After by Varian Krylov Page A

the building opposite his assembled men. Even after the dying, what he saw made him wonder for a moment if he'd gone mad. Or if, considering the dying, the impossible was now possible, and ghosts were real.
    The pale likeness of a human floated—judging by its position relative to the window—three or four feet above the floor. Fading away, into the shadows, then drifting toward the window like it would float through it, its face, like a man's, was twisted.
    Ghoulish. Like Munch's “The Scream.”
    And then he understood.
    He ran, knowing it was pointless, as fast as he could. Crashed through the heavy double doors. Scrambled up the stairs, not even noticing if it was hard or not, taking all those flights at top speed. Pointless, this desperate haste. He'd get there, and he'd be dead. No. Maybe not. Maybe he'd just done it, just then while Smith had been looking at Lott and Baldwyn and Riggs. He'd get there and the kid would be convulsing, but it wouldn't be too late. They'd get him down and Smith would give him mouth-to-mouth while Vallar or one of the others did CPR, and the kid would recover. And then he'd tell him everything. What they'd done to him. Why he'd tried to kill himself.
    “Cut him down!” Smith ordered, wrapping his arms around the hanging man's thighs and lifting, knowing someone else had made it into the room almost as fast as he had, because he could hear him.
    Vallar. Vallar righted the chair and sprang atop it, and shouted to the men as they came in, “A knife! Someone! A knife!”
    The kid was dead. Not cold, but good and dead. Smith had seen a lot of dead people. There was a quality about the dead that was nothing like actors lying still, pretending to be dead, nothing like sleeping men or injured men who'd lost consciousness. It was too late to save his life. All Smith cared about now was getting him down and covering him up before the cowards who'd bullied him to death got the satisfaction of seeing he'd shit and pissed himself. The thought of the men congregating in the latrine laughing at the state of the poor kid's corpse made Smith want to put a bullet in every last man left. Putting the final bullet into his own skull would be the easiest thing in the world. Christ, he'd have liked to have done it months ago.
    Above him Smith heard the sound of a blade sawing through threads, of fabric ripping, and the full weight of Kosinski's body dropped onto him. He staggered, lowering the body to the floor as carefully, as gently as he could.
    “Get me a blanket.”
    Someone, Dunn, handed him a blanket, and he hurried to spread it over Kosinski, just up to his chin.
    You have to; you can't just trust your eyes, your instinct, so Smith put his fingers to the kid's throat. He was so sure, he might have been more scared than relieved if he'd felt life throb in his jugular.
    “He's dead. Isn't he?” Vallar asked, adding “sir” as an afterthought.
    “Yes.”
    God fucking dammit. The poor kid. Smith had known. He'd known he needed help, and just watched him float away. Like he was already a ghost.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    “What are you lookin' at?” Riggs growled. That boy needed a good punch in the mouth. That would wipe the grin off his face. That would teach him to stare.
    “What the hell you do to that Kosinsky boy, you and Baldwyn?” Lott asked through that shitty grin of his.
    “I didn't do nothin' to that little faggot.”
    “No?”
    “Not my fault he was too much of a pussy to stick it out when things got tough.”
    “Things got tough for him, did they?”
    Why'd Lott have to be such an asshole? “Yeah. Everyone died, remember?
    We're all stuck here on this shitty base, eating shitty food, digging in the dirt and fucking our fists. Tough.”
    Fuck it. He didn't have to listen to Lott's bullshit. Little ass-wipe didn't know shit.
    He'd go to the weight room. It would feel good, the cold weight of the barbells in his grip. Straining. Burning. Sweating. He'd do a lot of sets. He'd flex his arms,