Tilting the Balance

As the pounding went on, Mutt began to think he wasn’t far from his own limit. Trying not to go to pieces in front of Lucille Potter helped him ride it out. He glanced away from the broken chunk of glass toward her. She was flattened out just like him, and didn’t look to be having any easier time of it than he was.

Later, he was never sure which one of them rolled toward the other. Whichever it was, they clung to each other tight as they could. In spite of what they’d been talking about when the barrage hit, there was nothing in the least sexual about the embrace-it was more on the order of drowning men grabbing at spars. Mutt had hung on to doughboys the same way when the Boches gave American trenches a going-over in the last war.

Because he was a veteran of 1918, he got to his feet in a hurry when the curtain of Lizard shells moved from the southern edge of Danforth, where he was, to the middle and northern parts of town. He knew about walking barrages, and knew soldiers often walked right behind them.

Danforth looked as if it had gone through the meat grinder and then been overcooked since the last time he’d looked out the window. Now most of the houses were in ruins, the ground cratered, and smoke and dust rising everywhere. And through the smoke, sure enough, came the skittering shapes of Lizard infantry.

He aimed and sprayed a long burst through them, fighting to hold the tommy gun’s muzzle down. The Lizards went over like tenpins. He wasn’t sure how many-if any-he’d hit and how many were just ducking for cover.

Off to one side, the BAR opened up. “Might have known Dracula was too sneaky to kill, ” Mutt said to nobody in particular. If the Lizards had any brains, they’d try a rush and support advance to flush him and Szabo out in the open. He aimed to throw a monkey wrench into that scheme. From a different window, he fired at the bunch he thought would be moving. He caught a couple of them on their feet. They went down, scrambling for cover.

“In the two-reelers, this is about the time the U. S. Cavalry gallops over the horizon, ” Lucille Potter said as the Lizards started shooting back.

“Right about now, Miss Lucille, I’d be glad to see ’em, and that’s a fact, ” Mutt said. Dracula’s BAR was stuttering away, and he had his tommy gun (though he didn’t have as many clips as he would have liked), but only a couple of rifles had opened up with them. Rifles didn’t add a whole lot as far as firepower went, but they covered places the automatic weapons couldn’t reach and denied the Lizards the cover they’d need to flank out Mutt and Szabo.

And then, just as if it had been a two-reeler, the cavalry did come riding to the rescue. A platoon of Shermans rumbled through the streets of Danforth, a couple of them so fresh off the assembly line that only dust, not paint, covered the bright metal of their armor. Machine guns blazing and cannon firing high explosive, they bore down on the Lizard infantry.

The Lizards didn’t have armor with them, they’d been more cautious about committing tanks to action since the Americans started using bazookas. They did have antitank rockets of their own, though, and quickly turned two Shermans into blazing wrecks. Then the tanks shelled the rocketeers, and after that they had the fight pretty much their own way. Most of the Lizards died in place. A few tried to flee and were cut down. A couple came out with their hands up; they’d learned the Americans didn’t do anything dreadful to prisoners.

Mutt let out the catamount screech his grandfathers had called the Rebel yell. The house in which he and Lucille Potter sheltered was pretty well ventilated, but the yell echoed in it just the same. He turned around and hugged her. This time he meant business; he kissed her hard and his hands cupped her backside.

As she had when he’d taken out the Lizard tank with her bottle of ether, she let him kiss her but she didn’t do anything in the way of kissing back “What’s the matter with you? ” he growled. “Don’t you like me? ”

“I like you fine Mutt, ” she answered calmly. “I think you know it, too. You’re a good man. But that doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you-or with anybody else, if that’s what you’re wondering. ”

Over the years, Mutt had done a fair number of things he’d enjoyed at the time but wasn’t proud of afterwards. Forcing a woman who said-and obviously meant-she wasn’t interested wasn’t any of them, though. Frustrated almost past words, he said, “Well, why the… dickens not? You’re a fine-lookin’ lady, it ain’t like you don’t have any juice in you-”

“That’s so, ” she said, and then looked as if she regretted agreeing.

“By Jesus, ” Mutt murmured. In a lifetime knocking around the United States, he’d seen and heard about a lot of things nobody who stayed on a Mississippi farm ever dreamt of. “Don’t tell me you’re one o’ them-what do they call ’em?  — lizzies, is that right? ”

“It’s close enough, anyhow. ” Lucille’s face shut up as tight as a poker player’s-especially one who was raising on a buste