The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard Read Free Book Online Page B

low-budget aliens and
Scotty’s Actors’ Equity accent. He gazed out the door again. The sun was behind
the hills, and the hillsides were unfeatured blurs of dark green smoke. Oh,
God, he wanted to be home, to be anywhere but Salvador! A couple of the guys
joined in the singing at DT’s urging, and as the volume swelled, Dantzler’s
emotion peaked. He was on the verge of tears, remembering tastes and sights,
the way his girl Jeanine had smelled, so clean and fresh, not reeking of sweat
and perfume like the whores around Ilopango—finding all this substance in the
banal touchstone of his culture and the illusions of the hillsides rushing
past. Then Moody tensed beside him, and he glanced up to learn the reason why.
     
    In
the gloom of the chopper’s belly, DT was as unfeatured as the hills—a black
presence ruling them, more the leader of a coven than a platoon. The other two
guys were singing their lungs out, and even the kid was getting into the spirit
of things. “Música!” he said at one point, smiling at everybody, trying
to fan the flame of good feeling. He swayed to the rhythm and essayed a “la-la”
now and again. But no one else was responding.
     
    The
singing stopped, and Dantzler saw that the whole platoon was staring at the
kid, their expressions slack and dispirited.
     
    “Space!”
shouted DT, giving the kid a little shove. “The final frontier!”
     
    The
smile had not yet left the kid’s face when he toppled out the door. DT peered
after him; a few seconds later he smacked his hand against the floor and sat
back, grinning. Dantzler felt like screaming, the stupid horror of the joke was
so at odds with the languor of his homesickness. He looked to the others for
reaction. They were sitting with their heads down, fiddling with trigger guards
and pack straps, studying their bootlaces, and seeing this, he quickly imitated
them.
     
    *
* * *
     
    Morazán Province was spook
country. Santa Ana spooks. Flights of birds had been reported to attack
patrols; animals appeared at the perimeters of campsites and vanished when you
shot at them; dreams afflicted everyone who ventured there. Dantzler could not
testify to the birds and animals, but he did have a recurring dream. In it the
kid DT had killed was pinwheeling down through a golden fog, his T-shirt
visible against the roiling backdrop, and sometimes a voice would boom out of
the fog, saying, “You are killing my son.” No, no, Dantzler would reply, it
wasn’t me, and besides, he’s already dead. Then he would wake covered with
sweat, groping for his rifle, his heart racing.
     
    But
the dream was not an important terror, and he assigned it no significance. The
land was far more terrifying. Pine-forested ridges that stood out against the
sky like fringes of electrified hair; little trails winding off into thickets
and petering out, as if what they led to had been magicked away; gray rock
faces along which they were forced to walk, hopelessly exposed to ambush. There
were innumerable booby traps set by the guerrillas, and they lost several men
to rockfalls. It was the emptiest place of Dantzler’s experience. No people, no
animals, just a few hawks circling the solitudes between the ridges. Once in a
while they found tunnels, and these they blew with the new gas grenades; the
gas ignited the rich concentrations of hydrocarbons and sent flame sweeping
through the entire system. DT would praise whoever had discovered the tunnel
and would estimate in a loud voice how many beaners they had “refried.” But
Dantzler knew they were traversing pure emptiness and burning empty holes.
Days, under debilitating heat, they humped the mountains, traveling seven,
eight, even ten klicks up trails so steep that frequently the feet of the guy
ahead of you would be on a level with your face; nights, it was cold, the
darkness absolute, the silence so profound that Dantzler imagined he could hear
the great humming vibration of the earth. They might have been