Chapter 45
Your whole body is battered by little shocks of instinct
and your mind is loose and unbuttoned and all your
thinking is drained from you in disjointed blobs. There's some
uneven ground a bit to your right, and you make
for it, but you see that there is a barrier
of trees on either side of it and that the
space between is narrowed down like a funnel, but you
can't stop yourself. A Jap with a pistol runs out
into the trail and he shoots at you and darts
quickly back and then the whole place kicks and scratches
at you with bullets and then suddenly the earth jumps
up and slams into your chest and crashes you down.
Egan is lying at your side and his mouth is
working as if he were trying to swear, but it
is clogged by a jumble of obscenities and all he
can say is, "Why you Goddam --." You are afraid that
he might lose his head and start shooting and you
fling your arm across his elbows so that he cannot
move them to lift his Garand. "Shut up! Shut up!"
There's a reserve of coolness holding your muscles together.
You know that you have been surrounded and that the
enemy has cut off your escape route to the rear.
But the wildness of their fire tells you that they
are only guessing at your likely position of concealment in
the hope that you will reveal yourself by crying out
or by returning their shots. You can see a few
of them peering out from behind tree trunks and bushes
with their sallow, hairy faces marked with the stalker's boldness.
The Japs are forming into a human noose and will
close in on you from all sides. They deliberately stumble
over matted vines and remnants of logs and expose themselves
for fleeting moments. They are a chain of men moving
in a series of sidesteps while steadily eyeing suspected areas.
Egan mutters, "Are we going to lay here and let
them stand over us and shoot us like a couple
of trapped rats? Jesus Christ!" You say, "I don't think
He's interested. Why should He be? He was expendable, too."
You are listening to yourself talk as though the words
were coming from some other lips. Egan is caustic. "Goddamit,
this isn't a movie at post theater number one. This
is us. Maybe in books a guy can sit around
gargling his philosophical mouthwash when he's sweating
mmmout a transfer
to the pearly gates, but not for me." Your voice
is slightly raised. "You sound like a man with a
paper asshole. Don't you think I'd like to shoot my
way out of this if I thought it could be
done?" He turns his head anxiously, "They're forty yards away
from us. Forty lousy yards." You look around. "If there's
a blind spot somewhere, we could make a break for
it. The best thing to do is head for their
own lines because they won't expect us to move in
that direction. You go first, and I'll cover you with
the Tommy gun. Go ahead!" He rises on his knees
and springs up and away. There is a shot. Egan
jerks erect and emits a rasping scream and blood spurts
from his neck. Three more rifles crack and he falls
backward a few yards from you with his helmet bashed
in and his substance trickling out of the metal fissures.
There's a corner of your mind that'll never sleep again.
* * *
