Uncollected Stories 2003 by Stephen King
Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-08-15T14:34:47+00:00
SQUAD D
An 11 page, 2,500 word story written for a proposed last volume of Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthologies. Ellison felt that the story was not quite ready to be published in the current form. King did not feel that was the case.
Billy Clewson died all at once, with nine of the ten other members of D Squad on April 8, 1974. It took his mother two years, but she got started right away on the afternoon the telegram announcing her son's death came, in fact. Dale Clewson simply sat on the bench in the front hall for five minutes, the sheet of yellow flimsy paper dangling from his fingers, not sure if he was going to faint or puke or scream or what. When he was able to get up, he went into the living room. He was in time to observe Andrea down the last swallow of the first drink and pour the post-Billy era's second drink. A good many more drinks followed – it was really amazing, how many drinks that small and seemingly frail woman had been able to pack into a two-year period. The written cause – that which appeared on her death certificate – was liver dysfunction and renal failure. Both Dale and the family doctor knew that was formalistic icing on an extremely alcoholic cake – Caruba rum, perhaps. But only Dale knew there was a third level. The Viet Cong had killed their son in a place called Ky Doe, and Billy's death had killed his mother.
It was three years – three years almost to the day – after Billy’s death on the bridge that Dale Clewson began to believe that he must be going mad.
Nine , he thought. There were nine. There were always nine. Until now.
Were there? his mind replied to itself. Are you sure? Maybe you really counted –
The lieutenant's letter said there were nine, and Bortman's letter said there were nine.
So just how can you be so sure? Maybe you just assumed.
But he hadn't just assumed, and he could be sure because he knew how many ninewas, and there had been nine boys in the D Squad photograph which had come in the mail, along with Lieutenant Anderson's letter.
You could be wrong, his mind insisted with an assurance that was slightly hysterical. You've been through a lot these last couple of years, what with losing first Billy and then Andrea. You could be wrong.
It was really surprising, he thought, to what insane lengths the human mind would go to protect its own sanity.
He put his finger down on the new figure – a boy of Billy's age, but with blonde crewcut hair, looking no more than sixteen, surely too young to be on the killing ground. He was sitting cross-legged in front of Gibson, who had, according to Billy's letters, played the guitar, and Kimberley, who told lots of dirty Jokes. The boy with the blonde hair was squinting slightly into the sun – so were several of the others, but they had always been there before.
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