At the Midway

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "We've no time for this!" The petty officer stiff-armed Amos in the chest. Blood spurted from the web of his hand as he fell back. "Get a bandage on that. We can't have you staining the goodies. Then get back here!"

  On his way to sick bay Amos overheard preparations for a landing party. He could not resist the building excitement, listened eagerly for details of who was going, what was expected.

  It dawned on him that the pain in his hand succeeded where self‑loathing and secret reprimands had failed. He felt he had awakened from a long sleep. Not a nightmare, but a more frightening numbness. A hundred rounds of boxing, winning or losing, could not have done the same. Pugilistic pain was something he was familiar with and always prepared for. This tearing out of skin and flesh between his thumb and index was nothing more nor less than an arbitrary, blind‑stupid accident. The very fact that anything could happen at any time hinted the possibility of things one could make happen. The penalties were there whether you willed them or not, whether they were man‑made or not.

  Then he stepped into the infirmary and saw the men injured in the fire Gilroy had started. Amos had assumed Gilroy became an incendiary in a fit of madness. As a consequence these men had been grievously hurt‑‑by chance. Did they consider their pain the key to spiritual wakefulness? Listening to their cries and moans, he knew for a fact they did not. He realized now he was merely lucky. The piano had not grabbed him on a bone, or fallen on a foot. Had it been so, he would be nearly as blind with suffering as these men were.

  "Here!" The surgeon tossed him a roll of gauze. He was obviously too busy for Amos' minor injury. Besides, he did not like tending blacks. Unlike many doctors, he did not attack wounds but nursed them like feverish babies until they were healed. He was a good doctor, but his personal and professional philosophy made him reluctant to tend like a slave someone he considered half a slave. "Wrap some of that around your hand."

  "I'm not crippled," Amos said nonsensically as he caught it with his good hand. Turning, he unintentionally locked eyes with a young man propped on a bed. "You're the boy they picked out of the water," he said spontaneously.

  "William Pegg, aye," the young man said.

  He cast a wary eye at the surgeon. He and two surgeons' mates were peering closely at a sailor who'd inhaled opium fumes. One of them was taking notes. They paid no attention to Amos as he slipped over to William.

  "Cut my hand open," Amos explained when the boy glanced down.

  "Got mine half bit off," William boasted, lifting the bandages clumped at the end of his arm. "Don't ever fall asleep with one arm out the boat."

  "That's a damn shame." Sitting on the edge of the cot, he spoke as he wrapped the gauze around his wound. "Is what they say true? You saw some kind of monsters?"

  "I saw them." William lifted his chin. "Don't believe me if you don't."

  "I guess I don't know either way."

  "We've slowed down. I feel it."

  "We've reached Midway."

  "Isn't that in the Aleutians?"

  "Down from the chain. Closer to Hawaii, but further west either way."

  "Why are we here?"

  Amos paused in his self‑ministration. "No one's told you?"

  "I guess not."

  "And I guess… no, you wouldn't hear much down in sick bay. Tell the truth, I don't know all that much myself. They say Midway's been attacked and we're sending a landing party to look."

  William bolted up. "They can't go out!"

  "Pipe down! No one's seen anything. I heard them aft."

  "You don't know how fast they are! No one's listened to me!"

  "We have lookouts. They can see miles in every direction."

  William was unconvinced. He began pushing himself out of bed. Amos glanced at the surgeon. He did not want to be accused of agitating the patient. "Git back down!"

  "No! Help me up! I know something that can save their lives."

  A dark coal flared in Amos' chest. The last time he'd heard words to this effect had been when Gilroy told him about the dynamite in the bunkers. It had been his way of extracting liquor from the steward‑‑twisting personal greed into a shared necessity. As difficult though it was picturing a dark purpose behind William's words, Amos warily asked, "Save whose life?"

  "Anyone out there. Anyone in an open boat."

  "Ease down! Sawbones'll kick your butt he sees you--"

  "You're a cook, aren't you? That's a cook's uniform."

  Since a cook had more status than a steward, Amos nodded.

  "You can help. We can cook something that'll save the landing party."

  "Say what?" Amos was tempted to hold the boy down. But if the surgeon looked over and saw him wrestling with his prize patient, he would lose what little rating he had left. "You're going to get us both sunk."

  "Where's the galley?"

  "Take your pick."

  "Take me to the nearest."

  His hand throbbed with pain. Returning to the work detail would be futile and someone had to keep an eye on this lad, so obviously distraught. As William struggled into a pair of trousers from the ship's stores, his eyes seemed to sink for an instant. Amos thought he was going to pass out. Reaching around, he reluctantly helped the boy cinch up. Neither the surgeon nor his assistants noticed as they slipped out.

  The galley in the common mess was empty.

  "We need to get a fire up."

  "Not during battle stations you don't."

  "You said the lookouts could see everything. They'll warn us and we can douse it. Get me a saucepan. A big one. I'll start the fire."

  "You're not making a whole lot of sense. You need to get back in bed."

  "The serpents hate this stuff. They hate it! They hate it!"

  Amos was tempted to hit him over the head with the kettle. Instead, almost hypnotized by the boy's intensity, he placed it on the fire ring.

  1325 Hours

  The davit pulleys squeaked peevishly as the two large assault boats were lowered. At nearly dead stop, the men on the Florida could hear the boom of waves against Midway's northern barrier. They were nearly two miles out from the islands, dark wafers barely showing above the spume. The deadly reef was much closer. Though the weather was still with them, the swell was powerful. Oates made sure to give the assault party a proper lee. Everything from the bridge indicated a smooth entry through the northeast entrance to the atoll. A smaller gap in the barrier was sketchily indicated to the south, much closer to the islands, but Oates dared not risk it. He had no intention of entering at all until the northern breech was properly scouted and sounded.

  The marines hunkered on the thwarts as the coxswain swung out. There were two signalmen with the boats. They tested their lamps as the launch propellers nibbled, then bit hard into the waves. Wink-wink, wink-wink. Human communication reduced to components, little better than squirrels clicking at each other in the trees.

  "Ah, Grissom…?"

  "Sir?"

  He looked at his exec a moment, then pursed his lips. Stepping into the pilothouse, he took up the phone to the forward mast lookout. "Don't be afraid to sing out if you see anything out of the ordinary. Do you understand?"

  Grissom heard a voice buzz at the other end and faced away so Oates would not see his grin. Obviously, the skipper was convinced he'd driven the lookout into a coma with his earlier gruffness. Now, of course, if a seal popped its head out of the water a mile off, Oates would probably know about it within seconds. Better to be over‑informed than the victim of an abject and fatal silence.

  The mild wind ruffled the smoke from the funnels, which began to roll down in gray waves over the landing party. Oates had wanted to come to a dead stop, but the chief engineer advised him the old engines might seize up if they weren't kept idling.

  "Landing force away, captain."

  They look like ghosts already, Oates thought, watching them through the smoke. He leaned over the bridge weather rail like someone trying to fly. He had to fight down a powerful impulse to call t
he mast again.

  As the boats were launched, all stations returned to battle alert. In the forward twelve‑inch turret the gun captain tried to follow the marines and the tiny contingent of sailors accompanying them through the peep‑sight of his periscope. All he saw was smoke bordered low with water. Garrett, Beck, and the rest of the gun crew sweated profusely in the resealed chamber. Silence prevailed. Garrett turned a hawk eye on the deck. Not a speck of powder in sight. During his brief minutes in the open, several fresh gusts had shot over the bow, almost literally lifting his spirit--nearly taking his hat and, it seemed, his desire to let everything blow to hell. Even after closing the hatch, returning to the electric‑brood swelter of the turret, he realized his wish to die, to erase all embarrassments, past and to come, was not as keen as before. All the humiliation in the world could not eliminate the bizarre charm of the world. He needed only to open his eyes and let the wind flick his cap to have his optimism reawakened.

  XXV

  0000 - 1338 Hours

  The heavy masts that were meant to keep the creatures out had succeeded, but at the cost of trapping the men inside. When Hart set off the gas bombs, one of the monsters had fallen back on the reinforced basement. The thick wood spines snapped. Screams of terror were cut short as sandbags and timber rained down.

  The roar of flames, the growls of angry giants, subsided. A strange, punctuated silence descended. Planks creaked as though irked. Rivulets of sand coursed through broken cement walls. Water gurgled up through the caulking, spreading into an inch-deep pond.

  Slowly, human sounds intruded on the primitive stillness. Soft moans. Then a whisper.

  "Is anyone else alive?"

  Lieber's question was answered with a racking cough.

  "Is that you, Hart?"

  "I'm all right. I think. How about you?"

  "Don't know... can't move." Then a moment later, "Ach! Donnerwetter! That hurts! Well... at least I didn't break my neck."

  As the night wore on, more of them regained consciousness. One man screamed for an hour. The others were not sorry when death silenced him. It seemed an eternity before the voice they were desperate to hear bellowed, "Goddammit! Oh shit, goddamn! I hope to fucking hell I'm not dead. I don't want to live eternity like this."

  "Top!"

  "Someone get this thing off me."

  "Sorry, Herr Feldwebel. We're all pinned down. Or dead."

  "Can't see a fucking thing..." Ziolkowski mused. "How come we aren't burned up? Hart? You alive, Chowderhead?"

  "Hart's over here, Top," Lieber informed him.

  "Sorry, Hart. Figured you for a goner."

  Up to now, Hart had not dwelled on the possibility that he had been given a nickname. It fit. Chowderhead and Bonehead--they'd been the perfect couple. Hiding his wounded pride, he said, "The sandbags protected us from the fire. When they collapsed they snuffed out the battle lantern. We're lucky."

  This drew morose chuckles from some of the trapped men. A little later they heard new movement.

  "Who is that?"

  "Uh... me."

  "You digging over there?"

  "Yeah... well, I'm trying to get out. Mind giving me a hand?"

  "You mean you're not pinned down?"

  "No. What happened? I got whacked on the head."

  "Enderfall, get your ass over here and dig me out. No, belay that. What good am I with this leg? Help Fritz. You still with us, Fritz?"

  "Yes."

  "I have some matches--"

  "No!" Hart shouted. "I smell gasoline. I don't think all of it ignited."

  "That's right, Enderfall. You'll have to reach around and grab ass to find us. That'll do your heart good."

  "Ooooo...."

  "Ace!" Lieber called.

  "Ooooo...."

  "Come on, Enderfall," Ziolkowski commanded. "This is what you've dreamed of. Ain't none of us can move but you."

  "Aw, Top...."

  If homoerotic grasping and groping was Enderfall's penultimate fantasy, he had his fill that night. With serpentine twists he maneuvered through the fallen beams, over moaning men and silent bodies. But he only succeeded in spreading the chaos. If he tried to lift a timber off one man, it placed unbearable strain on another. And the space was so cramped he could not help banging against the injured. Enderfall's major accomplishment was keeping men awake who would have been better off asleep.

  Hart's legs went numb. He'd added to the stink of evacuated bladders after too many pinched hours. Like Lieber, he managed to wiggle his toes enough to convince himself no vital nerves had been severed.

  When light began filtering in, he noted something odd gleaming on the timber next to him. To pass the cumbersome minutes he concentrated on it, trying to guess what it was.

  Recognition did not come gradually, but in a horrifying burst. When sunlight abruptly shot through one of the larger gaps above him--and fell directly on the scattered brain of one of the marines. Hart caught his breath and averted his eyes.

  With the sun came a budding of conversation among the Orientals trapped in the bunker. The Chinese warbled lowly, their sentences worming aptly as they described the horrors around them. The Japanese spoke in brief, harsh torrents that seemed to push at the beams as they discussed ways to extricate themselves.

  The whites offered very little beyond low curses. They seemed to have no language for catastrophe beyond a catastrophic breakdown of language itself. They waited to see what Enderfall would do, now that he could see what he was doing.

  "Hell, I'm the one in deep shit," he whined as he labored at the beams. "If those bastards come back I'll be stuck out here. You're all buried and safe."

  "Of all the fucking luck, you had to be the one loose," Ziolkowski groused.

  Those who could see the sergeant noted his pallor. Those who could see his broken leg knew it would have to go.

  "I'm doing my best, Top," Enderfall griped. And he was. But the morning light made him wary. The dreadful blows that had killed or wounded the marines and civilians lay open to view. At one point Enderfall stumbled over a man who'd been scissored in half by two beams. He ran out. The men below could hear him crying. He did not come back for a long time, and the trapped men were in an agony of suspense after the sobbing faded away. After an hour had gone by, Ziolkowski let out a bellow that lifted Lieber's hair. Still no response.

  "They got him," someone cried softly.

  Two more hours passed. Suddenly they heard shuffling, and Enderfall's face appeared.

  "I couldn't come back," he said breathlessly. "They were on the beach. If I'd moved they would've seen me. They only took off a little while ago." He returned to his labors. The morning wore into noon. The heat was stifling. A stench rose from the dead.

  Lieber's hand came across a loose nail. Wanting a date on his tomb, he etched "Im Feld, 24 Junis, 1908" on the timber that held him down.

  "Hey!" came Enderfall's excited voice.

  When they heard the boat motors, three men who had already half freed themselves lost their pants and a good deal of skin in their haste to finish the job and look. Enderfall abandoned the bunker and ran into the quad. When they heard his cheers, the men below cheered also. Enderfall returned flush with joy. "They came! Hart was right!"

  The civilian could not look in his direction. To do so would have meant glancing across the grisly cerebral patch of what had been a man. He noted the tilt of disbelief and awe in Enderfall's tone. Hart had foretold the future with supernatural accuracy. The battleship Florida had indeed been en route and was now seeding the island with a new contingent of marines. That the telegraphic process was as plain as Marconi, well‑publicized, comprehended by physicists the world round, seemed to sink men without the knowledge into dumb savagery. Enderfall‑‑and some of the others‑‑looked at Hart as though suddenly recognizing a sorcerer in their midst.

  1338 Hours

  The telephone rang tinnily. Oates swept it up.

  "The landing party has formed on the beach, sir. The fi
le-closers are moving up."

  "You can see them?"

  "The smoke is breaking over the lagoon. I don't see anything else. No one's come out to greet them."

  Oates hung up. It was beginning to seem they were too late for either salvation or vengeance.

  "Sir... I hope that's not hull damage I'm seeing," said Grissom.

  "On the lighter?" Oates swung his powerful Zeiss glass around, but the funnel smoke danced in the downwind and blocked the Iroquois from view.

  "I could be wrong, sir. The way she's stepped up on the beach, it could be something lying against her."

  "What are we doing here?" Oates sighed suddenly.

  "Sir, hell if I know."

  All guns were trained out. Oates was about to order a stand down from General Quarters when the lookout phone rang again. Wearily, he reached into the pilothouse and picked it up.

  "Captain! Torpedoes! Bearing Green Oh-Three-Oh direct!"

  1350 Hours

  As the marines from the battleship freed their trapped compatriots, they listened in disbelief to the story the survivors told them. Yet there was no denying the great gashes in the earth, nor the fact that some of the compound buildings had not been knocked over, but flattened.

  Ziolkowski was gently lifted out of his near-grave. He gave a whoop when he saw the landing party's three-inch fieldpieces being hauled up the beach.

  "We'll show the bastards now! One round in the gut... just one...." And then he fainted.

  The Florida marines stared at the unconscious, grizzled veteran. Whatever their private opinion of lifers, they respected their judgment in things military. The second lieutenant in charge of the contingent ordered a defense perimeter established around the compound, putting the three-inchers at its core.

  "Is this everyone?" the lieutenant asked Enderfall, pointing down at the men still trapped in the bunker.

  "I don't know. I... I don't know...."