The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories by Bruce McAllister Read Free Book Online

them. I’m smiling like an idiot and saying, “Thank you very much,” something stupid some USO type would say, and I’ve got someone holding me up so I don’t fall on my face. 
    There’s this Jolly Green Giant out in front of us. It’s dawn and everything’s beautiful and this chopper is gorgeous. It’s Air Force. It’s crazy. There are these guys I’ve never seen before. They’ve got black berets and they’re neat and clean, and they’re not Army. I think, Air Commandos! I’m giggling. They’re Air Force. They’re dandies. They’re going to save the day like John Wayne at Iwo Jima. I feel a bullet go through my arm, then another through my leg, and the back of my head blows off, but I don’t scream. I just feel the feelings, the ones you feel right before you die—but I don’t scream. The Air Force is going to save me. That’s funny. I tell myself how Steve had friends in the Air Commandos and how they took him around once in-country for a whole damn week, AWOL, yeah, but maybe it isn’t true, maybe I’m dreaming it. I’m still giggling. I’m still saying, “Thank you very much.” 
    We’re out maybe fifty klicks and I don’t know where we’re heading. I don’t care. Even if I cared I wouldn’t know how far out “safe” was. I hear Steve’s voice in the cockpit and a bunch of guys are laughing, so I think safe . They’ve busted me out because Steve cares and now we’re safe . I’m still saying, “Thank you,” and some guy is saying, “You’re welcome, baby,” and people are laughing and that feels good. If they’re all laughing, no one got hurt, I know. If they’re all laughing, we’re safe. Thank you. Thank you very much. 
    Then something starts happening in the cockpit. I can’t hear with all the wind. Someone says “Shit.” Someone says “Cobra.” Someone else says “Jesus Christ, what the hell?” I look out the roaring doorway and I see two black gunships. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. No one’s laughing. I’m saying “Thank you very much” but no one’s laughing. 
    I find out later there was one behind us, one in front, and one above. They were beautiful. They reared up like snakes when they hit you. They had M-134 Miniguns that could put a round on every square centimeter of a football field within seconds. They had fifty-two white phosphorous rockets apiece and Martin-Marietta laser-guided Copperhead howitzer rounds. They had laser designators and Forward-Looking Infrared Sensors. They were nightblack, no insignias of any kind. They were model AH-1G-X and they didn’t belong to any regular branch of the military back then. You wouldn’t see them until the end of the war. 
    I remember thinking that there were only two of us with talent on that slick, why couldn’t he let us go? Why couldn’t he just let us go? 
     
    I tried to think of all the things he could do to us, but he didn’t do a thing. He didn’t have to. 
    I didn’t see Steve for a long time. I went ahead and tried to sleep at night because it was better that way. If I was going to have the dreams, it was better that way. It didn’t make me so crazy. I wasn’t like a doll someone had to hold up. 
    I went ahead and wrote the dreams down in a little notebook Bucannon gave me, and I talked to him. I showed him I really wanted to understand, how I wanted to help, because it was easier on everybody this way. He didn’t act surprised, and I didn’t think he would. He’d always known. Maybe he hadn’t known about the guys in the black berets, but he’d known that Steve would try it. He’d known I’d stay awake. He’d known the dreams would move to daylight, from “interrupted REM-state,” if I stayed awake. And he’d known he’d get us back. 
    We talked about how my dreams were changing. I was having them much earlier than “events in real time,” he said. The same thing had probably been happening back in ER, he said, but I hadn’t known it. The talent was