“Oh, God! Oh, God!” one of the breezes said, above.
Kelly ignored it. He raised his head and nipped at her jugs, took part of one of them between his lips and nearly suffocated himself in flesh.
Lily was climbing toward her brink, sliding up and down on him, her head thrown back, mouth open. She made little sounds in her throat. Little obscene sounds.
As he felt her reaching her crest, Kelly thrust up, jamming hard into her, trying to finish with her. He knew that he would never again endure such incredible pleasure. He was sure of it. Of course, he was sure of it every time that he had her, was convinced in every instance that this was the ultimate and final joy; but now, his certainty was nonetheless complete for its familiarity. He could not conceive of anything to match this. He could not imagine another bout of this wet, hot, soft, nibbling, licking, jiggling, sucking, bouncing, sliding, slipping, thrusting, exploding excitement. Wide-eyed and breathless at the sight of her, he rushed both of them toward completion. “Soon, soon, soon, soon,” he mumbled ardently into her right breast.
But it was just not their night. As Major Kelly felt himself swept toward the brink, as he redoubled his efforts so that he might reach his end with hers, the Stukas bombed the bridge.
4
The hospital bunker was full of wounded men. Nurse Pullit was holding cold compresses against the back of Private Angelli's neck, while Angelli bent forward and let his nose drip blood into a rag. Tooley was treating a man for minor burns of the right arm, and a dozen men waited for treatment. All ten cots were occupied, and four men sat on the damp floor with their backs against the wall, cradling their arms or legs or whatever was hit.
Fortunately, the attack had first been directed against the farside pier. The men lying on the bridge floor staring over the edge at Major Kelly and Lily Kain on the grass below had time to jump up and run before, on a second pass, the Stukas placed two hundred-pounders exactly where they had been. Their wounds, for the most part, were minor: scrapes, cuts, weeping lesions, nosebleeds from the concussion, second-degree burns from being too near the outward-roiling flash of an explosion, twisted ankles, pulled muscles.
“You should all be thankful you're alive!” Major Kelly told them as he paced back and forth in the crowded bunker. He was trying to keep up company morale. He recognized that company morale was constantly hitting new lows, and he felt he had to do something to check this dangerous slide into utter dejection, depression, and apathy. The only problem was that his own heart wasn't in it. His morale kept hitting new lows, too, and he just could not think of any way to improve things. Except to harangue the men. “You should be thankful you're alive!” he repeated, grinning fiercely to show them how thankful he was.
The wounded men stared at him. Soot-smeared, blood-dappled, eyes white and wide, hair greasy and twisted in knots, clothes filthy and tattered, they did not seem cheered at all. One of them, when Kelly's back was turned, muttered, “Shallow philosophy.” But that was the only response.
“What's a nosebleed?” Kelly asked them. “What's a little cut on the arm or a burn?” He waited for an answer. When no one said anything, he answered himself: “It's nothing! Nothing at all. The important thing is to be alive!”
One of the men started crying.
Kelly tried to talk some more, but the crying drowned him out. He walked down the row to the fifth cot on the left. “Liverwright? What is the matter, Liverwright?”
Liverwright was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning to one side to take the weight off his swollen hip. Tears streamed down his face, and his mouth quivered unprettily.
“Liverwright? What is it?”
“The important thing is to be alive, just like you told us,” the wounded man said.
Kelly smiled uncertainly. “Yes. That's right.”
“But I'm dying,” Liverwright said. He was crying harder than ever, sobbing, his voice distorted as he tried to cry and breathe and talk at the same time.
“You aren't dying,” Kelly said. He didn't sound convincing.
“Yes, I am,” Liverwright said. “I'm dying, and I can't even die in peace. Now, all these men are moved in here. Everyone's rushing around. There's too much noise. And you're standing there shouting at us like — like General Blade.”
Liverwright had been the radio operator on alternate nights, before he took the piece of steel in the hip. He knew Blade. Even so, Major Kelly thought Liverwright must be delirious. “Me? Like Blade?”
Liverwright sniffed and wiped halfheartedly at his running nose. “Here we are in the worst trouble of our lives— and you're telling us we never had it so good. Half of us are wounded — and you're telling us it's nothing. Most of us will never get home again — and you're telling us we should take it easy, relax, count our blessings.” Liverwright blew his nose without benefit of handkerchief, wiped his sticky fingers on his shirt. “I always thought you were different. I thought you weren't like other officers. But down deep, you have the potential.”
Kelly was stunned by the accusations. All he could say was, “What potential?”
“To be another Blade,” Liverwright said. “You could be another General Blade.” He began to bawl again. His whole body shook, and he rocked back and forth on the edge of the cot, nearly tipping it over.
“Me?” Kelly asked, incredulous.
“I'm dying, and you're talking at me like General Blade. I can't take it. I can't.”
Suddenly, not really aware of what he was doing, Kelly reached down and took hold of Liverwright's shirt. He lifted the wounded man clear off his cot, held him up as if he were an airy ball of rags. He pulled Liverwright against him, until only an inch or two separated their faces. “Don't you ever say anything like that.” His voice was tight, issued through clenched teeth. His face was red, and he was sweating more than the heat could account for. “Don't you ever call me anything like that. Blade, the rest of them like Blade, on both sides of this fucking war, aren't a whole hell of a lot different. They're the throw-backs, the brutes, the cavemen. Don't you goddamned ever call me something like that!” He dropped Liverwright back on his cot, without regard for the man's hip.
Liverwright blew his nose again, wiped at his eyes. “Am I dying?” he asked.
“Probably,” Kelly said. “We all are, bit by bit.”
Liverwright smiled slightly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
Nauseous, ashamed of himself, Major Kelly went up front where Lily and Nurse Pullit were treating the last of the wounded.
Amazingly enough, the major and Lily Kain had escaped injury, though they had been directly under the bridge when the Stukas glided in. Lily told Nurse Pullit all about their escape as the two of them treated the wounded. “He was lying there, flat on his back, shoved right up in me. You know?”
Nurse Pullit giggled.
“Even if the Stukas hadn't glided in, we probably wouldn't have heard them any sooner. Anyway, when the first bombs hit the far side of the bridge, he got his hands and feet under him and started off.”
“With you on top?” Nurse Pullit asked.
Lily explained how it was. Kelly, his back still parallel to the earth, Lily still screwed on tight, had pushed up and scuttled along the riverbank like a crab. Two minutes later, when they were a quarter of a mile downriver from the bridge, he was still lodged firmly inside of her, and she had climaxed at least half a dozen times. It had been like riding a horse with a dildo strapped to the saddle. She wanted to try it again, Lily told Nurse Pullit, but she thought it might be best to wait until the bridge was likely to be bombed again. After all, the fear of death was what had given the major the energy to perform these acrobatics.