Civilian Slaughter by James Rouch

and arching her body in the air began to finger herself.
    “That's right. Keep it ticking over. Back soon.” Failing to find any of his clothes, Revell grabbed a corner of the sheet she'd discarded and wrapping it about himself sarong style, went out onto the landing. 
    “So what the hell is going on.”
    There was no answer, but from the flight above came another burst of donkey- like noises. Revell started up, dragging a long white crumpled train in his wake.
    “Share the joke then.”
Dooley had gathered quite an audience. He sat on the top step with tears of laughter streaming down his face. “It's that jerk Garrett. He chucked a thunder flash under Carrington's bed while he was on the job.”
    From the room drifted wreaths of grey smoke and anguished sobbing punctuated by vitriolic swearing.
    “I thought Carrington was the great unflappable, so why's he chased off after the young prat with a Colt.” Scully was minus his shorts, but still had the chefs hat and army boots.
    “Carrington might be, but his broad isn't. First thing she did was jump hard enough to almost yank his prick out by the roots, then when the bed burst into flame she shit herself.” Dooley dissolved in uncontrollable laughter. He was still laughing and holding his chest when a big naked girl came out and dragged him back to his room.
    “Anybody know what kind of state Carrington was in?” Revell made it an open question to the assortment of partially robed figures gradually drifting back to bed.
    Scully, with both hands cupped over his privates was edging away with his back to the wall. “I saw him about an hour ago. He was well away, at least a couple of bottles inside him. Garrett's safe enough if he keeps more than ten feet from him.”
    With that Scully reached an open doorway, and was suddenly gone.
    Faintly, from the direction of the lake, came the sound of a shot. Revell pretended not to hear it, and after disentangling his sheet from the stair rails, re- turned to his own room.

    NINE

    The dawn revealed long tendrils of mist creeping in off the heath to surround the hotel. Its sickly yellow light did nothing to dispel the chill in the air.
    A fire had been lit in a small ground floor lounge, after a long-dead flower arrangement had been removed from the hearth. It lay crushed under the pile of table legs and chair backs that had been broken for fuel.
    Garrett sat on the arm of a couch, wincing as their medic dabbed at a cut on his forearm.
    “Stop making a fuss.” Sampson threw the wad of cotton toward the fire. It missed and slowly frizzled until a spark caused it to be consumed in an instant. “Doesn't even warrant a suture. Come to that, it's hardly worth bothering with a tape, but if you want to try for a purple heart ...”
    “The mad bastard was shooting at me all night. Every time I thought he'd finished, he reloaded.” Steering himself, Garrett waited for the wound to be taped. When it didn't hurt he pulled a face anyway, then saw that Sampson hadn't been looking.
    “Serves you right.” The medic repacked the first-aid kit. “A man doesn't like a strange lady shitting in his bed, no matter what the reason.”
    “She wasn't a stranger to him.” Very gingerly Garrett rolled down his sleeve. He was pleased to see the light-coloured bandage showed through the tear in the cloth of his camouflage top. “He'd been bonking with her since two minutes after she'd arrived. I expect he'd have been at her sooner, but it took him that long to run her to his room.”
    “That's not the point. Doesn't matter how long he's been screwing her, a gentleman doesn't like his companion using his bed as a latrine. Anyway I reckon all the ladies who belong to Frau Lilly's mobile whorehouse are a mite strange. She said as much herself.”
    “Who? Carrington's broad?”
“No, Frau Lilly. Me and her got to talking last night, sort of an intellectual exchange.” Sampson saw the sneer of disbelief in the young PFC's face. “And not that