Jinn

by Matthew B.J. Delaney

Genres: War & Military; Horror; Military Thrillers

Synopsis

It is May 1943. On the remote island of Bougainville, in the South Pacific, a squad of United States Marines beats their way through the thick jungle. They've landed to do battle with the Japanese soldiers on the island, but in short order, they begin to realize that the forbidding battleground holds an ancient secret a hundred times more terrifying than any enemy army---especially when they start finding the bodies.

Flash-forward to July 2008. In the slums---and the skyscrapers---of Boston, a new kind of depraved serial killer is stalking human prey and terrifying the city. The bodies have been found posed and mutilated in bizarre ways that the two police officers in charge of the case have never seen before---and never want to see again. Are the two scenarios connected?

Detectives Jefferson and Brogan have no idea that to solve the biggest case of their careers, their investigation must take them around the world and through time and history---from a mysterious salvaged submarine with a shocking secret, to an inhumane prison where the inmates are even more scared than usual of "the Pit," and finally back to the beginning: the sinister island in the South Seas where something inhuman has been biding its time.

Matthew B.J. Delaney's Jinn won the 2003 International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel.

Release date: April 1, 2007

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 448

Sample

BOUGAINVILLE, NORTHERN SOLOMON ISLANDS
PACIFIC THEATER
11 NOVEMBER 1943, DAWN

The eight landing craft formed a jagged line of gray ship's metal across the tumbling Pacific Ocean. The small boats rose and dove through the rough waters, the ocean's shimmering green phosphorescence pounding against the ship's straight metal sides before misting over the helmeted heads of F Company. Private Eric Davis stood corralled between Marines, their helmets dripping salt water, their fatigues dark and wet. He hunched his shoulders as the landing craft caught the crest of another wave, diving through it in a nauseating roll, more water spraying onto the men.

Two months earlier he had been home in Boston. Then there was the draft. A month of training in Mississippi, his station in the Pacific, and the rest was a blur of sleepless nights aboard rolling ships, lying on canvas bunks, one on top of the other, listening to the occasional air raid warnings as Japanese Zeros buzzed above, circling like hungry vultures over their prey.

The landing craft hit another sickening drop, forcing Eric to spread his legs wider to hold his balance as more water sheeted down on him. They had been circling the island for ten minutes, the warm sun baking their helmets, drying the salt tightly against their skin. Over the metal sides of the landing craft, the men turned their heads, watching the Navy's shells slam into the thick vegetation across the beach.

Turning suddenly, the LCM slanted toward the shore. A Marine Air Group torpedo bomber roared overhead, its single prop cutting the air as it blasted by, making one last pass at the beachhead.

Men around him began to vomit. Some leaned their heads over the sides of the landing craft, others covered their mouths with the little paper bags they had been given before boarding. Davis watched the man next to him, bent at the waist, the egg-colored vomit spilling out around his fingers as he made a vain attempt to cover his mouth.

That morning the soldiers had been woken at 3 a.m. The mess boys of the USS Pennsylvania were wearing pressed white jackets and serving up plates of eggs and bacon, while jazz thrummed through the intercom speakers. Eric felt sick when he saw the food. When the military allowed a good meal, it usually meant the men had it coming heavy from the Japs that day. His shipmate Alabama used to say that a decent one was close to a last one, like granting the condemned prisoner his final dinner before the gallows.

The day after a landing, the colored regiments clearing away the dead from the beaches always found a good amount of half-digested eggs mixed in the sand, punched out by bullet wounds to some soldier's gut. They used to serve onions mixed in with the meal, but medical corpsmen found that the smell in the Red Cross tents was too overwhelming. The onion scent literally permeated out through the wounds, mixing with the odors of blood and defecation. Standing well out to sea, the USS Galla, a transport craft from New Guinea, had nine bagged bodies ready to begin the journey home to be buried. Someone had neglected to store them far enough aft, so, in their quarters, the crew could smell them decay.

Most of the Marines were silent as they ate their breakfast, sitting around the metal mess tables under the bare lightbulbs of the ship, listening to the droning of the engines and the slapping of the ocean against the metal sides. Night after night, Davis lay in his cot, his arms stretched behind his head, with the thought of death on an unknown beach growing stronger in his nose. Davis, who had been on the Galla before transferring to the USS Pennsylvania, could smell it again, seeming to waft up from the eggs.

He thought of home, his mind wandering back to Jessica. Hanging near the head of his cot were the three letters he had from her, stored in a tight roll in one of his bandoliers. He found her handwriting comforting, not so much for what it read, but in its femininity, the shapes of the words themselves. The way each letter seemed to flow together in her familiar style.

Before, before the war, before the smell of the dead, he used not to notice when they might be apart. Now, however, it was her face that came to him in the darkness behind his closed lids. Maybe he just liked the idea of a pretty girl caring for him, but, for whatever reason, Davis found himself thinking of her. Especially the way her hair smelled. He used to press her hair against his face, burying himself deep in its sheen. That sweet smell. God, how I loved that.
An explosion slammed his ears, his helmet vibrating against his skull. The damp chin strap, dangling loosely, swung back and forth, hitting him like a wet noodle across the face. The helmet fell down across his eyes, momentarily obscuring his vision. He pushed it back in time to see a section of the beach ahead of them disappear in a red burst of sand and broken branches. The shells from the Missouri landed in the thick palms lining the edge of the beach, sending splintered wood sections into the air for a moment, before they splashed back into the rolling tide.

Eric turned his head, leaning to the side to look out across the ocean. Behind them, safely out to sea, the Missouri and the Nebraska launched their last rounds of protective fire. Dotted against the horizon, the battleships' guns seemed harmless against the vastness of the sea surrounding them, their puffs of gunpowder smoke appearing as benign as milky clouds from burst mushrooms.
The metaphor was lost by the whistle of the automobile-sized shells as they passed overhead, screaming angrily, before slamming into the beach ahead of them.

Their craft continued forward, steadily moving toward the whirl of burning jungle and frothing sand. The LCM ducked again, water spraying against its sides and shooting up into the air in white fountains. Behind him, the ship's diesel engines groaned onward, a pulsating metallic sound, the tone rising and falling with the rolling of the ocean. Sometimes up, sometimes down, but always the monotonous droning. The driver stood above, his face tight and gleaming with seawater beneath his helmet, protected by a metal wall that reached past his waist.

Eric felt a tug on his sleeve.

"Cigarette?" Jimmy Scotti was holding out a thin white stick, while another unlit one dangled precariously from his top lip. His voice was contorted, his mouth tight as he tried to talk while keeping his lips pinched around the cigarette in his mouth.

"No, thanks." Eric shook his head.

Scotti shrugged and put the cigarette carefully into his front pocket, shielding it from the water.

"This is a mess, huh?" Scotti said suddenly, his voice sounding tense.

"What's that?" Eric asked.

"This," Scotti answered simply. "This whole fucking thing. Out here on the waves, landing on some Jap-infested island."

Eric nodded, thinking for a moment. "You know, I've never seen a Japanese person before."

"What?"
"I've never seen anyone Japanese before."

"You're shitting me."

"No." Eric shook his head. "I swear, there was one guy down the street who I thought was Japanese, but turned out he was from China."

Scotti snorted in surprise, then, lifting his head, shouted to someone in the front of the boat, "Hey, Leonard!"

"Yeah?" came the muffled reply from one of the helmeted heads.

"Davis here never seen a Jap before."

A few of the helmets turned toward the back of the craft with mild interest.

"Yeah? Fucking-A," Leonard's reply came, muffled over the sound of the crashing sea and the roar of the engine. "Well, he's about to see a whole fucking bunch of 'em at once."

Scotti nodded at this reply. "Never seen a Jap before . . . fucking Japs," he whispered in amazement to himself, shaking his head. The cigarette was still dangling from his mouth, and Scotti tightened his lips, bringing a silver lighter up toward the white paper.

Eric watched Scotti trying to light the cigarette, the flame dancing around the end of the smoke, his hand too unsteady to hold the lighter in place. "I can't get this damn thing lit." His voice sounded angry. "It's too damn wet out here."
Disgusted, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it overboard, the white stick sucked up instantly by a rolling wave. Eric looked forward, seeing the shore approach steadily. They were close enough that he could distinguish each of the individual trees lining the sand, the gracefully arching palms rising like sentinels guarding the entrance into the jungle beyond.

There was a soft thud from the beach ahead. It was followed by a whistling noise, as if someone had left a teapot on to boil for too long. Around him, men were beginning to cringe, pulling their heads toward their shoulders like turtles. Davis lowered his head as well, gripping his rifle more tightly.

The whistling increased, until reaching a full shriek. There was a pause, then the water next to them exploded into a froth of white as a Japanese 75mm shell smacked close by the craft. The men ducked into the puky mess in the bottom of the landing barge, ceasing to watch the approaching coastline.

"Three minutes!" shouted the driver, perched in the metal-plated wheelhouse above them.

"Get ready," the captain shouted out above the noise of the sea. He was an older man of about thirty-five, with a wide face covered by stubble and acne scars. Shells began exploding in the water around them, violent bursts of white foaming the water, which kept their heads down below the sides of the landing craft.

"Tighten up those helmets," the captain shouted. "Keep the waterproofing on your weapons."

Eric pulled the loose strap tightly underneath his chin, till the helmet pressed against his head. Around him men were doing the same.

"When we hit that beach, keep moving, never stop." The captain was holding the edge of the landing craft, steadying himself against the rolling sea.

There were murmurs and nods among the men. The captain straightened his helmet. "If you feel sick, go ahead and vomit now, get it out of the way." The captain looked around at the men. "Any man that tells you he's not afraid is crazy. Put it aside."

Another explosion tore into the water ahead of them, spraying light steam across the men. Eric crinkled his nose-it smelled like someone had loosened his bowels already. The smell wafted backward from somewhere in the front of the ship.

"Hell, I ain't scared," Scotti was mumbling to himself, rocking back and forth. "Goddammit, I'm gonna be all right." He kept repeating it, until the words flowed together into a chant. He ran his hands over his face, stopping for a moment to rub his glistening eyes, then his fingers frantically began to dig at his chin strap. "This fucking thing's too tight. I can't breathe in this."
"Sixty yards!" the driver shouted from behind, holding up one finger above his head.

Numbly, Eric made the sign of the cross over himself. Beside him, a guy who'd just been transferred into the unit was unwrapping a piece of gum. He put the stick in his mouth and went to work chewing nervously, crumpling up the paper and placing it back in his pocket.

Suddenly Eric had an intense urge to urinate. He crossed his legs, trying to push the sensation away. The sky had begun to cloud over, and rain was falling in thin drizzles, striking against the ocean in gray slanted lines.

The beach ahead was covered in gray-black sand, stretching back about seventy yards before meeting an impossibly thick jungle. Above the line of the jungle, wisps of fog curled around a steep range of mountains, while the surf crashed in low waves against the shore. A thin stream of smoke rose into the air from the great jungle-surrounded volcano, Mt. Bagana. Out at sea, the Missouri and the Nebraska had ceased their protective fire and the landing craft advanced in eerie silence. The talking among the men had halted, each man staring forward in nervous expectation as the rain dotted hundreds of tiny circles on the surface of the gray ocean around them.

Through the thin mist, Eric saw a sudden flash of red on the island. Then a second, and a third. There was an instant of silence, the final moment of quiet, before Japanese bullets tore at the sides of the landing craft. Pa-ching, pling, pling. Then there was another noise, different from the hard crack of metal against metal. It was softer, like a broomstick smacking a plump feather pillow. Just as it sounded, one of the soldiers jerked backward with a short cry, collapsing to the floor of the landing craft.

"Here it comes," the captain shouted. "Stand ready."

The bullets began snapping around them, popping against the metal hull of their LCM with incredible speed. The jungle was flaring with hundreds of pricks of red muzzle flashes, appearing almost as lightning bugs in a dark wood. Eric ducked beneath the sides as much as he could, listening to the random cracking. He was suddenly glad to be in the rear of the craft, ten full rows of men ahead of him forming a protective wall of bodies.

There was a heavy thundering, and a searing heat swept across his face. The landing craft next to theirs had been struck by a Japanese 75mm. Flames erupted from the back, and Eric could hear the cries of the men burning in the intense heat. Thick smoke swirled in small cyclones as the wreck continued to motor forward, running blindly toward the gray-black shore.

"Jesus Christ," Scotti cried to himself.

A sudden jolt against the bottom of their landing craft caused the LCM to shudder, the engine whining in protest.

"Reef!" the driver called from behind.

"Fuck, we're supposed to be going in on the goddamn high tide."

The jolt struck again, and the small ship yawed dangerously to the right, threatening to spill over into the sea. They were still about ten yards from the beach. If they went over, they'd have to swim. One of the men nearest Davis let go of the minesweeper he was carrying, dropping into a huddled ball at the base of the craft as he clutched his gut. Someone near him was praying softly, almost chanting. "Hail Mary. Hail Mary."

Next to him, the new guy spit out his gum, while from behind, Eric heard Scotti muttering something. He gripped his carbine tightly, reminding himself to keep it up over his head if he had to go through water. The beach approached suddenly, and the LCM ground to a momentary halt as it struck hard ground. The engines groaned and pushed toward the shore.

All around him, the hissing of bullets rent the air, moving with inescapable speed. He could hear them approach and blow past him, drilling loudly against metal or sometimes impacting with a muffled thump against flesh.

s20The craft jarred to a second stop, striking against the sandy bottom and throwing the men forward. A roar of fearful anger rose from a few of the soldiers as they prepared themselves for combat in the moments before the flaps fell. Davis closed his eyes for a moment, sucking in his breath, trying not to wet himself.

There was the sudden sound of metal chains being released and sliding forward. The heavy flap fell, splashing into the water and opening up the LCM.

It had begun. Someone was shouting, "Go! Go! Go!" and there was a frantic push forward.

Immediately men began falling, ripped open raw and bloody with numbing quickness. Eric felt the rush, the wild mindless race off the craft and onto the shore. Ahead of them stretched the pitted grayish sand, deeply scorched with rings of black ash by the Navy's heavy bombardment. X-shaped metal joints stuck up jaggedly from the beachhead, the tide washing around them as it rolled up to the jungle. Beyond the joints, multicolored tracer bullets were arching out of the trees, reaching toward the American landing craft, racing to meet the oncoming soldiers.

All along the beach, American landers were running aground, men pouring out in low, crouching runs. Davis shuffled his feet back and forth, still in the back, pressed tightly against the other soldiers. There was a sharp scream, and suddenly the air was filled with feathers. Soft floating down filled the air. It was surreal, dreamlike; the cries of the men, the pounding of the guns, all amidst the gently falling feathers.

A bullet had torn into one of the men, ripping open the standard-issue Kapok life jackets each of the soldiers wore. Davis surged forward through the clumps of featherlike material, a few of them sticking in wet clumps to his face and body.

As he reached the edge of the ramp, his foot caught on someone lying sprawled on the bottom of the landing craft, and he fell forward onto his chest. He pushed off the ground and stepped off the ramp, his boots sinking into the thick wet sand. The ocean water was cool and heavy, soaking into his clothes, weighing down his legs. He slogged forward, his body charged with the electricity of expectation, waiting for the blazing, crushing impact of metal against his body. What would it be like? Where would it hit? His face? His legs, chest?

His boots dug deeply into the wetness, sucking him in like quicksand. He remembered the familiar nightmares of something chasing you from behind as you feel your feet growing heavier, your movements slower, and a coldness pressing in at your back.

Men continued to collapse without warning, their bodies falling and forming dark clumps against the sand. A wave crashed in from behind. Knocked off-balance, Eric staggered forward a few paces, trying to pull his heavy boots underneath him to catch his body. He failed, falling facefirst into the wet sand. As he lay, the water swirled past him, its salty warmth bloody, dyed into a red ocean.
He froze for a moment, burying his face in the muck, listening to screams and the fire of weapons around him. Something heavy fell against his legs, and turning back he saw Rafuse's distorted face peering at him, his hand gripping Eric's leg tightly, a low gasp seeping out of his mouth.

Eric's eyes strayed down Rafuse's body, stopping around his stomach. Where his belly should have been was nothing but a mass of blood and protruding red. Something long and squirming had broken through Rafuse's midsection, and was lying on the sand, rolling like a snake, a quivering mess of blood and guts.
Rafuse's hand moved toward Eric's face, small bits of intestine clinging to the end of his finger. Horrified, Eric slid backward across the sand like a crab, moving out from underneath the heavy weight of Rafuse's body. He backed against something soft, and looking down he saw the leg of a fallen soldier.

Next moment he was up and running, moving as quickly as he could away from those red snakes squirming out of his friend. Ahead was a fallen tree, knocked down by the shell fire and swaying up and down with the rhythm of his feet on the damp sand.

Half-surprising himself, he reached the protective wood and threw himself down into the sand. He pressed his body tightly against the trunk, staring at the bits of rock and bark underneath. Behind him, fallen men were crawling across the beach or lying on their backs, screaming out names known only to them.
The heavy firing from the jungle continued, the red tracer bullets weaving a cross-stitch pattern over the sandy shores, breathing invisible death. In trickling numbers men began joining him behind the fallen tree. They flopped onto the sand, faces filled with the surprise of still existing, that their guts hadn't yet turned into snakes trying to break out through the skin.

Even in its slow death, the giant old tree provided shelter one last time. It protected them from the angry bullets that struck against the rotting wood, trying to burrow their way through and reach the men.

Soldiers around him were unfastening their shovels from their packs, digging shallow foxholes in the sand. Eric looked back across the beach. The smooth sand was dotted with the lumpy forms of the men who hadn't made it to the tree, their bodies rocking back and forth in the water. An LCM was rolling in on the waves, its engines vibrating in the rough water. The craft hit the beach and the flaps fell. Medics with a red cross painted on their helmets poured out, carrying packs filled with supplies.

A Japanese shell landed on the beach, just beyond the barbed wire. It fizzled in the sand for a moment, before exploding, sending hot bits of shrapnel into the bodies of the men. One of the medics went down, his hand pawing at his own pulpy face.

Eric chanced a quick look over the rounded mass of the tree. Set back in the dark shade of the jungle he could see two pillboxes, solidly constructed of coconut logs and dirt, and connected by trenches and a series of rifle pits. He ducked back down and pulled a grenade from his belt. Pulling the pin, he waited a moment and tossed the ball of metal toward one of the pillboxes. Other Marines around him were doing the same, their arms throwing the grenades in quick succession.

There was a series of quick explosions, like the bursting of small paper bags filled with air, and some of the return gunfire diminished. "Let's get over!" someone shouted. Nobody moved. Looking to his side, Eric saw that the voice was coming from a man he didn't recognize, with the stripes of a captain on his helmet.

Around him, men were stripping off their equipment, trying to lighten their packs. Davis pulled off his Navy life belt, two inflatable tubes that strapped around his chest.

"Keep it tight! Keep it tight!" a new captain shouted, not making sense, the veins in his neck bulging.

Men were pressed flat on their stomachs all around Eric, hiding their bodies in depressions in the mud, lifting their heads to fire occasionally into the jungle, their rifles recoiling with each shot. Spent cartridges littered the ground, glowing brass mixed in the black mud.

The heavy fire continued, spraying into the sand and mud around them. Rain continued to fall in slanting drizzles, soaking quickly into the earth and men. Beads of water dripped from the brim of Eric's helmet.

Men were beginning to stream over the log, running bent over into the jungle, moving toward the log-and-earth pillboxes. Resting his rifle on the fallen tree, Eric fired at the Japanese positions. His gun ejected the spent cartridge and he fumbled in his bandolier for another clip. Jamming it back into the gun, he pumped out bullets blindly, his Garand making a pop, pop, pop sound like an amusement park air rifle.

His clip spent, he stood up and tried to vault over the top of the trunk. Catching his foot on the ridged bark, he sprawled forward into the mud. As he scrambled quickly along the ground, a searing heat suddenly branded Davis's arm, and he fell flat. His shoulder was bleeding through a tear in his fatigues, the sight of his own blood startling him. Something inside urged him to move. No longer thinking, he rushed forward, barely conscious of the other men around him, also moving along the ground in the same hunched-over position.

He saw a dirty soldier running quickly through the jungle, heading toward the Japanese bunker. Eric raised his rifle and pulled the trigger, firing at the only Japanese person he'd ever seen. The man jerked, his body spinning around as the bullet impacted, sending him to the jungle floor.

More Japanese soldiers were streaming out of the log structures. Their cries of attack carried through the jungle as they charged to meet the oncoming Americans. A man with a sparse beard and dark eyes appeared suddenly in Davis's face. Davis swung the barrel of his rifle forward, pulling the trigger. The man disappeared from view, falling backward into the mud, and Davis advanced without further thought.

Men had begun to fight with their hands, close enough so that the blood from the dying beat across the faces of the living. American soldiers had reached the pillboxes, swarming across in scattered groups like ants.

"Burn 'em out!" someone screamed, as one of the soldiers, his back weighted down with a long, silver-colored fuel canister, stood outside the entrance of one of the boxes. A stream of flames shot out of the soldier's weapon, exploding through the opening and filling the structure with fire.

"Light it!" an American near him urged.

A shirtless Japanese soldier, his chest patched with dirt, broke from one of the trenches, confusedly running toward the American forces. A Marine struck him heavily across the face with the butt end of his rifle, and the man collapsed to the ground stunned, blood streaming from his nose.

The Marine was silent as he struck the fallen soldier again, cracking his skull under the blows from the end of the heavy rifle. Afterward, he stood up, arching his back as if stretching and wiping his forehead with the back of his forearm.
The heavy fighting had ended, but the dense jungle cloaked the few remaining Japanese soldiers around them. Marines were moving warily, sending arching flames into trenches, dropping grenades into camouflaged foxholes. Eric collapsed with fatigue into the sand. Adrenaline shot through his body, pitting into his stomach like a drug. He bent over and vomited eggs onto the sand. Wiping his mouth with his free hand, he spit, then leaned on his rifle for support.

One of the guys had a forgotten Japanese flag and took it out, smiling. "Hey," he shouted. "A Rising Sun!"

Davis turned his eyes toward the noise and saw it was Scotti. He was waving the flag over his head and standing on one of the pillboxes. He pointed to one of the men. "I'm a fucking Jap!" He laughed.

From somewhere in the jungle a rifle cracked. Scotti dropped the flag and clutched his throat, pawing at his neck, his face turning red as if he were choking. His hands dropped to his side, and Eric saw a half-dollar-sized bullet hole where the man's Adam's apple had been. Scotti collapsed to the ground.
Gradually the gunfire slowed to sporadic shots, individual recoils sounding from the jungle before finally dying out altogether. Davis lay back on the ground, closing his eyes. He heard the waves rolling along the sand and the crackling of the burning Japanese pillboxes. Occasionally a man would groan with pain. He looked up as a flock of parakeets flew across the jungle border, cutting back and forth in perfect formation.

Turning his eyes away from the sky, he gazed around at the wasted dead. Japanese and American soldiers covered the jungle floor, some sprawled over one another in strange embraces, blood from their wounds intermingling. A heavy rain had begun to fall, striking the wide green leaves of the canopy above. The entire jungle seemed to shimmer with wet color.

On the ground, lying close to him, was something like a man. The soldier was burned so badly that Eric couldn't tell if he were American or Japanese. His eyes were gaping holes, his black lips skinned back, his teeth showing white against the burned skin. Drops of water, falling from the trees, sizzled as they hit the man's face, little bursts of steam rising from the superheated charred flesh.


Two hours later, Eric sat in the sand, his back propped against a log, while one of the medics placed a white bandage across the wound in his arm. He looked out over the beach, watching the Pacific waters rolling up the sand in gentle waves. The coast was lined with the drab green steel of equipment. Large squat landing barges had delivered the first of the light tanks and half-tracks, which roamed the edge of the jungle burning diesel fuel. The M3A1 tanks, the Honeys, armed with 37mm guns, coughed up diesel smoke and grumbled as their tracks clawed through the fine sand.

A rough tent had been strung between two palms, and most of the wounded and dying had been carried underneath the dark green fabric. The air inside was stifling. Davis preferred baking in the sun on the beach to being inside with those men, all half-crazed with pain.

Most of the dead had been cleared from the beach. They lay in long lines just inside the perimeter of the jungle, pulled out of the way of the heavy equipment. Later they'd be searched for personal letters, which would get mailed. Then their bodies would be bagged up and taken out on the next ship.
The first bivouac was being established about a quarter mile from the shore. The trees, nothing more than burned stumps after the naval bombardment, were cleared, the ground flattened, and office tents erected. Men, stripped to the waist, their tags glinting in the sun, labored to clear out the heavy brush.

"Rough go of it?" the medic attending Davis's arm asked.

"Yeah, pretty rough," Davis replied.

"Hell, we're getting it rough all up and down here," the medic observed thoughtfully.

The MO finished patching Davis's wound and stood up, arching his back and stretching.

"You'll be all right. Get yourself a Purple Heart, take it home, show your girl."

"Thanks," Davis said, pulling himself to his feet.

The MO nodded and wandered off toward the medical tent. A wounded man was screaming inside, thrashing around on the sand while two MOs held him down as a third jabbed a long needle into his arm.

Davis turned away, walking back across the sand, his arm feeling heroically numb. Three of the guys he knew from the Pennsylvania were lounging around in the shade of a coconut tree. They were smoking cigarettes and watching the half-tracks drive across the beach.

Davis joined them, leaning up against the rough bark of the coconut tree and sliding to the ground.

"What, you kidding me? Hundred to one, I'd rather be over in Europe than the Pacific right now," a twenty-four-year-old named Jersey Walker was saying to the other men. "Shit, you got better climate, no bugs, better food."

"And the Nazis aren't crazy like the Japs. You ever heard of a Jap surrendering?" said Kelly K