The Lost Bradbury by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page B

nothing. Nothing at all. Damn. Except that I’m envious of you. I—I wish I hadn’t grown up so hard and so fast. See, Johnny, you’re going to come out of this war. Don’t ask me how, I just feel you are. That’s the way the Book reads. Maybe I won’t come out. Maybe I’m not a kid. And not being a kid maybe I won’t have the protection that God gives a kid just because he is a kid. Maybe I grew up believing in the wrong things—believing in reality and things like death and bullets. Maybe I’m nuts for imagining things about you. Sure I am. Just my imagination for thinking that you’re—aw. Whatever happens, Johnny remember this, I’m going to stick by you.”
    “Sure you are. That’s the only way I’ll play,” said Johnny.
    “And if anybody so much as tries to tell you you can’t duck bullets, you know what I’m going to do?”
    “What?”
    “I’m going to kick them square in the teeth!”
    Eddie got, jerking nervous, a funny smile on his lips.
    “Now, come on, Johnny, let’s move and move fast. There’s another-game—playing over this hill.”
    Johnny got excited. “Is there?”
    “Yeah,” said Smith. “Come on.”
    They went over the hill together. Johnny Choir dancing and zigzagging and laughing, and Eddie Smith following close behind, watching him with a white face and wide, envious eyes….
     

 LAZARUS COME FORTH
     
    This was published in Planet Stories in the winter issue of 1944 and has not been previously included in any story collection.
     
    * * * *
     
    Logan’s way of laughing was bad. “There’s a new body up in the airlock, Brandon. Climb the rungs and have a look.”
    Logan’s eyes had a green shine to them, eager and intent. They were ugly, obscene.
    Brandon swore under his breath. This room of the Morgue Ship was crowded with their two personalities. Besides that, there were scores of cold shelves of bodies freezing quietly, and the insistent vibration of the coroner tables, machinery spinning under them. And Logan was like a little machine that never stopped talking.
    “Leave me alone.” Brandon rose up, tall and thinned by the years, looking as old as a pocked meteor. “Just keep quiet.”
    Logan sucked his cigarette. “Scared to go upstairs? Scared it might be your son we just picked up?”
    Brandon reached Logan in about one stride, and while the Morgue Ship slipped on through space, he clenched the coroner’s blue uniform with the small bones inside it and hung it up against the wall, pressing inward until Logan couldn’t breathe. Logan blew air, his eyes looked helpless. He tried to speak and could only grunt like a stuck pig. He waved his short arms, flapping.
    Brandon kept him there, crucified on a fist.
    “I told you. Let me search for my own son’s body in my own way. I don’t need your tongue.”
    Logan’s eyes were losing their shine, were getting blind and glazed. Brandon stepped back, releasing the little assistant. Logan bumped softly against metal flooring, his mouth hungry for air, his nostrils flaring for breath. Brandon watched the little face of Logan over the crouched, gasping body, with red color and anger shooting up into it with every passing second.
    “Coward!” he threw it out of himself, Logan did. “Got yellow—neon-tubing—for your spine. Coward. Never went to war. Never did anything for Earth against Mars.”
    Brandon said the words in slow motion. “Shut up.”
    “Why?” Logan crept back, inching up the metal hull. The blood pumps under the skirts of the tables pulsed across the warm silence. “Does it hurt, the truth? Your son’d be proud of you, okay. Ha!” He coughed and spat. “He was so damn ashamed of you he went and signed up for space combat. So he got lost from his ship during a battle.” Logan licked his lips very carefully. “So, to make up for it, you signed on a Morgue Ship. Try to find his body. Try to make amends. I know you. You wouldn’t join the Space Warriors to fight. No guts for that. Had to