by Zack Parsons
I was exhausted anyway. Too tired to murder in this peaceful place. Too many kids. Now that I knew the monster’s secret lair, the advantage was mine. I could dispatch him at my convenience. For now, I could go home and have a bath.
I wheeled the car out of Sunset Beach and headed north along a frontage road, then deeper, avoiding the highway and letting the gray of evening fall across me. Headlights catching the playing-cards on bicycle spokes. Kids called in for dinner.
I think I was in Lakewood, at a stop sign on a quiet street, messing with the dial on my radio and trying to find something other than bad news. Both doors came open, and I was looking at iron.
“Nice and easy,” said a man. “Just back it up. Out of the car.”
“He’s got a gun,” said the one on the other side.
They leaned lower, and I could see their faces. Buzz cuts and navy-blue blazers. White around the eyes where the sunglasses had been. The one leaning over me smelled like too much aftershave. The other one grabbed my Stillman off the seat.
“All right, now out”—he shoved his gun into my ribs—”come on. No funny stuff.”
He frog-marched me to an idling limousine. The other fella slipped behind the wheel of my car and started to drive away.
“Nothing in this world worse than a horse thief,” I said.
The guy jabbed me in the back with the barrel of his gun. “Just get in the car and shut your mouth.”
Harlan Bishop’s footman Elias was waiting for me in the back of the limousine. His eyes were barely more than slits; the contours of his gaunt face were deepened by the low light within the car. He was a statue rising from a pool of oil. I climbed into the seat across from him, and the buzz cut with the heater slammed the door behind me. The limousine began to move.
“I think there’s been some mistake,” I said. “I didn’t call for a Frankenstein.”
Elias reached slowly into his jacket. His long, bony fingers returned clasping a stuffed envelope. He handed it to me. Inside was an impressive stack of green. More than I’d ever seen in an envelope. I wasn’t completely sure how they’d gotten it all in there.
“Your job is done,” said Elias. “It is time to go home.”
“Or what?”
Elias blinked. He seemed to wait for me to reconsider, but I’m stubborn and never put a lot of thought into those sorts of decisions. Never much cared for people telling me what to do.
“Tell your boss”—I held the envelope out to him—”that he can keep his money. I’d use gutter words, but I bet you’d drain the color. I decide when the job is done, and this one’s a long way from it.”
Elias took the envelope back and returned it to his jacket pocket. “Take us to the ocean,” he said to the driver.
“You gonna try to kill me?” I scoffed. “Tougher men have tried.”
“I’m a pacifist,” said Elias. “I won’t harm you.”
Of course he wouldn’t; he had people to do that for him. The buzz cuts, three of them, dragged me out of the car and onto a lonely strip of Pacific coast. We were ghosts in the limousine’s headlights. The tide was coming at us, washing around my ankles as they took turns swinging at me. I got a couple of licks in. Turned one fella’s nose sideways and left a bite mark on the hand of another.
Three on one wasn’t a fair fight, and the buzz cuts beat me all over again. Stomped on my broken fingers and punched a couple of teeth loose. I was doubled up and drooling blood into the white-lit surf. Wheezing, blood bubbling from my nostrils. The ocean crashing at my knees and over my hands. Reeling back and trying to suck me out with the breakers. One last kick to my side, right where I was already worked over by that giant. Christ Almighty, these fucking people.
Elias splashed out next to me, his feet bare, his pants rolled up to his knees like a beachcombing kid. He took the black book out of my coat pocket and leaned down so I could hear him over the surf.
“You’re done,” he said. “If you come near Harlan Bishop or his son again, you will be killed.”
“Thought you were ... a pacifist,” I said.
“I don’t like seeing you like this,” said Elias. “It hurts me more than you.”
I doubted that very much.
I’m not sure if I blacked out or just stared up at the night sky and listened to the ocean. The pain in my body ebbed, and I returned to a faraway night. I was on Kyushu, in the mountains east of Sendai. Gardener’s search for Lt. Col. Ishii and his secrets brought us to the burning village of Korano and beyond, up a winding mountain road to the Catholic Church of St. Ramon.
Moonlight illuminated the church. It seemed older than was possible, its iron crenellations black and Gothic, stones weathered and left moldy by the tropical summers, cracked by the cold winter. Loose vines dangled from the cross atop its steeple. Lost amid the trees, it reminded me of a plane long ago crashed in a jungle.
It was easy to see why Ishii had chosen it as his redoubt. It was situated on high ground, with an exposed approach surrounded by several low hills where ambushes could be situated. Lights burned through cinquefoil windows that ringed the chapel. The stained-glass tower windows lower to the ground were dark and covered in wooden slats to protect them from bombs.
I passed the field glasses to my left so the Pole in the German uniform could use them. We were gathered in a ditch, the last bit of good cover before the exposure of the road was our only way forward.
“That’s a butcher’s ground,” I warned Gardener. “Some mines, a machine gun, or even a good rifle will take its toll every time we have to move between cover.”
“Will we make it?” he asked.
“A few of us would,” I said. “I say we take an alternate approach. We should climb down and around. The church has the mountain’s peak at its back. I’d take my chances climbing sheer cliffs and roping down over the peak. The church’s roof would shield us from fire unless he actually came out of it to shoot, in which case we’d have a shot right back at him.”
“There’s no time for that. We’ve got him cornered here. We have to press the advantage, no matter the casualties.”
At Gardener’s insistence, I drew up a battle plan. It was little more than distributing some hand grenades and explaining the basics of assaulting a fortified position.
“If we come under fire, don’t stop. Don’t try to take a shot. Don’t turn back to help the man beside you. You have to move as quickly as you can toward the objective. Getting in close and pressuring them is the best way to help a wounded man.”
The men stared at me without reaction. They didn’t trust me. Nevertheless, Gardener was satisfied. He clapped a hand on my shoulder, and we formed up and began our advance.
We moved silently and as swiftly as we could. Each rattle of ammunition or clink of a canteen seemed to echo up the mountain. Our breath gusted from our mouths in the crisp mountain air. My legs ached from the climb. We could not slow or stop.
We passed the first of the hills. There was a collapsed outbuilding hidden behind it, some sort of shed. It seemed burned or rotted into absolute ruin. A footpath curled away from the structure and disappeared into thick grass. I was in the lead, Gardener right behind me. The rest of the men fanned out in a wedge, far enough apart that if the road was mined, only one of us would lose a limb.
The second and third hill were close together. One was barren, and the other was capped with an overgrown garden. Beside it, near the road, lay the hull of a truck stripped of any useful material. Only the body remained, slumping to rust, swallowed up by weeds. It was turned to offer good cover from the church. A little too good, by my eye, and there was pale, dead grass behind, suggesting it was recently moved. The Filipino radio man was poking around it until I waved him away.
The fifth hill was just before the halfway point up the road. There was a small cemetery atop the hill, fenced with black iron, most of the monuments just simple wooden crosses. There was a single stone cross big enough to shield a man. I looked back, unsurprised to see the w
edge of men behind me looking at the cross monument as well, all probably thinking the same thing: if the shooting starts, that’s where I’m going.
Ishii shot Gardener first. There was a single crack, and he crumpled in the road.
“Strzelec!” shouted the Pole, and the road erupted into chaos.
I turned, against my own instructions, and grabbed Gardener by his combat webbing and hauled him onto his feet. The big man with the Browning opened fire from the middle of the road. He’d stopped and was thumping rounds into the church, shattering windows and blasting apart masonry. The other men were scattering.
Gardener was conscious but dazed, blood spilling out of his chest and darkening the front of his uniform. Behind me I could see the Filipino running for the rusty truck. He crouched behind it, and a moment later it disappeared in a fireball. Shrapnel from the explosion snapped by and lifted dust in little clouds from the roadway. I felt some of it hit my midsection, a burning there, but there was no time to figure out how bad it was.
“Come on!” I shouted, and I dragged at Gardener. “Don’t make me get this guy for you.”
He pushed away my hands, stronger than I expected, and together we ran for the church. Another rifle shot cracked in the night, and the Pole fell facedown in the road. The damn fool on the Browning spotted the flash and hammered rounds into a window on the ground floor. The wood shutters blew apart in splinters, and the stained glass broke loose and came sheeting down.
I never heard the shot that killed the big guy on the Browning. His gun went quiet, and when I looked back, I saw him in a heap in the middle of the road.
Gardener and me and the Navy translator and the Indian with the Thompson were closing in on the church. The engineer was cowering in the cemetery. He’d won the prize cover of the cross and was stranded there, useless to us.
Ishii took a shot at us from another one of the windows, and it missed. Then we were in close, pressing ourselves to the stone wall of the church. It was very quiet without the Browning or the rifle shots ringing out. Our heavy breathing seemed loud, and I tried to quiet myself. I checked Gardener’s injury. It was in and out, messy, but looked like a muscle wound.
“I will go first,” said the Navajo with the Thompson.
“I’ll give him something to think about,” I said, and I pulled the pin on a hand grenade. I waited until the Indian was in position and then hurled it through the empty frame of a window. There was a startled cry on the other side and an explosion that shook the door. The Navajo kicked it in and stepped inside, firing his Thompson blind into the darkened church. By the camera flash of his gun I saw several men and women, Japanese and Anglo, cowering behind the chapel’s pews.
Ishii shot the Indian with a pistol, and he came at us, screaming, his face twisted in rage like a Samurai mask, a Banzai scarf around his head. He thrust his officer’s sword through the Navy translator’s guts. As Ishii drew the bloody length of it back out, he tried to turn, and I clubbed him, right in the mouth, with the butt of my Garand. He fell back but didn’t go down, so I hit him again. The third time was to be sure, and the fourth time, opening a gash on his head, was because I couldn’t kill him flat out. Gardener stopped me from hitting him again.
“We got him,” he said. “Make sure he stays got. I need to find his sister.”
“What?”
Gardener didn’t answer. He was already running toward the pews, calling out in Japanese. I was furious with adrenaline. I wanted to gun down the Jap nuns and burn the church and Ishii with it. I picked up Ishii’s pistol. One of those Jap Lugers. Nambu, they called them. It was still warm from being fired, and I thought about popping a round off into Ishii’s brain.
The translator grabbed at my boot, reminding me he was still alive and saving me from a rampage I would have regretted.
“Up,” he moaned.
I knelt beside him and saw straightaway that he was in bad shape. He was Italian or Greek, heavy brows, but his olive skin was sallow and his expression stricken. His shirt was black with blood. His guts were spilling out of the wound in his stomach. I tried to keep him from rolling onto them. He took hold of my blood-slicked hand.
“Help me get up,” he said, and he stared intensely at me for a moment. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply a few more times and was dead.
I lifted Ishii beneath his armpits and dragged him over to a chair beside the altar. His head lolled drunkenly. The cowardly engineer finally showed up and helped me corral the nuns and the priest—a fat Anglo speaking Dutch or something—into the rectory. Gardener returned with his prize: a slim, teary-eyed Jap girl in a nun’s habit. Gardener was talking to her in Japanese in a calm tone. He looked ashen.
“You all right?” I asked.
He finished murmuring to the Japanese girl before answering.
“Yes, are you?”
The front of my jacket was speckled with blood and holed in a dozen places. There was a red line of moisture at my belt. I was perforated good from shrapnel, but it didn’t hurt at all and was barely bleeding. Weeks later when I was being shipped back to America from the Marshall Islands with two failing kidneys and a blood infection, it wouldn’t seem so minor.
I replied to Gardener with a shrug.
“Get Ishii awake. She doesn’t know where he put it.”
“Put what?” asked the engineer.
“Get back outside and make sure no one is coming from the village,” said Gardener to the engineer. “And see if any of those poor bastards are still alive.”
I got Ishii awake by filling my canteen with holy water and dumping it over his head. His sister in the nun’s habit was crying at the sight of him all bloodied up. It sounded like hiccups. When Ishii lifted his head, she blurted something and tried to reach for Ishii, but Gardener held her tightly. Ishii said something in Japanese.
“English only,” said Gardener. “You don’t want your sister to hear what we’re talking about.”
Ishii’s lips curled back in a bitter smile.
“I should have known you would bring one of them, Gardener. To rub my nose in it? How many of you are there?”
“Enough,” said Gardener.
“He knows?” I asked.
“I know.” Ishii spit. “Everything. I know about you Americans and your secret army. The Warrens, right? I heard the code name tortured out of a man with your face at Buhlendorf.”
“Save it. The villagers in Korano told me you had the case with you when you came through.” Gardener drew his automatic and pressed the barrel to Ishii’s sister’s head. “This is real simple. You tell me where it is, and your sister lives. Nothing happens to her—”
“Hiertsukan!” Ishii shouted, and he fought with his bonds. “Let go of her, you son of a bitch!”
“Or you refuse and watch your sister’s brains explode. I’m a fair man, Ishii. A lot fairer than you and your pressure experiments on those Chinese. I’m giving you a chance to save something you love. That’s a lot to give a man in the middle of a war.”
Ishii’s sister closed her eyes. She was speaking quietly. In the tense silence that occupied the chapel I realized by her inflection she was reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Japanese.
“I can’t trust you,” said Ishii.
“You can trust that I will make you watch her die and then torture it out of you. Like you did to a man with my face at Buhlendorf, right?”
“Hollman and the SS did that,” said Ishii.
“Sure, and Uncle Sam is doing this. I’m just the gun at the end of his hand, pressed to little Miko’s temple. I’m trying to save everyone some time.”
Ishii went limp in his restraints. He stared down at his lap.
“It is atop the mountain,” he muttered. “In the mountaineer’s black cabin.”
Gardener released Ishii’s sister, and she threw herself at her brother. Ishii couldn’t look at her. Neither could I.
“We’re going to the top,” said Gardener. “He’s coming with us.”
It was a lon
g way up.
The shrill cry of the seagulls woke me from my dream. I was on the beach, legs dangling in the surf. One of my eyes was glued shut, and the other was a raw nerve pulsing in my brain. The dark shapes of the seagulls reminded me of a cursed place, long-ago symbols painted on the ceiling of a forgotten cave.
“Your hand looks infected.”
I sat up to see who was talking and came face-to-face with a Warren. Again. This time the Warren was much older, hair long and white, face sun-chapped and eyes small in squinting folds. He was shirtless and bronzed, but his body was going slack with age. He was sitting on a metal camping cooler stuck into the sand. Drinking a beer.
“Can I have one of those?” I groaned.
“I’ll give you two.”
He lifted his butt up just enough to pull two cans out of the cooler. He cracked one open with his church key and passed it and the other one to me unopened. I held it against my eye and took a long sip of the other one.
“We’re breaking the Covenant,” I said.
He waved his hand dismissively and said, “Maybe the Judge will come along and shoot us.”
“Are you real?” I asked, watching the gulls whirl above the beach.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
I chuckled, and it turned into a cough, both of which pained my tender ribs.
“The name’s Max Holden.” He held a hand caked with sand out to me. Made for a gritty shake.
“Casper Cord. You’re one of my past lives,” I said. “An old one.”
“Where’d we split?”
“Between wars, going to work in the canneries. I remember you used to have that Model T that you painted with house paint.”
The old man chuckled. “Guilty, but in my defense I was drunk. I was always drunk. That’s why I’m walking on a deserted beach in the early morning drinking beers with a stranger. What are you doing?”
“I’m the Judge,” I said.
Max laughed and then realized I wasn’t joking. “Casper Cord. I think I heard,” he said, and he saluted me with his beer. “Well, if you’re gonna kill me, at least let me finish my beer.”