by Steve Perry
Marie coughed again and managed to push herself up onto one elbow. She looked around, and saw Boukman’s horse squatting next to her. Saw the zombis jump back into the water.
She looked at the horse.
“Boukman.”
“In the flesh—though not my own,” he said. He laughed. “Come, petite Marie. We will go for a walk in the rain together, you and I. If your friends are alive, they will join us eventually.”
He saw her reach for a rock as big as her fist.
“Don’t make me hurt you, little one. I can kill you and bring you back if I need to, you know.”
She let the rock fall.
He laughed again.
Indy’s life didn’t flash before his eyes. The many times when he’d thought he was about to die, that had never happened, but the weightlessness he felt as he fell, surrounded by the falling water, seemed to last for a long time. Months, years, eons . . .
He couldn’t see much, but he opened his eyes wide. He wanted to see the rock he smashed into—
Sploosh!
Indy felt himself hit not rock, but water. He sank deep, ten or twelve feet, and stopped, then started to float upward.
The tide, apparently, was in.
As soon as he broke the surface and got a breath, he yelled, a wordless cry of victory.
A second later Mac popped up next to him, still connected by the rope. Grinning like a hyena he began to laugh.
“We bloody well made it in one piece!”
But the sea was roiling, wind and rain and river, falling into it, and they weren’t home safe yet. They started swimming aslant to the froth from the falling river, aiming for a shore that didn’t seem all that far away. Even so, it took them five minutes to make it.
The beach was more rock than sand, and not the most hospitable place in the rain and wind, with the breakers spewing foam, but it was, by God, better than drowning or being smashed on the rocks.
“This,” Indy said, when he managed to catch a breath, “is getting old, this swimming stuff.”
“I hear that,” Mac said. “I wonder if my cigarettes stayed dry?”
“The storm seems to be decreasing in intensity, don’t you think?” Gruber asked.
Yamada nodded. “Yes.” He was actually thinking about his scrolls and letters to his wife, back in the abandoned tent. Doubtlessly blown down and carried to who-knew-where by now. A shame.
“Make the going a little easier,” Gruber said.
For our quarry, too, Yamada thought, but there was no need to say that aloud. Gruber knew. They were going around the thickest brush when they could, cutting through when they couldn’t. The scouts would find animal trails and they’d follow those until it looked as if they would go the wrong way, then they’d strike out in the woods again. It was hard travel, but they were making progress in the right general direction. It was the best they could do.
Yamada entertained a small fantasy: Someday he would come back here with his grandchildren, and they would go on a hunt for the lost tent and the treasures it held, to prove that the stories he had told them were true. That, fetched up under a fallen tree that protected it from the rain and wind and harsh sun, they would find the rotting canvas, and inside, wrapped in the oilcloth, would be his scrolls. How delighted the grandchildren would be to see them!
Yamada smiled to himself. A small fantasy, but that was all it was. The tent could have been snatched up by a tornado and shredded to bits, or blown all the way to the sea by now, to make a home for the fish a hundred fathoms down. And he would never inflict this place on his grandchildren. Maybe if it was made civilized, the trees cut down, roads laid, it would be a spot they could visit and peer at from behind the window of an automobile. Why, Grandfather, this is not an awful jungle like you used to tell us about! It’s not so bad at all!
Ah, he would say in his old man’s voice, but you should have seen it fifty years ago . . .
THIRTY-ONE
INDY AND MAC were looking for a way to climb the rotten rock of the cliff, which was an easy hundred feet almost straight up, when something made Indy turn around and look at the sea.
It was not calm. The rain had slackened, the wind was noticeably less strong, and the tide, while still sending breakers close enough to splash over their feet now and then, seemed to be ebbing.
A man was wading ashore.
Indy knew it wasn’t an ordinary man, and he reached for his revolver, unsnapping the sodden leather flap of his holster. He had the gun out and was bringing it up when the man raised one hand and held it palm-out in a Stop! gesture.
Mac was fishing for his own pistol. “Shoot him, Indy! My bloody gun is caught on something—!”
In French, the man called out, “Don’t!”
He was big and heavy, the speaker. Must go 250, 260 pounds, Indy figured.
Indy brought the gun up and aimed at the man’s head—
“Boukman says you must follow me.”
“Like hell I will.” He started to squeeze the trigger . . .
“He has Marie. Come to him, or she dies.”
Indy eased up on the trigger.
The rain had stopped, though water still dripped from the trees enough so it didn’t seem all that much of an improvement. The wind still gusted hard now and then, but was definitely dwindling, Gruber thought.
As they curved around a hairpin turning in the animal trail upon which they had been traveling for the last half an hour, Gruber heard several things in quick succession: a yell—in Japanese—some squealing and grunting, and two shots.
He pulled his Luger—
Next to him, Yamada drew that long sword of his and gripped the handle in both hands—
He felt the ground vibrating, heard more of the grunting, getting louder—
“Off the trail!” one of the Japanese soldiers yelled.
Yamada and his captain leaped into the brush to the right, and Gruber did the same to his left, along with his remaining man.
A moment later a herd of pigs came into view, slogging and splashing through the mud and puddles on the trail, heading in their direction. There were twelve or fifteen of them, the biggest of them waist-high and probably 150 kilograms.
The pigs thundered past, never slowing.
Once they were gone, the men worked their way out of the brush. Gruber had gotten a nasty scratch from a branch on his left arm, it was bleeding freely, but otherwise he was uninjured.
Ahead on the trail, Gruber’s outwalker was down, being attended to by the Japanese scout. Gruber and Yamada both hurried to the fallen man.
There was a pig nearby, a bristly hog heavier than a man, shot dead.
As Gruber examined the fallen soldier, the Japanese scout gave a report to Yamada. Gruber caught parts of it, but it was obvious what had happened. They had come across the herd of pigs, which had been sheltering under a toppled tree whose crown had provided respite from the weather. The ground was all trodden down and muddy, a wallow. The animals had been startled. They had charged, the men had shot, but the fallen man had been knocked down and trampled. He was barely conscious, in pain, and a quick examination revealed broken ribs, what was likely a punctured lung, and almost certainly internal bleeding. They were a long way from an operating room or anybody skilled enough to save him.
The German soldiers all carried first-aid kits, bandages, and drugs that might be necessary on a battlefield.
“Give him a morphine injection,” Gruber said to his last remaining soldier. “Four grains.”
The soldier blinked. “Four grains? But, Doctor—”
“Do as I say!”
Gruber stood and gave Yamada a quick jerk of his his head.
The two doctors moved away.
Yamada said, “He needs major surgery.”
“Yes. And he’ll be dead long before we can carry him that far.”
Yamada nodded. “Four grains, yes.”
With that much, the man’s breathing would slow and eventually stop. It would be a pai
nless death. He would simply go to sleep and never wake up. Regrettable, but under the circumstances Gruber could see no option. Trying to carry the injured soldier would require making a litter, and the use of such a thing in the jungle where trails were narrow or nonexistent? For a man who, at best, would survive a few more hours? No.
Gruber moved back to the downed man. Already the morphine was starting to take effect. “Hurst,” Gruber said. “Can you hear me?”
“Jah, Colonel.”
“We are going to knock you out, to keep you from feeling the pain when we move you. When you wake up, you will be in a better place, do you understand?”
“Jawohl, Herr Doktor. I understand.”
“You’re a good man, Hurst.”
The man closed his eyes.
After another minute, Gruber said, “Move him off the trail.”
Gruber’s soldier and one of the Japanese men did so.
Yamada nodded at Gruber. “War forces us to make hard choices, Doctor,” he said.
Gruber nodded. “It does.” He was down to one man and himself now. Not looking good, but it was what it was.
They moved out.
To the man, whatever was left of him in there, Indy said, “I hope you know another way to get up this cliff, because if we fall and die, Boukman probably won’t be real happy with you.”
The big man, who wore only a pair of ragged green pants, appeared to be about forty, with long and tangled black hair and dull brown eyes. He said, “Wait.”
Indy and Mac exchanged glances. “For what?”
“Wait.” He looked out into the still-roiling sea.
Indy looked that way, too. Nothing to see but waves and—
Hold on a second—
There was a dark spot on the surface of the water, a hundred yards out. It looked like a coconut or some-such floating there, but as Indy watched, it rose from the water, and attached to it was, was—it took a couple of seconds for it to register.
It was a man. Walking toward the shore, his head and shoulders rising from the water as it got shallower.
When the water was only waist-deep on the figure, Indy saw that he was carrying a large rock clasped to his belly, the size of a suitcase; it must have weighed a hundred pounds or more.
Indy looked at Mac, who got it at the same time. “Ballast,” Indy said. “So he doesn’t float away. Amazing. He’s using the rock so he can walk on the bottom.”
A moment later, a second figure began to rise from the sea.
If there had been any doubt before that they were dealing with living humans, this would have erased it.
Another couple of minutes, and the two zombis arrived on the shore. They dropped the rocks they were carrying and stood still and silent, looking at the one who had spoken to Indy and Mac.
“We must climb up,” Green Pants said to the zombis. “Make us a way.”
As they watched, the first zombi—a man who had probably been in his twenties when alive, dressed in a blue jacket and cutoff shorts—picked up another stone, this one the size of a softball and pointed on one end. He walked to the cliff, reached up to eye level with the hand holding the stone, and began to hammer at the porous and friable rock face. With four or five strikes, he gouged out a depression deep enough to stick a foot into. He reached higher, and chipped out another hole. He climbed up the rock, put his left foot in the first hole, his right in the other, and hammered away at a third spot.
“My Lord,” Mac said. “He’s making a stairway. Handholds and footholds!”
The zombi was fifty feet up, just a little under halfway, when one of the hand- or footholds crumbled under his weight, and he fell.
He felt straight backward, landing on a pile of rocks with a sound that made Indy want to heave his long-past breakfast.
After a moment, the fallen zombi got up. He seemed . . . crooked, somehow, as if something in his spine or hip had broken, but he went back to the rock face and began to climb. When he reached the spot where he had fallen, he chipped out another depression to replace the crumbled one.
He continued his task, climbing higher.
He was eighty feet up the second time he fell, only this time he landed head-down. His skull split open on the rocks, and he didn’t move.
After a few seconds, Green Pants nodded at the second zombi, who picked up his fallen comrade’s pointed stone and ascended the rock wall. In a few minutes, he was at the top. He clambered over and out of sight.
Green Pants said, “I will go. I am heavy. If I do not fall, it will be safe for you.”
With that, he began to climb.
Indy and Mac looked at each other. “Don’t say it,” Mac said.
“What?”
“That this can’t be good.”
“Yeah. Well. Long as you know.”
Indy began to climb.
There came a scream, the sound of branches breaking, and Yamada’s sword was in his hand without conscious thought. He and Suzuki were first to round the curve in the trail—
A big tree, weakened by the storm, had fallen. Yamada’s scout was pinned to the ground by it; actually, smashed to the ground would be a better term. He was dead—Yamada could see that ten meters away.
So. Two Germans, Gruber and one soldier; and three of the Empire’s force—Suzuki, one soldier, and himself—remained out of a score of men sent to collect the formula. Which they had thus far failed to do. Worse, they had lost contact with the men who had the item, and their only hope was to try to head them off before they left this hellish island. A smart gambler would not risk much on their chances, Yamada knew. Of course, a samurai would take such a wager, for he would know the determination to succeed that Yamada felt. And that failure was simply not an option, as long as Yamada had one breath left in his body.
A quick examination confirmed what they already knew.
“He was a good soldier,” Yamada said, rising from his squat next to the dead man. “He did his duty.”
That was as good an epitaph as a man needed.
THIRTY-TWO
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, they had to take a break, and Gruber and Suzuki took the watch so that the others could try and catch a bit of sleep. Even though the rain had stopped and the wind died down, that would be difficult, given the sodden ground, but the conditions were what they were, nothing to be done for it.
Gruber considered his next action. He had been thinking about it for a while, and it seemed to be a good idea every time he examined it. Yes. Do it.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he said to Suzuki.
The Japanese shook his head.
“Speak English?”
Another negative shake. Apparently not.
Well, it would have to be Nihongo, then. Not the best, but he could make himself understood, he had a fair grasp of the language. In slow Japanese, he said, “What part of Japan are you from?”
Suzuki’s eyes widened a hair. He was surprised that Gruber spoke his language, but after that initial clue he hid it well. “Tokyo.”
Gruber nodded and smiled. “Family?”
“A wife, no children yet. My father and mother and grandmother. A brother, two sisters.”
Gruber nodded again. “I hope the conflict has not been bad for them.”
Suzuki shrugged. War was war, the gesture seemed to say.
“It will not last forever. What will you do after?”
Another shrug. “Who can say? Probably stay in the army.”
“Pardon me for being impolite, but is your family well-off?”
Suzuki didn’t understand the question. “Well-off?”
“Wealthy?”
Suzuki chuckled. “Wealthy? Ah, no. Soldier’s pay.”
Here came the moment of choice. Up until now, it was just idle, if nosy, conversation. “Would you like to be? Wealthy?”
“No chance of that.”
“What if there was? A chance, I mean.”
Suzuki, who had been mostly avoiding eye contact, looked directly at Gruber.
Suzuki gave him a small nod. “Stranger things have happened, I suppose.”
“The Reich has earmarked a certain amount of funding for . . .” What was the word? “. . . guzen no koto.”
“And what contingency are we talking about?”
Gruber took a deep breath. “Helping the Reich’s agents to accomplish certain goals.”
“By which you mean yourself?”
“Hai.”
“And what would this help require?”
“Not much, really. More of an . . . inaction on your part than anything you would need to do.”
“An inaction.”
“Yes. Perhaps if you heard a certain noise, saw something in the jungle, you might ignore it.”
“Look the other way.”
“Precisely.”
“I see. And how much would such . . . inaction be worth to the Reich, exactly?”
What was the value of the yen to a Deutschmark or British pound these days? Twenty-to-one for the pound? Four or five yen to an American dollar? Well, it didn’t really matter, did it? “Five million yen.”
Suzuki didn’t blink. “That much. That would make a man most wealthy in my country.”
“The Reich values its friends.”
“So you say. But by my . . . inaction, might I not be found derelict in my duty to the empire?”
“Not if the empire did not know. I would not tell them.”
The unspoken inference here was that anybody who might make such a report could . . . have an accident and be unable to do so.
“Ah. I see.”
“Think on the matter,” Gruber said. “We could speak of it again later.”
“Yes. We could.”
After the others roused themselves, it was Gruber’s turn to try to rest a bit. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but he did smile as he closed his eyes. If he had Suzuki figured correctly, the man wouldn’t be able to wait to lay out his conversation with Gruber to Yamada. That the stupid Kraut would think he could bribe an imperial Japanese officer, for any amount? The European savages had no concept of honor whatsoever! But as it happened, Gruber did know a bit about that, having learned it with the language, and he was, he hoped, using it to his advantage.