Ian Slater - World in Flames

As the air force van slowed to drop them off at their shared bungalow, Shirley’s boyfriend, a junior lieutenant from the silo complex HQ, was waiting in his car, its exhaust blowing clouds of steam high into the frozen air, and Melissa could feel the steady thump, thump, thump of the stereo as she got out of the base van, the frigid blast of air hitting her like a sheet of ice.

“Hi,” she heard Shirley call out to the boyfriend. “Come on inside!”

He shook his head, sliding the window down a fraction. “Kiloton’s in there. Doing some repair work. Didn’t think I should go in. Anybody knows you gave me a key—”

“Well,” said Shirley, walking over to his car, “you can come in now, can’t you?”

He looked anxiously at his watch. “We’re gonna miss that movie.”

“Okay,” Shirley called out, “give me a couple of minutes.”

Already inside, Melissa saw the jack-of-all-trades repairman known on the base as “Killerton.” He turned around, his bodybuilder’s torso threatening to burst the coveralls, a clump of chest hair so prominent, it made her look away.

“Didn’t think anyone’d be home,” said Killerton, grinning, his smile immediately suggestive, a shock of black hair as dark as that on his chest, Melissa noticed. Melissa shook the snow off her boots, still shivering and not knowing quite what to say to the repairman, not that there was anything unusual about him being there. Base personnel often requested repairs, and the workmen were issued a key. Happened all the time. She didn’t have to say anything to him. Just fix the damn ceiling tile and roof.

“Requisition,” said Killerton, holding up the pink slip from his toolbox for Melissa to see.

Shirley came in, snowflakes racing after her. “Hi, Killer. Didn’t see your truck.”

“Round the back.”

“You fix that sucker?”

“Workin’ on it. You got a leak, all right, coming right through the flashing.” He indicated the spot with a full-sized hammer that looked like a toy in his hands.

“Uh-huh,” commented Shirley, uninterested, taking off her parka.

“Can’t see it from there,” he said, looking over at them.

“Well, I tell ya, Killer,” said Shirley, “I’m not into roofs, man.” She disappeared into the bathroom. “Show Melissa.”

“Don’t bother,” Melissa said quickly. “I’m not into roofs either.” Shirley was calling out from the bathroom, “ Lissa— you and Stacy coming to the movie?”

“Rick’s probably still on his solo.”

“So? Give him a call. If you two are still talking, that is.”

Melissa didn’t answer, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Killerton with a grouting gun, testing the nozzle against his hand, wiping the putty off on his coveralls as Melissa dialed Stacy’s bungalow. Outside, the wind was picking up, throwing peppercorn-sized snow hard against the panes. No answer from Stacy’s bungalow.

“He’s not there,” Melissa told Shirley.

“Come with us, then.”

“No, thanks. Three’s a crowd. I don’t think your beau would appreciate—”

“Beau! Honey, he’ll do what he’s told or else.”

“No, thanks. I feel zapped anyway. I’ll wander down to the PX later on. See you there.”

Shirley was out of the bathroom, walking back to the door and pulling on her anorak. “Well, rug up, honey. Freeze your butt off out there.”

“I will.”

“ ‘Bye.”

The moment the door slammed shut, Melissa wished she’d gone with her.

“I won’t be long,” said Killerton.

“Fine.”

Melissa sat down and switched on the TV, but the repairman’s presence made her feel uncomfortable. Although he seemed to be patching the leak, smoothing it off, Melissa felt he was watching her. She was starting to get annoyed, but it was really her own guilt for having requested base repairs in the fight with Stacy. She should have left it for Rick to do instead of being petty about it.

“Worse then I thought,” said Killerton. “Wood’s rotten in here. Wormed right through.”

“Oh?” said Melissa, uninterested, but adding politely, “Thought it’d be too cold for them.”

“Sure, now it is, but summertime it’s hotter’n a pistol out here. No, this is old damage. I’m gonna have to fill in more holes than I thought.”

Melissa said nothing and changed channels. A commercial for “Rocky Mountain Bottled Water” blurted out, with a jingle she despised.

“The war’s the best thing that ever happened to ‘em,” said Killerton.

Melissa looked over at him. He was reloading the caulking gun with a new tube, but did it with such dexterity and long experience, he didn’t even glance at it, looking at Melissa, explaining, “War’s kicked the ass out of all the Europeans. Destroyed fuckin’ Perrier, and now with most of our water poisoned — hell, Rocky Mountain can jerk us off any way they like.” He was still smiling and she was flustered. The bad language was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but he seemed to be throwing it down like a gauntlet — to see how she’d react.

“Feeling pretty thirsty myself,” he said.

“Would you like a Coke?” she asked, for want of anything better to say.

“Beer if you’ve got it.”

She went over to the kitchenette, took a Coors from the fridge, and passed it to him. Still looking at her, he tore the tab off with his teeth.

Revolting, she thought — a big, hairy adolescent right out of Animal House. It was the kind of comment David might have made. And Rick. It was about the only thing Rick and David had in common — a disdain for the gross macho bit. Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t deny in her a sense of danger, of excitement, around Killerton. With a man like this, she knew you could let yourself go completely. Mind you, it could never be a permanent thing.

She heard the click of the toolbox.

When Parkin found him, David was all but unrecognizable, covered in the chalk dust from the direct hit on the castle high above the town. With only his eyes visible beneath the chalk, Brentwood would have looked comical had it not been for the broken child in his arms. He walked straight past Parkin and Monsieur Malmédy toward the first aid post set up by the Café Renoir, the child’s head, her spine snapped, lolling like a rag doll, apparently without a scratch on her, the muck and stench of body fluids causing the tiny dress to cling to her matted hair, her eyes wide open, fixed in horror. When David placed her down, taking off his tunic to cover her crumpled body, he tried to shut her eyes, but they wouldn’t. He drew the battle tunic up higher to cover her face. Old Malmédy, Parkin saw, was in tears as Brentwood lowered his head for a moment — to compose himself, to pray, or both— Parkin didn’t know which — only that when the American straightened up, he looked different. It wasn’t simply that now his tunic was off, the clean, pressed army shirt and lieutenant’s collar bars were in such sharp contrast to his bedraggled vaudevillian appearance moments before that they made him look fresher than others who had been in or near the shelter that had taken the side blast of a near hit. The difference in Brentwood’s appearance was in his eyes. They were the eyes of an old man in a young body, not wearied by age, but the determined steel blue of a man who had at one stroke lost all illusion about the fairness of life — a man who, to Parkin, looked resolved.

“What a bastard!” said Parkin, looking down helplessly at the tiny form covered by Brentwood’s tunic. Brentwood said nothing, his eyes not moving from the girl’s body, but if there was compassion in them, it had become subsumed, his look, Parkin thought, more that of a surgeon who, along with the recognition of the tragic, seemed to be standing in judgment not only of those who had done this terrible thing but of himself, of his own behavior, his competence, of how he might have prevented it. And now he had to tell the old man who was already in tears over the young girl that his daughter, too, was dead. He put his arm about the old man, and instantly Malmédy knew it was terrible news.