The Naked and the Dead (76 page)

            They continued to plod on. They were much closer to Mount Anaka now. Every time they crossed a ridge-line they could see the towering cliff walls bordering the pass, could distinguish even the individual trees in the forests on its middle slopes. The country, even the air, had changed. It was cooler here, but the air was perceptibly thinner, and burned faintly in their lungs.

            They reached the approach to the pass by three o'clock. Croft climbed the crest of the last hill, crouched behind a bush, and examined the land before them. Beneath the hill, a valley extended for perhaps a quarter of a mile, an island of tall grass surrounded by the mountain range in front, and by hills to the left and right. Beyond the valley the pass wound through the range in a twisting rocky gorge between sheer walls of stone. The floor of the defile was hidden in foliage, and might conceal any number of men.

            He stared at the few knolls set in the opening of the pass, searching the jungle that circled about its foot. He had a quiet satisfaction that he had come so far. A damn lot of land we crossed, he told himself. Through the silence which hung over the hills, he could hear the muffled rumble of artillery on the other side of the mountains, the sporadic grumble of a battle.

            Martinez had come up beside him. "All right, Japbait," he whispered, "let's keep to the hills around the edge of this valley. If they's anyone sitting at the entrance to the pass, they'll see us if we go through the field." Martinez nodded, crouched over the top of the hill, and turned to the right to circle the valley. Croft waved his arm to the rest of the platoon to follow, and started down the hill.

            They moved very slowly, keeping close to the tall grass. Martinez would advance only thirty yards at a time, and then halt, before moving forward again. Something of his caution was transferred to the men. Without anything being said, they all were wary. They roused themselves from their fatigue, alerted their dulled senses, even restored to some extent a necessary delicate control of their limbs. They were careful where they placed their feet, and they lifted their legs at each step, and set them down firmly, trying to make no noise. They were all acutely conscious of the silence in the valley, and started at unexpected rustles, halted every time an insect began its chirping. Their tension increased. They expected something to happen, and their mouths became dry, their heartbeats pounded high in their chests.

            It was only a few hundred yards from the place where Croft had studied the valley to the approaches of the pass, but the route Martinez took was more than half a mile. It took them a long time to circle around, perhaps half an hour, and their alertness diminished. The men in the rear of the column had to wait minutes at a time, and then jog forward on the half-run to keep up with the rest of the platoon. It was trying, it was exhausting, and it grated on them. Their fatigue became alive again, and throbbed in their backs, in the exhausted hamstrings of their thighs. They would stand in a partial crouch, waiting for the signal to move ahead, their packs resting cruelly on their shoulders. The sweat would run into their eyes, and their eyes would tear. They lost the fine edge of their tension, became surly. A few of them began to grumble, and in one of the longer halts Wilson stopped to relieve himself. They began to move while he was still occupied and the column was confused. The men in the rear whispered up the file to halt the leaders, and for a minute or so men were moving back and forth and whispering to each other. When Wilson was ready, they advanced again, but discipline was broken. Although none of the men talked aloud, the sum of their whispers, their decreased caution in walking, added up to a detectable murmur of sound. Occasionally Croft would give a hand signal to be silent, but it did not have enough effect.

            They reached the cliffs at the base of Mount Anaka, and bore to the left again, darting toward the pass from rock to rock. They reached a place where there was no defilade; an open field, a cove of the larger valley extended for a hundred yards to the first saddle in the pass. There was nothing to do but walk across it. Hearn and Croft squatted behind a ledge and discussed their strategy.

            "We got to divvy up into the two squads, Lootenant, and have one of them go across the field while the other covers."

            "I guess that's it," Hearn nodded. It was oddly, incongruously pleasant, to be sitting on the rock ledge, absorbing the warmth of the sun on his body. He took a deep breath. "That's what we'll do. When the first squad reaches the pass, the other one can come on up."

            "Yeah." Croft massaged his chin, examining the Lieutenant's face. "I'll take the squad, huh, Lootenant?"

            No! This was where he had to step in. "I'm going to take it, Sergeant. You cover me."

            "Well. . . all right, Lootenant." He paused a moment. "You better take Martinez's squad. Most of the older men are in it."

            Hearn nodded. He thought he had detected a trace of surprise and disappointment in Croft's expression and it pleased him. But immediately afterward he was annoyed with himself. He was getting childish.

            He motioned to Martinez and held up one finger to indicate he wanted the first squad. After a minute or two, the men formed about him. Hearn could feel some tension in his throat, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, a whisper. "We're going to move into that grove, and the second squad will cover us. I don't have to tell you to keep your eyes open." He fingered his throat, feeling as though he had forgotten something. "Keep at least five yards apart." Some of the men nodded in agreement.

            Hearn stood up, climbed over the ledge, and began to walk across the open field toward the foliage that covered the entrance to the pass. Behind him and to his left and right, he could hear the footsteps of the squad. Automatically he held his rifle at his side, both hands gripping the stock. The field was a hundred yards long, and perhaps thirty yards wide, bordered by the cliffs on one side and the valley of tall grass on the other. It sloped downward slightly over a run of scattered small rocks. The sun beat on it fiercely, refracting brightly from the stones and the barrels of their rifles. The silence was intense again, laving itself in layers of somnolence.

            Hearn could feel the impact of each step on the sore bruised ball of his foot, but it seemed to exist at a great distance from his body; he knew remotely that his hands were slippery on the gun. The tension banked itself in his chest only to flare forth at any unexpected sound, anyone kicking a stone or scuffling his feet. He swallowed, looked behind him for a moment at the squad of men. His senses were exceptionally alert. Behind everything, he had a suppressed joy and excitement.

            Some of the foliage in the grove seemed to move. He halted abruptly, and stared across the fifty yards which separated them. Seeing nothing, he waved his hand forward again, and they continued to advance.

            BEE-YOWWWWW!

            The shot ricocheted off a rock and went singing into the distance. Suddenly, terrifyingly, the grove crackled with gunfire, and the men in the field withered before it like a wheat prairie in a squall. Hearn dropped to the ground behind a rock, looked behind him to see the rest of the men crawling for cover, squirming and cursing and shouting at each other. The rifle fire continued, steady and vicious, mounting in crescendo with the parched snapping sound of wood in a forest fire. The bullets chirruped by in the soft buzzing sound of insects on the wing, or glanced off a rock and went screaming through the air with the tortured howl of metal ripping apart. BEE-YOWWWWWW! BEEE-YOWWWWWWW! TEE-YOOOOOOOOONG! The men in the field flopped behind their rocks, quivered helpless, afraid to raise their heads. Behind them, back of the rock ledge, after a pause, Croft and his squad had begun to fire into the grove at the other end of the field. The walls of the cliff refracted the sound, bounced it back into the valley, where it rushed about in disorder, the echoes overlapping like conflicting ripples in a brook. A wash of sound beat over the men, almost deafening them.

            Hearn lay prone behind a rock, his limbs twitching, sweat running into his eyes. He stared for long seconds at the granite veins and tissues of the rock before him, looking with numb absorption, without volition. Everything in him had come undone. The impulse to cover his head and wait passively for the fight to terminate was very powerful. He heard a sound trickle out of his lips, was dumbly surprised to know he had made it. With everything, with the surprising and unmanning fear was a passionate disgust with himself. He couldn't quite believe it. He had never been in combat before, but to act like this. . .

            BEE-YOWWWWWW! Rock fragments and powder settled on his neck, itched slightly. The gunfire was spiteful, malevolent. It seemed directed at him, and he winced unconsciously every time a bullet passed. All the water in his body had rushed to the surface. Perspiration dripped steadily, automatically, from his chin, the tip of his nose, from his brow into his eyes. The skirmish was only fifteen or twenty seconds old, and he was completely wet. A steel band wrenched at his clavicle, choked his throat. His heart pounded like a fist beating against a wall. For ten seconds he concentrated only on knitting his sphincter, roused to a pitch of revulsion by the thought of soiling himself. "NO! NO!" The bullets whirred past with an ineffable delicate sound.

           
He had to get them out of here!
But his arms cushioned his head, and he flinched each time a bullet ricocheted off a rock. Back of him he heard the men bawling to each other, shouting words back and forth incoherently. Why this fear? He had to shake it. What had happened to him? This was unbelievable. Before him for an instant, in shame and fear, was the touch of Cummings's cigarette as he had stooped to pick it up. He felt as though he could hear everything, the scattered men breathing hoarsely behind their rocks, the Japanese in the grove calling to each other, even the rustling of the grass and the tense humming sounds of the crickets in the valley. Behind him, Croft's squad was still firing. He ducked behind the rock, scrounging his body as a volley of Japanese fire ricocheted off it. The stone and dust stung the back of his neck.

            Why didn't Croft do something? And abruptly he realized that he had been waiting here for Croft to take over, waiting for the sharp voice of command that would lead him out of this. It roused a vivid rage. He slid his carbine around the side of the rock, started to squeeze the trigger.

            But the gun wouldn't fire; the safety catch was still on. This mistake infuriated him. Not quite conscious of what he was doing, he stood up, pressed the safety and fired a volley of three or four shots into the grove.

            "GET BACK, GET BACK," he roared. "COME ON, GET UP, GET UP!. . . BACK!" Numbly he heard himself shouting, his voice shrill and furious. "COME ON, GET UP AND RUN!" There were bullets whipping past him, but standing on his feet they seemed insignificant. "GET BACK TO THE OTHER SQUAD!" he roared again, running from rock to rock, his voice bellowing like something apart from himself. He turned and fired again, five shots as quickly as he could squeeze them off, and waited dumb, motionless. "GET UP AND FIRE. GIVE THEM A VOLLEY!"

            A few of the men in the squad stood up and fired. Awed, confused, the grove was silent for a few seconds. "COME ON, RUN!" The men straggled to their feet, looked mutely at him, and began to race toward the ledge from which they had started. They faced the grove, fired a few shots, and ran back for twenty yards, stopped to fire again, retreating pell-mell, sobbing like animals in anger and fear. The Japanese in the grove were firing once more, but they paid no attention. All of them were frantic. In motion, they wanted only one thing -- to reach the safety of the ledge.

            One by one, gasping, panting angrily, they climbed the last shelf of rock and dropped behind its bank, their bodies pungent with sweat. Hearn was one of the last. He rolled over on the ground, came to his knees. Brown and Stanley and Roth, Minerta and Polack were still firing, and Croft helped him to stand. They crouched behind the rock. "We all get back?" Hearn panted.

            Croft looked about quickly. "Looks like all of us." He spat. "C'mon, Lootenant, we got to get out of here, they'll be circling around soon."

            "Everybody here?" Red shouted. He had a long abrasion on his cheek, powdered with embedded dirt. His sweat etched through it like tears on a dirty face. The men were clambering behind the shelter of the rock, shouting angrily and nervously at each other.

            "IS THERE ANYBODY THE FUG MISSING?" Gallagher shouted.

            "Everybody's here," someone yelled back.

            The grove at the other end of the field was silent. Only an occasional shot chirruped over their heads.

            "Let's get out of here."

            Croft peered over the top of the shelf, searched the field for an instant and saw nothing. He ducked down as a few shots chased after him. "Want to go, Lootenant?"

            Hearn was unable to concentrate for a moment. He was still caught in the ferment that had aroused him. He could not quite believe they were back to a temporary safety; all his energies were balked. He wanted to drive them for another hundred yards and another, bawling out his commands, bellowing his rage. He rubbed his head. It was impossible for him to think. He was churning. "All right, let's go," he blurted. There was an emotion in it somewhere, as sweet as anything he had ever known.

            The platoon jogged away from the shelf, keeping close to the cliffs of Mount Anaka. They walked quickly, almost running, the men at the rear crowding up to the men ahead of them. There was a low hill they had to cross which put them in view of the grove for a few seconds, but it was several hundred yards away. They drew only a few scattered shots as they darted quickly, one by one, over the summit. For twenty minutes they kept walking and running, going farther and farther to the east, parallel to the base of the mountain. They were more than a mile away, separated by many small hills from the entrance to the pass, before they halted. Hearn, following Croft's example, selected a draw near the summit of a knoll, and posted four men at the approaches. The others flung themselves down, panting breathlessly.