STORIES, AFTER EIGHT

Part five.

As you recall, I said I was no longer offering the readings for my stories unless you were a Paying Subscriber. This is the written part of that deal. Leave me a message if you like it. And by the way, I haven’t done the reading yet. That won’t be coming out until tomorrow.

Oh yeah, not that I believe in giving trigger warnings, but this new guy, he’s not a nice guy.

The Higgins boat had seen more action than any of the Marines climbing into it. It floated like a dark shadow against a backdrop of endless stars that looked like a celestial painting swimming into the night. As he looked at the boat he could see it had been strafed by bullets more than once, and Emerson Dunne felt a sense of relief at the reality of finally going into battle. He knew he probably wasn’t right in the head to think that way. There was something a little off about a man who enjoyed killing, he knew. He’d heard it from others, about others; did that mean he was he one of the others now?

He was a survivor, he told himself. He wasn’t afraid of dying, and if the idea of going into battle excited him, there was nothing wrong with that. The Marines needed a few more men like himself. Men who would kill on command.

That’s how you survive. You kill everyone and let God sort ‘em out.

It’s all this sitting around bullshit and doing nothing that eats at a man’s soul. He told himself he hated the Japs. Not for anything they’d done over the past years — he didn’t give a gator’s tit for that. Let them kill each other all they want, the squinty-eyed little bastards. No, he hated them different. He hated them for being different. It wasn’t like hating niggers, he told himself. With Japs, you had to hate them because they were foreign, and odd, and they spoke different than you did. It was all gibberish from what he could tell. You justified killing them by telling yourself they attacked us first; it was time to return the favour.

As if Pearl hadn’t been bad enough, he thought. The latest scuttlebutt was what the Japs had done when they sacked Shanghai, which was somewhere in China. And there were stories coming out of Mongolia — wherever the fuck that was — and Nanking-something-or-other. They were stories so outrageous, they were downright inspirational. Nobody really knew if the stories they told were true. And why wouldn’t they be? he thought. He’d heard rumours of raping and pillaging — downright medieval, he told himself.

They deserve everything they got coming to them, but, it’s not like I wouldn’t’ve done the same.

What’s wrong with a little rape and relaxation?

But still…

He hated them.

Tojo. The whole lot of them. They deserved to be wiped out for everything they’d done, sure, but aside from that, as far as he was concerned there was the memory of looking out at what was left of Pearl when they’d shipped out. They were leaving the States behind and heading into the great adventure, or so he’d thought then. That was almost two years ago. Now, the job was almost done and it was only a matter of time before they invaded Japanland itself. He was looking forward to that. He’d show them that Marines could be just as merciless, just as ruthless, and just as unforgiving.

I’ll finally find out if those geishas really do have a side-ways snatch.

He could hear someone gagging off to his left, with the unmistakable sound of retching and the stench of puke almost making him gag. He told himself not to listen, but listening to a man getting sick before going into battle wasn’t something he expected he’d ever get used to. It was all he could do not to throw up himself. He’d also heard a man sometimes emptied his bowels before he died, and getting gut shot was probably the worst pain you could imagine.

He told himself to stop thinking like that. It wasn’t as if they were expecting a lot of resistance, but everyone knew the Japs would fight to the last man and never surrender. They said there was no honour in surrender, and he could believe that. It was the reason they were suicidal. Death before dishonour, and all that rot, he thought, rather ironically. And where’s the honour in throwing your life away? Still, they were coming in with 500 men. The landing strip was small, and hidden, but big enough to house a squadron of fighters. From what little intel they had, he supposed there were no more than fifty men. Sixty would be a generous count.

The sea was calm and the moon was on the rise, the island was a dark shadow on the horizon. Its twin peaks standing up like bookends in the darkness. They’d studied the topography of the island from the civvies that fled when the Japs first arrived. And how reliable were they? he wondered. You couldn’t count on Natives for anything. They were all lazy and shiftless, and would more than likely sell their own families to make a buck. He was almost certain of it. They weren’t any different from the beaners and niggers back home, he told himself.

Home was Gaines, Mississippi, a small, dust-ridden, clap-board town of two hundred that was stifling hot in the summer, and mild in the winter. It was the sort of town one would call sleepy. There was little to do, and less to see. The town survived off the cotton fields that were owned by the same five families that had been there since before the Civil War. His family had not been one of the five; his family had a history of share-cropping. Leaving Gaines had been the single best thing he’d ever done in his life. It wasn’t as if he would be going off to college, he told himself, not with a war going on. He’d enlisted the day after the Japs bombed Pearl.

At twenty-two, he was the old man of the group. Most of the older guys he knew had been shipped off home with various wounds. Some had been draped in flags and dropped into the ocean. That was the thing about being in a war, he told himself, tomorrow might never come. Live for the day, that’s what I say.

He dared to look over the wall of the boat. The island was a dark shadow on the horizon. They knew they were coming, he thought, as he fell back against the wall, taking a deep breath and telling himself he was a fool for taking chances. It only takes one lucky shot, Haggard had said to him. And he was right, he told himself. Haggard had been a Corporal. Not a very good one, as far as Dunne was concerned.

The Sergeant moved up towards the front of the boat, offering words of encouragement, reminding them that there were still civilians on the island. Dunne let himself drift toward the back of the boat. Only a fool would want to be the first one out. At least this way, he’d be able to hide behind the others and maybe reach the beach. His only hope was that the boat was close enough to the beach that they’d have solid ground once they stepped out. Wearing a sixty pound rucksack on your back was hard enough, but slogging through five feet of water while someone was shooting at you? Not his idea of a good landing.

He could feel the ground rise up underneath the boat and felt the shudder as the bow ramp slammed down onto the beach. This was the moment they would be the most vulnerable, he knew.

“Grab your packs,” the Sergeant called out, “and let’s move out.”

Dunne was scanning the landing site, looking for a place he could find cover if everything went South in the next thirty seconds. If I were a Jap, I’d wait until we were in the water — no matter how deep — and then open fire.

It didn’t even take thirty seconds.

“Get out! Get out! Get out!” the Midshipman screamed as he started to crank the winch, lifting the ramp back into place. Dunne found himself running, feeling the adrenaline pick up as he leaped out into the darkness, hoping he’d find water instead of sand. He could see the boat backing off the beach as he landed on the sandy beach. The weight of the pack came crushing down on him as he rolled twice to the left, found his footing, and scrambling, made his way to the jungle. He looked back. The boat’s ramp was half-way up before the boat turned, the force of its forward momentum into the waves pushing the door back into place.

The Sarge would want to set up a beachhead.

But where?

“Hit the tree-line! Get cover!”

There was a machine gun nest off to the right. It was strafing the beach blindly. The night offered enough cover so that anyone who got shot, well, that was just bad luck as far as Dunne could see. Suddenly, the lights on the airstrip came on and he could see a dozen Marines exposed and in the open.

The machine gun opened fire.

“Someone get me that gun!” the Sarge screamed out into the night.

Dunne quickly stood up on one knee and shot at four of the lights. The beach was dark but it was only a moment before the island’s large spot lights crisscrossed the beach. He dropped down and crawled forward, through the long jungle grass, counting in his head as he did. When he reached twenty, he stopped. He pushed the grass aside, looking for a clearing where he might get a better line of sight.

The machine gun opened fire again.

He dropped down and crawled through the long grass. He was closer — closer than he knew he could have come if they were in the light of day. He moved ahead. Slowly. He took one of the grenades off his belt and slid the sack off his back. He moved ahead again.

There was a pause.

Reloading, he told himself.

He stood up on one knee and tossed the grenade like a kid throwing a baseball. He’d pulled the pin, released the spoon, and let it cook off two seconds before throwing it. The grenade exploded just before it landed.

“Maximum damage, minimal effort,” he said to himself, and rolled to his left in case anyone had survived and decided to strafe the grass where he was laying. He reached out and grabbed the pack, dragging it with him. It wouldn’t do to lose all his rations. There was no telling how long they’d be here, but he was thinking it would be longer than three days.

He found an outcrop of rocks and trees and threw the sack down as he checked his weapon. It wouldn’t do him any good to find out the gun was jammed full of sand. He looked to his left. There was movement. He ducked down and crawled to the other side of the rocks.

He saw an officer.

He was standing with a short sword in his hands, directing his men, and Dunne thought a Jap sword would make a nice souvenir.