Into the Storm (39 page)

“If they come, we’ll help. I said that already. But we can help you now, better, before they come. Baalkpan’s vulnerable, and no one seems ready to fight. If you prepare to fight now, you’ll be better able when the time comes. Believe me”—he forced a half smile—“my people learned the hard way about being unprepared. Maybe this time it’ll be different.”

“I have not seen your amazing ship up close,” said Nakja-Mur, “but Keje and Adar tell me of its wonders. Still, what can one ship do in the face of the Grik multitudes?” The word “multitudes” sounded bad, Matt thought with a sinking feeling.

“Not enough probably, by herself,” he said flatly, “but a lot. The main thing
Walker
and her crew can do right now is help
you
prepare. And the first thing we need for that is fuel.”

 

Walker
swung at her anchor as the tide dragged her around until the busy, festive city of Baalkpan was off the port beam. It was totally dark and the lights cast an eerie, almost Oriental glow that reflected off the restless wave tops. Occasionally, sounds from shore reached Alan Letts as he leaned against the rail beside the number three gun. A party of men quietly worked on it, preparing to dismount it if they were allowed, so they could get at the balky traverse gear. Larry Dowden stopped by and spoke to Campeti, who supervised. “. . . in the morning . . .” was all Alan heard.

Screeching metal on metal and a string of obscenities came from the torpedo workshop. Letts was surprised to hear a hoarse Japanese shout respond to Sandison’s tirade, followed by a crash of tools on the deck. When there was no further sound or cry of alarm, he chuckled. “That Jap’s either going to make the best torpedoman Bernie has, or get fed to the fish.” It still struck him strange having a Jap help with any sort of weapon, but Jap torpedoes worked just fine. Maybe Shinya knew something about them. He knew about machines; that was why Letts had suggested the appointment in the first place. If he had to work—and everybody did—that was as good a place as any. He stretched. It was nice to be on deck, breathing real air without the sun blasting the skin right off him. He scratched his forearm, rolling a ball of parched skin under his fingernails.
I’m starting to get just like the Mice
, he thought.
I can only come out after dark. God, I wish I was home.

Off to the west, lightning rippled through dark clouds.
It’ll probably rain
, he thought dejectedly,
and then I’ll start to rot
. There’d been several days of uninterrupted sunshine—hot, as usual—but it normally rained once or twice a day. He didn’t know which he hated worse, the hot sun that burned his skin or the hot, miserable rain that caused his skin and everything else to rot and mildew. All things considered, he’d
really
rather be in Idaho.

He lit a cigarette and let it dangle between his lips like he’d seen others do. It was an affectation he imagined they got from movies, but it looked cool, so he did it. Wouldn’t be long before there weren’t any smokes, he reflected. That wouldn’t bother him as much as others. But some of the things they were running low on were important to their very survival, and he didn’t have the slightest idea where to get more. He was the officer in charge of supply, but unless the lemur monkeys, or whatever they were, came through, there was no supply for supplies. He was a whiz at organizing and allocating and sending requisition forms through proper channels. In the past, if the stuff came, it came. But if it didn’t, they always managed to make do or get by because there was always something to make do with. If the snipes needed a new feed-water pump, he would pick one up at the yard in Cavite or from one of the destroyer tenders like
Black Hawk
. If it was “the only one left” and they were saving it for
Peary
or
Stewart
because their supply officers did them a favor, then he could roll up his sleeves and swap and bid with the best. But when it came to getting something that wasn’t there and never had been, and the only choice was to produce it themselves, he didn’t have a clue what to do. He hoped the captain did.

He glanced to his left when someone leaned against the rail a few feet away. It was that nurse, the other one, with the auburn hair, the one that never said much. Karen something. Karen Theimer.

“Hi,” he said. She glanced at him, but then looked back at shore. She put a cigarette to her lips and drew in a lungful.

“What do you think’s going on?” She gestured at the city.

Alan shrugged. “Big Chief Powwow,” he answered with a grin. “How should I know? I’m a meager lieutenant jay gee. Mine’s not to reason why. I hope they come up with some supplies, though. Me being the supply officer, I always like to have supplies to be in charge of and, right now, there ain’t much.” She didn’t grin or laugh, or say anything at all. She just took another puff. Standing so close, with the moon overhead and the flashes of lightning in the western sky, Alan was struck for the first time that she was really kind of cute. Of course, she and Lieutenant Tucker might be the only human females in the world—talk about a supply problem! He guessed it wouldn’t be long before she started to look good if she had a face like a moose.

“I haven’t been much help,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been having . . . a tough time adjusting to what’s happened. I always led a sheltered life and thought becoming a Navy nurse would be a huge adventure.” She looked at him for the first time, and her lips formed a small, desolate smile. “I guess I was right. I have to try harder, though. Lieutenant Tucker’s right. If any of us are going to survive we’re all going to have to pitch in, and in ways we might not expect. Everything’s changed, and I have to figure out a different way of looking at things. Going across to the Lemurian ship scared me to death.” She shuddered. “I mean, they’re like . . . aliens from another planet! Like Martians. Add in all the carnage of the aftermath of battle and I guess I didn’t handle it very well. But I did learn that being a Navy nurse doesn’t mean just being a Navy nurse anymore. Do you know what I mean?” She suddenly pulled her hair. “God, why am I even telling you this? You’re just some guy.”

He looked at her and sighed, chagrined. “Yeah. I’m just ‘some guy.’ Maybe that’s been
my
problem all along. I think I do know what you mean, and I’m ashamed of myself. I’ve been wallowing in my ‘meager supply officer’ status so long it never occurred to me that might mean something different now too. It took me longer than you to figure that out, though. Thanks.”

She smiled at him, and this time he saw her dimples in the light of the city. “My name’s Karen Theimer. What’s yours, Lieutenant?”

L
ieutenant Benjamin Mallory and Lieutenant (j.g.) Perry Brister sat on chairs in Jim Ellis’s cramped quarters on USS
Mahan
waiting for him to wake. Ellis’s fever had finally broken the night before, and Pam Cross assured them he’d be fine—he just had to sleep it off. And so they waited, playing hand after hand of acey-deucey on the tiny table between them. Eventually, a groggy groan escaped the patient and he slowly came awake. His eyes seemed confused when he saw them, but he smacked his lips and croaked: “Thirsty.”

In seconds the nurse appeared with a cup of water. “Here,” she said in her brusque Brooklyn way. “Drink.” Jim drank. When he spoke again, his voice was more normal.

“How long?” he asked simply.

“Almost two weeks since the fever hit. How much do you remember?” Brister asked.

“Not much,” Jim admitted and tried to rise, but his expression contorted with pain and he settled back. “But I do remember that crazy bastard Kaufman shot me!”

It all came flooding back: the dinosaurs on Bali, the mysterious contact in the strait, the urgent signal for him to take
Mahan
east—which he did, but not for long. What was the point? There were
dinosaurs
on Bali! He didn’t know what was going on, but there’d been no Japanese ships or planes since they came through the Squall, and he had a hunch there wouldn’t be. He decided to turn around, to go back and rejoin
Walker
.

Kaufman argued with him, right there on the bridge. At first he remained reasonable, advocating that they continue to the rendezvous point off Alor. But when Jim gave the order to come about, Kaufman began to insist. He said Jim was risking all their lives and they’d die if they turned around. Jim ordered him off the bridge and that’s when he just . . . lost it. He had a pistol and he took it out. Immediately, Jim and a couple of others jumped him and in the ensuing struggle, the gun went off. It probably wasn’t even deliberate. Regardless, the bullet entered Jim’s left leg, just below the knee, and exited the other side of his calf, right above the ankle. The men would have thrown Kaufman over the side right then, but he had the gun and time to talk. He said turning back was suicide; they’d done everything they could. The ship was a wreck and the men were exhausted. They deserved to live. Then Mr. Monroe, the only other officer besides Brister—in engineering at the time—took his side. He said they should listen to Kaufman, who was a captain, after all, and it was nuts to go back after all they’d been through. The crew began to go for it. They were angry about Jim being shot, but it wasn’t like he was their captain or anything. He was just a strange officer who’d been put in charge. Kaufman only wanted to do what they’d been
told
to do, so that’s how it was. Before Brister or Mallory even knew what happened, Captain Kaufman had the ship.

What he did next was inexplicable. Instead of heading for Alor, which had been his original purpose, he didn’t make for Perth at all. He was convinced that there were carriers between them and Australia, so that left only Ceylon. They steamed east for the day, hugging the coast, and that night they shot the Lombok Strait. They’d still seen no sign of the enemy, but that made no difference to Kaufman. He’d become obsessed with reaching Ceylon and—Jim guessed—terrified of meeting
Walker
. He wasn’t about to go anywhere the other ship might be. Jim was in the wardroom the entire time, undergoing treatment. Not under arrest, but more or less in exile. He kept up with events as best he could, mostly through Mallory and Brister. Much of the rest of the crew seemed hesitant to look him in the eye. There were exceptions, like Bosun’s Mate Frankie Steele and Torpedoman Russ Chapelle, but not nearly enough to recapture the ship. Then, in spite of the best the surgeon and nurses could do, he lapsed into a fever. His last conscious recollection was they were nearing Tjilatjap, hoping to find some fuel. He cleared his throat.

“What happened at Tjilatjap?” His voice grew soft. “Was it even there?”

Brister and Mallory looked at each other, and finally Ben shook his head.

“No, sir. You don’t remember any of that? We told you about it after we came aboard.”

Jim just shook his head. “Pretend I wasn’t there,” he said, attempting to grin. “Start over. What did you find?”

“Nothing, sir. At least nothing that looked like Tjilatjap,” said Brister. Like others who’d been there before, he pronounced it “Chilachap.”

“What did you see?”

“Some strange, huge village—almost a city. I don’t really know how to describe it. It was pretty big. Multistory structures, built on some kind of bamboo pilings. It was deserted, and most had been burned to the ground.”

“Deserted?”

“Yes, sir. Well, sort of deserted. It wasn’t abandoned willingly; it looked like there’d been a fight. Bones, sir. Bones everywhere, and a few mostly scavenged bodies off in the jungle. They were furry and had tails and . . . they weren’t human.”

“Sir,” said Mallory stiffly, “there was nothing left alive out of a city of hundreds, easily, and it looked like whatever got them ate them. Not just scavengers either. Most of the bones were . . . piled up.”

Pam Cross had left and reentered with a thermometer during the conversation. Her face was hard.

“Did you see it too?” Ellis asked.

“I did,” she said simply and poked the device in his mouth.

Brister cleared his throat. “Well, sir, we got the hell out. Kaufman became even more unhinged. He insisted our only hope was Ceylon and had us pour it on. He wouldn’t listen to reason. By then, almost everyone wanted to look for
Walker
, in spite of the consequences, but he said the next man who suggested it would be left in the whaleboat to look on his own.” He wiped at the sweat beading his brow, and the nurse removed the thermometer from Jim’s lips. She made a noncommittal sound. “Anyway, a storm kicked up and we shipped a lot of water. It wasn’t much of a storm, but shot up like we are, we were lucky to survive. Things settled down by morning, but we had to pump out and make repairs, so we ducked into this little bay on Panaitan Island—”

“That’s how we found the plane!” interrupted Mallory, a grin splitting his face.

“Plane?”

“Yes, sir. A PBY Catalina! If you can look out that porthole beside you, you might be able to see her!” Ellis struggled to rise, but he was very weak. Mallory immediately regretted the suggestion, but with a heavy sigh and rolling eyes, Nurse Cross helped him up. His head swam and his vision was blurred, but through the porthole, sure as the world, a familiar, battered seaplane was half beached on the island.

“You weren’t kidding!” he exclaimed. “Where’d it come from?”

The two men shrugged. “Same place we did, I guess,” said Mallory. “We steamed into the bay and there it was on the beach, its crew nowhere in sight. The place is crawling with lizards like bit your man on Menjangan . . .” He didn’t need to speculate on the air crew’s likely fate. “There were bullet holes all in it and it was full of water, but otherwise it seemed in pretty good shape—just out of gas. The radio’s crapped out—we checked that right off. Salt water corroded all the connections was Signalman Palmer’s guess. He’s been working with us. Anyway, we figure the same thing happened to it that happened to us, and it made it as far as the Sunda Strait before it ran out of fuel.”