Read No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) for Free Online Page B

came back just like it’d done that afternoon. Pressin’ down, takin’ my breath, but this time my drunk old self saw the ghost leaning in, felt its cold mouth on mine. Saw all kindsa rage and fear in its eyes, and had no idea why. I couldn’t move, feelin’ like a hundred stones were flattenin’ me. It was desperate, trying to crush my life away as fast as it could. Like it was dyin’, and I was the only thing gonna keep it alive.
    My tortoise flipped itself over, presenting its mottled shell to the ghost. It fell away and my breath came back, even though my head kept spinnin’. I sat up, checkin’ myself with my hands. I was still all there, still all breathin’. The ghost spun toward Andy again, and I remembered him actin’ like he couldn’t breathe all day. “Wait a sec!”
    No way I thought the thing would understand me, but it stopped and turned, tremblin’ with need. “Wait a minute,” I said again. “What’s goin’ on, what do you want? How the hell can I even see you?”
    “See who ?” The Ack whispered, but Daniel hushed him. The ghost looked between us, haunted bleak gaze, and said something in Korean.
    “I don’t speak —dammit! Danny! What’s—” I replicated the sounds it had made best I could, feelin’ like a fool. “What’s that mean?”
    He hesitated. “Are you sure you got that right?”
    “No!”
    “Because if you did, it’s asking for fish soup.”
    I stared at him. “I don’t think life-suckin’ ghosts ask for fish soup, Dan. Wait a second. Can you see it?”
    “Revenge.” The ghost spoke English that time, and its bleak haggard face started changin’, becomin’ more like a girl than a ghoul. I pinched my fingers against the sidewalk, gettin’ ready to run or tackle or whatever I had to, but she said “Vengeance,” again, and I figured that was communication, not a threat. “So long,” it whispered. The thing’s accent was pure Korean, like it’d learned English as an adult. As an adult ghost. Joanne was just gonna love this one. “My family…dead. For them…I slay.” She gestured to all of us, and I closed my eyes.
    “Somethin’ happened in Korea. We, our unit, we killed her family, maybe. Killed her, dammit. I’m sorry, doll. I’m so damned sorry.” That was all explanation to my buddies and half a question to the ghost, but I hardly needed to see her nod to know I was right. “You been with us since then? Comin’ after us since then? Danny ?”
    “It came back with us,” Dan said miserably. “Fifty years ago, it came back with us. I can’t see it. Why can you ?”
    “’cause I’m drunk off my ass, an’ I been magicked up a lot lately. You gotta be in an altered mental state ta see this shit. Now stop avoidin’ the topic an’ tell me what you knew.”
    “Nothing! I just knew something was there, and I never did know how to stop them. Then it disappeared and I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I never imagined it was coming after us, Muldoon. I had no idea. Heart attacks. Everybody dies of heart failure in the end. And besides, we were spread all over the place.”
    The ghost peeled her lips back from black rotting teeth, an’ I was glad as hell she didn’t have enough breath to stink. “Long hunt.” Her ruined face crumpled and she reached out, not to any of us, but toward the sea.
    Not the sea. Any idiot coulda seen that, and I wasn’t that much of a fool. Toward Korea. Toward her home. “Last blood.” She came alive all of a sudden, throwin’ off the smoky air an’ insubstantiality to look like a real girl. Just a kid with eyes haunted by death, same way as we’d all been back then. She wasn’t anybody, not a face burned inta my memory, not one of the regular nightmares that came through the long years to remind us what we’d done. She was just a girl, and we’d prob’ly dropped a bomb or fired a bullet and earned ourselves some’a what the brass called collateral damage.
    She hadn’t been one of ‘em, though.