Black Maps Read Online Free PDF Page A

breathing through his open mouth because of the cotton in his nose, and it felt like he was suffocating. His head throbbed and his stomach felt queasy. Then the smell of the diesel fumes and the shit suddenly penetrated the cotton and made him drop to his knees. With a noise like a bark, he vomited onto the red dirt between his trembling palms.
    â€œYou all right?” Konieczny asked, leaning over him.
    Freeze wiped his mouth and looked up at Konieczny’s face, its freckles and peachfuzz and acne. The twink would be lucky if he lasted a week in the bush. Freeze could see him tripping a mine and blowing into the air, his body cut in half. He remembered how Perkins had looked after he triggered a Bouncing Betty. He’d had his wet intestines in his hands, and he was trying to put them back in. Or had Freeze just dreamed that?
    He looked away, squinting in the sun. “Fuck you,” he answered.
    â€œJust trying to help,” the kid said. He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the work.
    Freeze stood, his legs quivering. He thought about saying he was sorry, but then he’d have to explain and he didn’t know how to explain or even what to explain. So they finished soaking the shit without talking, then dropped matches on it. Black smoke curdled out of the pit, and the stench made them gag. Standing there beside the blaze, his eyes burning, head swimming, Freeze almost threw up again. And later, back in the hootch, he lay on his rack, the stink of the burning shit still thick in his nostrils, and heaved his guts into a C-rats can. His heart was beating fast, like it did when they were in a fire fight. What had happened? He’d been a strack soldier for ten months, an assistant squad leader—leader of the first fire team—for the past four, ever since C.B. got zapped. And now he was a shit-burner. God, how he hated that frigging brown-bar.
    Hating the lieutenant made him feel better than he had since he’d stepped on the mine; it made things seem more real, more logical. So he stoked his hate, made it grow. Everything was Reynolds’ fault. Reynolds was the evil heart of it all. If it wasn’t for him, he’d be happy now, he’d be one of the guys again, nothing would have changed. The bastard was worse than Charlie.
    Lying there on his canvas cot, Freeze imagined Reynolds walking point through knee-high brush. Then he saw him stop dead. He’d felt something under his boot. For a second, stupidly, Reynolds thought it was a scorpion, or a rock, but then he felt the pin sink and he knew it was the metal prong of a Bouncing Betty. Before he could move, or even think, the mine flew up out of the ground with a pop. Reynolds closed his eyes and covered his head with his hands, and for a moment, a moment that stretched out until it was outside of time, he waited for the explosion of light, the thundering roar, the hail of shrapnel. Then the moment ended and the Bouncing Betty fell back at his feet, dead. The main charge hadn’t gone off. Reynolds opened his eyes and stood there for several minutes, panting hard, the sweat rolling off his face and dripping onto the mine, his eyes staring into ozone. Hey , his men would say later, you should have seen the brown-bar freeze .
    Freeze planned his revenge all afternoon. Then, an hour or so before dusk, he saw Reynolds go into the officers’ club. After waiting a few minutes to be sure he wasn’t coming back out, he snuck into Reynolds’ quarters. He had planned to fire a single pistol shot into his pillow and leave, but once he was there, that plan seemed too dangerous, even crazy. He had to do something, though, so he stole the two officer-grade steaks Reynolds had in his refrigerator. He stuffed them inside his shirt and left, almost giddy. He could just see the look on Reynolds’ face when he saw the steaks were missing.
    Back in the hootch, Freeze put the smaller steak up for auction. He stood on his