Hanging On

by Dean Koontz

  "How many?" Beame asked when the head of the procession reached the gorge and the tail had not yet shown itself.

  "We were promised a hundred to start with," Major Kelly said.

  Maurice found a way down the gorge wall, using some of the old bridge's underworks for support. His people followed him, carefully picking their way across the river, stepping from one unsteady mound of rubble to the next. The men with the wheelbarrows lifted these above their heads, and they looked like canoeists fording shallow water.

  Beame grinned fiercely. "I believe we might just pull it off!"

  "You do?" Kelly asked.

  "I don't," Slade said, giggling.

  "For once," Kelly said, "I have to agree with Lieutenant Slade."

  Two hours later, Lieutenant Beame was down in the ravine with Danny Dew, surveying the wreckage which yesterday's B-17 attack had produced. The two bridge piers were still standing, stone and concrete phallic symbols, but the steel and wooden superstructure and the bridge flooring had collapsed into the gorge. Much of the planking was smashed, charred, or splintered beyond repair, though several large sections like the sides of gigantic packing crates were salvageable. Likewise, some of the steel support beams, cables, angle braces, couplings, and drawing braces had survived and could be used again if Danny Dew were only careful not to crush them when he started through here with his D-7 dozer.

  "Over there!" Beame shouted, pointing at a jumble of bridge parts.

  "I see it!" Dew shouted. "Ten-foot brace! Looks undamaged!"

  They were forced to shout because of the din in the gorge. For one thing, the buckled plating on which they stood was the cap of a heap of refuse which was blocking the middle of the river. The water, diverted into two narrow streams by this barrier, gushed past them in a twin-tailed roar of white spume.

  "Is that a coupling?" Beame shouted.

  Dew squinted. "Yeah! And a good one!"

  Added to the roar of the water were the sounds of fifty French men and women who were doing preliminary salvage that was best completed before the dozer came through. Hammers, wrenches, drills, shovels, and torches sang against the background of the moving river. And, worse, the French jabbered like a cageful of blackbirds.

  They were jabbering so loudly that when Beame tried to hear himself think, he failed. They jabbered at the Americans who were giving them directions in a tongue they could not understand, and they jabbered at one another, and many of them jabbered to themselves if no one else was nearby.

  "I don't see anything more!" Beame shouted.

  "Me either," Dew said. "I'll get the dozer." He scrambled down the shifting pile of junk, leaped the narrow divide of shooting water, and came down on both feet on the shore. Very athletic. Beame had always heard that Negroes were good athletes, but Danny Dew was the first proof he had seen. He watched Dew climb the steeply sloped ravine wall and go over the top without effort.

  That was when he saw the girl.

  She was standing at the crest of the slope, fifty yards from where Dew went over the top. She was watching the workers, the gentle morning sun full on her.

  She was the most beautiful girl Beame had ever seen. She looked no older than twenty-one or -two, perhaps only seventeen. Though it was difficult to judge her height from this angle, he thought she must be tall for such a slender girl, maybe five-seven. Her complexion was Mediterranean, dark and smoky. Great masses of black hair cascaded around her face and fell to the sharp points of her widely spaced breasts. All this took Beame's breath away. He was affected by the way she stood: shoulders back, head up, exuding grace, a serene and almost Madonnalike figure.

  Though Beame was no womanizer, he knew he had to meet her.

  He went down the rubble heap too fast, lost his footing. He tottered and fell into the spume, flailing. He swallowed a mouthful of water, tried to spit it out, swallowed more. He was drowning. He felt himself swept around the rubble. He banged into a steel girder, shoved desperately away, scrambled for the surface, realized that he did not know where the surface was. Then, abruptly, he was in calmer water. He bobbed up, sputtering, shook his head, swam a few strokes to the shore, and crawled out, amazed that he was still alive.

  The girl had not gone away. She was up there, watching him now.

  Had she been anyone else, he would have run away and hidden until she was gone. But she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Wiping his hands down his sodden trouser legs to press the water out of them, he surreptitiously checked to be sure his fly was closed. It was. He started up the slope.

  He did not make it to the top as easily as Danny Dew had done. He slipped and fell twice. His wet clothes took on a patina of mud, and his face was smeared with long brown streaks of topsoil. What did the girl think? She had seen Danny Dew come off the rubble, across the water, and up the hill as if he were walking across a room-and now she saw Beame floundering like the first legged fish that crawled out of a prehistoric sea. He felt like an ass.

  But she was smiling. And it was not a cruel smile.

  Beame waved and started towards her. The closer he got, the more he saw how beautiful she was. By the time he was standing in front of her, he was numb, speechless in the aura of her radiant beauty. Her hair was really black, not just dark brown. Her complexion was Spanish and flawless, her eyes as large as olives and as black as her hair. Her nose was small, fine-boned, exquisitely arched. Her smile was wide and warm. Her teeth were square and white, her lips two ribbons tied in a sensuous bow.

  "Hello," he said, clearing his throat. "My name's David Beame."

  "Nathalie," she said.

  "What?" He thought she had told him, in French, to get lost. Or worse.

  "That's my name," she said. "Nathalie."

  "You speak English," he said, relieved that she had not been insulting him. "I'm pleased to meet you, Nathalie." She was gorgeous.

  She was flattered by his ill-concealed admiration. She blushed. Beame was happy he had flattered her. He knew he was blushing too, and he wiped his face with one hand, never realizing his hand was muddy.

  "How is it you speak English?" he asked.

  "Father taught me."

  "And who is your father?"

  "Maurice," she said.

  Could this be true? Could greasy, conniving Maurice Jobert give half the seed to make a girl like this? "I've never seen you before. You weren't at the village dance a couple of weeks ago."

  "I had a summer cold. Papa made me stay in bed until the fever broke." She cocked her head and looked at him. "You are staring-so intently."

  Startled, Beame wiped a hand across his face to cover another blush.

  "You're getting mud all over your nose," she said, putting one finger to his face, taking it away, showing him the mud.

  "Oh," Beame said, feeling like an ass. He wiped his muddy nose with his muddy hand. Realizing his error, he used his shirttail next. But that was even muddier than his hands. Suddenly, he wished that he had drowned when he fell into the river.

  "Are you nervous?" Nathalie asked.

  "Me? No. Why should I be nervous?"

  "Father says you are all scared of dying. Father says you are the only soldiers he's ever seen who are aware of their own mortality." She smiled. Just gorgeous. "He likes doing business with you, because you have no illusions."

  "You mean it's good that we're nervous?" Beame asked, surprised.

  "Oh, yes. Very good."

  "Well," Beame said, "I'm very nervous." He let her see how his hands were shaking. "At times, I'm so terrified I'm not functional. I haven't had a good night's sleep since we landed here." When she nodded sympathetically, Beame could not let go of the subject. "I have awful nightmares. I can't eat. I pick at my food and get indigestion, and the worst gas... I've been constipated for three weeks. If I could have one good shit, I think-" He realized what he was saying, and he wanted to leap off the edge of the ravine.

  She looked down at the workers again, embarrassed for him. She presented Beame with a lo
vely profile which soothed him and made him feel like less of an ass. Indeed, he felt as if he had been transformed into a spirit by the white heat rolling off her. If she turned and touched him, her hand would go straight through.

  After a long silence, he heard himself say, "You're beautiful."

  She looked at him timidly, blushing again. "Thank you."

  Beame's heart rose. She was just what he had thought she was! A flower, an innocent, a girl-woman as precious as anything he had ever wanted. And if he just did not start talking about his constipation again, he might be able to win her.

  * * *

  2

  Sergeant Emil Hagendorf had a voice like a 78 rpm phonograph record playing on a turntable forever moving at 60 rpm, and he always sounded morose. "You don't know what it's like," he said, morosely.

  Major Kelly sat down on one of the rec room chairs. "What what's like?"

  "Chaos," Hagendorf said. His pasty face grew paler at the word.

  "I live in chaos," Kelly said.

  But the major knew his own ability to cope with the chaotic did not help Hagendorf. Before the war, Emil, the unit's chief surveyor, had developed a comfortable philosophy of life. He believed there was a precise order and pattern to everything in the universe. He thought he could look dispassionately at anything-religion, sex, politics, money-survey it as he would a roadbed, stake it out, and eventually understand it. He had lived by his philosophy, a man of order and routine. He rose at the same hour each morning, neither smoked nor drank, and took a woman only as often as his system demanded one. He planned his future as carefully as he surveyed land, and he was able to cope with whatever came along. Drafted, he went through basic training with high marks, was quickly promoted, seemed at home in the Army. Then, when he was behind the lines with the unit for one week, he became a sloppy, inefficient, falling-down drunkard. And Major Kelly had not been able to rehabilitate him.

  "You've got to stop drinking," Kelly told the chief surveyor when he confronted him in the rec room that morning.

  Hagendorf picked up his bottle of wine and went over to the dart board that was nailed to the rec room wall. "See this? It's divided into all these little sections." He pointed to each of the sections on the board, which took a while. "Throw a dart here, you get five points... or here, you get ten. Or a hundred, here. I once thought life was neat and compartmentalized like that."

  "Life isn't like that," Kelly said.

  "I know, now." Hagendorf took a long swallow of wine, his whiskered neck moving as he drank, sweat beading on his white face. "My whole philosophy-gone. My sense of direction, fundamental beliefs-destroyed by General Blade. And you."

  "What's that got to do with drinking too much?" Kelly asked.

  "You'd drink yourself to death, too, if your philosophy of life was suddenly proven wrong."

  "No. I'd find something else to believe in."

  Hagendorf shuddered. "That's chaos. What do you believe, by the way?"

  "That this is all a fairy tale, grand in color but modest in design. You and I are figments of some Aesop's imagination."

  "That's the worst philosophy I've ever heard." He clutched his wine bottle in both hands. "It's illogical. A good philosophy must be based on logical precepts, on valid proofs. How can you prove we're figments of a cosmic imagination?"

  "I don't have time to argue with you, Emil," Kelly said, his voice rising on each word, until there was a hysteria in it which matched Hagendorf's hysteria. "The Panzers are coming! We have a whole village to build in just six days!" Red-faced, trembling, he unrolled a tube of onionskin paper and flattened it on the table, used a pair of metal ashtrays to hold down the ends. "I have a job for you, Emil."

  "Job?" Hagendorf looked skeptically at the paper.

  Briefly, Kelly explained how they were going to hoax the Germans with the fake town. He tapped the paper. "I've done a preliminary blueprint of the town we'll build. You'll mark off the streets and lots."

  Hagendorf blanched. "You can't ask that of me!" His face was soft, soggy, pale as a fish belly. "Surveying again -I'll get a taste of how it used to be. I'll crack up!"

  "I've been fair, Emil. You haven't had to work in weeks. Beame and I have done the bridge surveying, but that's simple stuff. I need you for this." He pointed at the wine. "And no drinking until you're finished with the job."

  "You're killing me." Hagendorf came over and looked at the plans.

  "We already have the road that comes from the east and crosses the bridge." Kelly traced this with his finger. "We're going to need two more streets paralleling that road-here and here. Then we need two crossing streets that go north-south. Finally, I want a sort of service road running all around the village, at the edge of the woods."

  "This is going to take a lot of time," Hagendorf said.

  "You have today," Kelly said.

  "Impossible!"

  "Hagendorf, we have six days. Only six days! Every minute I waste arguing with you, the Panzers get closer. You understand me?"

  "Can't do it without wine," Hagendorf said, finishing his wine.

  "You have to. I don't want this marked out by a drunk. You've become a real wino, Emil. You don't know when to stop."

  "Untrue! I've cut back. I've only had one bottle so far today."

  "Jesus, Emil, it's only an hour since dawn. You call that 'cutting back,' do you?"

  "You're going to destroy me," Hagendorf said. His round shoulders slumped more than usual, and he appeared to age before Kelly's eyes.

  "Nonsense," Kelly said. "Now, move! Let's get down to the machinery shed. Your men are waiting. We've dusted off your theodolite and other tools. Hurry, Hagendorf! Six days will be gone before you know it."

  "My theodolite," Hagendorf said, dreamily. His mind spiraled back to more pleasant times when the world could be measured and known. Abruptly, he dropped his wine bottle and started to cry. "You really are destroying me, sir. I warn you! I warn you!"

  Fifteen minutes later, as Kelly stood by the shed watching Hagendorf stagger away with his assistants, Private Vito Angelli-the Angel from Los Angeles as Pullit had begun to call him-came along with his French work crew. They all jabbered at once, laughed, and gesticulated furiously, as if they were on stage and required to exaggerate each gesture to communicate with the people in the back rows. Angelli stopped them at an enormous bomb crater north of the machinery shed.

  Kelly hurried over and clapped Angelli on the shoulder. "Going okay?"

  Angelli was thin, dark, all stringy muscles, intense eyes, and white teeth. "We've filled in all the other craters below the bridge road."

  Angelli could not speak French, and none of the workers could speak Italian or English. Therefore, Angelli used a lot of gestures and smiled a great deal, and said, "Eh? Eh?" When dealing with his relatives who had come to the States from the old country and who often spoke a different dialect of Italian than he did, he had learned the best way to be understood was to punctuate everything with numerous ehs. It never failed. No matter what you said, if you framed it with a couple of ehs you could topple any language barrier.

  Angelli turned to the workers, clapped his hands. "One more hole to fill, eh? Eh? Quick job, eh? But big job gets done pňco a pňco, eh?"

  The Frenchmen laughed and went to work. They all had shovels, and they energetically attacked the ring of blast-thrown soil, scooping it back into the crater from which it had come.

  "Faster!" Kelly said. They seemed to be working in slow motion. "Angelli, tell them to shovel faster. We've got only six days!"

  "But they are shoveling fast," Angelli said.

  "Faster, faster, faster!" Kelly demanded. When Angelli gave the order and the Frenchmen complied, the major said, "You've got excellent rapport here. If all the men could work with the French as well as you do, we might come close to building the town before the Germans get here."

  Angelli grinned. "Then you think we'll do it, sir?"

  "Never," Kelly said. "I said we'd come closer to doing it if we
had your rapport with these people."

  "Do not be so negative, bon ami." Maurice appeared out of nowhere at Kelly's elbow. "The work goes well. You will have a new bridge tonight, with my people helping. Your chief surveyor has begun to mark off the streets and lots. My wonderful people have cleared away random brush and have filled in the bomb craters. We've come so far in so few hours!"

  Kelly looked at the bundle of papers Maurice was carrying. Ignoring The Frog's optimism, he said, "Those the forms?"

  "Ready for signatures," Maurice said, handing them over.

  Reluctantly, Kelly took them. "The men won't like this."

  "Oh, but they will!" Maurice said. "They are sure to see what a real bargain I am giving them. Americans love bargains."

  Private Angelli looked warily at the forms. "Why won't we like those? What are they?"

  "Credit contracts," Maurice said. "Nothing sinister."

  Angelli was perplexed. "Credit contracts?" he asked, squinting at the bundle.

  "One for each man in the unit," Maurice said. He thumped the middle of his checkered shirt. "Made out by hand, written by me or members of my immediate family, very official."

  "Credit contracts?" Angelli repeated.

  "Let me explain," Kelly said, wearily.

  * * *

  3

  Sergeant Coombs was operating the small cargo shuttler when Major Kelly found him. He had been trundling the more compact construction materials from the storage dump by the runway to the men at the bridge, and though it was now well past noon, he had not taken a single rest break. He was sweaty and dirty. His back ached, his arms ached, and his knuckles were skinned and sore. He had stoved his left thumb but had kept on working while it swelled to half again its normal size. He was in no mood for Major Kelly. Only his great respect for the rules and regulations regarding the responsibilities of rank kept him from being completely uncooperative.

  "I have something for you to sign," Major Kelly said.