“I’m okay,” the wounded man said sullenly.
“Sure you are, Titelbaum,” Cooter replied. “Tootsie One-five,” he continued, keying his helmet. “This is Tootsie Three. Tommy, send one a’ your boys—send Chalkin—to One-six. Over.”
“I kin handle it!” Titelbaum insisted as the lieutenant listened to the reply.
“One-five,” Cooter said in response to a complaint Suilin couldn’t hear. “I’d like to be in bed with a hooker. Get Chalkin over here, right? I need ‘im to take over. Three out.”
“I kin—”
“You got one hand,” Cooter snapped. “Just shut it off, okay?”
“I’m left—”
“You’re a bloody liar.” Cooter looked at Suilin, balanced on the edge of the armor, for the first time. “Good. Gimme a hand with McGwire. We’ll sling her to the skirts and get a little more space for Chalkin.”
Suilin nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
“Here, take the top,” Cooter said. He reached beneath McGwire’s shoulders and lifted the corpse with surprising gentleness.
McGwire had been a small woman with sharp features and a fine shimmer of blonde hair. Her head was bare. A bullet had entered beneath her right mastoid at an upward slant that lifted the commo helmet when it exited with a splash of brains.
McGwire’s flesh was still warm. Suilin kept his face rigid as his hands took the weight from Cooter.
“Titelbaum,” the lieutenant said, “where’s your—oh.”
The wounded crewman was already offering a flat dispenser of cargo tape. Cooter thrust it into a pocket and grasped the corpse by the boots.
“Okay, turtle,” he said as he raised his leg over the side coaming—careful not to step on the comatose soldier on the floor of the compartment. “Easy now. We’ll fasten her to the tarp tie-downs.”
Cooter paused for a moment on the edge, using a tribarrel to support his elbow. Then he swung his other leg clear and slid from the bulge of the skirts to the ground without jerking or dropping his burden.
Suilin managed to get down with his end also. It was a difficult job, even though he had proper steps for his feet.
Gear—stakes, wire mesh, bedding and the Lord knew what all else—was fastened along the sides of all the combat cars. Cooter spun a few centimeters of tape into a loop and reached behind a footlocker to hook the loop to the hull. He took two turns around McGwire’s ankles before snugging them tight to the same tie-down.
A trooper carrying a sub-machinegun and a bandolier of ammunition jogged up to Daisy Belle, glancing around warily at the vehicles which snorted and shifted across the bald. “This One-six?” he demanded. “Oh, hi, Coot.”
“Yeah, try ‘n keep Titelbaum trackin’, will you?” the lieutenant said. “He’s takin’ it pretty hard, you know?”
“Aw, cop,” the newcomer muttered, looking past Suilin. “Nandi bought it? Aw, cop.”
“Foran’s not in great shape neither, but he’ll be okay,” Cooter said.
The lieutenant’s big, capable fingers wrapped tape quickly around McGwire’s shoulders.
The corpse leaked on Suilin’s hands and wrist. The reporter’s face didn’t move except for a slight flaring of his nostrils.
Chalkin climbed into the fighting compartment. The barrel of his sub-machinegun rang against the armor. “Dreamer,” he said. “None of us’ll be okay unless some fairy godmother shows up real quick.”
“Okay, let’s get back,” Cooter said. He touched the reporter’s shoulder, turned him. “Dunno how long Junebug’s gonna stay here.”
He glanced up at the moons. “No longer ‘n she has to, I curst well hope.”
Suilin found he had a voice. “It gets easier from here?” he asked.
“Naw, but it gets over,” the big man said as he waved Suilin ahead of him at the steps of their vehicle.
Suilin paused, looking at the hull beneath the tribarrel he served. He hadn’t had a good look at the cartoon painted on the sides of the combat car before. Above Flamethrower in crude Gothic letters, a wyvern writhed so that its tail faced forward. Jets of blue fire spouted from both nostrils, and the creature farted a third flame as well.
He wondered whether a bullet would blast away the grinning drawing an instant before another round lifted the top of Dick Suilin’s head.