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"Inside voices," the lieutenant said. "Sit down."
"I don't think so," Lee said. "I don't have to listen to this shit." With that, he stalked away from the table, through the men and women swiftly returning their attentions to the meals in front of them, and out the side door.
"What the fuck?" Davis said, dropping his wad of soggy napkins on Lee's tray.
"That seems to be the question of the moment," the lieutenant said.
"Sir-"
"Our friend and fellow is not having the best of months," the lieutenant said. "In fact, he is not having the best of years. You remember the snafus with his disability checks."
"I thought that was taken care of."
"It was, but it was accompanied by the departure of Lee's wife and their two-year-old. Compared to what he was, Lee is vastly improved. In terms of the nuances of his emotional health, however, he has miles to go. The shit with his disability did not help; nor did spending all day home with a toddler who didn't recognize his father."
"He didn't-"
"No, but I gather it was a close thing. A generous percentage of the wedding flatware paid the price for Lee's inability to manage himself. In short order, the situation became too much for Shari, who called her father to come for her and Douglas."
"Bitch," Han said.
"Since then," the lieutenant said, "Lee's situation has not improved. A visit to the local bar for a night of drinking alone ended with him in the drunk tank. Shari 's been talking separation, possibly divorce, and while Lee tends to be a bit paranoid about the matter, there may be someone else involved, an old boyfriend. Those members of Lee's family who've visited him, called him, he has rebuffed in a fairly direct way. To top it all off, he's been subject to the same, intermittent feast of blood as the rest of us."
"Oh," Davis said. "I had no-Lee doesn't talk to me-"
"Never mind. Finish your story."
"It's not a story."
"Sorry. Poor choice of words. Go on, please."
"All right," Davis said. "Okay. You have to understand, I was as surprised by all of this as-well, as anyone. I couldn't believe I'd affected the thing. If it hadn't been so real, so like all the other times, I would have thought I was hallucinating, on some kind of wish-fulfillment trip. As it was, there I was as the thing picked itself up from the jungle floor. The anger-my anger-I guess it was still there, but…on hold.
"The second the thing was upright, someone shouted and the air was hot with bullets. Most of them shredded leaves, chipped bark, but a few of them tagged the thing's arm, its shoulder. Something was wrong-mixing in with its confusion, there was another emotion, something down the block from fear. I wasn't doing anything: I was still stu
"Now it was pissed. Even before it picked itself up, the place it landed was being subject to intensive defoliation. A shot tore its ear. Its anger-if what I felt was fire, this was lava, thicker, slower-moving, hotter. It retreated, scuttled half a dozen trees deeper into the jungle. Whoever those guys were, they were professionals. They advanced on the spot where the thing fell and, when they saw it wasn't there anymore, they didn't rush in after it. Instead, they fell back to a defensive posture while one of them put in a call-for air support, I'm guessing.
"The thing was angry and hurt and the thirst-" Davis shook his head. He sipped his Coke. "What came next-I'm not sure I can describe it. There was this surge in my head-not the thing's head, this was my brain I'm talking about-and the thing was looking out of my eyes."
"It turned the tables on you," the lieutenant said.
"Not exactly," Davis said. "I continued watching the soldiers maybe seventy-five feet in front of me, but I was…aware of the thing staring at the DVD still playing on the TV. It was as if the scene was on a screen just out of view." He shook his head. "I'm not describing it right.
"Anyway, that was when the co
Davis watched the lieutenant evade an immediate response by taking a generous bite of his Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese and chewing it with great care. Han swallowed and said, "Soldiers."
"What?"
"Soldiers," Han said.
Through his mouthful of burger, the lieutenant said, "He wants to know what happened to the soldiers. Right?"
Han nodded.
"Beats the shit out of me," Davis said. "Maybe their air support showed up and bombed the fucker to hell. Maybe they evac'd out of there."
"But that isn't what you think," the lieutenant said. "You think it got them."
"Yes sir," Davis said. "The minute it was free of me, I think it had those poor bastards for lunch."
"It seems a bit much to hope otherwise, doesn't it?"
"Yes sir, it does."
When the lieutenant opted for another bite of his sandwich, Davis said, "Well?"
The lieutenant answered by lifting his eyebrows. Han switched from McNuggets to fries.
"As I see it," Davis began. He stopped, paused, started again. "We know that the thing fucked with us in Fallujah, linked up with us. So far, this situation has only worked to our disadvantage: whenever one of us is in sufficient discomfort, the co
"But what if-suppose we could duplicate what happened to me? Not just once, but over and over-even if only for ten or fifteen seconds at a time-interfere with whatever it's doing, seriously fuck with it."
"Then what?" the lieutenant said. "We're a thorn in its side. So?"
"Sir," Davis said, "those soldiers hit it. Okay, yes, their fire wasn't any more effective than ours was, but I'm willing to bet their percentages were significantly higher. That's what me being on board in an-enhanced way did to the thing. We wouldn't be a thorn-we'd be the Goddamned bayonet Han jammed in its ribs.
"Not that we should wait for someone else to take it down. I'm proposing something more ambitious."
"All right."
"If we can disrupt the thing's routine-especially if we cut into its feeding-it won't take very long for it to want to find us. Assuming the second part of my experience-the thing has a look through our eyes-if that happens again, we can arrange it so that we let it know where we're going to be. We pick a location with a clearing where the thing can land and surrounding tree cover where we can wait to ambush it. Before any of us goes to ruin the thing's day, he puts pictures, maps, satellite photos of the spot on display, so that when the thing's staring out of his eyes, that's what it sees. If the same images keep showing up in front of it, it should get the point."
The lieutenant took the rest of his meal to reply. Han offered no comment. When the lieutenant had settled into his chair after tilting his tray into the garbage and stacking it on top of the can, he said, "I don't know, Davis. There are an awful lot more ifs than I prefer to hear in a plan.
If we can access the thing the same way you did; if that wasn't a fluke. If the thing does the reverse-vision stuff; if it understands what we're showing it. If we can find a way to kill it." He shook his head.
"Granted," Davis said, "there's a lot we'd have to figure out, not least how to put it down and keep it down. I have some ideas about that, but nothing developed. It would be nice if we could control our co