Hanging on

nurses' station. Beyond, ten cots stood in shabby imitation of a genuine hospital ward, five along each wall, a thin gray blanket folded on each, meager comfort against the chill in the subterranean room which gave little evidence of the bright summer day aboveground.
        Three low-wattage bulbs strung on a single frayed cord for the length of the rectangular room, powered by the small camp generator, did little to dispel the gloom. The walls seemed draped in a heavy purple fabric of shadows, and the corners were all pitch black. Kelly glanced quickly at those corners when he came in, and he felt as if inhuman creatures lurked there, waiting and licking their scaly lips, and watching with big, demonic eyes.
        Cockroaches and fat centipedes scurried along the earthen floor and clung to the rough ceiling, moving in and out of pools of light, silent, cold, many-legged.
        Only two patients resided in the hospital bunker when Major Kelly arrived there fresh from bolting the radio room. One of these was Liverwright, who had been wounded in one of the previous bombings, six days ago. He had been bathing in the river when the Stukas made their first pass, and he had taken a three-inch sliver of steel deep in his right thigh. The second patient was Kowalski, the zombie.
        Three people attended the patients, though none of them had medical training. General Blade had not been able to kidnap a doctor or a medic for them, as yet.
        Lily Kain, the only woman with the unit, was cutting gauze into neat bandage squares when Kelly arrived, her scissors making crisp snipping sounds in the heavy air. Because of the heat aboveground, and because she apparently had reptilian blood, she was wearing one of her skimpy, sequined dancer's costumes, out of which her ass cheeks bulged. She had the kind of ass cheeks that bulged well: pale, firm, beautifully formed, without the hint of a droop. Indeed, everything about Lily Kain was perfectly formed, all five-feet-six of her. She had thick black hair and wide-set black eyes and a freckle-spotted face, little upturned nose, full lips-a wet-dream face. Her breasts were big and incredibly uptilted; they threatened to spill out of her dancer's costume. Her waist was tiny, and her hips almost fleshless, legs long and flawless. She gave Kelly a fierce hard-on.
        "Watch your jugs," Kelly said, grabbing her sequined backside. "Watch your jugs, or they'll fall out of your suit."
        "You watch them," she said. Her voice was cool, almost a whisper, but with force enough to let a man know she had her own resources. "You're better at watching them than I am."
        "How are they?"
        "My jugs?"
        "No," he said. "I know your jugs are fine. How are the men? Anybody hurt in today's raid?"
        "Everyone made it to the bunkers in time," she said. Her pretty face was dotted with sweat, but it hid no deception. She didn't know about Major Kelly's being caught with his pants down in the latrine, and he was not about to tell her. She stopped folding gauze and cocked her right eyebrow. Lily had a way of cocking her right eyebrow that made you think she was going to shoot you with her nose. "I'm worried about Liverwright. Six days, and he can't seem to heal. He may get blood poisoning yet."
        "No negativism," Kelly ordered. "This is, after all, just a fairy tale, a fable. We're all figments of some Aesop's imagination, bound to his will."
        "I'd like to reduce Blade to a figment of my imagination, then cut his balls off," Lily Kain said. Lily Kain, though freckled and pug-nosed and inordinately pretty, was not your average, reserved, quiet American girl.
        "I just finished the Blade and Slade Show," he told her. "Supplies will be coming in tonight."
        "Parachute-or a landing?" she asked. She looked pitiful, lost and delicate and needful of comforting. Major Kelly wanted to comfort her. He wanted to pat her hand and console her and say, "Now, now." He also wanted to rip her skimpy sequined costume off and split her right there, but he managed to restrain himself.
        "They'll land," he said. "The shipment's too heavy for a parachute drop this time."
        This pleased Lily Kain. Every time a transport landed, she hoped she could persuade the pilot to take her back to Allied territory. After all, she didn't belong here. Everyone knew that. If anyone forgot it, even for a moment, Lily reminded him.
        "I don't