Hanging on

better you're going to feel. A bag of shit doesn't die. You don't have to be sorry for it."
        "Next time," Tooley said, trying to change the subject, "you better listen to him."
        "Next time, let's hope there's more to his ravings-like dates and times. What good is an oracle who can't give dates and times?"
        Private Kowalski belched.
        "There!" Tooley said.
        "There what?"
        "He's improving."
        "How so?"
        "He belched."
        "The only thing a belch is an improvement over is a fart," Major Kelly said.
        "But it is an improvement."
        Major Kelly shook his head. His head felt as if it were going to fall off. He could not allow that. His headache was bad enough now. "You will never learn, Tooley. Things don't get better. They just don't. They stay the same way, or they get worse. Kowalski is a bag of crap, and he'll only get worse. If you want to hang on, accept that. Otherwise, you'll never make it."
        "I'll make it."
        Kowalski belched. Then he farted. Then he relieved himself on the clean sheets.
        "A relapse," Tooley said. "But only temporary."
        Major Kelly got out of there. He turned so fast he stumbled into Private Angelli who was no longer suffering from a bloody nose and who was now seeking treatment for his abraded shoulder. He weaved past Angelli, did not even look at Liverwright. At the front of the bunker, Lily Kain and Nurse Pullit were still giggling, so he avoided them as well. He pushed through the bunker door and collided with Sergeant Coombs.
        "I was looking for you," Coombs said. He was huffing like a bull, and his eyes were maniacally alight. It was obvious that the sergeant would have liked to add something to his statement, something like: "I was looking for you, Diarrhea Head." However, he restrained himself.
        That surprised Major Kelly, because he was not accustomed to the sergeant restraining himself. Apparently, even Coombs could be affected by disaster and the brief but fierce presence of death.
        "And I was coming to find you," the major said. "I want the men on the job fast. That wreckage has to be cleared, salvage made, and the reconstruction begun by dawn. I want you to check the men in the hospital and be sure there's no malingering; if a man's fit to work, I want him out there working. We're not going to dawdle around this time. If there is really going to be a Panzer division sent this way, I don't want them to show up and find a pile of ruins where the bridge should be. I don't want them angry, and I don't want them having to linger on this side of the gorge. Is this clear?"
        "It's clear," Sergeant Coombs said. He thought: you coward. He wanted to stand and fight the krauts for a change, even if they would be putting handguns against tanks. "Something I want to show you, first," he said, cryptically, turning and stomping up the steps.
        Major Kelly followed him topside where the fire in the brush around the bridge had not yet been fully doused and strange orange lights played on the darkness, adding an unmistakable Halloween feeling. They walked east along the river to the latrines, which had taken a direct hit from a misplaced two-hundred-pounder. Most of the structure was shredded, with the undamaged walls leaning precariously.
        "Was anyone inside?" Major Kelly asked. The nausea he had experienced in the hospital bunker returned to him now.
        "No," Coombs said. "But look at this!" He led Kelly to the line of earth-moving machines which were parked in the vicinity of the outhouses.
        "They don't look damaged to me," Kelly said.
        "None of the machines were touched," Coombs said.
        "Well, then?"
        "But they were covered with crap," Coombs said. He held up his big hissing Coleman lantern as if searching for an honest man. "What a cleaning-up job this is going to be. Christ!"
        On closer examination, employing his olfactory sense as well as his eyes, the major saw that what appeared to be mud was not actually mud at all. It really did look like mud from a distance, great gouts of mud sprayed across the windscreens, splashed liberally on the mighty steel flanks, packed around the controls, crusted in the deep tread of the oversized tires. But it was not mud. The sergeant was right about one thing: if Major Kelly had ever seen shit, this was it.
        Coombs lowered his lantern and said, "Now let's