Payback by Sam Stewart

everything dead. Charlie made sure . Charlie went over to a guy with no stomach and shot him in the head. Or a guy with no head and shot him in the stomach.
    Catlin lay sweating.
    If I get out of here—
    What?
    I’ll be kind to old ladies.
    You think you’ll get out of here?
    Seriously?
    Yeah .
    No.
    Okay. Just testing your sanity .
    Pass?
    Pass .
    He thought about Mack. If anyone could really make it out, it was Mack. And it made him feel better. Possibly Mack was even now in this grass. Crew chief, gunner, Catlin, Mack, Things Happen, Scarf—they were all of them more or less standing in the hatch. Mack was so stoned he could’ve floated, could’ve flown to Song Be by himself. Four minutes north. Four if by chopper and a week if by foot.
    No—if by TWO feet. One busted ankle and it’s—
    Lacerated. Sprained.
    Sorry, I forgot .
    The shooting was over. Catlin drank water from a plastic canteen and left it open to the rain.
    Hey asshole! You think you’ll live long enough to drink it?
    Hey fucker? I got two words for you.
    What?
    Things Happen.
    You think they’re gonna happen anymore?
    Catlin gave it thought. Whatever was happening had already happened. It had happened in threes. And whatever was up there, it wasn’t gonna give him any fourth time at bat.
    You want to hear the punchline?
    No.
    If you made it, if you no-shit made it, you know what’d happen? They’d send you back to war. Up another mountain. Down another path .
    Catlin closed his eyes. The inevitability hit him like a stone. There was no way out of here, no way back. The game was so crooked that to win was to lose. He thought about getting out his pistol right now, get it over with, just put a bullet in his brain. He thought, But that’s something you can always do later, and the thought seemed to offer him a sliver of support. Candle in the dark; light in the tunnel. My rod is my staff.
    He waited now, sweating and plotting in the grass. The rain seemed to slacken, then stopped. The mosquitos came roaring into life. Charlie moved over to his boats again. Heated discussions in the heat. Catlin could make out a couple of the words but not enough to make sense, though it sounded like a fight. On the other hand, everything sounded like a fight; the whole fucking language sounded choppy and vicious. “Have a nice day” was like “Take it up the ass.” So it might have been friendly:
    â€œWhat do you feel like doing tonight, Marty? You want to go beat a few bushes for Catlin?”
    â€œI don’t know, Angie. What do you want to do?”
    He was biting at his lip so hard it was bleeding.
    Boat sounds again. Grunts. Oars. Conversation receding. Silence.
    He waited, staring at the sky. It was leaden, it was totally socked in with gray. Already new thunderclouds threatened from the south.
    Passengers waiting for the incoming flight are invited for cocktails in the Sky-Tripper Lounge .
    He would look for his rifle.
    He would find his rifle and he’d head for the jungle.
    Or stay in the grass.
    Like a damn sitting duck?
    Okay. You’re right.
    He headed through the grass again, carefully, slow, wary of the traps and explosive trip-wires he knew were all around him. His foot throbbed heavily, Krupa in his boot going babadabadop , the pain shooting up at him. Every time he landed, it felt like he was stepping onto seven-inch spikes. He kept on moving. He thought about The Doctor, who’d lost his intelligent imaginative head to the tripping of a wire. “No metaphors,” he’d said. “There are no metaphors in war. When you’re feeling like your heart is on fire—it is.” And the seven-inch spikes were no metaphor either, they were hidden in the grass—short little seven-inch knife-sharp punjis, nasty little spears made of fire-hardened wood and then planted as one more contemptible surprise. And again he was alerted to the randomness of fate. If