by Sean Ding
“Whatever it is, hell ran loose here and we’re surely the first to find out-” Johnny was interrupted by a muffled thud that came from one of the office rooms at ground floor. Bolts of electrifying chills propagated from the napes of the four men down to their heels.
“You heard that?” Paul gasped.
“Yes, it came from there.” Johnny said, hooking around some wooden boxes and quickened his pace toward a grimy door that had a small painted Japanese flag on it. With the rifle tightly held in his left hand, he turned the rusty door knob with his right and eased open the door while Paul, Nelson and Kenso lurked forward quietly and stood behind him.
The room was pitching dark. Johnny found the switches and turned on the overhead. It cast an odd, unsteady light, waxing bright for a while and then dim. A large Japanese Imperial Flag and a tattered map of China hung loosely on a wall directly across the room. There was a stack of radio signaling devices on the table below the Japanese flag and beside the table was a high-back armchair made of rosewood with its back facing the four wide-eyed men. Someone was sitting on the arm chair! For a moment Johnny thought there was something wrong with his eyes. The person on the armchair just tilted his head to the left!!
CHAPTER 21
“Holy shit! This one is alive.” Paul whispered, pointing his vintage Type 99 rifle at the man sitting in the armchair with his back facing them. From the doorway where they were standing, the guys could see the shape of the man’s head protruding slightly above the backrest of the chair. And there was still a fair amount of hair on his head. Paul and the rest waited but the man in the chair did not move again.
“I think he is dead.” Kenso whispered.
“No, I swear he just moved his head.” Johnny said softly.
“I saw that too, Johnny.” Paul whispered. He made a gesture to Nelson. It was a hand gesture that they were both familiar with and had used it a hundred times during their tactical field trainings in the Singapore army. Nelson nodded his head and he moved soundlessly into the room, sneaking like a burglar towards the armchair.
About three feet away from the armchair, Nelson pointed his rifle at it and cocked his weapon intentionally. Then he said in a loud voice, “Hey there, we mean you no harm. Please turn around slowly.”
The man in the chair said nothing.
“I think he does not understand English.” Johnny said, “Kenso, why don’t you ask him?”
“Okay...Kon’nichiwa Koten Shite Kudasai (Hello, please turn around)” Kenso asked in Japanese.
A screaming silence filled the next ten seconds.
“He’s not responding.” Paul said.
Paul stole forward, lifting his rifle up so that the gun muzzle was almost touching the stile of the chair. He looked at Nelson and silently mouthed the words ‘one, two and three’. And at three, he swung the armchair around using the barrel of his rifle. At the same time, Nelson jerked his rifle forward and was ready to squeeze the trigger if anything happened.
Nothing happened. They were staring at the corpse of a Japanese soldier and the hilt of a samurai sword was sticking out of his chest. It was a more ghastly scene unlike the other skeletons that they had already encountered. That lifeless corpse sitting on the arm chair had not decomposed fully, like an Egyptian mummy with dried skins, withered flesh and brown shriveled muscles still fully intact. His bloodstained neck craned upwards as if he was looking up at the sky beyond the cave. His entire lower jaw was missing and Nelson could literally peer down his throat through the big opening below his upper teeth.
Paul and Nelson lowered their weapons.
“This is gross.” Kenso said.
“Hmm, I didn’t expect to see an Egyptian mummy here. Why didn’t his body decompose like the others?” Johnny asked.
“He’s not an Egyptian mummy, if he moves, he’s a zombie.” Nelson joked.
“Must be the rush of air when we opened the door, that’s why we thought he moved.” Johnny said.
“But where did that sound came from?” Kenso asked.
Paul knelt down, took out his hatchet and used its blade to poke at the belly of the dead man on the chair.
“Damn it, I am quite sure I saw him…” Paul jolted to his feet before he could even finish his sentence. He was taken aback by a slight expansion on the chest of the corpse!
“Shit! he’s alive.” Paul cried, tumbling a few steps back. Nelson and Johnny scrambled to aim their rifles at the dead man who was starting to breathe!
“Fire! Johnny, fire now!” Nelson urged.
“No, you fire.” Johnny shouted. Both of them trembled with fear but neither of them squeezes the trigger.
“Are we taking him down? Paul!” Johnny shouted at Paul, waiting for him to give his cue.
“Wait!” Paul yelled, putting up his hand to stop his pals from engaging the ‘zombie’. The four bewildered men noticed that the corpse’s chest had stopped heaving up and down and then something moved up his throat. From the ugly opening that was once the man’s lower jaw; a rat emerged and plopped into his lap. And when it did, a great flood of its brothers and sisters poured out from the dead man’s throat. All in all, six large greyish rats emerged from that ghastly opening and plunged to the ground. Paul axed down two of them but the others scurried out of the doorway and disappeared.
The corpse in the armchair remained motionless for a long while. It was as dead as it should be.
Paul stared at the two puddles of blood and gore on the ground and said, “Thought we were dealing with a real zombie here, thank god it’s only rats.”
“Rats, I hate rats. They must be having a party in his tummy.” Nelson said in a repulsive tone of voice.
Paul shifted his gaze to another pile of organic splatter under the armchair, a tiny pool of blood and bones that had dried up ages ago and pretty much amalgamated to the hard cold ground.
“I think I found his lower jaw.” Paul said, “Look here, it’s totally shattered. And I believe those are his broken teeth.”
“Are you telling me that somebody butchered him with a samurai sword, and then blew his lower jaw into pieces? What kind of crazy shit is this?” Johnny asked.
Paul pulled out the samurai sword from the dead man’s chest and examined it under the dim light. “Maybe that somebody had used this flawless sword to chop off his lower jaws before punching it into his heart.”
“Whoever did this must be a cold-blooded psychopath.” Kenso muttered. “This man is not even armed.”
“I noticed that too Kenso, he was not armed at all.” Paul said.
Nelson strode gingerly to the table beside the corpse and he brushed away some cob webs that were covering four chests of World War Two Imperial Japanese radio equipment. One of the chests held the transmitter, another chest held the receiver, the third chest was a gasoline powered generator and the last one contained two large cans of engine oil. There was also a complete headset hooked up to the transmitter set.
Nelson could identify the make of the radio station. It was a Japanese Type 94-2 radio station which he had read about when he was in high school.
He smiled at Paul and said to him with certainty, “It’s a 94-2 vintage, man. And I think this zombie here was a radio specialist like me when he was alive.”
Paul moved forward and he turned some of the knobs and switches on the radio station, trying to power it up but to no avail.
“Damn it. Nelson, do you think you can fix this?” Paul asked Nelson.
“I dunno. It’s really old school,” Nelson said, looking closely at the radio transmitter and turning a few knobs on its metallic panels. “I need some time to figure this out.”
“Hey, what about these? Found them in a box over there.” Johnny said.
Paul, Nelson and Kenso turned around and they saw Johnny carrying a few sets of bulky radio sets in his arms. “They are walkie talkies right?” Johnny asked.
“Yes, these are one of the world’s first walkie talkies manufactured for military purposes, known as han
die talkies at that time.” Nelson said with a smile, pausing to wait for someone to commend him on his vast knowledge on communication electronics. Nobody did that and Nelson’s smile faded from his face.
“Well, these handie talkies are known to be robust and durable. I bet we can still use them. If not, I can fix them.” Nelson said.
“That would be great. Lucky to have you here, Nelson. Let’s bring those back.” Paul said, remembering then that he should pay some compliments to Nelson. In any case, Nelson might be the only person capable of fixing the walkies and the radio stations in that cavernous army barracks.
“Kenso-san, discover something interesting?” Paul noticed that Kenso was standing at one corner of the room and he appeared totally engrossed. He was peering at some dusty documents and files stacked against a wall. For a moment, he seemed to be ignoring Paul’s question. Then he looked up and said, “Pardon my lack of knowledge but I think this room was the command center of the entire facility. See, they kept all their top secret documents here.”
Paul, Johnny and Nelson threaded past the hideous corpse to peek at the documents that Kenso was talking about. Unfortunately, all the documents were written in Japanese and they could only rely on Kenso to translate.
Kenso rustled through a stack of brown and dusty papers and shook his head. “Hmm, these are definitely letters from the military high command in Tokyo. But besides the addresses, the top secret stamping and the sender name, the entire content was encrypted, look.” Kenso handed over the documents to Nelson.
Nelson scanned some pages and said, “Well, if this is an extremely secretive military operation, I am not surprised at all that they’d encode all their messages and data here.”
“Let’s go now. We still need to scout for supplies at that vegetable garden.” Johnny said, feeling the weight of the stuff he carried taking a toll on him, gradually turning his sore arms and strained legs into a kind of unbearable stiffness inside his body.
“Yep, but I think we have to come back later so that I can lay my hands on the radio station. This thing may be our only hope to put a call out.” Nelson said.
Paul nodded with a smile and he clapped Nelson’s shoulder before he stalked out of the command center room, holding the samurai sword in his hand. Johnny handed some handie talkie sets to Nelson before the two men walked out of the room with Kenso right behind them.
At the doorway, Kenso stopped and took a last glance at the dead man on the armchair before he switched off the overhead and shut the door behind him.
CHAPTER 22
Sarah Tan dumped her handbag on the ground and glanced at the ghostly two-story building that stood before her. She had moved away from the group who were starting to argue among themselves whether they should go inside the barrack for the night. The temperature had dropped significantly out there and Sarah could feel her face and her lips getting numb from the frigid night air that seemed to circulate non-stop in that military facility.
What an unbelievable, horrible day, she thought. She shifted her gaze away from the building and unfolded her clenched fist to study a piece of luminous leaf lying in her palm, a piece of ‘souvenir’ that she had picked from a bush in the crystal cave. The leaf continued to glow amazingly bright at various parts even though it had been dead for some time.
“Weird, isn’t it?” Howard’s manly voice startled her. Sarah turned and saw Howard walking toward her.
“The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Hey, are they still arguing about where to spend the night?” Sarah asked.
“Your fiancé somehow managed to convince Mr. Park and the rest to move into the barracks.” Howard said with a smile. “He’s quite persuasive, you know.”
“Huh, he is a sales manager, and a pretty successful one. I bet he had utilized all his sales tactics to convince those guys.” Sarah said with a chuckle.
“Yep, sure he did. I was worried at first that Mr. Park would insist on staying out in the open. They’re starting to pack their belongings now. Oh man, it’s getting cold out here.” Howard said, rubbing his hands to keep warmth.
“Cannot blame those people, they were terrified after they heard about the mangled skeletons in the barrack storeroom. No one would feel comfortable sleeping next to a room full of corpses.” Sarah said.
“Sarah, I hope you understand why I withheld some of these grisly findings. In situations like these, we have no choice but to tell a white lie. If we relate every single bad encounter, we’d create panic among the group and take away their hope, and hope is a very dangerous thing to lose now.” Howard said.
“I understand, Howard. I did a module on psychological panic and extreme anxiety responses in med school. And I can say that we are having a very vulnerable group here.” Sarah said.
Howard nodded his head and said in a serious tone, “Fear is a very powerful emotion and it can drive ordinary people to do insane things.”
There was a moment of silence. And then Sarah spoke. “Well, is that creepy storeroom easily accessible from the living quarters?”
“I’ve asked Paul to lock up that room, just in case anyone accidentally steps into it.” Howard said.
“Speaking of Paul, what’s taking him so long?” Sarah asked.
“Speak of the devil. Here he comes.” Howard said, raising his eyebrows and pointing his thumb at the two-story building behind Sarah. Sarah spun around and she saw Paul and his buddies returning from their scouting trip with Kenso-san trotting behind them. Paul was holding a samurai sword in his hand. A bulky haversack and two rifles were slung over his back. His two ‘lieutenants’ Nelson and Johnny were carrying at least two rifles each and there were heaps of canvas bags and haversacks under their muscle bulging arms. Amusingly, Kenso-san was half dragging two green military jerry cans that seemed to be too heavy for him.
“What are these for? You guys starting a war?” Sarah asked sarcastically.
“Only as a precaution, Dr. Sarah.” Paul answered nonchalantly. The three Singaporean men dumped the ridiculous load that they were carrying on the ground. The greasy rifles and ammunition bags produced a loud metallic clanking sound when they hit the floor. The three other canvas bags that dropped to the ground were unsealed and they contained scores of peach fruits, green apples and pumpkins!
Nelson rubbed his neck and shoulder with his trembling hands and said amiably, “Howard, we plucked some juicy fruits from the fruit trees in that vegetable garden. There’s also fresh water from a small well beside it.” He pointed to the two jerry cans of water that Kenso had volunteered to lug all the way from that well to the spot where they stood.
“The water should be drinkable as there are aquatic plants and the usual pond insects thriving in it. Anyway, all four of us had already drunk from it.” Johnny said, his lips curled upwards to form a cheeky smile.
“Are you sure the well water is drinkable?” Sarah asked.
“It looks clear and normal, no luminous plants or fishes or anything weird in that well.” Paul said, pouring some water from one of the jerry cans into an empty plastic water bottle that had his name sticker-labeled on it. “I’ve also added my water purification tablets into the jerry cans. Here, take a look.” He passed the half-filled bottle to Sarah who couldn’t wait to examine it. Sarah peered into the crystal clear water for a moment and took a few sniffs near the brim of the water bottle.
“It seems okay, but you never know.” said Sarah. “Do you mind?” She held up the water bottle in front of Paul. “No, not at all.” Paul said, motioning her to drink from it. Sarah took a few sips at first, and then she gulped down whatever remained in the plastic bottle.
Howard smiled affably and shifted his gaze from the Arisaka rifles and ammunition bags on the ground back to Paul and his buddies. “Did you guys manage to establish the way out?” he asked.
Paul shook his head and there was a resigned look on his face that made Howard and Sarah’s heart sink with despair.
“The annex buildings in the North a
re a mess. We can’t get near the debris behind those buildings, it’s too dangerous. Unless we could penetrate through the tons of debris, it seems like no way out from there. Anyway, we went into one of the annex buildings and found a room that looked more like a morgue than a laboratory to me. Johnny, why don’t you share our findings with Howard and Sarah?” Paul said.
“Sure.” Johnny answered, pulling his sweaty hair that was plastered on his forehead backwards and said, “Howard, you will never believe what we saw in that laboratory. There are all these gurneys and surgical equipment in that big hall. There’s also a scary looking hand. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed that this place could have been a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese army.”
“A scary looking hand?” Dr. Sarah asked, finding it not too hard to accept Johnny’s uncanny findings in that peculiar campsite. Johnny and his buddies nodded their heads in synchronicity, like young boys owning up to their mischiefs.
“Yes, a hand that has small plants growing on it, and it glows like those trees in the crystal cave. For once we thought it was alive.” Kenso said.
Sarah pursed her lips. She thought of the luminous leaf in her palm and she was not overly surprised when she heard Kenso and Johnny talking about the creepy hand floating in a glass box filled with formalin and how it seemed to twitch and move at one point.
When Johnny finally stopped talking, Paul peered into Howard’s sparkling eyes and asked, “By the way, have you ever heard of any military project codenamed NEN, Howard?”
“No, Paul, I have no idea what Project Nen is.” Howard shook his head, ransacking his mind but that project name did not ring a bell.
“What about it?” Howard asked.
“We were all in that big laboratory room staring at that creepy hand that floats in smelly formalin. Then we stumbled upon a metallic box with a Japanese engraving on it, it reads Project Nen according to Kenso.” Paul said.
“Yeah, and there’s a Japan destination address on it as well, the Imperial Biological Headquarters in Mount Atago, Kyoto. Sorry but we didn’t open the box though.” Kenso said.