The Year of Counting Souls

by Wallace, Michael

  ALSO BY MICHAEL WALLACE

  Crow Hollow

  The Crescent Spy

  The Devil’s Deep

  Victoria Crossing

  The Righteous Series

  The Red Rooster

  The Wolves of Paris

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Michael Wallace

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477823767

  ISBN-10: 147782376X

  Cover design by PEPE nymi

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  MANILA, DECEMBER 31, 1941

  Louise Harrison was waiting at the waterfront to be evacuated from Manila when she discovered that one of her patients was missing, a young soldier from Los Angeles named Jimmy Fárez. She remembered him hobbling to the hospital door on his crutches, but couldn’t recall seeing him climb into the back of the truck with the rest. Many of the men had already been evacuated by seaplane, but she was certain Fárez was not one of them, and he was not waiting on the waterfront, either.

  “Where is Corporal Fárez?” she asked.

  Nobody seemed to hear her over the crying children, the men shouting orders, the armed soldiers fighting back the press of civilians desperate to flee the city ahead of the Japanese army. The question had been directed at Dr. Claypool, who was assisting an injured man with a nurse in attendance. He didn’t look up.

  Dr. Claypool had the face of a meat packer and a brow that frowned in concentration, eyes intense beneath eyebrows as thick as hairbrushes, but his hands were delicate and clever. He bent over a groaning young man, re-suturing a thigh wound that had opened in the move from the hospital. His fingers danced above the wound like a pianist’s moving over a keyboard.

  Louise waited until he’d tied off the last stitch before tugging on his arm. “Dr. Claypool. Did you see Corporal Fárez? I don’t think he made it down from the hospital.”

  “Fárez? One of the Pinoys? You know we couldn’t take them all, they have to—”

  “No, he’s an American. The boy from Los Angeles.”

  Claypool groaned. “Oh, right. I saw him at the hospital. He was looking for that damn mutt. Must have missed the transport, the idiot.”

  “He’s our idiot, though. I have to go back for him.”

  “What about the trucks? Could we . . .”

  The doctor stopped and looked around him, and Louise wondered how he’d missed the army trucks rumbling off. They’d been mobbed by civilians trying to scramble on. Soldiers had pushed them away. Several hospital patients had left on the trucks.

  “It’s only six blocks back to the hospital,” she said. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  A seaplane, fully loaded with injured soldiers, nurses, and doctors, swung around from the docks and picked up speed as it pulled away from shore. Propellers churning, it lifted sluggishly from the bay, water streaming from its pontoons. A hush fell briefly over the crowd as eyes scanned the sky, watching anxiously for a pack of long, sleek Zeros to materialize. No enemy fighters appeared, and the plane disappeared in the direction of Corregidor Island. Corregidor was a small, supposedly impregnable island fortress in Manila Bay where troops could hole up while waiting for reinforcements.

  Claypool looked away from the waterfront and met her gaze. “You’d better hurry, by God. The next plane should be here in twenty-five minutes. Five minutes to load, and then we’ll be off. There might not be another plane after that, you understand? At some point they’ll stop, and whoever is left will be stuck in the city when the Japs arrive.”

  “I’ll be back in time.”

  Louise’s heart was pounding as she ran up the street in her white skirt, hand on her cap to keep it from falling off. The muggy air wrapped around her like a hot, wet sheet pulled too soon from the wash, and sweat streamed down her temples and along her ribs from the exertion. She left the waterfront and its pungent scent of spilled fuel and dead fish. Grand old mansions and Spanish colonial buildings encircled the harbor, worn by the relentless sun and tropical downpours but maintaining a certain elegance. Palms flanked the streets, and every home seemed to have a garden overgrown with fragrant plumeria and bougainvillea.

  Among the beauty and charm, the city showed evidence of three weeks of bombing: trees uprooted, buildings with windows knocked out, gutted vehicles in the street, a dead mule still attached to its harness that lay on the side of the road, stinking in the sun. A white banner strung across the street read “Open City—No Resistance.”

  Farther in, the streets were packed with fleeing civilians on foot and bicycle, women with crates of chickens, donkeys, and handcarts. An American truck loaded with Filipino soldiers rolled through the crowd, forcing people aside. The walls of the colonial fort and the spires of the cathedral rose ahead of her, and she used them for a guide when she was forced to detour around a bomb crater big enough to swallow a bus.

  Louise arrived at the military hospital moments later. It looked gaunt and abandoned from the exterior, the gates open, supplies strewn about the street in front—looted or merely scattered in the haste to evacuate, Louise didn’t know. A sound like thunder rolled in from the outskirts of the city, and the air was hazy with smoke that might have been cook fires except that it smelled of gunpowder and burning fuel. The Americans were torching gasoline supplies to keep them out of the hands of the enemy.

  She rushed up the stairs and hurried down the hallway. A pair of Filipino orderlies dashed out of one of the patient rooms, their arms full of medical supplies, but Corporal Fárez’s room itself was abandoned, only unmade cots, sheets tossed about, bedpans overturned. Abandoned crutches and piles of dirty clothes. Footlockers thrown open and hastily rifled through.

  Louise kept looking. The hospital wasn’t empty. There were still Filipino orderlies in the office, burning records, although many had abandoned their posts and fled into the city. No one had seen Fárez.

  Other civilians were helping to evacuate the injured Filipino soldiers that the brass had decided to leave behind. There wasn’t enough transport to get them all to safety, and so it was decided that some would be left to hide among t
he population and pray the occupying army didn’t sniff them out. Wounded Filipino soldiers limped past her, bandaged and half-mad with pain or doped up with morphine. They’d shed their gowns for civilian dress.

  “Miss Louise! Did you come back for me?”

  She turned to see one of the Filipina nurses, a young woman named Maria Elena, whose slight build and pretty face always made Louise feel tall and gawky. Maria Elena’s father had sent her to the American school, and she spoke excellent English. She was also a hard worker and covered full daytime shifts in the heat when the American girls were wilting. Never should have been left behind.

  Louise cringed at the question. “There’s no room on the plane, but the army will come back for you as soon as they can.” The words felt hollow, and the other woman’s face fell. “I’m looking for Corporal Fárez,” Louise added stiffly.

  “I saw him. He was chasing that dog. Come on, I’ll help you look.”

  They walked down the hallways, checking each room for the missing soldier and his adopted pet. The hospital had 450 beds and numerous wings, and it was a laborious search. As they moved, Maria Elena made her case.

  “I’m from Laoag, not Manila. I don’t have any family to hide with.”

  “We’re not evacuating for long. As soon as MacArthur gets his reinforcements—”

  “And my father is with the government—he’ll be arrested. I’ll be arrested, too, maybe shot.”

  “I’m only a nurse,” Louise said helplessly. “I had my orders.”

  “You could put in a word with the lieutenant. The one who evacuated us. He wasn’t listening to me, but maybe if you told him . . .”

  “I’ll say something when I get back.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  Maria Elena’s face lit up at this bit of false hope, which only made Louise feel worse.

  They found the missing patient in the courtyard behind the hospital, where recovering soldiers came for exercise, in the shadow of a balete tree with its knotted, exposed roots like fingers thrusting into the ground. Fárez leaned on a crutch, a piece of rope with a noose wrapped around his fist. The other hand waved a stick.

  “Come on, Stumpy,” Fárez said. “There’s a good boy. Don’t you want to play?”

  Stumpy was of medium size, with dirty brown fur and of average manginess for a Manila street dog. He was entirely unremarkable in appearance except that he’d lost half his tail in some accident. His temperament was mild, which was a good thing, as the mean ones didn’t last long. Neither did the unwary, who were run down by vehicles or crushed by carts.

  At the moment, the dog seemed suspicious of the corporal’s attentions, but intrigued at the same time. His stump tail wagged madly, and he barked excitedly while staying just out of reach. The corporal lunged for him, and he scooted back with his tongue out in a doggy grin.

  Fárez dropped his crutch in the attempt and grabbed the tree to keep from falling.

  “Come back here!” He was near tears. “Those Japs will have you, don’t you know? Fine, then. See if I care.”

  Louise understood why Fárez had adopted the street dog, or thought she did, anyway. The young man had lost a chunk of his left buttock in the bombing of Manila immediately following the Pearl Harbor attacks. The airfields and docks of Manila Bay had come under relentless assault, and hundreds of wounded poured into an army hospital previously occupied with appendicitis and malaria patients. Fárez and many others like him, facing the tedium of a lengthy recovery, needed something to occupy their time.

  The dog seemed to appreciate the extra food but was otherwise indifferent. Why should he care? He enjoyed a rich, fulfilling life in the streets, where he spent his days off on some disreputable errand or other, only to return for meals. He wasn’t Fárez’s pet, so much as a freeloader who knew a good thing when he got it.

  Louise picked up the corporal’s crutch and took his arm. “Come on, we’ve got to get you to the waterfront. The plane leaves in fifteen minutes.”

  “I got to get Stumpy.”

  Louise stared at him, not sure at first that he was serious. He had the glazed look of someone on morphine; clearly he was a little loopy.

  “Stumpy will be fine. Look at him—he’s a survivor. Come on, Corporal.”

  Fárez pulled free. “I won’t leave my dog. Stumpy! Come here, Stumpy. Good boy, a little closer. Darn you, no! Get back here, you.”

  A hysterical laugh threatened to rise up in Louise’s throat. And a little anger, too, at his stubbornness, morphine or no. She had a farm kid’s hard-hearted outlook on the comparative value between a human and an animal life, and this particular dog was indifferent to the corporal, she was sure. Meanwhile, the Imperial Japanese Army was overrunning the city.

  “He’s a street dog!” she said. “What the devil is wrong with you?”

  “Please help me,” Fárez said. “Just get him a little closer so I can get the rope around his neck.”

  And then what? Haul him down to the waterfront?

  Louis exchanged a look with Maria Elena, and the two nurses moved to block the dog’s retreat. But the moment they attempted to herd Stumpy, he danced back with a cocky bark. Louise lunged. Her fingers grazed fur but failed to catch hold. Stumpy’s eyes lit up in a mischievous, almost-human expression. Oh no, you don’t!

  “I’ll have one of the nurses look after him,” Louise said, panting. “We don’t have time. For Pete’s sake, Corporal. Will you come, or do I have to leave you here for the Japs? The dog will be okay, but you won’t.”

  “Please!” Fárez’s brown eyes were pleading, and he looked so young, surely younger than eighteen, as his chart claimed. “Get the other nurses. If we all work together, we can get him. Once I’ve got hold of him, he’ll be a good boy, I know he will.”

  Louise had been gesturing impatiently, but now her hands fell in exasperation, and she found the small bulge in the front-right pocket of her nurse’s dress. It was a piece of cellophane-wrapped fudge from a C ration, given to her by one of the soldiers in the ward. The gift giver was a radioman who claimed he didn’t like sweets. Louise thought he was slightly in love with her, and most of the other nurses as well. Put a boy in a hospital with a gunshot wound and he turned sentimental in a hurry. Louise could hardly say no to free chocolate.

  Now she broke off a small piece and held it out. “Be still, both of you.” She knelt. “Come here, Stumpy. Look at this. Bet it tastes really good, don’t you think?”

  The dog took a tentative step forward, tail wagging, nose twitching. The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Staccato bursts of small-arms fire sounded from the southeast. The enemy was in the city, an evacuation plane was about to depart and leave her behind, and here she was, trying to lure a street dog with chocolate.

  Fárez and Maria Elena stood rigid while Stumpy came forward. The suspicion faded from his eyes, and he licked his chops. One final glance at Louise’s face, as if searching for deception; then he came for the treat. He gulped it in one swallow, but not before she picked him up. He didn’t struggle.

  “Whew! You need a bath.” Louise turned to the corporal. “We’ve got your dog. For God’s sake, can we get out of here now?”

  Once back inside, she tied Fárez’s rope around Stumpy’s neck and set him down, prepared for a fight. But the dog was placid now, sniffing at her apron. He smelled the rest of the treat. Perhaps if he was good, she’d give it to him.

  Louise, followed by the hobbling soldier and the young Filipina nurse, led the dog down the hall and down the stairs to the street. The last of the hospital staff were fleeing into the city. More gunfire sounded to the north and the southeast. But it was still distant.

  “You think they’ll let him on the plane, right?” Fárez asked. “I’ll carry him in my arms the whole way. He can be a mascot, you know. Raise all our spirits out there in the jungle or wherever they’re taking us.”

  A mascot? He was fooling himself. They wouldn’t let the dog on the seaplane, she knew that much. If they could car
ry thirty more pounds, it would be medical supplies.

  For that matter, they’d probably send Maria Elena away. The ledger of the American forces in Manila had few credits and many debits; the equations were cruel and merciless. An American nurse would be evacuated, a Filipina nurse left to survive the Japanese occupation. Anyone who’d heard of the brutality in China these past several years knew what that meant.

  But it wasn’t for her to decide. So she led the dog by the leash and let the young nurse help Fárez walk, obviously with expectations of evacuation herself. Louise checked her watch. Five minutes left. Make it ten before they lifted off without her. They had time.

  An artillery shell came shrieking in, and they threw themselves to the ground as it struck a block of apartments they’d just passed. Glass rained down on the street, and flames jetted out the upper window. A long, howling scream came from the building, and Louise sprang to her feet and made toward the noise, her nurse’s training taking over. The dog’s makeshift leash was wrapped around her leg, and he barked and jerked madly, trying to get free. She freed herself and handed the rope to Fárez as he climbed shakily to his feet. Then she remembered their more urgent purpose. She had to get to the waterfront. They were close now, with a view of the bay.

  The cries continued from the building, and Louise felt twisted in two directions. Every life matters. Go, help.

  Maria Elena grabbed her arm. “Look. Is that ours?”

  In flew a seaplane, only a few hundred feet above the water as it approached for a landing. The angle was wrong to see any markings, but it had to be the US Army Air Forces flight that would carry her to safety on Corregidor.

  Even as this thought coalesced in her mind, a roar of piston engines sounded above and behind her. She knew that sound.

  Louise had lived more than a year in Manila and grown accustomed to the Curtiss P-40s roaring in and out of Clark Field north of the city. But for the last three weeks, the motorcycle-like rumble of Zeros, and the deeper, menacing sound of Japanese bombers had dominated the skies.

  Louise turned slowly, staring into the brilliant blue sky to see three Japanese Zeros swooping low over the city. They made straight for the bay and the incoming seaplane.