Corporal Jameson pressed the butt of his Tommy gun into his shoulder as he crested the ridge of the hill. Smoking shrapnel sizzled in the backs of corpses like his mom’s fried chicken. The smell of burning flesh and boiling blood tickled his nostrils making him feel strangely hungry. Behind him, the sun blared as it rose in the east, burning the back of his neck and making him sweat beneath the lining of his helmet. He furiously blinked away a droplet of sweat as it trickled into his eyes but he dared not keep his eyes shut for long. The danger of a surprise attack was too real to risk it.
Peering down the sights of his gun, he scanned the remains of the machine gun position that had been a thorn in the side of their company for two days. The machine gunner splayed over his weapon as if protecting it, his back peppered with growing puddles of red where the mortar that had finally silenced him had thrown shrapnel in it. Around him were three more dead soldiers, the majority lay face down on the dirt but the third sat against the sandbag redoubt. Half of his face was blown away from the explosion and the half that was intact stretched into a terrified grimace, its vocal chords strained into a scream that it could not emit.
Behind the position, there was a dark cave that seemed to stretch deep into the mountains. The Japanese had dug in deep around here, constructing a network of tunnels and caves filled with hidden defence points and booby traps that would make Daedalus jealous. He flashed his torch into the mouth of the cave, it was full of supply crates and the personal effects of the soldiers. The dirt on the floor was packed tight where many feet had trampled on it. They were gonna have to check it out, Jameson realised with a sigh.
For good measure, Jameson put two bullets in each of the bodies to make sure they were really dead. It was a trick he’d learnt as a Private in Guadalcanal. Once, when they passed a position of what they thought was a platoon of dead Japanese soldiers, the corpses rose behind them, lobbing grenades and firing widely before engaging them in hand-to-hand combat. It was only by sheer luck that he’d survived, one of only four of his platoon to have done so. It was a mistake you only made once.
Satisfied, Jameson unwrapped a D ration chocolate bar and took a bite. He then signalled for the rest of his squad to approach.
Up came Roberts and Harris, their rifles slung across their backs, followed by Johnson with his BAR.
When Johnson saw the machine gunner his eyes lit up and he leaned his gun against the sandbag to pull the body off the gun by the back of his webbing.
“What the fuck are you doing Johnson?” Jameson asked.
With his smile wide with glee, he took the Japanese machine gun and aimed it down the hill.
“I’ve never seen a Nambu so intact! I was sure it would have been fucked by the mortar,” he replied as he swept its sights down the hill, mimicking the firing arc of the gunner that had killed so many men. “It’s a beauty.”
“I’m glad you’re having so much fun,” Jameson replied in a sarcastic voice. “Where’s Balder?”
“Still climbing,” Roberts replied with a smirk.
As if on cue, Balder emerged panting up the slope, his face red and covered with sweat. The flamethrower strapped to his back rattled as he scrambled up and collapsed onto the floor, sitting next to the dead Japanese soldier with half a face.
“Took your time,” Harris said, his voice light with laughter.
“Yeah? You try lugging seventy pounds of flammable fuel up a cliff with the rest of your kit, see how you cope,” Balder spat back, throwing a stone at Harris’ feet.
“That’s enough,” Jameson barked. “We’ve got a job to do here or have you forgotten?”
Balder shook his head and dropped his face in his hands. When he lifted it up, he finally noticed the corpse next to him and scrambled away to the other side of the MG position with a startled yelp.
The rest of the squad laughed and even Jameson struggled to suppress a smirk.
“We’re gonna have to check out that cave aren’t we?” Roberts said, stepping over to the cave’s mouth and squinting inside.
“You know it,” Jameson replied.
“Any chance of a few minute’s rest before we go in, Corporal?”
“Not a chance. Roberts, Harris, you’re with me.”
Roberts and Harris exchanged a look and Roberts handed a D-ration to Harris.
“Fuck,” Roberts said.
“I knew it’d be us.”
“It’s always us.”
“What about us, Corporal?” Balder asked.
“Not a chance I’m taking you into a cave with me, Balder. Don’t want a stray bullet making barbecue out of us. You and Johnson will wait out here and stand guard. Johnson, signal the rest of the squad, tell them it’s safe to come up. If you want to make yourself useful, Balder, you can start looking through these crates, see if there’s anything that we can use in them.”
“On it,” Balder replied, shouldering the straps of his flamethrower off and rolling them to get used to the lack of weight on them.
“And for fuck’s sake be careful. These crates could be full of booby traps.”
Without another word, Jameson turned his flashlight on and hooked it to his webbing before journeying into the darkness. Roberts and Harris followed behind, adding their own lights to his. The inside of the cave smelt damp, like a shirt that had been left in the bottom of a washing machine for too long. This mixed with the stench of dried blood, rotting meat, and smoke that had become ubiquitous for the whole of the campaign. Dry hay crunched underfoot, causing Jameson to wince with every footstep. They held their weapons close to their shoulders, ready to fire at the first sign of movement.
When they had explored deep into the network of caves, they came across a large chamber that had been made up into a makeshift air raid shelter. It was the first sign of life they had come across other than the mess of army supplies and buckets that had been used as latrines that littered the passages.
The walls were lined with Tatami set up for sleeping, the blankets upon them were crumpled and the pillows sunken where people had slept on them.
Jameson held his hand up to indicate that Roberts and Harris should stay put then knelt and placed his hand on the blanket. It was still warm, the occupants had been sleeping there recently. But where were they?
Carefully, he rose and indicated that they should enter. Harris stayed in the doorway, keeping his torch pointed down the passage in case anyone approached.
Roberts nudged another blanket back with the butt of his rifle, revealing a child’s doll. It was filthy with dust and one of its eyes was missing. Frowning, he placed it underneath his webbing.
In the centre of the cave the embers of a fire glowed and above it there was a pot of soup that was still steaming. Jameson scanned the roof of the cave for a hole, if they were cooking in here there had to be a ventilation hole to let out the smoke.
At the back of the cave there was a large flag of the Rising Sun. The white was stained and yellowed and there were tears that had been hastily repaired throughout but the red remained vibrant. It flapped lazily as if pushed by a slight breeze, instantly Jameson knew there was another room behind it.
Jameson approached and pulled back the flag only to immediately regret the decision. Horrified he stepped back and leaned against the wall to wait for the nausea to pass. Shocked by this reaction, Roberts came over and pulled the flag back, the horrified choke at what he saw made Jameson wince.
Regaining himself, Jameson straightened and yanked the flag down, exposing rows of bodies, a mixture of old and young, women, men and children, their faces pale and ghostly. The children and women had bruises on their necks where they had been strangled by the oldest man in their respective families, often a boy as young as fourteen or an old man. These sat in the centre of the room, on their knees, their chests burst open where they had held grenades to themselves. Pieces of flesh clung to the walls of the cave like gruesome decoration. Their faces were twisted in terror, with tears trailing down their faces, cleaning away the grime.
At the back of the cave, a Japanese officer knelt, his tunic unbuttoned to reveal his bare stomach. A cut like the open seam of a coat spilled blood and guts from the officer’s stomach. His face was set in grim determination.
“What the fuck?” Roberts gasped, his throat clogged with tears.
It wasn’t the first of such massacres they had come across. The Okinawan civillians had been filled with horror stories of American soldiers who would rape an cannabalise them if they were captured. It made sense that many would want to spare themselves and their families of this fate. It didn’t make it any easier to see.
Frowning, Jameson went down on one knee and held a necklace from around the neck of the closest corpse to him. He decided to ignore the fact that not too long ago this had been a living person, perhaps somebody’s mother, wife, or daughter. Attached to a string there was a small wooden charm, about the size of a cigarette lighter with the Japanese character for protection on it.
Carefully, Jameson removed the necklace from around the woman’s neck and handed it to Roberts. His father was a carpenter and he boasted the ability to deduce any type of wood from a hundred yards away.
“What do you make of that?” Jameson asked.
Roberts turned the charm in his hand and held it up into the torchlight. His body still shook from the shock of the sight so it was a welcome distraction.
“Looks like the wood from a peach tree,” Roberts said. “Why?”
Jameson bit his lip.
“All the bodies are wearing them. Even the kids.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of local custom.”
“Maybe. I’ll ask one of the interpreters when we get back to base,” Jameson said and wrapped the necklace around his neck.
They stood there in silent horror at the sight before them.
“Come on, we’ll have a GRU sort them out. There’s nothing we can do here.”
Roberts nodded and took a deep breath, steadying himself.
He removed the doll from his belt and knelt next to the body of a young girl, she couldn’t have been much older than six. She lay there, her eyes staring at the ceiling, her round face caked in dirt. Gently, he placed the doll within her arms and closed her eyes. For a moment it looked like Roberts had frozen, it was only by the barely perceptible movement of his lips that he knew he was praying. Then he rose and they left the room.
“Find anything?” Harris asked.
Jameson shook his head.
“Nothing of note,” he said and they continued into the caves.
Thick silence surrounded them, broken only by the muffled sounds of their footsteps and the steady drips of water dropping from the ceiling onto their steel helmets. The light from their flashlights shone ahead, barely piercing into the depths of the caves.
Jameson froze and held his hand up to tell his men to do the same. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the passage and slowly he brought his Tommy gun up and flicked off the safety.
Wordlessly, Roberts and Harris did the same with their rifles.
Like the steady coming of the tides there grew a sound that confounded Jameson. At first it seemed to mix with the dripping from the ceiling but then it grew too loud to confuse it as such. It sounded like someone playing an impossibly long game of hop scotch. A rhythmic, steady hopping that became louder as the source grew closer.
“What the fuck is–?”
Jameson hushed Roberts with a stern look, admonishing him for saying what the rest of them were thinking.
His finger trembled on the trigger until he steadied his breath and focused at the point behind his sights. His knees felt as if they would give way and his every instinct told him to run but he held his ground. He was leading these men and he needed to set an example.
The sound grew closer. It was just round the corner. Only a few more moments and he would see it.
“On my mark,” Jameson whispered to his men, more to confirm to himself that they were still there than to give an order.
Into the combined arcs of their flashlights a man hopped into view. It wore a long blue robe with a black and red hat which had a sheet of paper attached to it, the paper had writing on it though it was difficult to read as the man kept hopping toward them.
“Stop where you are!” Jameson yelled before remembering one of the Japanese phrases he’d learnt. “Kosan-Se-Yo!”
But the man kept hopping toward them.
“Kosan-Se-Yo!” Jameson repeated, gesturing wildly with his Tommy gun.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Roberts asked.
“He’s crazy!” cried Harris.
“Kosan-Se-Yo!” Jameson said once more, his voice straining with fear and confusion.
“Fuck this,” Harris said, and broke formation to approach the man.
“Get back behind me Harris! That’s an order!” Jameson bellowed.
Harris looked back with a smirk.
“What? It’s probably some nut escaped from the looney bin,” he said and rose his rifle next to the man’s head.
“Harris, you get away. He could be dangerous!”
With that the paper attached to the man’s head flapped up, revealing a face of sickly green skin that was rotting and filled with maggots. Its wide open mouth revealed fangs which it sunk into Harris’ arm as he yelped in terror.
“Bring him down!” Jameson shouted, unloading a whole drum magazine into the hopping figure as Roberts let rip with his rifle.
Their guns fell silent as their ammo ran out and the man did not fall. It drained Harris of his blood, his face slowly growing grey as his very life force was sucked away.
Satisfied, he let Harris’ body drop to the floor and turned his attention to Jameson and Roberts.
The soldiers stumbled backwards, desperately fumbling to reload their weapons as the figure hopped toward them. Blood dripped from its chin as it moved with one goal, to continue its feast.
“Run,” Jameson gasped as the magazine clicked into place.
“What?” Roberts asked.
“Run!” Jameson yelled before letting rip another burst of his Tommy gun. By the time the rounds had finished rolling on the floor, Roberts was sprinting away.
With one final burst, Jameson followed.
They sprinted back down the passageway, past the chamber of corpses, until they could see the glint of daylight from the cave’s entrance. They were nearly there, nearly safe. All the while the hopping continued behind them, somehow keeping pace with them as they struggled to breath with the energy they were using.
They passed the corner and Jameson could see Johnson and Balder waiting by the mouth of the cave.
“Hey!” Jameson cried with relief until his foot fell on a tin cup, tripping him and sending him sprawling on the floor.
Roberts hesitated a few steps away from Jameson but carried on his escape at Jameson’s order.
When Jameson turned to get up, the man was upon him, standing over him with a fearsome expression. Its long fangs glinted in the torchlight as it prepared to pounce on him, Jameson emitted a terrified scream, the necklace fell out from his tunic as he scrambled to get away.
The man recoiled in anguish at the sight of the peach tree charm, hissing terribly at Jameson.
Thirty rounds of light machine gun fire burst through its body, shredding the man’s robes and sending him recoiling backwards.
“Hurry up, Corporal!” Johnson said in the following silence.
Jameson got to his feet, sprinting toward the outside.
“Baldur! Get the fucking flamethrower!” he cried.
But Baldur was already on it, he had strapped the gasoline canisters to his back and was readying the wand. He jogged a few feet into the cave mouth and waited for Jameson to get clear.
Jameson’s feet skidded in the dirt as he turned just in time to watch Baldur unleash a stream of flaming fuel all over the man, dousing him with fire and smoke.
A terrible, guttural screech emitted from the creature as its body convulsed, struggling against its own stiffness to writhe in agony. Baldur did not release the trigger until the gas canisters were empty and for good measure, Jameson unloaded a full drum from his Tommy gun into the thing’s smouldering corpse. As they stood panting and staring at the slowly dying embers, Jameson let out a heavy relieved sigh. In all his years fighting from island to island, he had never felt closer to death than he did watching that thing hop slowly toward him.