Nightmare Alley

by Len Levinson

  Jimmy heard shouts and battle cries all around him, but he was in a world of his own as he rested on his knees, gazing down at the dead Japanese soldier, who was a wiry little man with a Fu Manchu mustache who stank of perspiration and raw fish. American artillery shells blew apart real estate on the other side of the Driniumor River, and Jimmy O’Rourke couldn’t help feeling revulsion for the dead Japanese soldier, because he looked so alien and almost inhuman with his yellow skin, high cheekbones, and peculiar slanted eyes. He thought the Japanese soldier had an evil, fiendish appearance, like a snake or an illustration of a dragon, because newspapers and magazines had convinced Jimmy that Japanese people were beastlike and inhuman, so it was a normal mental reflex for him to see the dead Japanese soldier within that framework.

  Something compelled Jimmy O’Rourke to look up, and he froze with fear at the sight of a Japanese soldier aiming an Arisaka rifle at him, about to pull the trigger. The Japanese soldier was too far away for Jimmy to attack, and Jimmy couldn’t run away from a bullet. All he could do was remain on his knees, straddling the dead Japanese soldier underneath him, and wait for the bullet to come.

  The Japanese soldier tightened his finger around the trigger. The dead man lying underneath Jimmy O’Rourke had been a close friend of his, and he wanted revenge. The trigger only had one-sixteenth of an inch to go, and Jimmy was wondering whether he’d open his eyes at Saint Peter’s Gate or in the ovens of hell (most probably the latter, he thought), when suddenly the Japanese soldier closed his eyes and dropped to his knees.

  Standing behind him, his teeth bared like a wildcat’s, was Corporal Lupe Gomez, his sharpened, bloody bayonet held point up in his right hand and his entrenching tool, the blade locked into its L position, in his left hand, covered with the brains of the Japanese soldier.

  The Japanese soldier pitched forward onto his face, and Corporal Gomez spun around, swinging the entrenching tool to the side, crashing the blade into the face of a nearby Japanese soldier. The blade sank into the Japanese soldier’s head cavity, scrambling his brains. Corporal Gomez pulled the entrenching tool out just in time to parry to the side a lunging Japanese rifle and bayonet, and then Corporal Gomez stepped inside the Japanese soldier’s guard, punching up with the bayonet in his right hand, burying the blade to the hilt in the stomach of the Japanese soldier, whose eyes rolled into his head, blood welling over his lips.

  Corporal Gomez pulled the blade out, saw movement out of the corner of his eye, turned, and saw a Japanese rifle and bayonet streaking toward his chest. “Aaaiiiiieeeee!” he screamed, dodging to the side, then diving forward, stabbing his bayonet into the belly of that Japanese soldier, then pulling it out and leaping away before the Jap even hit the ground.

  He landed in front of two Japanese soldiers, who were surprised to see him suddenly before them. They charged immediately, holding their rifles and bayonets level, aiming for his heart. Gomez swung wildly with his entrenching tool, slamming one Japanese soldier on his hands, breaking knuckles and mangling cartilage, and the Japanese soldier screamed as he dropped his rifle and bayonet.

  "Aaaaiiiiieeeee!” replied Corporal Gomez as he swung his entrenching tool around and clobbered the other Jap on the head, busting into the Japanese soldier’s skull cavity, splattering his blood and brains into the air. Then Corporal Gomez turned to the Japanese soldier with the broken, bleeding hands.

  Corporal Gomez was surprised that the Japanese soldier hadn’t run away, because he couldn’t fight with broken hands. He wasn’t anxious to kill an unarmed man with his hands hanging down at his sides, but war was war, and what else could he do? He raised the entrenching tool in the air. The Japanese soldier just stood there, apparently waiting to be killed, but then, as Corporal Gomez commenced his downward death stroke, the Japanese soldier’s foot lashed out, and Corporal Gomez realized that he’d underestimated the Japanese soldier.

  The Japanese soldier’s foot connected with Corporal Gomez’s balls, and the pain was so terrific that Corporal Gomez folded. He fell to the ground, writhing and groaning, cupping his groin in his hands, gritting his teeth. His consciousness, drowning amid all that pain, told him that he was about to die.

  The Japanese soldier happened to be a karate expert, as deadly with his feet as with his hands, and he raised his foot with the intention of splitting Corporal Gomez’s head open with one quick, powerful stomp of his heel, when suddenly the bloody tip of a bayonet appeared in the middle of his chest, and his raised foot fell to the ground, along with the rest of him.

  Pfc. Frankie La Barbara was standing behind the Japanese soldier, and he pulled his rifle and bayonet out of the Japanese soldier’s back. Frankie La Barbara’s face and uniform were covered with blood and gore, and some of the blood was his own. He’d lost his helmet somewhere along the way, and had a three-inch gash on his scalp that oozed blood over his left ear.

  He felt wild and crazy, even worse than usual. He looked around, but somehow there didn’t seem to be as many Japs as before. No Japs attacked him; they were all engaged in fighting other American GIs. Frankie La Barbara stalked toward the closest Japanese soldier, whose back was to him, and harpooned him in the back with his rifle and bayonet. The Japanese soldier dropped to his knees, and Frankie La Barbara side-stepped to a position behind another Japanese soldier, took aim, and plunged his bayonet into that Japanese soldier’s left kidney.

  The Japanese soldier shrieked horribly and reached around to cover the wound with his hand, while Sergeant Cameron, who’d been standing in front of him, slammed him on the forehead with his rifle butt, splitting his skull. The Japanese soldier collapsed onto the ground.

  Sergeant Cameron, whose nose was a lump of bloody, shattered flesh and cartilage, thought a second Jap was standing behind the Jap he’d just clobbered, so he thrust his rifle and bayonet forward; but Frankie La Barbara parried the blow and stepped so close to Sergeant Cameron that their noses almost touched.

  “It’s me, you asshole!” Frankie La Barbara shouted.

  “Oh.”

  Frankie La Barbara turned around and saw scattered groups of men fighting, but in general the battlefield had quieted down considerably. The sun was just below the horizon, and the dawn illuminated heaps of bodies everywhere. Frankie La Barbara oriented himself and looked east, where he saw Japanese soldiers retreating, running toward the river. Remembering the colossal horde of Japanese that had attacked a couple of hours ago, he realized that the Japs had taken a lot of casualties.

  Frankie La Barbara wanted the Japs to have more casualties. He spotted his machine-gun nest and trotted toward it so he could fire a few final bursts and kill more Japs. He carried his rifle and bayonet in his right hand and jogged lazily toward the machine-gun nest, because he was tired from all the fighting and in fact was too fatigued to feel the full elation of victory.

  The ground surrounding the trench was littered with bodies, some Japanese and some American. Frankie didn’t want to know yet which of his buddies were dead. He didn’t even want to think about it. He approached the trench and saw that the machine gun had been righted and that somebody was lying behind the side of it closest to the river.

  As Frankie drew closer he realized that the machine gun was pointed directly at him, and he stopped, a chill going up his spine. Squinting, he saw that the soldier lying behind the machine gun was Japanese. Frankie dived to the ground just as a burst of .30-caliber bullets flew over his head.

  “Banzai!” cried the Jap behind the machine gun.

  Frankie La Barbara yanked a grenade from his lapel and pulled the pin. Then he realized that a GI might be approaching the trench and might get blown up by mistake.

  “Is anybody around?” Frankie shouted.

  “Yeah, I’m around!” replied Pfc. Morris Shilansky, his voice coming from Frankie’s right.

  “There’s a Jap behind our machine gun!” Frankie said.

  “You think I don’t know that?"

  “I‘ m gonna throw a pineapple! Are you far enough
away?"

  “Yup!"

  “Anybody else around?” Frankie asked.

  “Around where?” asked the voice of Lieutenant Breckenridge, to the left of Frankie La Barbara.

  “Around my machine-gun nest!"

  “I'm not that close!"

  “I'm gonna throw a pineapple!"

  “Go ahead!"

  Frankie turned loose the arming lever and began counting, because if he threw it too soon, the Jap might throw it back. He drew back his arm and chucked the grenade at the count of four. It sailed through the dawn light and landed with a clump inside the trench. Frankie stuck his fingers in his ears and lay flat on the ground, waiting for the grenade to explode; but then, a few seconds later, he saw it flying back at him.

  Frankie didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. If he stood up and tried to run away, the shrapnel would blow him to bits, but if he stayed where he was, it would demolish him. The grenade landed a few feet in front of him, rolled a few inches, and then stopped, gleaming evilly.

  Sweat poured from Frankie La Barbara’s forehead, washing away some of the blood. He stared at the grenade, waiting for it to blow, but nothing happened. The seconds passed, and he realized it was a dud!

  “What happened?” Lieutenant Breckenridge asked.

  “It was a dud!” Frankie replied.

  “I’ll throw one this time!” Lieutenant Breckenridge said.

  Frankie stuck his fingers in his ears again and flattened himself against the ground. Mosquitoes and other flying bugs swarmed around his bloody head, diving in to suck up the red syrupy nourishment. He saw a grenade fly through the air and disappear inside the trench.

  Baaaarrrooooooommmmmmmm!

  The ground shook under Frankie La Barbara, and clods of earth rained down upon him. He leaped to his feet and ran to the trench, holding his rifle and bayonet angled downward so he could shoot the Japanese soldier who’d been lying behind the machine gun. Smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder swirled around the trench, and Frankie La Barbara jumped inside and saw the machine gun lying on its side. The head of the Japanese soldier lay to the right of the machine gun, a leg to its left. The Japanese soldier’s torso hung on the edge of the crater left by the grenade blast, knots of guts hanging down from his belly.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge jumped into the trench beside Frankie, and Shilansky landed on his other side. Lieutenant Breckenridge waved his hand in an effort to make some of the smoke go away, and narrowed his eyes. He saw Japanese soldiers holding their rifles and bayonets high, wading across the Driniumor River, heading toward the far side as fast as they could.

  “Get that machine gun going!” Lieutenant Breckenridge shouted.

  Frankie La Barbara lifted the machine gun and set it down on its tripod. The weapon was pockmarked from shrapnel, but the barrel appeared straight. Frankie sat behind it and worked the bolt. It was sticky, but Frankie rammed it back and forth, and after a few strokes it worked smoothly.

  “Load me up!” said Frankie.

  “I don’t see no ammunition!” Shilansky replied.

  Shilansky looked around. The trench wasn’t what it had been before. The grenade blast had widened it and covered up the boxes of ammunition. Shilansky got down on his knees and dug with his hands.

  “Ouch!” he hollered, pulling his hand out of the dirt. Three of his fingers bled, cut by a fragment of an ammunition box that had been blown apart by the grenade explosion.

  “Use your rifles!” Lieutenant Breckenridge said, flopping down behind the edge of the foxhole and aiming the Japanese Arisaka rifle in his hands at the back of a Japanese soldier wading across the Driniumor River.

  The Arisaka rifle was a bolt-action weapon based on the German Mauser; it was not semiautomatic, like American M 1s. Lieutenant Breckenridge pulled back the bolt, pushed it forward, and clamped it down. Then he lined up the sights and trained them on the back of the Japanese soldier. He squeezed the trigger, and blam—the Arisaka rifle fired, but the Japanese soldier kept wading across the river, bouncing up and down every time one of his feet touched bottom, trying to get away as fast as possible.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge worked the bolt again, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle fired, but the Japanese soldier continued to make his way across the river. Lieutenant Breckenridge realized that something must have happened to the sights of the rifle; it wasn’t worth a shit anymore.

  Then the Japanese soldier fell into the water, as if by delayed action. Lieutenant Breckenridge raised his head slightly and realized that other GIs in the vicinity were firing at the retreating Japanese, and one of them had hit the Japanese soldier whom Lieutenant Breckenridge had been aiming at.

  “Keep firing!” Lieutenant Breckenridge yelled. “Shoot the bastards down!"

  Frankie La Barbara and Morris Shilansky pulled the triggers of their M 1s, and Japanese soldiers in the middle of the river lost their footing, their heads sinking beneath the surface of the fast-moving water. The battlefield crackled with the fire of American rifles, and then Lieutenant Breckenridge heard the chatter of a machine gun. He turned toward the river and saw the Japs falling like flies.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge wanted to kill some of them too. He crawled out of the trench and looked around for a good M 1 rifle. He didn’t have to go far. One lay nearby, its barrel underneath a slim American soldier who didn’t have a mark on him that Lieutenant Breckenridge could see. Lieutenant Breckenridge pushed the GI off the rifle, then saw the blood and guts. It was Private Jilliam, the sixteen-year-old kid, his belly cut open by a Japanese bayonet. A splotch of dried blood covered the side of Private Jilliam’s face that had been lying on the ground, but otherwise he was pale; his blood had soaked into the ground.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge paused. It wasn’t every day that he saw a teenager killed in such a brutal manner. He knew that Private Jilliam had been frightened ever since the regiment had arrived on New Guinea, and Pfc. O’Rourke was supposed to have been looking out for him, but there comes a point where a soldier has to stand on his own, and Private Jilliam hadn’t been able to do it.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge shook his head as volleys of rifle fire echoed across the regiment’s front line. He could imagine very clearly what had happened to Private Jilliam. The kid had been caught up in the patriotic fervor back in the States. Recruiting posters had fired his imagination, and he’d seen John Wayne fight off entire Japanese armies on the silver screen. He thought he’d look wonderful in a uniform, and all the girls would adore him, so he had lied about his age and signed up. The recruiting sergeant didn’t check out Private Jilliam’s application too thoroughly because he wanted all the warm bodies he could get.

  And now Private Jilliam’s warm body was cold. He’d get shipped back to the States in a pine box and get a hero’s funeral. Maybe they’d even name a town square after him. He’d be remembered for years, and all he’d ever been, really, was a dopey little kid with his head up his ass most of the time.

  Lieutenant Breckenridge crawled back to the trench and slithered inside. Pfc. Frankie La Barbara and Pfc. Morris Shilansky hugged their M 1 rifles against their cheeks and shoulders, pulling their triggers. Lieutenant Breckenridge looked down at the river and saw the Japs drawing close to the far side. He dropped onto his belly, clicked the safety off, aimed at the Japanese soldier closest to the far bank of the river, and pulled the trigger.

  Blam!

  The Japanese soldier stopped suddenly and his knees bent as he threw out his arms, dropping his rifle. Then he fell backward into the rippling water, which closed over his head.

  “That’s for Private Jilliam,” Lieutenant Breckenridge muttered, moving his rifle a few inches to the right and aiming at another Japanese soldier. He squeezed the trigger and blam, that soldier sagged into the water, dropping beneath the surface and then bobbing to the top again, arms outstretched and legs splayed as the water carried his corpse toward quieter regions of the thick, tangled jungle.

  ELEVEN . . .

  Colonel
Hutchins staggered into his command post tent, his uniform torn, a gash over his left eye, and a bayonet cut on his chest. He’d lost his helmet and he was splattered with blood. In his right hand he carried a bloody Japanese samurai sword, and in his left hand was his Colt .45 pistol, empty and also sticky with blood, because he’d been using it as a blackjack ever since it ran out of bullets.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” he shouted.

  Master Sergeant Koch sat in his chair, wearing his helmet, his M 1 carbine lying on his desk in case the Japs got close. Pfc. Levinson sat on the other side of the office area, typing a letter, also wearing his helmet, with his M 1 carbine lying on his desk too.

  Master Sergeant Koch leaped to his feet. “Ten-hut!”

  Pfc. Levinson jumped up and stood at attention.

  Colonel Hutchins frowned. “Knock that shit off,” he said. “As you were.”

  Both men sat down. The flap of Colonel Hutchins’s office was thrown to the side, and Major Cobb emerged, wearing his little wire-rimmed eyeglasses on his pug nose.

  “My God!” he said at the sight of Colonel Hutchins. “What happened to you?”

  “Never mind what happened to me,” Colonel Hutchins replied, pushing Major Cobb to the side and limping into his office. Major Cobb followed him, and Colonel Hutchins collapsed into his chair. Opening the drawer in his portable desk, he withdrew his metal flask of bourbon, unscrewing the top and taking a long swig, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  “I don’t think you should drink so much of that, sir,” Major Cobb said softly.

  “Who asked for your two cents?” Colonel Hutchins replied. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and screwed the cap back on. “What the fuck happened to my artillery out there?”

  “I don’t know, sir. What did happen to it?”

  “It stopped—that’s what happened to it.”