No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,58

maybe the best-looking guy I’d ever seen. Even Annie’d paused when she’d seen him the first time, and only smiled when I asked her about it, so I knew he was good-looking. He was like some kinda Viking with yellow hair and good shoulders, and a face that coulda starred in the movies. Instead he’d worked his way into and outta a lot of hearts back home, and seemed to be doing the same thing here. I guessed handsome was handsome, whether a girl was American or Korean. He said, “Three?” deadpan. “I was hoping for five or six, but I should leave some for the rest of you, huh?”

“Not for Muldoon,” Alabama Andy said. “He’s got Annie waiting for him.” A bunch of good-natured bickering went up, but Danny leaned over toward Dandy and said, “Be careful out there. My mother and father used to tell me stories about the Korean demons who wouldn’t approve of your easy way with the girls. You don’t want to make them angry.”

Dandy Andy grinned wide. “Yeah? How do I know if I’ve got one’s attention?”

“You just keep an eye out for a woman so beautiful even you don’t think you stand a chance, and stay away from her.”

Dandy kicked back, arms folded behind his head and leaning on a wall that wasn’t there. “Now that’s a problem, see, ‘cause there’s no such thing as a girl too pretty for me.”

I said, “You oughta listen to him, Dandy,” without knowing quite why I said it, except that voice at the back of my head wanted to warn him, and sounded sad about it. But he didn’t hear me, ‘cause somebody else was saying, “Hey, you’re a poet and don’t know it,” and another guy was finishing it up with “His feet do, they’re Longfellows.”

Then we got called up to fight, and for a few weeks there wasn’t any joking except the gallows humor that kept us sane. Danny was with us that whole stretch, always muttering warnings that nobody took seriously ‘til another one of the guys, Reckless Rick, got himself drowned when there was no water for miles from where we were. Then Dandy found the one pretty girl on the war front, and came back to the camp to die the next morning. Me and Danny stood over his body awhile, counting the bite marks, all small and perfectly round, like vampire leeches had fastened onto him. I counted more than a hundred, and finally said, “What did that to him?” to Danny.

He shrugged and said somethin’ in Korean, a word I couldn’t say back. “An avenger of women wronged. Like a banshee, except they suck a guy dry like a vampire. They lure men in by offering to suck, um.” He trailed off, looking uncomfortable. “You probably don’t want to look at his Johnson, if you know what I mean.”

I hadn’t wanted to in the first place, but Danny walked away an’ curiosity just about killed this cat. I took a look down Dandy Andy’s shorts.

Danny was right. I hadn’t wanted to. Pale an’ sick, I staggered off to throw up, and every damned one of us in the unit listened hard to Danny’s warnings after that. I wrote letters to Annie where I told her about the strange things in the night, an’ then I tore ‘em up and wrote new ones not mentioning it. I hated to think she might be doing the same thing at home, picking and choosing what to tell me so I wouldn’t worry, but she’d had enough heartbreak with her daddy in the institution. I didn’t want to add to it.

It musta been around Christmas when Danny came out from behind the lines again and shook me awake one night. Didn’t say a word, just knelt there with a hand over my mouth and a finger to his lips, waiting for my eyes to get less round and my heart to stop pounding so hard before he let me go and put his mouth next to my ear. “I need help, Muldoon. There’s something out there I can’t handle and you were the first one to believe me about the demons, so I’ve got to ask your help.”

The sky was ink black beyond his head, a sliver of moon over on the horizon but not a single star shining through, though the cold said it had ta be clear. “This something I’m gonna get kicked outta the Army for?”

He sat up far enough

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