by Joey W. Hill
Then she snapped herself out of it and did the only thing there was time left to do. Curled herself over Nate, protecting his head and chest with her body.
She felt his arms curl clumsily around her, as he tried to protect her, too. Wouldn’t want his mates teasing him that he let a girl do all the work, would he? But she knew it was more than that. He would try to protect her because that was his nature. Alistair flashed through her mind again, his expression when he told her he would be unhappy if something befell her.
Hopefully not for too long. If he smiled without the weight of war upon him, she was sure girls would swoon. She would have liked to see that.
She lifted her gaze enough to see the first flash from the lead plane, a blossom of fire, and then she ducked her head down and prayed.
Strafe bombing. She’d heard the term from her patients’ lips, but knowing a term was not knowing what it truly meant. Much as she hadn’t known what being a vampire’s servant meant, and still didn’t, but now had a far more vivid idea than she’d held before.
She’d much prefer another taste of that experience than this one. Nurses taught themselves to compartmentalize fear, any emotion that didn’t serve the men they were caring for and, in this case, trying to protect. She thought she knew what being truly helpless meant, nothing within her control, but in war, there were always deeper, more horrible ways to learn that lesson.
She knew the ordered chaos of a wartime field hospital, dealing with men torn apart by gunfire and bombshells. This was pure chaos, nowhere to go. Fires started, and flames flashed against the water. The smell of salt, blood, burning. Screaming. The noise was relentless, overpowering, like standing where thunder was born. Terror was a contagious disease impossible to avoid.
It seemed to go on forever. The noise, the explosions, the flying debris. She was cut and hit, but not knocked from her post, and Nate held onto her grimly as the boat shuddered. Then her ears reverberated painfully at an explosion so loud it obliterated everything. Sound, smell, taste. Only touch survived…the loss of it. She was thrown into the water, Nate torn from her arms.
Even as she cried out his name, she had to duck under, protect her face as burning pieces of the boat fell against her, around her. Then she was driven under, a terrifying feeling. Too dazed to try to swim, her brain screamed that she must, or she would die.
She was floating up, natural buoyancy, her arms somehow thrashing, helping, taking her back to air. She seized a piece of the boat, little more than a large stick, but she saw nothing bigger.
“Nate!” She screamed his name again. She saw others floundering as she was, each in their own private, desperate struggle for survival.
Eerily and just like that, things got quieter, the roar turning to a drone once more as the planes headed away, their grisly task done. The noise of their destruction was replaced by the sound of people calling out, the splash of bodies in the water.
“Nina.” Her name was being shouted and she saw Helen, her head bleeding, holding onto a slightly larger piece of debris. Nina made her way to her and they combined their two rafts, holding onto each other amid a world of water and fire, and despairing cries drifting on the breeze.
“God help us,” Sister Helen said. “Temple’s head was blown apart in my lap.”
What did God think of the things men did to one another? And at what point did He decide to help them? It crossed her mind, vaguely, a few times during the hours they were in the water, trying to work their way toward the shore they saw far in the distance. They had no idea if it was land that belonged to friend or foe, but it was the only hope of aid.
They had little control over direction, and attempts to stay close to one another, the little knots of people who’d put together life rafts, were only marginally successful. When groups of nurses were swept away from one another, there was no way of telling if they would find one another again.
Nina was in a numb trance when she suddenly realized her feet had bumped something solid. Land. They’d reached land. “Helen,” she said urgently. She’d helped Helen keep her head up out of the water as much as possible, the only way they could attempt to keep the head laceration dry and safer from infection. It had been the best tending they could do and Nina was glad to see it looked no worse. Her friend looked at her blearily.
“We made it, mate,” Nina said, her maternal instincts kicking in with the endearment. Though the other woman was older, Nina was stronger and more awake at this point, and Helen looked vulnerable. Which helped reassure her, truth be known. It was always easier to keep her wits about her if she could focus on someone else’s needs.
They had to pry their fingers off the boards, and kind of laughed over it, a harsh, sobbing sound. They helped one another to shore, staggering, and collapsed there, just beyond the surf. With it being night time, the light house was strobing, allowing Nina to see some other shapes on the beach, but she wasn’t sure yet if they were other survivors or not. Unless someone had been able to grab onto Nate, he was lost. He’d have had no ability to swim with any strength, to keep himself afloat for long.
It was a hard pain under her ribs, a nurse’s failure to care for her patient. To save him. But there were plenty of things to worry about now. If Nate was on the other side, she could just imagine him chiding her not to waste time on him when there was plenty left to do to save her own arse and, more importantly, care for the others on this beach.
But for just these few moments, she had to rest. She could barely move, but she managed to help herself and Helen further up the beach, so they were out of the wet and could hopefully start to dry out some. For once she was grateful for the perpetual warmth just below the equator, else the lot of them would have been lost to hypothermia.
Her few minutes of rest turned into full unconsciousness, where she dreamed of bombs, Nate sinking down to the bottom of a deep sea, staring up at her, his hands reaching for her. Her hands were outstretched, mouth open on a silent scream as the futility of trying to help anyone in this madness gripped her. Then Nate was gone, and her hands were gripped by strong, familiar ones. Alistair. Pulling her out of the water, pulling her out of this world and into his own.
She opened her eyes with a start. Her mouth was dry, gritty, her clothes stuck to her. But the ceaseless rock of the sea gripped her no more. She pushed herself to her elbows and looked around. Helen still slept next to her, and Nina immediately came awake enough to check on her. Helen’s repose was normal sleep.
Nina struggled to her feet and looked down the beach. Her heart leaped, seeing they weren’t alone. Perhaps a dozen or so survivors here, trying to rouse themselves like her. Maybe others had landed further up the beach. They’d see. As the sun climbed in the sky, maybe their hopes could, too.
In the end, about ninety souls found their way to that shore. Some soldiers, some wounded and some not, a little over two dozen nurses, other passengers. The nurses who were able put themselves to work to tend where tending was needed. The soldiers and others foraged for fresh water and something to eat for them all. Finding things sparse, it was agreed a delegation would try to find a nearby village and see what aid could be secured.
There was no doubt they were somewhere that the enemy was too, so there was fear of what leaving the beach to find help might mean. However, there seemed little recourse if they were going to get fresh water and food, and medical help for the more severely wounded. They’d survived the destruction of their boat, after all. That was some cause for optimism.
Later, Nina would believe Nate and the others who’d perished in the boat attack were the lucky ones. Because they didn’t have to experience what happened next.
She’d just adjusted a tourniquet on one lad’s leg. A strip of cloth donated from someone’s clothing was doused in the sea water and wrung out, so she could return to his side and bathe the sweat from his forehead. Sharp male voices barked out commands in Japanese. Her patient’s head jerked up on the same string as her own and they looked toward the fo
rest, where their delegation seeking a village was emerging. At the muzzle end of a group of armed Japanese soldiers.
She would remember the brief press of the soldier’s hand on hers, where it rested on his shoulder, even as his brown eyes stayed trained on the advancing men, the uncertain looks on the faces of the small group who’d gone out in the hopes of finding some kind of help.
“’S okay,” he murmured. “You’ll be all right, nurse. You’re women.”
She’d learned weapons of war didn’t discriminate. And that often included the men who wielded them. He knew that as well as she did, but he was offering the comfort he could. Even knowing his own terrible fate was far more certain. A sudden surge of anger filled her. Anger at the advancing men with guns who had so little regard for their distress and fear, for the honor and nobility of these young men, most of them boys. She also felt a terrible, terrible fear. A knowledge in her gut she couldn’t define, couldn’t face, but knew would come to pass no matter what. She tightened her fingers on his, and then the soldiers were close, shouting orders, waving the guns, forcing them all to their feet, separating them all out. Nurses in one group, the soldiers in the other.
She found herself pressed between Helen and Sister Charlotte, who had a twisted ankle and so was leaning on a stick they’d found her. Her black hair was pulled back in a ragged knot, exposing the bird-shaped birth mark on her neck.
There was a lot of milling, a lot of sharp, rapid speech between the Japanese soldiers. Some were passing among their boys, kicking those who were wounded to make them get to their feet. If they couldn’t, they made other soldiers lift them.
Sister Madeleine stepped forward, lifting her hand. “Please, they shouldn’t be walking—”
The other nurses cried out as one of the Japanese soldiers guarding them bellowed, stabbing at her with the sharp end of his bayonet. Her sisters pulled her back into their ranks, holding her, and they all stared at the enemy, then toward their own soldiers. They were being corralled. Herded. Moved up the beach, toward the spit of land that curved behind the lighthouse and disappeared.
“No,” Sister Charlotte whispered. “God have mercy on them.”
Nina had her eyes trained on her boy with the tourniquet. One of his mates was helping him, and another joined them. With their arms around each other’s shoulders, for a surreal moment she imagined them at a footy match in that same pose, congratulating one another and laughing after a try was scored. She thought of Alistair’s mates, the one teasing him about being of not much account on the field, which probably meant he was an excellent player. Men cared for one another that way.
Her gaze slid back to their captors. They weren’t much older, and some were younger. She wanted to see such humanity in them, but that ability escaped her. She hated their dark, expressionless eyes, the inscrutability of their faces, the cruel set of their mouths, the lack of any mercy. Helen had said this was what hell must look like. Nina thought this was hell, firmly, squarely planted on this beach, and the flames were closing in.
The Japanese soldiers were snarling at them again. Wanting them to sit, to face the waves, to turn their faces away so they couldn’t see the soldiers being marched off. When a few nurses couldn’t tear their eyes away, they were struck. Nina stared out at the waves, but she watched in her peripheral vision. Watched until the boys were out of sight.
Seabirds dove and called to one another. The water rushed on shore. She’d always thought the sound of the ocean a peaceful thing. Now it was a ticking clock. Forward, recede, forward, recede.
Gunfire. Pop, pop, pop…a scream, snatched away on the wind.
The women jumped at the sound, held one another’s hands. She saw tears, but sobs were muffled, faces stone masks. Becoming hysterical over it did nothing. They couldn’t help if they broke down. A nurse helped. Served. Made things better, even when a lad was at death’s door and about to step through it. That was what gave her value, purpose. A reason to push on.
The soldiers were returning. She heard one of the sisters mutter, “God punish and rot every one of the heathens, starting with his privates,” and Nina couldn’t argue with it. She wished she had a gun. She would stand up, start shooting, and she wouldn’t stop until they cut her down. Until this was all over and she was far beyond it.
More discussion, more harsh talking back and forth. Then suddenly, the Japanese soldiers were prodding at them, shouting, forcing the nurses onto their feet. But not to walk them up the beach, take them to a prison camp.
They were forcing them to walk toward the water.
Chapter Four
All those hours she’d been in the water, salt on her chapped lips. Now, she licked them, tasting that bitter taste, as the Japanese soldiers barked, gestured at them fiercely to keep walking. Helen was next to her and grabbed her hand, holding tight.
Many of them joined hands, knowing what was coming. A chain of connected souls, and somehow that made the unbearable bearable, seeing the machine gun being set up and readied on the beach. She looked back to the water, not at the soulless eyes of the men behind the weapon. If that was the last thing she saw, she would be lost forever, unable to find Heaven because she wouldn’t believe in it anymore.
God help us.
Nina lifted her gaze to the sky. More seabirds, diving and weaving. And then, with little pause, no fanfare, the machine gun erupted, and the birds scattered.
Screams. Was it seconds or hours that it took? Probably seconds. Maybe she blacked out, the trauma too much to handle. But suddenly Helen’s body was bumping hers, and Nina got a glimpse of staring eyes, of the skin leaching of color as death set in. Was Nina dead? Her heart was pounding like a hammer in her throat, her lungs straining. No, she wasn’t dead.
The gunfire was still peppering the water around her. There was no escaping it. If she wasn’t yet dead, she was going to be. So she thought.
Then the gunfire stopped, and she was still alive. Surrounded by bodies.
She’d been trained to keep her wits about her in trauma situations. It was the only thing that saved her now, though this was far more than she’d ever faced before.
She’d fallen, been knocked forward, and a fortunate bit of surf had pulled her out somewhat. The next period of time was impossible to quantify, both the longest and shortest moments of her life, as she tried to use subtle twitches of her body to take her in deeper, where her body floated free of the ground.
Fire in her side told her she’d been hit. The Japanese were splashing into the water, guns fixed with bayonets, checking. Stabbing. There was a part of her that wanted to be dead, that didn’t want to survive something this horrible, continue living in a world where people did such monstrous things to one another.
Instead, she drifted out further, and when the soldiers went by, she was deeper than they wanted to come. But she suspected they would stand and watch, scan the shore for any signs of life. A couple times she had to hold her breath so long she thought she might drown.
She had hazy impressions as she pretended to be a corpse. Floating, floating, using slight movements of her arms to bring her back up in an aimless, bobbing way when the water pulled her under. The way she imagined a dead person would act, at the total mercy of the elements.
They stood there a long time. Or at least it seemed that way. She couldn’t really see that well, since she couldn’t risk lifting her head, so everything was peripheral impressions, stray bits of noise. Some still squatted down on their heels on the beach, watching, while others were occupied with other things. A few left.
Even if they all left, she knew going back to shore here would mean death. Going out to sea meant death. Other bodies had been picked up by the surf, moving around her, with the currents, and that provided her some cover. Those close enough to shore were being dragged up, piled together. She didn’t want to see that. She made her decision.
Slowly, she sank below the cover of those other bodies and started to stroke outward, past the surf, away from shore. She w
as a strong swimmer. She could do this, no matter the pain in her side, no matter what manner of creatures her blood was likely to attract.
She kept going until she was well past the breaker line, then she turned over and floated once more, trying to keep just her face above the surface. She didn’t dare look toward shore again. She wouldn’t want to know what was happening there anyway. Would the bodies be left like drift wood, treated as nothing? Or would they burn them?
She needed to just float, keep moving her arms. Every time the surf grew stronger, suggesting she was being pulled in, she worked her way out, but shock gave way to exhaustion far too quickly. Still, she kept floating. She didn’t know how long, but she knew when night closed in, and then she couldn’t see. But they couldn’t see her, either.
It didn’t really matter. She’d gone out much further than she expected. A somewhat hysterical laugh bubbled out of her. Yes, I escaped being bombed by the Japanese, their massacre of the survivors, but like a total ninny, I swam out too far and drowned.
Her side was numb. She couldn’t tell if the bullet had gone into her, or had merely taken a healthy chunk out of her flesh, but since her exhaustion seemed normal, not because of organ damage, she would assume the former. And hope the blood wasn’t calling every shark within a ten- mile radius to her.
Plenty enough blood closer to shore, she realized, and remembered the tang of it in her mouth. Horror gripped her anew. She was too tired to make it to another beach, but perhaps too stubborn to die. She wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction. Someone needed to survive this, to tell others what had been done here. Oh, God, what if she were the only survivor of their ship?
Telling what had happened, that would be a purpose. But beyond that, to spend the rest of her days haunted by those faces… She’d do better to let herself drown.