At the Midway

by J. Clayton Rogers

  With additional help from a yeoman they carried Oates to the bunk in the sea cabin aft of the pilothouse.

  When the ship's surgeon arrived, he took one look and nodded.

  "Digitalis?" Singleton asked.

  "Not for paroxysmal tachycardia."

  "Oh? Have you given it to him before?"

  Their eyes met. The surgeon flinched a nod.

  "There you have it. Incoordination and disassociation of auricular and ventricular systole."

  "I am well aware of the toxic effects, Singleton. So long as he lets me know of any increase in urine within forty-eight hours--"

  "But what if he doesn't? He's a stubborn man. You might try strophanthus. That's not as potent and the toxic effects are negligible. Besides, digitalis can't remove the dropsical effusion by itself. You need morphine sulphate and atropine sulphate to reduce the strain. And a strong cholagogue. Calomel, elaterium or elaterin--in conjunction with a dry diet. As few fluids as possible."

  A strangled sound came from the bunk.

  "Captain...."

  "I..." Oates gasped.

  "Don't try to speak. We'll have you right as rain in no time. You just need rest and--"

  "I am not...."

  Singleton and the surgeon exchanged startled glances. Considering the pain he was undergoing, they would have deemed even a murmur as an astonishing act of will.

  "...a hock of ham!" Oates concluded. The left side of his face seemed to cave in. Yet he lifted one hand several inches and made a fist. "Do... you hear me?"

  "Loud and clear, Captain Oates."

  XXVI

  1506 Hours

  Through tears, through smoke, through carnage Lieber pushed himself. At first he saw no one and was certain the entire landing party had been wiped out. Here and there a gory limb poked out of the sand, victims of the shelling. They put him in mind of his own injured legs. As blood began to circulate through them, the pain became excruciating. But he soon found himself able to push up and walk, though with all the coordination of a drunken crab.

  The field guns lay on their sides at the edge of the compound. There was no sign of the gunners.

  Victims of the beasts.

  Then he caught movement out the side of his eye and turned. It was the thirty-six-foot long U.S. ensign of the Florida, snapping on the main gaff like a woman waving from a window. This perked him up enough to continue his search.

  Finally, Lieber saw four men crawling out from under a clutch of scrawny bushes. "Gott sei dank! Here! Over here!" he hailed.

  "How... how can you...."

  "We've been living like this for almost two weeks. I have more stories than the four of you together. So we talk about it later. We have to dig some men out of the ground."

  It was something to do, something necessary, so they followed. On the way to the bunker they told Lieber of how the marines had landed with one hundred and thirteen men. They'd brought two three-inch fieldpieces with them. When the crucial moment came, they were manned and ready, but the officers in command were further up the lagoon, near the boats. The field guns were a quarter mile away in the compound. The gunners hesitated firing with men so close to the target.

  The creatures split up, the largest going for the boats, the smaller two moving inland. Shots were fired. Men began to die. The air reeked with brittle shouts of horror.

  The gunners waited too long and only lived long enough to regret it. The creatures were too fast, their paths too erratic. No hits had been scored.

  More men had died--until the great shells of the Florida ripped across Sand Island and laid blackness over all. Eight high-explosive shells had been fired: four twelve-inch and four eight-inch. One of them had hit the water near the beach and skipped completely over the island. Of the rest, only four had exploded. The reason for this was the destructiveness of the maxemite explosive used in the major calibers. It frightened the Navy as much as the enemy, so a detonator of three hundred and fifty grains of fulminate of mercury was employed to avoid premature explosions. It took quite an impact to ignite high-explosive shells. As a result, three of those that landed on the island plowed harmlessly into the yielding coral sand.

  When they reached the dusty devastation of the bunker, they had a hard time deciding where to start. Some of the trapped men were alive and vigorously told them so. Some were dead and no doubt about it. The rest may or may not have been unconscious.

  "Shouldn't we be getting ready?" one of the Florida marines said. "They might come back."

  "Oh, they'll come back. They've been coming back every day. They'll keep coming back until the food is gone."

  The newcomers blanched. Only now did they comprehend. Midway had become a commissary of human flesh.

  "Our only hope is to get these men out and off the island. If the admiral wants to do battle with these things, he can come back with the Fleet."

  Wraiths that resembled men began emerging beyond the compound. They staggered about, in shock from the beasts and the bombardment. Considering how very few places there were to hide, it seemed a miracle to Lieber that more than three-fourths of the landing party had survived. Some of them helped at the bunker. Others scraped the remains of the gunners off the fieldpieces as a grisly prelude to repairing them. A few marines wandered in temporary, silent insanity.

  The men at the bunker had been at work less than half an hour when the sounds of gunfire rolled in from the sea.

  Once freed, Hamilton Hart embarked on an agonizing series of attempts to stand. When he succeeded, he looked up at a chubby cloud and thought he saw a god-like face in it. Even as the firing outside the lagoon intensified, he gave prayerful thanks.

  "Maybe the Florida will stop them before they can get back."

  "She didn't before."

  At the edge of the quad a large group of men continued the frantic task of putting the field guns in operational order. Happy to be alive and unbroken, Hart cheered them on. Resting on the rubble of one of the compound houses, listening to the fear-stoked men around him, a strange ripple of peace washed over him. It was beginning to seem that some of them would live, due in no small part to his ingenuity and efforts. Blessed expiation for what had happened on the Kiltik. When the creatures first appeared at Midway it was as if his guilt, in all its monstrous proportions, had come to earth to bedevil him. But they also offered recompense. What had been horrifying was now proving sweet. For every moment his bowels threshed his fear, there was an instant when he found himself grinning for no reason‑‑but feeling a kind of delight in existence. Now he was absolved. If he'd still been in the Army they would undoubtedly recommend him for a medal. A civilian commendation was a possibility. A handshake from the president, perhaps. He could take the photograph of him clasping Teddy's hand, march up to the Presidio, and shove it none to gently up General Funston's ass.

  The horizon flashed and sputtered. What a fight was going on out there! Pushing himself up, he staggered in the direction of Mt. Pisgah. From there, he hoped to observe the long-delayed death of the dinosaurs.

  1538 Hours

  "That's it!" Lieutenant Grissom yelled excitedly at the ordnance officer over the metal-pounding racket.

  "They seem intent on getting back to the atoll."

  "Coming right into it."

  "And here they come again!" the ordnance officer grinned.

  The Florida had won the race to the lagoon. The serpents came right at them. At three hundred yards the rapid-fire guns opened up. The explosions were stitched by thousands of machine gun bullets into an aquatic inferno.

  Rather than trying to escape, the creatures thrashed back and forth abeam, confused by the cascade of explosives. The gunners' fire was not very accurate. Once again, the smoke blew back in their faces, half blinding them. But the creatures' reaction improved their odds dramatically. At this rate, a hit was inevitable.

  Every time the six-incher under the bridge loosed a round, the broken glass on the pilothouse deck sang jaggedly. As men passed from the pilo
thouse to the bridge wing, the glass was ground into slippery gravel. Some found it difficult to maintain their footing as the ship swayed. The Florida had to avoid the reef while cutting the monsters off from the atoll. This summoned harsh turns from the helmsman. A petty officer lost his grip on the handrail, fell, came up cut and cursing.

  A lookout on the bridge nearly went by the mast as he pointed. "There! One of them's breaching!"

  Lieutenant Grissom swung his binoculars to the starboard bow. His breath vanished as he got a close-up look at the head of the green-striped serpent; as it flinched its head from side to side, Grissom observed its eyes. One of them shone with perplexity and frustration. The other was dull. A second look confirmed one eye socket was empty. The creature was half blind.

  The ordnance officer was shouting into his phone. On the signal bridge above them, a fire control officer was also yelling. Grissom was amazed by their intention. They were going to use the forward eight-inchers like hunting rifles. In spite of the odds against a hit, he did not stop them. It would be something to tell, if they could be that lucky. The forward turret began swinging around.

  Green Stripes was already bracketed by six-inch shells. The next instant the larger guns erupted. One of the high-explosives caught the side of its long neck. A gusher of blood rifled out.

  Unrestrained cheering broke out in the pilothouse.

  Standing next to Grissom, Dr. Singleton eyed every movement made by the wounded creature. "It's all wrong." He turned to the exec. "They move so quickly, over such long duration. Not like the larger reptiles at all."

  "But not too quick for our guns! They--why are they slacking off?" Grissom whirled on the ordnance officer. "We have two more targets out there!"

  1545 Hours

  Many of the gunners on the upper decks had stopped to do what Grissom had done: cheer. Their shouts of triumph quick-marched down the companionways, leaving the men below the main deck with the impression they had just massacred the entire lot of devil spawn.

  Midshipman Davis banged his hand painfully on the hull as he gave a jubilant shout. Through the gunport he saw little more than a smoky haze. But the sounds from abovedecks were so enthusiastic neither he nor the other gunners could resist. The exuberant pounding of feet could be heard even through the three-inch floorplates. The hot breech added to the heat of the chamber and the moment. They did not care. This was their first battle. They had won, hands down.

  The smoke cloud broke. Davis craned forward. "Look!"

  Only a couple of men could look out at the same time. What Davis and the gunstriker who joined him saw was a green-striped creature twisting its neck in bloody convulsions. It streaked first one way, then another. Davis saw its jaws open wide, thought he heard a desperate animal moan. Curiously similar to heavy machinery dragged across a flashplate.

  "Look at the blood. Poor bastard."

  "Poor bastard?" The gunstriker gave him a look of amused incredulity.

  Davis grinned sheepishly. "Well...."

  His last word.

  His last emotion: embarrassment.

  Then confusion and terror.

  1552 Hours

  The mother Tu-nel leapt from the ocean and landed her massive weight athwartships. Casemates and gun decks crumpled, crushing twenty-four men to death in an instant.

  The moment before their deaths, the oil buffer attached to Davis' gun burst, searing the flesh off the men in the casemate. The longitudinal keys at the top and bottom of the jacket grated like a train hitting ties as the rear of the gun snapped from the breech ring. The firing gear was percussive. Both Davis' gun and the gun above discharged. One of the one-hundred-pound shells clipped the serpent's abdomen before plowing underwater. The other was knocked sideways. Its shell severed a bluejacket as he was flung back from a ladder, then struck the ammunition hoist just as a shell was coming up.

  The cordite flareback had already ignited the buffer oil, sending blue-green flames across the deck. The explosion spread the fire, killing every man on the gun platforms overhead. A dozen men were knocked back so powerfully they rebounded off the wood and armor shields and fell below. The creature snapped at the tumbling sailors, but missed. The explosions and fire girdling her belly grew uncomfortable. She raised her enormous front flippers and slid back into the ocean.

  Her departure was a mixed blessing. Her weight and impetus, as well as the high speed the Florida had built up, had caused water to flood across the low freeboard and would have swamped the bilge pumps had she remained a minute longer. But the fires that had already begun to sputter found new life.

  Wood, cordite, corticone and dead men supplied the fuel.

  1552 Hours

  Ensign Garrett was clutching the window bars of his prison when the Florida was struck.

  Behind him, Stoker Gilroy had been cackling: "Garrett! I know you. We both got the shit beat out of us and look where we end up! The world hates losers. Gives 'em to the Navy to finish off."

  His demented oratory was cut short when the ship jumped crazily. He flew across the cell and whammed against the bulkhead next to Garrett.

  "Ah..." the stoker gurgled almost comically as he desperately searched for a direction in which to balance himself..

  The ensign's grip slipped and his arms shot through the bars, his cheek crashing into the edge of the window. The sentry in the corridor performed an unintended, almost comical flip, landing on the wall rather than the deck.

  "Let us out!" Garrett bellowed at him.

  But the sentry was trapped against the far wall. He was looking up at the brig.

  "We must have struck a reef. Grissom... that stupid--"

  "Fuck," Gilroy concluded.

  The ship righted almost as violently as it had keeled over. Garrett slapped against the deck, while in the corridor the guard thumped down sharply.

  "Let us out!"

  They'd struck the reef. That seemed the only possible explanation to men belowdecks. For all the sentry knew, the Florida had been sliced open. He was not one to leave prisoners locked up for drowning. He unlocked the door.

  "Out! Get out!"

  1554 Hours

  The officer of the deck sat in the pilothouse and watched life race from his body in great scarlet gouts. He had been bounced to starboard like everyone else when the monster boarded. The observers on the wing had been ejected off the bridge like shells lobbed from a mortar, landing on the lower platforms at such odd angles that every one of them was killed instantly.

  It was Lieutenant Grissom's luck that he was not among them. In the rush of jubilation that had preceded disaster he had gone to the voice tubes. He wanted the ship photographer fetched to the bridge so he could capture on film the death of Green Stripes. When the ship lurched, his mouth crunched down on the pipe. The brass flap was still open. When his front teeth were knocked out they went rattling down the speaking tube

  The OD was less fortunate. Whipped across the wheelhouse, he'd saved himself from falling out the window by grabbing the ledge. In the pocket of his tunic was the Fleet Signal Book. The nearest ship that would have understood the flags was thousands of miles away, but it was his duty to keep the book on his person. When it popped out, he leaped forward to catch it. As he pulled back, he was horrified to find his tunic soaked red. Glass sticking up from the casement had sliced his neck in one neat swipe. Staggering backward, he baptized the deck with his blood. He dropped down and watched his life drain away.

  Singleton shared Grissom's good fortune. At the moment of devastation he was passing the binnacle and was able to grab hold of it as he fell. Flat on his stomach, he looked on as the pool of blood from the dying man gushed towards him.

  The ship straightened. With the superstructure bulkhead behind them, no one had seen the creature prop itself on the main deck. Their conclusion was the same as Garrett's:

  Reef.

  With his mouth bleeding painfully, Grissom battled to his feet and met the eyes of the dying man. The exec's brimmed with silent apolog
y, convinced they'd struck the reef, that the man's death was his fault.

  The helmsman had held onto the wheel throughout, at one point being swept off his feet and Ferris-wheeled three hundred and sixty degrees before landing back on the deck. After regaining his equilibrium, he gauged the distance to the reef and made certain it was maintained. He was so intent on his job he did not realize the others thought they had been hulled. Giving the now-dead OD a cursory glance, he called out, "Bearing Oh-Nine-Six, Mr. Grissom. We're leaving the island behind."

  Grissom looked up, surprised by the southeast heading.

  A yeoman burst into the pilothouse. "Where's the captain?" he inquired breathlessly. The soot covering his body did not hide the bright gleam of blood on his arm.

  "I'm in command. What is it?"

  Grissom's tone was so tentative and slurred the messenger glanced at the ordnance officer for confirmation.

  "Mr. Grissom, we need the reserve damage control party to starboard...." As he gasped for breath a belt of .30 caliber ammunition went off in the fire amidships. Bullets sprayed in all directions. There was a heavy patter on the metal walls.

  "Fire!" Grissom exclaimed. "We're on fire! Again!"

  The messenger was astonished the men on the bridge were so much in the dark. He quickly filled them in.

  "It jumped out of the water?" Singleton said disbelievingly.

  Grissom grabbed the command phone and in a barely comprehensible voice ordered the reserve to starboard. Only after he hung up did he look at it in wonder, as if astonished the phone had worked.

  1450 - 1601 Hours

  When the twelve-and eight-inchers loosed their salvos at Sand Island, Amos Macklin and William Pegg had been in the common galley. The firing gongs sounded, but Amos was so caught up in what they were doing he did not notice until it was too late. The large stew pot containing hot duff sauce shot up to the ceiling, spraying its contents on everything in sight, with the greatest dose reserved for the two men standing under it. Fortunately, William had turned down the heat ten minutes earlier or they would have been scalded.