Read Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1 for Free Online Page A

the desk think that it was my injuries that messed me up, that the doc didn’t know what he was talking about. I’d lost an ear, for Christ’s sake, and the desk wouldn’t understand that I needed to be
wired up,
to re-submerge and escape from the sun and snow. To get loose. The Marine supply base was on the north side of the city, and that friendly supply sergeant was in there somewhere. Straight was all wrong, I thought, and I needed Pavlodar, dreamed in subterrene green—the only way. I didn’t know why, but I had this crazy thought going through my head and couldn’t get rid of it: if I didn’t get back to the line with Ox, the ghosts of Snyder and Burger would haunt me forever.
    A tired voice answered the phone after I punched in. “Erikson.”
    “Hey, Phil, it’s Sc… Wendell.”
    “Jesus!” He sounded awake now. “My head case at the front, you going to assemble a story that makes sense for once? I hear you finally went psychotic.”
    “Look, I don’t know what the docs told you but I’mfine. I got shot, and they must have given me something that was past its shelf life. I’ll have the story for you—”
    He cut me off in midsentence. “Just shut up. People around here are already talking about it, and we have a pool to guess how long it’ll be before you crash. I didn’t want to send you there; Jackson or Martha should have gotten that posting. I don’t know who’s pulling strings for you up top, but I swear to shit, your ass is mine from now on. Get me the story before tomorrow morning, or you’re done.”
    “I’ll have a draft emailed to you in two hours. Look, it won’t even be rough. I’ll give it to you polished.” The lie came to me then, easily, like all of them did. “You won’t be able to reach me once I send it, though. I have a chance to get back on the line.”
    “Screw that,” he said. “Screw another promise from the wonder kid. I’ll believe it when I see it, so get it to me.”
    Phil didn’t say goodbye; he just hung up. The laptop’s glare blinded me for a second, until my eyes adjusted, and I stared. Blank. I couldn’t remember a damn thing about what I had done, where I had been. There was a vague feeling of terror and of horrible things, but also a sense that if I sat there long enough and relaxed, it would all come back in a wave of shit. It did. I wrote the story while crying, in an hour, and, after sending it, thought about what it would take to make it all go away. I was going back to Pavlodar.
    As I walked out the door, my phone started ringing. It was probably Phil, I figured, pissed off about a period I had forgotten, so I shut the door and left.
    Son of two parents: reporting and subterrene. I needed the story, needed to see the war, like some psycho PeepingTom with an addiction to scoping out unsuspecting housewives—only
my
addiction was watching death in its million forms. Kaz gave me clarity, focus, because it made everything simple. No ass grabbing at the watercooler, no having to worry about shitbags breaking into your computer and stealing your contacts, your research, your story. The irony of subterrene was that it provided the intangible and priceless: decency. Gestures that weren’t only gestures, like Ox’s holding Snyder’s head because it had totally mangled his state, or Snyder’s tossing me a beer because somehow I’d become one of them—worth his last can. Then, just as quickly, Kaz took it away, leaving you with its aftertaste, enough to get you hooked on guys like Snyder and Burger before ripping them from your grasp, as if to say,
Ah-ah-ah, not too much, I want you coming back for more.
And you would. I knew
I
would. Decency was like a drug to someone like me, someone who almost never got to see it and who rarely showed it except in trade to screw you over.
    I remember running into a Special Forces guy sitting on the side of the road when I first got to Kaz. He didn’t even look at me. So I walked up to him and laid on my