Tilting the Balance

“Aw, Sarge, they were just struttin’ around, no people anywhere close, ” Szabo said, as innocently as if he were telling the truth. Maybe more innocently.

But he knew as well as Mutt that Mutt wasn’t going to call him on it. “I’m right glad o’ that, ” Daniels said. “You go, ah, findin’ chickens where there is people around, you’ll have Miss Lucille diggin’ pellets outta your ass. Birdshot if you’re lucky, buckshot if you ain’t. ”

“Not while I’m luggin’ a BAR, ” Szabo said with quiet assurance. “Didn’t Miss Lucille say something about an auditorium somewhere in this park? If there’s any roof at all, cooking these birds gets a lot easier. ”

Mutt looked around. Riverview Park was good-sized, and with the rain coming down in http://businessbookpress.ru curtains he couldn’t see anything that looked like a building. “I’ll ask her where it’s at, ” he said, and sloshed back to where she was playing mad scientist with the late, unlamented Lizard’s remains.

“Look at this, Mutt, ” Lucille said when he came up. She used her scalpel to point enthusiastically at the Lizard’s jaws. “Lots of little teeth, all pretty much the same, not specialized like ours. ”

“Yeah, I seen that when I captured a couple live ones not long after they invaded us, ” Mutt answered, averting his eyes; the skull had enough rotting meat still on it to threaten to kill his appetite.

“You captured Lizards, Sarge? ” Freddie Laplace sounded impressed as all get out Lucille just took it in stride, the way she did most things. Mutt would have been happier had it been the other way around.

Nothing he could do about it, though. He asked her where the auditorium was; she pointed eastward. He slogged in that direction, hoping some of the place was still intact. Sure enough, he discovered that, although it had taken a shell hit that left one wall only a baby brickyard, the rest seemed sound enough.

In the rain, finding anything more than fifty yards away wasn’t easy. Mud thin as bad diarrhea slopped over his boot tops and soaked his socks. He hoped he wouldn’t come down with pneumonia or the grippe.

“Halt! Who goes? ” Szabo’s voice came out of the water, as if from behind a falls. Daniels couldn’t see him at all. Dracula might be a chicken thief, but he made a pretty fair soldier.

“It’s me, ” Mutt called. “Found that auditorium place. You want to give me them birds, I’ll cook ’em for you. I grew up on a farm; reckon I’ll do a better job than you would anyways. ”

“Yeah, okay. Come on this way. ” Szabo stood up so Mutt could spot him. “Not gonna be any Lizards around for a while, though, Sarge-is it okay if I wander over there in an hour or so, and you’ll make sure there’s some dark meat left for me? ”

“I think maybe we can do that, ” Daniels said. “You put somebody here on your weapon before you go wandering, though, you hear me? In case we do have trouble, we’re gonna need all the firepower we can get our hands on. ”

“Don’t you worry about that, Sarge, ” Szabo said. “Even roast chicken ain’t worth gettin’ my ass shot off for. ” He spoke with great conviction. From any other dogface in the squad, Daniels would have found that convincing. With Szabo, you never could tell.

He took the chickens back to the auditorium. Whoever had been there last, Americans or Lizards, had chopped up a lot of the folding wooden seats that faced the stage: more than they’d used for their fires. Taking advantage of the free lumber, Mutt built his blaze on the concrete floor where others had made theirs before him.

He pulled out his trusty Zippo. He wondered how long it would stay trusty. He had a package of flints in his shirt pocket, but the Zippo was burning kerosene these days, not lighter fluid, and he didn’t know when he’d come across any more kerosene, either. For now, it still gave him a flame on the first try.

He quickly found out why the previous occupants of the auditorium had been so eager to use the seats for fuel: the varnish that made them shiny also made them catch fire with the greatest of ease. He went back out into the rain to throw away the chicken guts and to get some sticks on which to skewer the pieces of chicken he was going to cook.

His belly growled when the savory smell of roasting meat came through the smoke from the fire. His grandfathers would have done their cooking in the War Between the States the same way he was now, except they’d have used lucifer matches instead of the Zippo to get the fire going.

“Chow! ” he yelled when he had a fair number of pieces finished. Men straggled in by ones and twos, ate quickly, and went back out into the rain. When Lucille Potter came in for hers, Mutt asked jokingly, “You wash your hands before supper? ”

“You’d best believe I did-and with soap, too. ” Being a nurse, Lucille was in dead earnest about cleanliness. “Did you wash yours before you cleaned these birds and cut them up? ”

“Well, you might say so, ” Mutt answered; his hands had certainly been wet, anyhow. “Didn’t use soap, though. ”

Had Lucille Potter’s stare been any fishier, she’d have grown fins. Before she could say anything, Szabo strolled into the auditorium. “You save me a drumstic