At the Midway (31 page)

A swash of water drew his attention.  For a moment, he would have sworn he saw a ship's mast.  He noted Chung staring hard at the water's edge.

"What do you see?"

Without answering, Chung stood and began walking towards the beach.  Something was out there, all right.  But if it was a ship, Hart had no doubt someone would have seen it on the horizon before sunset.

They were well beyond the light emanating from the station and compound.  Yet Hart could discern Chung's outline against the stars, an animated simulacrum denting the night.  Ahead of him something tall rose.  It moved and for a moment Hart mistook it for a very thick mast.

Light blew into the world.  The marines at the station had noticed something odd seaward and had switched on a spotlight.

The creature raised itself out of the water, its chest propped on the sand.  The light seemed to explode off its wet skin, showing the entire length of its neck.

Chung-Ho hesitated only a moment.  He glanced back at Hart and said in a wondrous tone, "A dragon...."  Then he added to the astonishment of the onlookers by continuing down the beach.

"Bonehead!" the marines at the spotlight shouted.  "Chung!" Hart added in a voice loaded with disbelief.  But Chung either did not hear or was ignoring their entreaties.  He had always been like a man in a trance.  The presence of the beast did not shock him out of character.

The creature was momentarily dazzled by the light.  It swayed back and forth a few times in confusion.  Then it saw Chung and froze--its perplexity compounded, as if it was not accustomed to having its meals walk right up to it.

"Chung!" came Hart's frantic cry.

The Chinaman stopped and looked down.  "
No toes
!" he cried out.  Then he raised his eyes.  Man and creature stared at each other.  The marines fell silent, stunned in every way.

"Bonehead!" came Hart's final, horrified commentary.

The creature slowly dipped, paused... dipped, paused... lowering its head in tentative stages, until it was directly above the man.  One might have thought it was about to lick the man like a loving pet.  It sniffed.  As though picking a bug off a petal, it opened its jaws and took Chung-Ho between its teeth.

The man's scream was short-lived.

The ground began to shake.  The thud of donkeys was a familiar one on Midway.  They were descended from the draft animals that had been let loose after the construction of the relay station.  Living off marram grass and the brackish but salt-free water only inches under the sand, they roamed in wild herds.  But the profound counterpoint of mini-quakes was a new sound.  The spotlight swung wildly.

2020 Hours

Lieutenant Anthony dashed into the quad when he heard the commotion.  He could see the frantic shadows of men racing about the spotlight fifty yards away.  There appeared to be something on top of the relay station.  It was rising in the air.  He could not imagine--

His heart thumped to his throat when he realized the thing was not on the building, but beyond it--alive and coming closer.

"Name all the waters, all the countries, all the capes and major bays you would have to pass if you started at Chicago and traveled to Manila via the Horn."

This had been the final question on his Marine Corps entrance examination.  The Secretary of the Navy himself had chosen him for the honor, there being no state senator for the District of Columbia.  Along with algebra, geometry of the plane and solid varieties, and geography, spelling was very big with the examiners.  Anthony had prepped at Swaveley, a cram school open to the privileged sons of Corps' alumni.  But with the Marine Corps Band practicing on the balcony in Band Hall at the Washington Marine Barracks where the test was given, spelling words like physiognomy, tonsillectomy and psoriasis had verged on the impossible.

Yet he had passed and the next thing he knew he was staring across a river at Port Royal, South Carolina.  The Corps had situated its School of Application at Parris Island, site of an old navy yard.  There, Anthony learned small-arms firing regulations, drill regulations, tactics, organization, hygiene, rifle instruction, signals, engineering, security, and administration.

None of which helped him with what he was seeing now.  Miami and San Juan lay one thousand and thirty-two miles apart.  Cabo Raso jutted between Cayenne and Sao Luis.  The Corps did not bother teaching him monsters did not exist because that was a given.

And here was a monster.

Lieutenant Anthony's men carried their rifles wherever they went.  He'd told them this was to prevent the Nips and Chinks from breaking into the armory
-
-
contained in a small shed
-
-
and overthrowing the ostensible government.  In reality, this was a concession to Ziolkowski, who could turn a devil's jig at the sight of rust or verdigris on bluing.  By making them keep their guns by their side, the sergeant could make certain they were properly maintained, and know who to blame if they weren't.

The problem that immediately presented itself to Anthony was that his men carried little ammunition.  It would take more than a few rounds of .30-06 to bring that beast down.  Reaching into his pocket for his keys, he dashed across the compound.

He never made it to the armory.  A horrible animal scream came from high in the air.  Whirling to his left, he saw something spray across the sand, black and glistening like oil gushing from a hose.  Before he could look closer, something hit him boulder-hard.  A bell rang and shouts sounded.

When next Anthony opened his eyes, he was a dozen yards from where he'd been--the world top-up and down.  Lights blinked on and off.  Before he passed out, Anthony saw what had hit him.  Lying in the sand next to him was a donkey's head.  Its mouth worked spasmodically in a lung-less bray of anguish.

2031 Hours

On the other side of the lagoon, men stood on the short dunes and tried to catch a glimpse of what was happening on Sand.  The tiny points of Gooney Island and Spit Island marked the mile distancing the two major islands of the atoll and aided their sense of perspective.  The creatures only
looked
small from here.

"First Squad!  Fall in!" Ziolkowski shouted.  "Not you, Enderfall.  Hustle your ass to the shack and get the Rexer."  He noted Lieber running up breathlessly from the lagoon.  "You go with him, Fritz, and bring the ammo.  On the double!  The rest of you: load and lock!"

Boats were dragged into the shallows.  When Enderfall and Lieber returned, everyone piled in.  They began rowing across the lagoon.

"Top... do you see that?"

A scream shot out across the water.  The rowers hesitated.

"Dip them, boys.  I see them, too.  But the others are in trouble.  We've got to--Well, thank God for that."

Rifle shots rang out.  The marines had begun to fight back.

2053 Hours

Ziolkowski and his men saw not only the huge creature closing in on the relay station with surprising speed, but also two giants bounding through the quad.  They could just make out the dark shapes of donkeys bolting madly in all directions.  As one of them darted through the compound, it was taken from behind.  Teeth clamped over its backbone, it continued to gallop as the creature lifted it.  Limbs were severed one by one as the creature gnawed.  Before swallowing, a great shake separated the donkey's head from its body and sent it flying.  The men in the boats were amazed when the head knocked down a man running towards the armory.

Private Lieber was stunned, horrified and entranced by the spectacle.  Where had such magnificence come from?  Eager for a closer look, he stroked so hard he outpaced the other rowers and started the boat in a circle.

"Ease off, Fritz!" Ziolkowski shouted.  "You've got us catching crabs back here."

Palms hot and wet, Lieber fell into sync.  The dark seemed to draw the boat down, hold it back--at least, to Lieber's thinking.  To the rest, the boat was shooting ahead heedlessly into the maw of death.

"When we land, I want order arms, you hear?" Ziolkowski called out to the boats.  "I don't want any of you doing a rabbit into the bushes.  Fritz, extend to the left with three men.  But not far.  We'll be snapping in on volleys.  And for God's sake be
quiet
.  I want to come up behind that big one."

He wants to sneak up on
that
? the men wondered in dread as they exchanged glances.  It might be better than charging down its throat, but it was not nearly as good an idea as rowing back to Eastern.

Lieber looked down.  His Springfield was hidden in shadow at the bottom of the boat.  He felt around with his bare toes to make sure there was no water leaking in.  No good going ashore with a wet gun.  The beast was wonderful, yes, but something so magnificent and terrible could not be allowed to live.

Ziolkowski's plan for an orderly landing was shattered when the largest of the creatures crushed the relay station.  The imported tile roof avalanched backwards, collapsing the shed behind the building--the shed that held the main generator.

After a loud crash and bang, everything went dark.

2100 Hours

The marines firing at the creature from the station avoided being crushed by inches.  The operators inside were not so lucky.  Their screams were cut short as walls and beast caved in on them.

Private Kitrell ran up to the creature.  With his good arm he pressed his Springfield against its flank and fired.  The recoil knocked him back.

"Skinny!"

A flipper like a bulwark whipped up.  Though barely grazing Kitrell, he was thrown twenty yards.

"Skinny!  You stupid... you stupid...."  Depoy hesitated.  The beast terrified him.  The sudden darkness terrified him.  The smell of deep things risen was so strong it drove him back.  But a mate was down.  "Come on!" he shouted over the noise.  Dropping his gun, he raced forward.  He could just discern Skinny Kitrell's prone form.  He was unconscious--if not dead.  Taking hold of his arms, he waited for someone to grab the legs.

No one appeared.

It was as stark a shock as the beast itself.  But an instant later two men showed up and helped him raise Skinny off the ground.

Timber and masonry snapped and buckled as the creature made rubble of the building.  Depoy sensed it had attacked the building because of the spotlight next to it.  Now that the light was gone, it was trying to decide what to attack next.  To the marines, it was obvious.  There was food in the area. 
They
were the food.

The beast's slightest movement could result in them all being crushed.  Once they had a firm grip on Kitrell, they scrambled wildly... falling, dragging themselves and the unconscious man a few more yards before slipping down again.  Depoy ran straight into some dannert wire, the remains of a fence that had once corralled the donkeys.  He was cut savagely, but made no noise.  No one spoke.  Visions of Bonehead exploded in their brains.

2108 Hours

On Eastern Island the Japanese workers had watched Ziolkowski's marines depart with dismay.  Ace was particularly vexed when he saw Lieber go with them without a single backward glance.

Other than storms, the worst thing he'd ever witnessed at sea was off Cape Naka-Shiretoko.  Ace was talking to two men in another small boat.  Abruptly, the man who was seated shrieked, throwing up his arms in sudden agony.  Yet he did not stand.  A sail fish had mistaken the boat for prey and hulled it, driving its sword completely through the boat and impaling the man's rectum.

Fatalism and religion helped the fishermen deal with weather and waves, but only a nasty turn of cynicism could counter the nasty things the ocean dished out.  Mentally, the Japanese fishermen were better prepared than anyone else on the island for the abrupt appearance of the Tu-nel.  They were horrified by what was happening on Sand, but tales of sea serpents abounded in Japanese fishing lore.  The creatures across the lagoon were but three mythological monsters come to life.

"We have to do something."

"Without guns?"

"There are Lee rifles in the armory."

Ace jumped as if pricked.  The fishermen glanced at each other with wary surprise.  Minutes later, they were piling into one of the fishing boats.

2116 Hours

The fire in the station guided Ziolkowski's party.

"We'll bring it down with a few stiff volleys," he asserted.

No one was convinced, but they followed him nonetheless.  Oddly, it was not so wrenching coming up from behind.  The beast was like a large, steep hill, with little beyond a stubby tail to identify it as something else.  They wondered why it remained so still as they sneaked up.  They could not know it was investigating a smell it only vaguely recognized: burning human flesh.

"Enderfall," the sergeant hissed, "keep your ass close.  I want you to feed me the clips."

After his sorry experience with the Lee rifle while stationed in the Hermit Kingdom, Ziolkowski had gone in search of a good Mauser.  It was while snooping around one of the European armories that he learned about a new kind of portable machine gun--a nasty producer of mass death with a palindromic name.  After some heavy dealing with a regimental quartermaster, he acquired a Danish Rexer.