Read A Jungle of Stars (1976) for Free Online

point, quite high, as he returned to the barracks from her apartment.
    As he walked across the quad, he was whistling an inane little song and his mind was a million miles from armies, barracks, and anything else less pleasant.
    A man was leaning against the lamp post next to the barracks door but Santori paid little attention to him, taking him for one of the boys. As he drew closer, however, the figure took on a ghostly, shadowy shape and flicked a cigarette into the darkness, showering sparks.
    There was something grotesque about the man, Santori thought -- sort of gorilla-like, yet oddly familiar. As he approached to within a few yards of the figure, it spoke to him.
    "Hello, Joe," came an oddly familiar yet unplaceable voice, a deep, rich, distinctive bass that, once heard, was never forgotten. "Celebrating?"
    "Yeah, man," Santori replied. "It's all over now."
    "I agree, Joe, but not for the reasons you think. Remember me, Joe?"
    With that, the figure stepped full into the baleful half-light of the quad lamp posts.
    Santori could never have forgotten the scarred face and huge, animal-like body he saw. His mouth flew open and he stepped back involuntarily and almost automatically made the sign of the cross. He continued to back away as the figure advanced.
    "Don't run, Joe. It won't do you any good to run," said Paul Carleton Savage icily. "There's no hole deep enough for you to crawl into."
    "But -- but -- you're dead! I saw--" Santori stammered.
    "Yeah, Joe, I'm dead. You saw it. You saw McNally kill me, didn't you?"
    "I -- I never planned on killin' you, Savage," he protested. "I never thought the sonovabitch would kill you!"
    "But I was murdered, Joe," commented the other, matter-of-factly, "and you are what the law calls an accessory."
    Images of the quad, of places to run, of people to run to, sped through Santori's brain. But where can you run from the dead? he asked himself. Now, deep in the back of his brain, Joe Santori's survival self tried to shout out a fact, a very important fact. His right arm! He's got a claw hand! his mind exulted. And that meant--
    All the terror suddenly lifted, leaving him drained and angry. "You ain't dead, Savage," he accused the looming figure. "Ghosts don't have no machine parts. McNally only got your hand!"
    Savage shook his head slowly from side to side. "You're right -- and wrong, too. I'm no ghost, Joe -- but McNally got me square in the back with that shot. And I want him for that."
    "Well, go and find him, then. You know I didn't have nothin' to do with shootin' you."
    "That's what I have to ask you about, Joe. You see, the Army says McNally never existed."
    "The hell he didn't!"
    "Right. Tell me what you know about McNally, Joe, and our business --
    yours and mine -- will be finished," Savage coaxed soothingly.
    "You ain't gonna press charges?"
    "No way, Joe. I'm not even in anymore. Tell me about McNally, Joe, and I promise you no one will ever know what happened -- then or now."
    They were close together; the little corporal could smell stale tobacco and the remains of a pizza on the other's breath. It was somehow reassuring.
    There just wasn't any way Savage could be here -- but there'd always been stories of crazy things like this.
    "Can't tell you much about him, Lieutenant," Santori began. "None of us were regulars with each other, you know. We seemed to be just picked up if we was available, regardless of unit. Only three of us were from the same outfit.
    McNally was an add-on, like you. First time I ever saw him was during the mission briefing."
    "You talked, though. Did he say anything about himself -- prior service, names, wife, anything?"
    Santori shook his head. "Nothin'. He talked all the time about how crappy it was to get picked for the mission, how we was all short-timers and all." "You were? All short-timers?" The little man nodded affirmatively.
    "Everybody but me," Savage mused, more to himself than to Santori. "And you say McNally kept this up?"
    "Yeah.