"Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers " - читать интересную книгу автора

DIE! DIE! DIE!"
Hornets try to swarm into you-you swat them aside.
Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles.
People curse.
"Oh, fuck."
Keep moving.
Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your
eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your
M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of
bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my
rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the
hell are my feet?
A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic
rifle vibrates. The face is gone.
Keep moving.
And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's
happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of
a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by
high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a
silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and
suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by
a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the
filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you-total, terrible sound.
The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket
absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins.
You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"


You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and
crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your
mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try
to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you
touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for
warm, wet cavities.
Your reaction to your own death is nothing more than a highly
intensified curiosity.
A hand presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something
about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any
legs. Tons of ocean water, dark and cold and populated by monsters, are
crushing you. You try to raise your head. Hands hold you down. You fight.
You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
"Legs..."
You cough up spiders.
On the ground beside you is a Marine without a head. Exhibit A,
formerly a person, now two hundred pounds of fractured meat. The Marine
without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his
skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom
teeth are intact. In the hands of the Marine without a head is an M-60