Soldier Dogs #3

by Marcus Sutter

  They hit their target!

  But they didn’t hit Stryker. Instead, a yelp sounded from the rear as Stryker dove into the underbrush.

  That was Boomer’s yelp!

  And that was Boomer’s scent.

  When Stryker glanced over his shoulder, he saw Boomer lying bleeding on the ground in the clearing. He’d leaped in front of the bullets aimed for Stryker. He’d saved his life . . . and saved the mission.

  As Stryker watched, Boomer’s tail wagged one final time. Then his eyes fluttered closed.

  Chapter 15

  Two Ears stepped closer to Bo, his uniform a dark shape in the dawn light of the jungle. His boot landed in the mud three feet from Bo’s hand.

  Bo didn’t whimper. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even breathe.

  And in a moment, Two Ears continued past. Only a few steps, but enough so that Bo’s heart started beating again.

  The soldiers around the machine gun laughed.

  Two Ears took another few steps, scanning the jungle.

  Bo squeezed his eyes tight. He prayed to God for protection. He thought of his mother and father, who were somewhere on the island, probably thinking of him. He also thought of his sister, who was quiet and shy but as stubborn as a boulder.

  Then he started crawling.

  The leaves rustled loudly under his knees, yet somehow Two Ears didn’t appear from the darkness. A trickle of muddy water soaked Bo’s neck as he crawled blindly uphill, trying to get away from the Japanese soldiers.

  Bo left the voices behind. He wormed through what felt like an endless field of ferns. Eventually he reached a leaf-strewn forest floor dotted with boulders.

  After he’d crawled for half an hour . . . he kept crawling. Because every time he thought of rising to his feet, he remembered the look on Two Ears’s face.

  Eventually, exhaustion hit. Bo slumped against a boulder and caught his breath. The yellow dawn light streamed through the trees, warming the damp leaves and soil and raising a thin mist.

  Bo inhaled. The rich, earthy scent of the jungle was comforting . . . but it made him hungry.

  A few birds chirped, and Bo realized that he couldn’t hear the sound of battle anymore.

  Must be a lull in the fighting, he thought. That was okay, he knew he needed to head west and north.

  He rubbed the ache from his neck. He needed to get moving, to put some distance between himself and the camp by morning. He needed to—

  The birds fell silent, and his breath caught.

  Something must’ve spooked them.

  Something nearby.

  Bo tilted his head, listening. He heard nothing, nothing . . . then a soft crunching. Followed by the crack of twigs, the crumple of leaves.

  The chill seeped back into Bo’s bones: Two Ears had tracked him!

  Bo didn’t know if he should flee or hide. He didn’t know if he was already in the sights of Two Ears’s rifle. He took a breath and—

  A deep grunting came from the gloom.

  Then a guttural, animal snorting.

  “Oh, no,” Bo muttered.

  That wasn’t Two Ears . . . it was a wild boar!

  In a flash, Bo scrambled to his feet. A snouty grunt sent him galloping in the other direction. A boar would gore him with its tusks if it was scared or mad.

  Bo fled through the jungle, grabbing thick stalks to pull himself along. His feet slapped the ground, and the drizzle speckled his face. He ran and ran, his lungs aching and his legs pounding.

  At the base of a gnarled tree, he put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. When his panting stopped, he listened for the boar. He didn’t hear a single snort. Thank God.

  Wait.

  There.

  Was someone talking? Yes! Someone was cursing in Japanese.

  Bo almost broke down. That was Two Ears!

  He must’ve heard Bo’s wild flight from the boar. Now he was swearing in rage, his voice slashing through a sudden torrent of rain.

  Hunting for Bo.

  Chapter 16

  The drizzle turned into a downpour that drenched Stryker. Rivulets snaked down the jungle hillside, joining into fast, muddy streams.

  With gunfire still sounding behind him, Stryker trotted forward. He’d caught Epstein’s scent on the battlefield, then lost it again in the rain.

  He knew it was coming from above, though—from the top of a hill or the peak of a jungle ridge. His paws ached, a scratch on his side itched, and the rain-soaked pack on his back felt heavy and awkward.

  Still, Stryker remembered that last wag of Boomer’s tail and didn’t let himself slow down. He’d find Epstein—for his pack, and for Boomer.

  The rainstorm muffled his hearing. The world smelled of mud and water. He couldn’t see much through the downpour.

  He turned uphill, followed a tumbling stream through the jungle—then paused. Japanese soldiers! Not too close, but not too far either.

  They were hidden in a pillbox—a concrete mound—on the hillside. Or lying in ambush.

  Stryker wasn’t patrolling. There was nobody to warn and nobody to protect. He needed to deliver his message to Epstein, that was all. So he looped around the Japanese, heading higher on the hillside. He climbed a slope, loped between dripping bushes and—

  Pain!

  A stab of pain in his hip!

  He staggered before he even heard the gunshot, a dull thuck in the rainstorm. A bullet hole thudded into a tree trunk a foot from his ear! A sniper was firing at him!

  He needed to make a break for it. He needed to run.

  Another bullet shook the bush Stryker was under, and he burst out. He ignored the pain in his hip and raced forward. He veered to the left—then to the right.

  Bullets slammed into roots and pinged off rocks.

  Stryker leaped over a fallen tree and almost lost his footing because of his injured leg. He flashed along a shallow jungle ravine and found himself in a gap between the trees.

  Another bullet whistled overhead, and Stryker ran. Faster and faster uphill.

  The pain in his hip flared when he veered to the right. He almost yelped, but he’d been trained to stay silent. He stumbled again and scrambled in the soggy leaves before racing higher.

  After his frantic flight, Stryker found himself on the peak of a ridge, peering out across the green jungle. It looked almost peaceful, with the mist covering the chaos and destruction. The treetops swayed in the rain beneath the gray clouds. A torrent of water roared below him.

  He crept to the edge of the ridge and inhaled deeply, trying to detect a hint of Epstein. Or of any marines. He couldn’t smell anything except the damp vegetation of the jungle and—

  A mortar exploded on the other side of a tree. Debris pelted Stryker’s side, and the shock wave shoved him off the ridge.

  He hurtled through the air.

  When he hit the ground, pain burst in his wounded hip. He rolled over and over—then splash!

  Water filled his mouth and soaked his coat, dragging him downward. He’d fallen into a river, but he was too weak to swim! He struggled to keep his nose above the surface as the current carried him away.

  Chapter 17

  The rainstorm plastered Bo’s hair to his head and chilled him through his clothes. The jungle was hot when the sun was high, but it was still early morning and Bo was soaked to the skin. As he listened to Two Ears cursing, he spun to his left, then desperately to his right.

  He didn’t know which way to run!

  Uphill. He’d head uphill and away from—

  A sudden thought stopped him. Why was Two Ears cursing so loudly?

  The guttural snorting came a second later, a rough, piggish grunt. Wait—was the boar attacking Two Ears?

  Bo almost laughed. Judging from the sound, at the very least the boar was scaring Two Ears. Terrifying him.

  Time to run.

  Despite his wobbly legs, Bo raced away from the boulder. Branches stabbed him, but he didn’t care; in the rain Two Ears couldn’t hear him, c
ouldn’t track him. Especially while facing an angry boar.

  Still, Bo didn’t slow. He ran until he couldn’t run another step—then he kept running.

  The sound of battle grumbled through the lashing rain. The noise was soft, coming from across the island. Grenades, tanks, artillery. Every now and then the wind brought the tik-tik-tik of machine gun fire—but from far ahead of him, thank God.

  Not from behind him.

  Not from the encampment.

  Bo stumbled when the crack of a rifle came from closer than the other sounds. Maybe it was Two Ears, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe someone was aiming for Bo, maybe for the boar.

  He didn’t care. He didn’t stop. He needed to find the Americans, that’s all that mattered.

  The rain slowed. The shelling intensified. Lizards fled at his crashing, panting approach.

  Bo jogged mindlessly through the brush until the jungle blurred around him. His imagination drifted back to a happier time. Into the warmth of his childhood, years ago, before the Japanese invasion.

  He remembered watching his cousins tend a corn field, guiding huge carabao pulling metal plows. The animals had looked like shaggy monsters to Bo’s young eyes, but they were gentle.

  His parents weren’t farmers, but they worked the fields because of adalalak: the Chamorro tradition of helping relatives and neighbors.

  Which had made sense to young Bo. “I can help too!” he’d said.

  “You stay out of the way,” his sister told him, ruffling his hair fondly.

  The next thing he remembered was his parents and sister repairing their home’s roof after a storm. His sister was eight years older than Bo, and got to do all the good stuff, like climb on the roof.

  Bo wanted to be up there too. He’d been about to ask when he’d heard sailors’ voices outside. He’d run to the door to peek at the pale American sailors in their funny costumes. A few hundred of them lived on the naval base, but Bo hadn’t seen them often.

  One of the sailors threw him a candy. “Here, kid.”

  “Dangkulu na si Yu’us ma’ase!” Bo sang out. Which meant thank you very much.

  “Dang-a-lang a ding-dong to you, too!” the sailor said, and tossed him another candy.

  Bo returned inside, smiling happily. But to his surprise, his father was frowning at what he’d overheard.

  “What’s wrong?” Bo asked.

  His father told him that the US Navy had occupied Guam for more than forty years. The entire island had been designated as a naval base without ever asking what the people who lived there wanted. “We don’t even choose our own leader,” his father said. “We’re ruled by the navy governor.”

  “He seems nice,” Bo said.

  “That’s true,” Bo’s mother said. “But it doesn’t matter. This is our land. Our people lived here for thousands of years. We should choose.”

  Bo had heard this conversation before. His parents didn’t like that the Chamorros needed to follow navy rules and they couldn’t even vote. The navy just took what they wanted. If you didn’t like it, too bad.

  Of course the navy had treated the people better than the Japanese soldiers, who forced the Chamorros to feed them and work for them—using beatings and worse as punishment.

  Still, Bo hoped that after the war, the American military would give the Chamorros more rights and stop taking their land.

  Bo’s mother hadn’t let him eat his candy until after dinner. First, he’d stuffed himself with kadon guihan, fish stew, then popped one of the sweets into his mouth.

  And now, staggering through the jungle in a stupor, he remembered the burst of flavor on his tongue. He remembered the feeling of fullness from dinner. He remembered the sense of safety, knowing that his parents and sister were there for him.

  They’d always been there for him when he was a little kid, but they couldn’t help him now. Nobody could help him now—and nobody could help the people in the encampment except for him.

  So despite his fear and exhaustion, and the pounding ache in his feet, Bo kept running. When his legs threatened to give out, he slowed to a walk. When he couldn’t walk anymore, he shambled onward. He didn’t know where he was going, except westward. Toward the battle. Toward the Americans.

  He needed to tell them about those machine guns threatening thousands of people. Of course, he didn’t even know which Americans to tell, and he didn’t know how he’d convince them. That didn’t matter right now.

  He focused on one thing: he kept staggering onward, dizzy and weak.

  At least until he reached the river.

  Then he knelt down to take a drink . . . and collapsed.

  He couldn’t go on any longer. He couldn’t force himself to his feet—and he’d never felt so alone.

  Chapter 18

  The river current soaked into Stryker’s fur and backpack, weighing him down. He paddled his paws, struggling to keep his muzzle above water.

  He tried to swim to the sodden banks of the river, but his legs turned numb and useless. He couldn’t smell anything with water splashing into his nose. The only sound he heard was the smack of the river against his ears.

  He sank under the surface.

  He choked and gasped. Summoning his strength, he paddled harder and thrust his snout above the waterline. He sucked in a lungful of air. He drifted weakly, spinning and dizzy, battered by floating debris.

  He was fading. He’d never deliver the message.

  He’d never smell Dawson again.

  Dawson.

  The thought of his human gave him a final spark of strength. When the muddy bottom of the river snagged his paws, Stryker half swam and half clawed himself toward the bank.

  At least he tried. But the current was too strong. Stryker couldn’t pull himself out of the water.

  Exhaustion seeped into his bones. His eyes closed. He sank beneath the surface again and—

  Something grabbed him!

  Teeth clamped onto the strap of his pack and pulled.

  Stryker’s eyes feebly cracked open and he saw a human. Those weren’t teeth, they were hands. A young human tugged at Stryker, his legs splashing into the water, his feet sinking into the mud.

  “C’mon, you dumb dog!” the young human moaned, slipping down the bank. “Help me out! I can barely stand, I can’t do this alone.”

  The silly child was going to fall into the river! Stryker couldn’t let that happen. Summoning the last of his strength, he paddled furiously as the boy heaved him toward the water’s edge.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” the boy groaned.

  Giving one mighty pull, the boy flopped backward onto the riverbank, yanking Stryker from the water—and onto the boy’s narrow chest.

  For a moment they lay there panting, with the boy’s feet in the water and Stryker on top of him. Then the boy wrapped his arms around Stryker and started crying.

  Stryker licked his face.

  “Ew,” the boy said, and hugged him tighter.

  Stryker licked him again.

  “You’re warm,” the boy said. “And stinky.”

  They remained there in a dripping embrace until the boy regained his strength. He rolled to the side, gently laying Stryker on the riverbank.

  “Where’d you come from? What are you wearing?” The boy picked at the backpack . . . then froze. “You—you’re wounded!”

  Stryker shook water from his eyes.

  “You are too!” the boy said. “You’re bleeding and—oh! You’re carrying gear. You’re an American fighting dog! There’s bandages and . . .”

  Stryker lifted his head when the boy’s voice trailed off.

  “Is this food?” The boy made a noise like a puppy curling up for a nap. “What are Ration D Bars? Tropical bars?”

  The boy rummaged in the pack. Stryker smelled human food, sickly sweet and unnatural. He licked his injured leg and listened to the boy taking a bite.

  “Yech. That’s disgusting,” the boy said. “And the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Here.”

 
Stryker sniffed the square of food, then turned away.

  “You don’t want? More for me, then.” The boy finished the rations and looked at Stryker. “So, you’re with the US Marines? That means you know where they are.”

  The boy sounded nervous, so Stryker gave his stubby tail a reassuring wag.

  “Good!” The boy stroked Stryker’s back. “Good dog. I need to find them. I need to tell them something. Except I don’t know if they’ll believe me.” The boy fell silent for a second. “Well, I still have to try. Can you get up?”

  The boy touched Stryker’s belly and gently patted his chest, so Stryker stood and shook himself thoroughly.

  “Gee, thanks,” the boy said. “I wasn’t wet enough.”

  Stryker tested his leg. Not strong enough to hold all his weight, but not weak enough to keep him from walking.

  “Go home, boy!” the human child said. “Go home to the marines!”

  Stryker knew the word “home.” He twitched his ears and sniffed. The boy smelled desperate and exhausted.

  This human definitely needed home. That made sense. Stryker knew how he felt.

  Stryker couldn’t continue his mission right now either. Not after being hurt and almost drowned. Being out of the water was helping, but he needed more time to recover.

  So he took a few limping steps, then looked over his shoulder to tell the boy to follow.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” the boy said, licking his fingers. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you? Are we going home? Good boy!”

  Stryker limped downhill until he found a marshy spot to cross the river. After coming so close to drowning, he still felt wary of the water. He paused there to gather his strength.

  “Come on,” the boy said, stepping into the water. “Is this the way home? Go home! Home to the marines!”

  Stryker didn’t come—the boy was too young to obey—but he waited for the boy to splash back to him.

  “Here.” The boy unstrapped the pack from Stryker’s back. “I’ll hold this.”

  Stryker eyed him before deciding that was okay. As long as the boy didn’t try to take his message collar.