Hide and Seek

Jwasn't that bad. On the other hand, dead people stopped bleeding

too.

It was bad for us, though. It left us with a choice.

, mm

In that place you didn't want choices.

I thought about it for a while.

"Listen, "I said. "It seems to me that we've been running parallel to

the coastline so far, maybe moving a little inland. That sound right

to you?"

"I think so."

"Then I think we should take the right. Seems to me that access to the

beachfront would be important to whoever the hell is in here. That

hole in the basement can't be his only exit. I'm thinking a hole in

the seawall, something like that."

"Some way to collect food and water." "Right."

"Let's try it."

"I just hope to hell we don't find six more of these. You could get

pretty lost in here."

We had lost the flies by now but we still had the stink. As we moved

on, though, I started to feel I had it right, because the air seemed

fresher, more redolent of the sea.

We were moving through short lengths of passageway- five steps in this

direction, ten in the next but I had the sense that we were basically

moving outward toward the rock face. Inside me all the troops were on

red alert, armed and watchful. So were Steven's.

Both of us amazed me.

Walking two abreast like that you could feel the pull of tension

between us; a strong, supple feeling. Strange. As though we shared

the same nervous system, he and I, impulses tugging two sets of

muscles, two structures of bone. I hardly knew him, really. But I

knew him then. And you could see why friendships are so easy to come

by in combat situations, why the loyalties are fierce ones and why you

avoid them if you can, because the trauma runs so deep when shell or

bullet shatters them forever. I didn't worry for Steven. I worried

for us.

ACK KET CHUM