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that precise moment of absolute terror. But he never knew what it had been.
He hurried on down the tunnel, leaving his sound of fear where it had saved him.
There was more. Much more. Through miles of drainage sewer, among the floating schools of rats
whose voices mingled so high he was deafened. Slipping and drinking the scum-clouded water. And
always in darkness, always pounded by his fear that had grown to such proportions an entire
section of his brain was closed off, numbed by the constant electrical level of horror and nausea.
Then he came to a tunnel-end, and he could hear the water rush to plunge over a precipice. It was
a brief drop, but it was sufficient to tell him he'd found an outlet. When he came to the end of
the passage, he found a huge metal grille, partially rusted, and in a frenzy of desperation he
slammed it again and again with his hip, his shoulders, his back, till it broke away and dropped
out.
He fell, gasping, into the murky stream, went under, came up and struck off spastically for the
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opposite side. When his feet could touch bottom, he dragged himself erect and hauled one foot
after another, till he bumped against the far bank, and hauling himself like a sack of soaked
meal, he fell face forward onto the thankgod ground. It was moist and cool, and he blessed it,
blessed it, kissed the earth with his garbage-tainted lips.
There was more. Much more.
A sprint through a forest, crashing into trees, falling a hundred times, running full tilt into a
thick limb that caught him full in the mouth and knocked him unconscious. When he came back to
consciousness, his mouth was full of blood and two teeth had been shattered. His face felt like a
pound of dogmeat. He stumbled erect, walked into the limb a second time, felt his head reverberate
like a church bell and managed somehow to go on.
There was more. Much more. A crawl across a shelled no-man's-land littered with dead trucks and
dead weapons and softer things that were attached to nothing at all. And once, yes, he was sure of
it, once he heard a voice calling out to him in the darkness, "Help me ... help me ... I'm ...
where are m-my arms ... help me ..." but the voice was too much like no other voice he'd ever
heard (he told himself) and he crawled on.
More. Into a mine field. He knew it was a mine field because the entrance to it was guarded by
what had been a man. The left half of his face had been pushed in as though it were a paper cup,
and in his outstretched hand, still clenched in the mannerprescribed by the manual, was his
bayonet, that he had been using to probe the ground for antipersonnel mines. It had probed too
deeply, and now the hand would seek no more. The body with the pushed-in face was not too far from
the hand for Arnie to know this was a mine field.
So he slid forward cautiously on his belly, probing with his own bayonet as the pushed-face
Cerberus guarding the field had done. Somehow, he slid through. Darkness. All around.
And then, without his even realizing he had done it, he saw a body looming up out of the darkness,
and he was crying again, letting it all out, holding nothing back, crying like the child inside
all men. It was a sentry, and so pathetic were MSgt. Arnott T. Winslow's sobs that he never
bothered to challenge him. He merely went forward and helped him to his feet. There could be no
danger in an enemy who sounded like that.
He was in a company area, he didn't know which one, and someone said, "Hey, fellah, can you open
your eyes?" and he realized he had crawled all the way from that sewer with his eyes so tightly
closed they throbbed with pain. His eyes came unstuck slowly, and he was insane with delight to
see a soft pink haze opening the sky like a brilliant blossom. It was daylight. It was rebirth. It
was the world once more.
There was a lister bag hanging from a tripod, and he stumbled forward, managed to slump to his
knees before it, and drank thirstily from the tap. They watched him, wondering what horrors had
turned this man into little more than an animal. He could never tell them, they could never know,
for perhaps their devils were spiders or snakes or hypodermic needles or some more nameless
subliminal terror they would never have to face, if they were very very lucky. As lucky as Arnie
Winslow had been unlucky.
It was not till much later, when the doctor had shaken his head and marveled at the stamina of
this man who had crawled God only knew how far, to return to his own lines. With a broken jaw,
with two teeth missing, with staved-in rib cage, with thousands of minor cuts, abrasions, holes in
his flesh and loss of blood, with extreme shock shaking him like a high-tension wire in a
hurricane, with exposure and loss of control of his hands. This was a remarkable creature, this
creature the dog tags called MSgt. Arnott T. Winslow, US51403352.
And when the interrogation officer came to him in the field hospital, lying twitching and wide-
eyed (as though he wanted to miss nothing of what went on in the light of day), only then did he
remember why he had crawled all this way.
Truck and the patrol.
He told the G-2 and the man went away, and a while later he came back with another officer and
they said things to Arnie Winslow.
"We don't have very accurate intelligence on that area."
"We're an advance spear of the front. We'd need at least a regiment out there..."
"Or a guide who could take us back the way you came."
Booming echoes of what they were saying cascaded back and forth in his skull. He could not believe
he was hearing them correctly. All the pain and fear had been for nothing.
"Or at least a guide who knew the way. But we can't start till tonight. They'd shell our asses to
bits if we tried it in daylight."
Arnie heard himself saying, "I'll take you back."
Through the darkness again. All the way back. Through the horror of the pit a second time.
The doctor interrupted. "This man isn't going anywhere. He's suffering from shock and three broken
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