Only if the interpreter was dead. Benito said he was not. Tal had no clue what kind of man waited for him in Carmen’s room. He and the soldier had fired at each other. The Japanese shot Remy. Tal shot him.
Tal slipped his finger over the rifle’s trigger, leveled the barrel, and walked on.
He came near the long trench dug after he’d left the camp. Scattered in the bottom lay the corpses of a dozen Japanese, stripped to their loincloths. The dead guards were all thin, rib cages and joints bulging, cut up and battered by what had killed them. Tal moved along the edge of the open grave, holding his breath until he could get past the bodies, and wondered why they were naked.
Before he could exhale, a sound snagged his ears. A clomp, coming from Carmen’s building fifty yards ahead. Footsteps in the stairwell! Was Carmen coming to meet him? No, she’d never make that sound, hard boots and anger on the steps.
Tal froze beside the trench. He fell to his chest. A putrid reek curled out of the ditch. Tal slid a few feet away from the edge to get a clean breath.
Someone emerged from the building.
Tal picked out of the night only the motion of a shadowy form, coming in his direction. More shapes issued from the rear door.
Japanese soldiers!
Had they gotten to Carmen first?
Tal lay uncovered in the grass. He could run off into the night, come back after they were gone, then dash to her room. She must have hidden from them!
What if they’d found her? The Japanese had reason to kill Carmen; she was an informant for the guerrillas. Did they know? Tal’s stomach wrenched in the dirt. Was the wounded interpreter behind this? Tal should have killed him.
The soldiers headed his way. Was Carmen with them? Tal had to find out. How would he save her? He had no confidence he could hit anything at a distance with this rifle. How could he fight soldiers at night? And if he started shooting, would guerrillas come, or more Japanese? He cursed Benito. The boy would’ve known what to do.
Tal had no choice. He slithered over the rim of the trench, down among the rotting, naked soldiers.
~ * ~
Chapter Fifty-eight
O
VER THE dark field, the three guards walked behind Carmen and Kenji. Nagata set a pace Kenji could not keep up with. The gap between them widened.
They approached the long pit where the Japanese corpses lay. Kenji, who hadn’t left Carmen’s room since his wounding, had not yet seen the bodies there. She hurried him along, guiding him away from the rim of the ditch. There was no need for Kenji to see so much death while he struggled against his own.
Ahead, Nagata crossed the pavement. He stamped into the high cogon grass leading to the orchard. Kenji lengthened his strides and straightened his back so they would not fall too far behind.
Carmen said, “You are stronger than I knew.”
Nagata disappeared into the grass. In the middle of the road, Carmen looked back at the animal husbandry building, knowing she would not see it again. When the Tuck boy came, where would he find her?
They followed Nagata into the orchard. The guards urged them through the fruitless trees with nudges. Kenji asked for patience. Leaving the orchard, he lost his balance and faltered. Carmen caught him before he fell. The guards complained to Kenji.
“I’ll run ahead,” she said to him. “I’ll tell him you need to rest.”
“I can go on. Stay with me.”
Carmen strengthened her support under his good arm. Kenji drew a deep and weary breath. They headed for the ravine where Carmen had bathed and gathered water the past two days. A stand of bamboo topped the rim of the gully. In the gaining moonlight, Nagata waited for them to catch up.
Nagata reached to Kenji’s cheek, checking his color. Kenji’s pallor was not difficult to see. Nagata tugged the unbuttoned tunic aside to look at the bandage. The night drained the small bloodstain to black.
Nagata sucked his teeth in disappointment. He dropped Kenji’s shirt-tail. “Hayaku” Hurry. He tramped off into the cogon grass.
Carmen took Kenji’s arm. He faltered stepping forward. From behind, a hand pushed him along. Kenji stopped her from whirling on the guard.
Kenji struggled through the bamboo, then down the slope of the ravine. Carmen helped him pick his way across the creek bed, stepping stone to stone. Kenji and the soldiers slipped many times, soaking their boots. Nagata seemed unconcerned with quiet, only making speed.
They clambered up the opposite bank. Nagata led them out of a narrow band of jungle lining the ravine. He moved onto the road to stride down the center.
Kenji’s boots scuffed on the pavement. He struggled to lift his feet. Beside the tarmac stood the charred remains of the chapel torched last night by Nagata and his raiders, with a hundred villagers inside. Around the church stood a dozen untouched sawali huts, abandoned and lightless. Their owners were likely dead.
Carmen had walked this way only once, with Tal, Remy, Yumi, and the raucous boys of Tal’s barracks. They’d ridden into the village in rickshaws. Remy had bought her and Yumi clothes at the bazaar. Carmen had throttled a chicken and shocked Tal.
This was the road to Anos.
The moon let Carmen keep Nagata in sight. They walked for ten minutes on the tarmac. Kenji began to fight for every step. She bore as much of his weight as she could, afraid to look at his paling face or his bandage. Kenji pressed on, and the guards trailed like silent ripples.
The road wound through a copse of palms and tall banyans. The outlines of the first humble houses of Anos lay not far ahead. Nagata stopped in the road, lit by stars, waiting for them.
Kenji leaned more on her with every stride.
She whispered, “Why are we in Anos?”
Kenji licked his lips, mouth dry. “Maybe this is where his soldiers are.”
No, she thought. In her room, Nagata said his unit had returned to Makiling.
Kenji said, “I don’t know.” He sounded light-headed.
Carmen tugged him to a standstill. She said, “That’s enough.”
She slid aside his tunic. The bandage was soaked. A dribble of blood inched down his bare stomach.
Kenji said, “Yes.”
His knees buckled. Carmen reached to catch him; he sank through her hands to the pavement. He landed sitting upright, legs spread.
She faced the three guards for help. They stood back, resting their rifles.
“We need to stop,” she told them. “This is killing him.”
Nagata approached. Kenji mustered enough strength to lift his head. The tunic had slipped off his shoulders.
Nagata came close to Kenji. He knelt and spoke in quiet tones. Kenji nodded. He lowered his eyes and reached out, like a man begging. Nagata stood erect. He pulled the pistol from his waistband and offered it to Kenji. Changing his mind, Nagata backed off several steps to set the gun on the road. Kenji dropped his arm. He would need to crawl for it.
Carmen went to her knees. She cupped Kenji’s face.
“Kenji-sama, please. What are you doing?”
His head felt heavy; it would drop if she did not hold it.
“Nagata has suggested I may have an honorable death. He is wrong.”
“Tell him he needs to let you sit, until you stop bleeding.”
“He will not.”
Carmen touched her forehead to his. “Don’t do this. Try to stand.”
In her hands, against her brow, Kenji slowly shook his head.
“Not long ago, you asked me a question. What would we do if we had a reason? Do you remember?”
She fought the quavering of her voice. “Yes.”
“Well.” His voice was sleepy. “Let us see.”
Nagata motioned to the guards. Two of them pulled Carmen away. Her last sight of Kenji was him sitting in the road, his chest black, the gun out of reach.
~ * ~
Chapter Fifty-nine
T
AL BURROWED into the jumble of bodies.
He squirmed between rigid a
rms and brittle chests. The Japanese were not fleshy, they’d been hungry, too, on the day they died. With seconds left, he pulled a cadaver across him. The soldier’s skin was warm after a day in the sun.
Tal could not hold his breath for his nerves. The stink of feces and decay in the pit repulsed him, he fought down a gag. Around him, marble eyes gazed in all directions. Tal watched the rim of the trench. He kept the rifle close.
Footsteps passed near. Tal’s hand tensed on the rifle. The jangle of weapons moved beyond the trench and no one peered in.
He waited until the sounds were faint but not gone. Tal cast the corpses off, stood among them aghast, and scrambled out.
Away from the ditch, he crouched, scanning the dark. He brushed himself off as if the bodies had left bits on him. He smelled his own arms and hands. Fifty yards ahead, the dark outline of a soldier strode across the road leading into the camp. Others trailed, among them one taller than the rest.
Tal looked to the animal husbandry building. If Carmen was still inside, he could double back. But what if she was with them? He had to pursue the figures disappearing into the high grass to find out, or he might never see her again. He bent at the waist to jog across the open field.
The shapes entered the cogon grass. They were easy to track through the trampled blades. Tal stayed at enough distance to tail them without being heard. Before he knew it, the grass thinned, giving way to the orchard. Entering the fruitless branches, he lost sight of them.
They could have taken any number of paths through the orchard. Tal couldn’t break into a run, that would betray him. He stepped cautiously forward, keen for a voice, a snapping stick, something to guide him onward.
Where would Japanese soldiers take Carmen? To safety, to protect her? That didn’t fit with what Tal knew of them. Why murder so many, then save Carmen, a Filipina they’d abused and degraded? It made no sense.
Would she go with the soldiers without being forced? No. She’d sent Benito to bring Tal back, expressly to keep her out of the hands of the Japanese.
They wouldn’t take her into the villages, not where guerrillas might swarm them. A handful of armed Japanese would get hacked to pieces if they wandered into the wrong barrio.
Unless that barrio was empty.
Anos.
The little village was lifeless. The Japanese had killed every inch of it. Why go back? Why take Carmen there?
Maybe she wasn’t with them. What if the soldiers had gone to her room to collect their wounded comrade, and left her behind?
What if they hadn’t?
No time to puzzle. Tal had to choose a path through the orchard. Lacking Remy’s ability to read his own luck, he trusted in the promise he’d made Carmen to always return. He sped his gait, keeping low under the dark branches, careful to stay silent. He moved north, toward the bay and the dead village.
He hurried under mango and lemon trees, over earth silvering with the rising moon. At the boundary of the orchard he paused, casting out his senses. Ahead lay a field of scrub and wild acacia. Beyond that, a bamboo grove masked the bank of the ravine.
Tal stepped out of the orchard, into the open.
Voices dropped him to the ground. He raised his head to trace the sound but could not see the source for the grass and night.
He heard her.
“I’ll run ahead. I’ll tell him you need to rest.”
She was here!
That was all he knew for sure. Not where she was being taken or why, or how he could save her. He had no plan, no ally, and a weapon he’d never fired.
Tal didn’t recognize the next voice. “I can go on. Stay with me.”
Was this the interpreter Tal had shot?
If it was, whose side would he be on? He’d tried to kill Tal and needed Carmen to stay with him. He was wounded. Tal would not count on him.
Silently he sat up in the grass, straining his eyes for movement in the gray light. There they were, walking toward the ravine. Four soldiers and Carmen. Tal rose to do the one thing he could be certain of, follow.
A palisade of bamboo stood beside the ravine. Carmen and her guards stopped. Another voice cut through the night.
“Hayaku”
Tal’s spine chilled.
Nagata!
The man moved into the bamboo. Carmen and the soldiers disappeared into the stalks behind him, slowed by the wounded interpreter.
Nagata had burned the village church with a hundred people inside. The murder of Anos was likely his doing, too. For months in the camp, no day passed without a vicious act from him.
Now he had Carmen.
Tal tracked them into the ravine, creeping noiselessly while the soldiers clambered over the rocks and skidded into pools. The animals and birds hooted at the Japanese for their careless passage, masking Tal fifty strides back.
Nagata led the way up the opposite bank. Tal waited behind the boulder where he’d met the guerrilla Emilio. The tall interpreter had trouble getting up the rocky slope.
Tal glided behind them. Over his head the old owl swooped in a hunter’s farewell. Tal squatted in the cover of trees and brush along the Anos road.
Nagata moved to the middle of the tarmac, with no risk of traffic. Every Filipino along this road had either fled for the hills or died in his home.
The interpreter, Carmen, and the soldiers walked behind Nagata. Tal stayed off the road, darting from palm tree to bush, fence post to ditch. The moon had risen enough for him to trail from farther back. Carmen and the soldiers did not speak. The one sound was the interpreter dragging his boots.
The road curved beneath a stand of trees close to the shoulder. Nagata walked into the moon shade, then Carmen and the soldiers. Tal could not see them clearly and slowed his pace. He stole through the small yards of darkened huts still unburned. The carnage of Anos began on the far side of the trees.
Carmen spoke. Tal froze behind the trunk of a palm. She implored someone, “This is killing him,” and in a lower volume, “What are you doing?” Tal couldn’t make out the rest of her words. He waited; her voice was not moving on the road.
He heard a brief scuffle and nothing more. The road under the blocked moon fell silent.
Tal waited no longer. He scurried forward, staying on the grass, behind cover, into the darkened patch. He closed in on someone sitting in the road, torso wrapped in white.
The interpreter. They’d left him behind.
Keeping off the road, Tal passed the downed soldier, who did not register that he was near.
Tal stepped from behind cover, onto the pavement. The soldier was swathed in white only from the rear; from the front, his whole bandage glistened black.
The interpreter raised his dull face. Carmen had stayed back in Los Baños to save him. Now he was dying, and it had all been for naught.
The soldier raised his good arm. Tal gripped the rifle, ready to club him, until he saw the interpreter’s hand empty. The man pointed at a pistol steps away on the road.
What did he want? For Tal to give him the gun? To take it?
Gunshots rang.
Tal ducked in reflex. He came face to face with the wounded interpreter.
In pain, the Japanese said, “Carmen.”
Tal took off running through the darkness, into Anos.
~ * ~
Chapter Sixty
C
ARMEN HAD been brought here to die. There was nothing in the village but death.
The guards let her loose not far from Kenji. She did not run back to him. For what? To watch him bleed? See him commit suicide? Or have Nagata kill her in front of him?
Every hut in the village had been torched. The moon and stars lit charred bodies standing below their homes. Other houses had crashed down, their stilts burned away, the families buried.
The numbers of the murdered all around gave Carmen an unexpected calm. She would not meet death alone. She was Filipina, and would die as they did, because they were Filipino. Though she knew the ones upright beneath their ho
mes had been tied to the posts, they were on their feet nonetheless. Carmen took a bitter pride in this. She would not run and take a bullet in the back. She would stand, Filipina, and stare Nagata in the face.
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 43
