Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

the buzzing talk of seven pretty little girls. "So I say to him-'Don't give me that, Mr. High and Mighty.' So he says, 'Oh yeah?' And I say, 'Yeah!' "
      "Honest, will I ever be glad when this thing's over. I saw the cutest hat on my last furlough. Oh, what I wouldn't give to wear it!"
      "You too? Don't I know it! You just can't get your hair right.
      Not in this weather. Why don't they let us get rid of it?" "Men! They make me sick." Seven gestures, seven postures, seven laughter’s ringing thin beneath thunder. Teeth showing in girl giggles. Hands tireless, painting pictures in the air.
      P.G. Centre. Girls. Seven of them. Pretty. Not one over sixteen. Curls. Pigtails. Bangs. Pouting little lips-smiling, frowning, shaping emotion on emotion. Sparkling young eyes- glittering, twinkling, narrowing, cold or warm.
      Seven healthy young bodies restive on wooden chairs. Smooth adolescent limbs. Girls-pretty girls-seven of them.
      An army of ugly shapeless men, stumbling in mud, struggling along the pitch black muddy road.
      Rain a torrent. Buckets of it thrown on each exhausted man. Sucking sound of great boots sinking into oozy yellow-brown mud, pulling loose. Mud dripping from heels and soles.
      Plodding men-hundreds of them-soaked, miserable, depleted. Young men bent over like old men. Jaws hanging loosely, mouth gasping at black wet air, tongues lolling, sunken eyes looking at nothing, betraying nothing.
      Rest.
      Men sink down in the mud, fall on their packs. Heads thrown back, mouths open, rain splashing on yellow teeth. Hands immobile-scrawny heaps of flesh and bone. Legs without motion-khaki lengths of worm-eaten wood. Hundreds of useless limbs fixed to hundreds of useless trunks.
      In back, ahead, beside, rumble trucks and tanks and tiny cars. Thick tires splattering mud. Fat treads sinking, tearing at mucky slime. Rain drumming wet fingers on metal and canvas.
      Lightning flashbulbs without pictures. Momentary burst of light. The face of war seen for a second-made of rusty guns and turning wheels and faces staring.
      Blackness. A night hand blotting out the brief storm glow. Windblown rain flitting over fields and roads, drenching trees and trucks. Rivulets of bubbly rain tearing scars from the earth. Thunder, lightning.
      A whistle. Dead men resurrected. Boots in sucking mud again-deeper, closer, nearer. Approach to a city that bars the way to a city that bars the way to a…
      An officer sat in the communication room of the P.G. Centre. He peered at the operator, who sat hunched over the control board, phones over his ears, writing down a message.
      The officer watched the operator. They are coming, he thought. Cold, wet and afraid they are marching at us. He shivered and shut his eyes.
      He opened them quickly. Visions fill his darkened pupils- of curling smoke, flaming men, unimaginable horrors that shape themselves without words or pictures.
      "Sir," said the operator, "from advance observation post. Enemy forces sighted."
      The officer got up, walked over to the operator and took the message. He read it, face blank, mouth parenthesized. "Yes," he said.
      He turned on his heel and went to the door. He opened it and went into the next room. The seven girls stopped talking. Silence breathed on the walls.
      The officer stood with his back to the plastic window. "Enemies," he said, "two miles away. Right in front of you."
      He turned and pointed out the window. "Right out there. Two miles away. Any questions?"
      A girl giggled.
      "Any vehicles?" another asked.
      "Yes. Five trucks, five small command cars, two tanks."
      "That's too easy," laughed the girl, slender fingers fussing with her hair.
      "That's all," said the officer. He started from the room. "Go to it," he added and, under his breath, "Monsters!"

      He left.
      "Oh, me," sighed one of the girls, "here we go again."
      "What a bore," said another. She opened her delicate