“Are you jerking my chain?” Mosovich asked quietly.
“No,” Elgars answered. “Why?”
He looked at Mueller, who was standing there, white faced, and thought about simply answering. Finally he shook his head.
“Not here, not now,” he said. “Later. Maybe. I have to think about this.”
“It’s not the only memory where I die,” Elgars said with a shrug. “There’s another one where I’m running and I’ve got a burned hand, it hurts anyway, and I’m carrying something and then the ground’s coming up at me and I die. And another where I’m up to my waist in water, firing a gun, a light machine gun, offhand. And I die. And another where I blow up and die.”
“You die a lot,” Mueller commented looking at her oddly.
“Yep,” Elgars answered. “Game over, man. Happens to me all the time. Practically every night. It really sucks. Hard to get much confidence going when you die all the time.”
“The shrinks didn’t tell me about that,” Mosovich said.
“That’s because by the time the flashbacks started, I’d figured out to stop talking to the shrinks,” the captain said with a shrug.
“I have dreams where I die,” Papa O’Neal said, spitting over the side. “But it’s usually an explosion, usually a nuke. I have that one recurrently. By the way, this is a weird fucking conversation and I need a beer for one of those.” He reached up and grasped the tree trunk, hauling himself back up the bluff. “Time to wander down and see if Cally has burned the pig.” He turned to give Mosovich a hand then turned back as there was a crackling in the brush.
The Posleen normal had apparently been screened by a holly thicket. Now it charged down the hillside, spear held at shoulder height.
Mosovich had just started to haul himself up and was in no position to respond, but that didn’t really matter.
Papa O’Neal didn’t bother going for the assault rifle on his back. Instead, his hand dropped to the holstered pistol, coming back up in a smooth motion as the Posleen closed to within feet of him.
The Desert Eagle tracked to just above the protuberance of the double shoulder. Bone over the shoulder, and the shoulder itself, tended to armor the front of a Posleen. But just above and below were open areas; the higher open area, corresponding to the clavical region in a human, also contained a nerve and blood-flow complex.
Papa O’Neal triggered one round and then pirouetted aside, blocking the now limply held spear with the barrel of the gun. The Posleen continued on for a few steps then slid down the hill and off the bluff.
“Heads up,” O’Neal called calmly. Then he dropped out the magazine and replaced it with a spare, carefully reloading the original magazine as the Posleen bounced down the hill and off a cliff.
Mueller shook his head and wiped at his face, where a splash of yellow marked the demise of the normal. “God, it’s nice dealing with professionals,” he chuckled.
Elgars shook her head in wonder. “I don’t care if it is difficult to use. That Posleen had a hole I could fit my hand in going all the way through it. I need to get one of those pistols.”
“They are nice,” Mueller agreed, grabbing the trunk. “On the other hand, they are loud.”
“We heard you up on the hill,” Cally said as the foursome hove into view of the barbeque pits. “I’m surprised you didn’t skin it out and bring back a haunch.”
“Slid down the hill,” Papa O’Neal said with a grin. “Damned bad luck if you ask me. Where’d everybody go?”
“Most of the kids are taking a nap,” the thirteen-year-old said, poking at the hickory fire. She had pulled her hair back and put on a full-length apron to work on the fire. Between that and the smudge of ash on her hands and face she looked like some medieval serving wench. “Wendy and Shari are technically inside getting side dishes ready. But I told them there was plenty of time and I suspect they’re racked out, too. Any other trouble?”
“These guys are pretty good in the hills,” O’Neal said. “Almost as good as you.”
“No trouble,” Mueller said. “But I’ve got a question: I’ve heard of people eating Posleen, but…”
Papa O’Neal looked sort of sheepish as Cally laughed hysterically.
“Yeah, he ate one,” she said. “Parts of a few, actually.”
“They really taste like shit,” he said with a shrug. “They’re tough, they’re stringy, they don’t soften up when you cook ’em and they really, really taste bad; worse than sloth and that’s saying a lot.”
“You’ve eaten sloth?” Mueller asked. “Shit, I’ve never met anybody who’s eaten one of those.”
“Yes you have,” Mosovich said with a grimace. “I did one time. If Posleen’s worse than that, they’re pretty bad. It’s hard to describe how bad sloth is; it tastes sort of like what you’d think a road-killed possum would taste like after a few days on the road.”
“That’s a pretty good description,” Papa O’Neal said. “And Posleen tastes worse. I loaded it up with nam pla even, my own recipe for nam pla with added habanero, and the taste still came through.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Mosovich laughed. “That’s bad!”
“I finally figured out that I could eat it if I coated it in berbere,” O’Neal said with a shrug. “That shit’s so hot you can’t taste anything at all; it puts Thais on their ass.”
“Man, you must have been everywhere,” Mueller said with another laugh. “I’ve heard of berebere but…”
“I had it once,” Mosovich said. “Somebody bet me I couldn’t eat a whole plate of something called ‘wat har bo.’ ” He shook his head. “I took one bite and paid off the bet; I’d rather eat my pride and give up a C note than die.”
“Berbere isn’t for the faint of heart,” Papa O’Neal admitted. “Even I can’t stomach much of it and I’ve eaten more really hot shit than I want to think about. So I don’t eat ’em anymore. And I don’t let Cally eat it at all; you can get a disease from it, like when cannibals eat brains. It’s caused by a little protein they’ve got that we can’t break down.”
“Kreinsfelter or something like that?” Mueller asked. “Same thing as Mad Cow Disease basically. I’ve heard you can get it from eating Posleen. So why did you?”
“That’s it,” Papa O’Neal said. “But, hell, the onset is a couple of decades normally.” He grinned and waved at his body. “One way or another, I don’t really think I’ve got another couple of decades.”
“I’m hungry,” Mueller said with a grin. “But I don’t want to die from what I eat. Is there anything else?”
“Well, you sort of missed lunch,” Cally said somewhat sourly. “This will be ready in about an hour. But there’s other stuff to get ready too.”
“We’ll get on it,” Mosovich said with a chuckle. “Just point us in the direction, O Viking princess!”
She shook her head and brandished a burning brand at him then gestured to the house. “Since the sweet corn is still up, I think we should have that again. Cornbread is in the oven. I had the kids pick some broccoli and that probably should be cut up and put in a big dish and microwaved. We could have a side of fresh beets if somebody went out and picked them. Ditto on tomatoes, they’re always good with a little seasoning. What am I missing?”
“Beer,” Papa O’Neal said, picking up a large set of skewers and jabbing them in the butterflied pig. “And turning this. How long has it been on this side?”