The Throat by Peter Straub Read Free Book Online

nose and those pricky little eyes. A transparent sheet of
adhesive plastic covered the hole in his chest. Scoot tossed the glass
back to me and detached his knife from its peculiar thong, which looked
more than ever like a body part. Then I saw what it was.
    Scoot noticed my quiver of revulsion, and he turned his crazy glance
on me again. "You think this is about revenge. You're wrong. It's
proof."
    Proof that he was right and Captain Havens had been wrong—wrong from
the start. No matter what he said, I still thought it was revenge.
    Attica took an interested step forward. Picklock sat up straight in
the back of the truck.
    Scoot leaned over Captain Havens's body and began sawing off his
left ear. It took more effort than I had imagined it would, and the
long cords of muscle stood out in his arm. At length the white-gray bit
of flesh stretched and came away, looking smaller than it had on
Captain Havens's head.
    "Dry it out, be fine in a week or two," Scoot said. He placed the
ear beside him on the concrete and bent over Captain Havens like a
surgeon in midoperation. He was smiling with concentration. Scoot
pushed the double-edged point beneath the hair just beside the wound he
had made and began running the blade upward along the hairline.
    I turned away, and someone handed me the last of the 100 that had
been circulating. I took another hit, handed back the roach, and walked
past Attica toward the door. "Make a nice wall mount," Attica said.
    As soon as I got outside, the sunlight poured into my eyes and the
ground swung up toward me. I staggered for a moment. The sound of
distant shelling came to me, and I turned away from the main part of
the camp, irrationally afraid that body parts were going to fall out of
the sky.
    I moved aimlessly along a dirt track that led through a stand of
weedy trees—spindly trunks with a scattering of leaves and branches at
their tops, like afterthoughts. It came to me that the army had chosen
to let these miserable trees stand. Normally they leveled every tree in
sight. Therefore, they wanted to hide whatever was behind the trees. I
felt like a genius for having worked this out.
    An empty village had been erected on the far side of the growth of
trees. One-story wooden structures marched up both sides of two
intersecting streets. There were no gates and no guards. Before me in
the center of the suburb, on a little green at the intersection of the
two streets, an unfamiliar military flag hung limply beside the Stars
and Stripes.
    It looked like a ghost town.
    A man in black sunglasses and a neat gray suit walked out of one of
the little frame buildings and looked at me. He crossed over the rough
grass in front of the next two structures, glancing at me now and then.
When he reached the third building he jumped up the steps and
disappeared inside. He had looked as out of place as Magritte's
locomotive coming out of a fireplace.
    The instant the door closed behind Magritte, another opened and a
tall soldier in green fatigues emerged. It was like a farce: a
clockwork village where one door opened as soon as another closed. The
tall soldier glanced at me, seemed to hesitate, and began moving toward
me.
    Fuck you, I thought, I have a right to be here, I do the dirty work
for you assholes.
    He kicked up dust as he walked. He was carrying a .45 in a black
leather holster hung from his web belt, and two ballpoint pens jutted
out of the slanted, blousy pocket of his shirt. There were two crossed
rifles on his collar, and a captain's star on his epaulets. He carried
something soft in one hand, and a wristwatch with a steel band hung
upside down from a slot in his collar.
    Too late, I remembered to salute. When my hand was still at my
forehead, I saw that the man coming toward me had the face I had just
seen in a body bag. It was Captain Havens. My eyes dropped to the name
tag stitched to his shirt. The steel watch covered the first two or
three letters, and all I could read was SOM.
    Good trick, I