The Year of Counting Souls

by Wallace, Michael

  Louise nodded her agreement. “Plus the new patients. A couple of them are shot up pretty bad.”

  “So we’re staying here?” Maria Elena asked.

  “No,” Kozlowski said. “Baliuag will be abandoned. Our side is only holding it long enough to keep the Japs from cutting the highway.”

  “But we don’t need to go all the way to Bataan,” Claypool said. “Not yet.”

  “We don’t stay here, we don’t go to Bataan?” Louise asked. “Where do we go?”

  “There’s an emergency field hospital and supply dump about twenty miles up the road in the mountains,” Claypool said. “In a little village by the name of Sanduga.”

  “Never heard of it,” Frankie said. “You say there’s a military base there?”

  “Not a base, no,” Kozlowski said.

  “A simple building and some medical supplies,” Dr. Claypool said. “Hospital is probably too strong of a word, to be fair. It’s a warehouse, really. But it’s secure and hidden.”

  Kozlowski nodded. “We’ll be safe from bombers for a few days while you get your patients stabilized. The Japanese will pause for a few weeks in Manila to consolidate.”

  “Do we know that for sure?” Louise asked.

  “We don’t know anything for sure,” the lieutenant said. “For all we know, Bataan will be overrun by the time we get there. Or maybe it’s not as defensible as MacArthur thinks, and we’ll be captured anyway before reinforcements arrive to relieve us.”

  This seemed to Louise to be the most likely scenario. America was a long way away, half its fleet at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Louise had no doubt that America would eventually prevail against this brutal enemy, starting here in the Philippines, but getting all of those men and supplies from America would take months, maybe longer. Did they have enough strength left to defend Bataan and Corregidor, as impregnable as they seemed?

  The thought of falling into Japanese hands was terrifying, and getting to Bataan as soon as possible seemed the safest option. But Dr. Claypool was right: a protracted journey would kill some of their patients.

  “How long would it take us to get to Bataan?” Claypool asked. “Two days? There will be thousands of injured men and few available beds. We’ll be better off in the field hospital. And there’s another thing about the village.”

  “Remind me,” Kozlowski said.

  “I stocked that hospital myself, and I saw the terrain,” the doctor answered. “The road keeps going through Sanduga. I’m pretty sure it hooks through the mountains and comes around into Bataan from the back door. We’d have a way out even if the highway is cut.”

  “That is a good point,” Lieutenant Kozlowski said.

  Louise looked back and forth between the two men. There was something odd about this conversation she couldn’t put her finger on, the way the doctor and the lieutenant kept glancing at each other before they took turns speaking.

  “It sounds dangerous,” Frankie said. “Up in the mountains . . . anything could happen.”

  “That’s true enough,” Kozlowski said.

  “I’m a little confused,” Louise said carefully. “We were ordered to evacuate Manila and go to Bataan. Then we were told to come to the hospital in Baliuag, and now we’re being told to make for some mountain village. Or is some of this our own initiative?” It was put out there casually.

  “Of course not,” Kozlowski said. “We follow army orders.”

  “Then why does it sound like we’re just now formulating this plan?” she asked.

  “This isn’t up for vote,” Kozlowski said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “But I want to consult with my medical staff,” Dr. Claypool said. “There’s a choice to be made. Something the four of you can decide or not.”

  “I’ll be honest, I didn’t see much point in consulting,” the lieutenant said. “You might have heard us arguing. That’s what we were talking about.”

  “What do you mean by a choice?” Louise asked. She glanced at the other three nurses, who seemed confused. “Do we have orders or not?”

  “We have general orders,” Kozlowski said. “Getting specifics is another matter.”

  “This is now a medical matter,” Claypool said. “And I’m offering a choice.”

  “So, a vote, after all.” Kozlowski shook his head. “I don’t agree with it, but go ahead.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Louise said. “Are you saying we each have a choice to either go with our patients into the mountains or to continue to Bataan?”

  “More or less,” Kozlowski said. “The doc says you’ll all go with the patients if given a choice. I say he’s wrong, that you’ll evacuate to Bataan.”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  He tossed his head at Maria Elena. “This one isn’t even an American. She can go back to her family while the rest of us are taken prisoner by the Japs. Why would she take her chances in the mountains? And Miss Clarice is all of, what? Eighteen years old? Terrified—look at her. She’ll go to Bataan. You, on the other hand,” he said to Louise, “are filled with romantic notions. You won’t leave your patients. So you’ll come with us.”

  She supposed that was a compliment, though she didn’t like how he put it. Romantic notions? Her ears were still stuffy from the exploding tank shell. She’d seen blood and carnage, and there was a nervous clawing at her stomach that threatened to burst into full-blown panic. It sure as hell didn’t feel like an adventure, if that’s what Kozlowski was getting at.

  “That leaves Miss Frankie as head nurse,” Kozlowski added. “I expect as head nurse she’ll go along with whatever her doctor says. That leaves two going to Bataan and two into the mountains. So why vote?”

  “Prove it,” Dr. Claypool said, tone stubborn. “Ask them.”

  “Fine. Girls, what do you say?”

  “It’s our responsibility to stay with our patients,” Frankie said. “No, it’s a privilege.”

  “You see,” the doctor said to the lieutenant.

  “But it’s nuts to go into the mountains in the first place,” the older nurse continued. “We’ll be stuck behind the Jap lines. If we really care about these men, we’ll take them to Bataan, where they’ll be safe.”

  “Miss Frankie,” Claypool said sharply. “That part is not up for discussion.”

  “We’d all be on Corregidor Island by now if that plane hadn’t been shot down,” Frankie continued. “Safe. Well, what’s the next best thing? Get to Bataan. Don’t make us carry these wounded men into the mountains. We’ll all be killed up there.”

  “Thought you said it was our privilege to look after them,” Louise said.

  “You be quiet and remember your place,” Frankie said. “I saw what you did, running back into the city for Fárez, then helping that Jap, then standing out in the street watching that tank battle like it was a tennis match—you have a death wish. I won’t be taking your advice, you can safely assume that much.”

  “The lieutenant was right about me,” Clarice said. “I want to go to Bataan.”

  Her voice was thin, and this was the first time she’d spoken in the conversation. Louise studied her, surprised. She’d assumed that the lieutenant was wrong and Clarice would stay with the doctor and the patients. Or at the least, follow the consensus of the other nurses.

  “Miss Maria Elena?” Dr. Claypool said.

  “I don’t want to be captured—that much is right. You’re Americans, and the Red Cross will come looking for you if you’re taken prisoner. Not me. The Japs will treat us Pinoys like they’re treating the Chinese. And I can’t fade into the population—I’m not even from around here. I’d be safer in Bataan.”

  “Then we’ve lost three nurses.” Claypool sighed. “I assume you’re with me, Miss Louise?”

  “I’m not finished,” Maria Elena said. “I know I’m at risk if the enemy gets us. I know what they’ll do to me. The Japs are animals.” She shuddered. “But there’s a reason I was still in the hospital when Louise came back
for Corporal Fárez. I was doing my job, I didn’t walk away. I won’t walk away now. These men need our help. We can’t let them die. I’m going with you into the mountains.”

  Dr. Claypool let out a deep breath. He looked more confident now. “Miss Louise? Your official word?”

  Louise chewed her lip. What kind of choice was he giving her? Stay behind enemy lines and maybe face the enemy? She didn’t want that. God, no. But if she left for Bataan to save her own hide . . .

  “I’ll stay with the injured men,” Louise said at last. “I don’t think I could live with myself if men died because I was a coward.”

  “What about that Jap we picked up on the road?” Lieutenant Kozlowski said. “You want to save him, too?”

  Louise’s head swiveled to one side as a man was carried past her on one of the makeshift stretchers, crying for morphine and water. His eyes were bandaged.

  “Even the Japanese soldier,” she said. “If we’re caught, he might save our life.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kozlowski said. “The Japs won’t care. They’ll probably bayonet him first thing as a deserter. Unless he’s a spy, and then everything we’ve said will be twisted against us.”

  “In that case, we save Sammy Mori because he’s our patient and that’s our job,” Louise said. “Anyway, it’s just for a few days, until we get the men stabilized. Then we’ll go to Bataan anyway. Right, Lieutenant?”

  “Right,” Kozlowski said, but he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at the doctor. Again something was passing between the two men.

  “I’m changing my mind,” Clarice said. All eyes turned to her, and she looked away quickly. Louise couldn’t see it in the darkened courtyard but imagined Clarice’s face was flushed, as it did when she got excited. “I was wrong. I’ll do my duty. If Dr. Claypool says to go into the mountains, I’ll go into the mountains.”

  “So that’s three staying with me and the patients, and one going,” Claypool said.

  “I don’t believe this,” Frankie said. “Dr. Claypool, really. Why are we even having this discussion? Let’s all go to Bataan.”

  “You’re on your own, apparently,” Claypool said.

  “No, I’m not on my own!” Frankie’s voice was frantic. “I won’t be left behind while the rest of you go off to wherever. Who knows what will happen to me? I might be . . . Damn you all, I’ll go.”

  At that moment a pair of Filipino soldiers came running into the courtyard from the street outside. The road was clear; there were no enemy aircraft in the sky. The hospital evacuees were to travel back down the road in the direction from which they’d come, lights out. When they reached the highway, they would drive all night toward the Bataan Peninsula.

  But the local units didn’t know their true orders. Five minutes later the hospital evacuees were on the road, only they were not going to Bataan.

  Chapter Six

  The hospital evacuees started in the direction of Bataan, but ninety minutes later they turned off the highway and onto a small dirt road. The sign marking the road had been pulled down so as to slow the enemy forces rolling across the countryside, but Dr. Claypool remembered the spot, or said he did. Louise didn’t know how he could be sure. It was dark, and they were running without lights, except when they were turned on to briefly inspect some landmark or other.

  The dirt road turned into a rutted, muddy track. They crawled into hill country through a mist so thick that the lights couldn’t have cut through it even if they’d dared to use them. Kozlowski turned on his flashlight, shielded it from the sky with his helmet, and probed ahead on foot to find the way.

  Louise and a few others got out to walk. It was so cramped in the back, the air sickly from ointments, dirty bandages, and the smell of the engine. Walking relieved boredom and exhaustion and eased the frustration at not being able to help the injured men under her command.

  She walked up next to Kozlowski. He flickered the light onto her face to see who it was.

  “Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on the patients?”

  “Nothing to be done at the moment. We’re out of sterilized needles for morphine, and we can’t do much of anything in the dark.”

  “What about the Jap? Giving you any trouble?”

  “Rest easy, Lieutenant. He’s in pain and immobile.”

  “What’s to keep the other men from tossing him out of the truck while you’re out here? Thought you’d want to keep an eye on him.” His tone was sarcastic.

  “He’s just another injured man—nobody’s going to kill him.”

  “Every one of those men is a victim of Japanese aggression, and don’t think they’ll forget it.”

  “I’m not asking them to forget it. I’m asking them for simple human decency toward a fellow sufferer.”

  Kozlowski only grunted at this, and they stopped talking. The jungle filled the silence with the hum, buzz, and chirp of countless insects, a shrieking call somewhere in the distance, and creatures crashing through the underbrush.

  “How much longer?” another voice asked from the darkness. It was the soft voice of Corporal Fárez.

  Kozlowski turned the flashlight briefly on him, and he blinked in the light. Fárez limped with his crutch while a cord wrapped around his free hand. The light trailed down and reflected off a pair of eyes near the man’s feet.

  “Fárez!” Kozlowski said. “For the love of . . . Do you still have that mutt? I told you to get rid of it. More than once.”

  “Don’t blame him, blame me,” Louise said.

  “You?”

  “I picked up the dog and brought him into the truck. It might be useful for therapeutic purposes.”

  “Therapeutic?” Kozlowski said. “Right, sure.”

  Others shortly joined them in walking ahead of the slowly moving trucks. Some had no business being out, and Louise sent them back with a stern word. She wouldn’t have them busting stitches. Clarice and Maria Elena came out, too, but the noise of the surrounding forest seemed to unnerve Clarice, and she soon returned to the truck. That left six or seven men on the road, plus Louise and Maria Elena, hiking up the hill along the muddy, rutted trail while the trucks rumbled behind them.

  About an hour later they stumbled upon a pair of nipa huts that flanked the road on a steep hillside. More grass-roofed huts and shacks with corrugated-metal roofs appeared. Soon an entire village emerged ghostlike from the looming, vine-strangled trees. Not a sound or light, not so much as a barking dog to greet them. Had the people heard the trucks and fled into the night, thinking it was the Japanese? Would they be shot at by frightened villagers?

  Kozlowski ordered them back into the trucks. He questioned Claypool about the village, but the doctor said this wasn’t Sanduga. Then where was it? Claypool said he was sure they were on the right road, that it wouldn’t be long now. Probably by morning. A few groans greeted this pronouncement.

  They crept forward. Claypool admitted his doubts about an hour later when they were all back in the trucks and moving at a slightly faster pace. The road crested a hill and followed a ridge for about two miles before dipping into a bowl-like valley and ascending again. The doctor said he couldn’t remember the terrain.

  “Great plan you gave us, Doctor,” Kozlowski said. “I’m sure your patients won’t mind losing several hours. Especially those with critical injuries.”

  “Shh, these men need to rest,” Louise said. She was glad Frankie was in the other truck, or the lead nurse would be ratcheting up the alarm. Clarice, too. No need for the girl to panic.

  “Sorry, you’re right.” The lieutenant sighed. “Which truck are we in? The one with the English-speaking driver? No? Let me get out and talk to the fellow—we’ll turn around and stop losing time.”

  “Hold on now,” Dr. Claypool said. “This might be the right road. It might not be, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “And when will you know for sure? Doc, we’re losing time.”

  “Give me another mile. Let’s see.” Claypool’s voice sounded li
ke it was floating in the dark air, unattached, but Louise could hear the worry in it and could easily picture the thick eyebrows drawn together.

  But it wasn’t another mile before they stumbled into another village. This one was even smaller than the previous one, a small collection of huts and shacks on stilts, together with a patchwork of rice paddies that crawled up and down the hillside. A long, warehouse-looking building made of cement block stretched alongside the road, and when Kozlowski’s flashlight illuminated it, Claypool cried out for the trucks to stop. He climbed down, calling for Louise to follow him.

  “And turn on the truck lights,” the doctor said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Moments later half the evacuees were out of the trucks and looking around doubtfully. This was it? A dozen nipa huts, as scruffy-looking as street dogs, two wooden shacks with rusted corrugated-metal roofs, and a cement building that looked about as enticing as a Japanese prison?

  “It’s a fully functioning hospital,” Claypool said. “Or it will be soon enough.” He looked around at the patients. “I want everyone who can walk out here. We’ve got work to do.”

  Lieutenant Kozlowski waved his flashlight. “You heard him, boys.” If he was feeling doubts, they didn’t show in his voice. “Move it.”

  There was a small electric generator and three buried tanks of oil to supply it, and Kozlowski soon had the building lit, including blue vapor lights for the surgery. Louise and the other nurses inspected the building while the men put blankets over the windows to maintain blackout conditions.

  The place was filthy, with a thick layer of dust, a moldy smell, dead roaches lying on their backs, and live ones scurrying to the corners. Every visible piece of metal was rusting. Water had leaked through the roof, leaving a big puddle in the middle of the largest room.

  “What do we do first?” Dr. Claypool asked. “Cots? Fix the roof?”

  He directed the questions to Miss Frankie, but the head nurse was looking around her with a bewildered, anxious expression and seemed not to have heard.

  Claypool turned away from Frankie. “Miss Louise?”