. Come with us, boy. Hurry!"Pok looked as if he might waver, but glanced aside at Bethut, next to him, and he gripped her hand fiercely. "Bethut will ...tay, and I will stay. And we will show you that there is nothing to fear." Then you are a fool, like that one." The old man rose, and grabbed his walking stick and his bag. "Well, we go. May the ancestors watch you and ward you, and may the yellow come not to this place." He laughed, bitterly, a spectre of his youthful self, and walked away from. His name was Horace Bechtel, and he had been a paratrooper since there had been an airborne. Sergeant First Class Bechtel was small, wiry and as mean as a water moccasin. He set the tone for week two when we formed up for PT on Monday morning."I don't like my Mama because she's a leg," he said. "So you can bet I don't like none of your candy asses from the get go. Do us both a favor and quit now, so I don't have to run you off."After we did fifteen repetitions of the daily dozen, Bechtel formed. Here I am, 25 years old. No family, very few friends and because of a car wreck, I will never have any children. My world had revolved around my lover. Ok, so he wasn't handsome, not in the conventional sense, nor was he rich and powerful. He wasn't even a particularly good lover, though my knowledge in this area was previously limited to a furtive, drunken coupling with a barely known teenager on my sixteenth birthday. From what I heard from the girls at work, my sex life was also fairly dull. ?Y ? you?re ?a woman ???Yes.? Shesaid curtly. ?Good observation.??But ? how c ?could you do this to ? another woman ??The Chameleonlaughed aloud through the mouth flap of her mask.What afunny question.?Are you hungry ???Answer me !? Susan Cumber shrieked in anger. ?How could you ??The Chameleonslapped her leather-gloved hand across the woman?s face twice, first one way, then a backhander. The blow snapped Susan?s head sideways,making her gasp and sob, before ducking her face forward in the neck.