Nen (13 page)

Paul and his scouting team moved up the creaky spiral stairway and landed on the catwalk that formed a narrow corridor on the second level of that building. At least twenty prisoner cells were evenly spread out along the catwalk. The cells were of the same size, about ten by five feet. In each of the windowless prison cell was a small rusty iron bed with its four legs riveted into the hard cement ground and a ghastly water closet sitting right next to it. The four men strode past the first few cells which were empty and unlocked. They stopped when they reached a locked cell. There was a human skeleton lying motionless on the bed with its hollow eye sockets staring straight at them.

“What do you think of this, Nelson?” Johnny asked, eyeing at the skeleton that was not wearing what a prisoner should be wearing, but donning a smart officer-grade uniform with a pistol holster strapped on his leather belt. A Nambu semi-automatic pistol was lying in his skeletal palm and a coin-sized bullet hole could be seen on his bald skull near his left temple.

“He killed himself, that’s for sure. At least he died with his whole body still intact.” Nelson said.

“Judging from his uniform, he must be one of the top guys here, maybe a commanding officer.” Paul said.

“I thought these prison cells were meant for prisoners of war right? For the Chinese people, maybe?” Kenso said.

The other three men turned and smiled wickedly at him.

“No offence, but Japan was at war with China when all these happened and the prisoners they put in the cells should not be this high ranking officer but the… the Chinese soldiers right?” Kenso said.

“You’re right Kenso, we’re just pulling your leg.” Paul said, “If he was really the commanding officer, maybe there was a coup and his subordinates had locked him up in this prison cell?”

“That’s quite unlikely Paul, why would they allow him to keep his pistol then? I think he locked himself in so that whatever killed his men was unable to kill him?” Nelson said, rubbing his eyes.

“Yes, I overlooked that. You’re probably right.” Paul said, turning his attention to the next prison cell right ahead.

The four men went past all the prisoner cells on level two and they realized that six of the lockups were bolted with a high ranking Japanese soldier lying dead in it. Four of these soldiers had bullet holes in their skulls and their pistol or revolver was by their sides.

While coming down the spiral stairway, Paul said, “All these officers locked themselves in and four of them had swallowed bullets. What the hell happened here?”

“Really beats me, Paul. The other two officers up there who did not shoot themselves had apparently starved to death” Johnny said.

“Yeah, one of them actually was holding what I believe was the keys to the cells but he did not escape. He rather starved to death in the cell.” Kenso added.

“Whatever it is, hell ran loose here and we’re surely the first to find out-” Johnny was interrupted by a muffled thud that came from one of the office rooms at ground floor. Bolts of electrifying chills propagated from the napes of the four men down to their heels.

“You heard that?” Paul gasped.

“Yes, it came from there.” Johnny said, hooking around some wooden boxes and quickened his pace toward a grimy door that had a small painted Japanese flag on it. With the rifle tightly held in his left hand, he turned the rusty door knob with his right and eased open the door while Paul, Nelson and Kenso lurked forward quietly and stood behind him.

The room was pitching dark. Johnny found the switches and turned on the overhead. It cast an odd, unsteady light, waxing bright for a while and then dim. A large Japanese Imperial Flag and a tattered map of China hung loosely on a wall directly across the room. There was a stack of radio signaling devices on the table below the Japanese flag and beside the table was a high-back armchair made of rosewood with its back facing the four wide-eyed men. Someone was sitting on the arm chair! For a moment Johnny thought there was something wrong with his eyes. The person on the armchair just tilted his head to the left!!

CHAPTER 21

“Holy shit! This one is alive.” Paul whispered, pointing his vintage Type 99 rifle at the man sitting in the armchair with his back facing them. From the doorway where they were standing, the guys could see the shape of the man’s head protruding slightly above the backrest of the chair. And there was still a fair amount of hair on his head. Paul and the rest waited but the man in the chair did not move again.

“I think he is dead.” Kenso whispered.

“No, I swear he just moved his head.” Johnny said softly.

“I saw that too, Johnny.” Paul whispered. He made a gesture to Nelson. It was a hand gesture that they were both familiar with and had used it a hundred times during their tactical field trainings in the Singapore army. Nelson nodded his head and he moved soundlessly into the room, sneaking like a burglar towards the armchair.

About three feet away from the armchair, Nelson pointed his rifle at it and cocked his weapon intentionally. Then he said in a loud voice, “Hey there, we mean you no harm. Please turn around slowly.”

The man in the chair said nothing.

“I think he does not understand English.” Johnny said, “Kenso, why don’t you ask him?”

“Okay...Kon’nichiwa Koten Shite Kudasai (Hello, please turn around)” Kenso asked in Japanese.

A screaming silence filled the next ten seconds.

“He’s not responding.” Paul said.

Paul stole forward, lifting his rifle up so that the gun muzzle was almost touching the stile of the chair. He looked at Nelson and silently mouthed the words ‘one, two and three’. And at three, he swung the armchair around using the barrel of his rifle. At the same time, Nelson jerked his rifle forward and was ready to squeeze the trigger if anything happened.

Nothing happened. They were staring at the corpse of a Japanese soldier and the hilt of a samurai sword was sticking out of his chest. It was a more ghastly scene unlike the other skeletons that they had already encountered. That lifeless corpse sitting on the arm chair had not decomposed fully, like an Egyptian mummy with dried skins, withered flesh and brown shriveled muscles still fully intact. His bloodstained neck craned upwards as if he was looking up at the sky beyond the cave. His entire lower jaw was missing and Nelson could literally peer down his throat through the big opening below his upper teeth.

Paul and Nelson lowered their weapons.

“This is gross.” Kenso said.

“Hmm, I didn’t expect to see an Egyptian mummy here. Why didn’t his body decompose like the others?” Johnny asked.

“He’s not an Egyptian mummy, if he moves, he’s a zombie.” Nelson joked.

“Must be the rush of air when we opened the door, that’s why we thought he moved.” Johnny said.

“But where did that sound came from?” Kenso asked.

Paul knelt down, took out his hatchet and used its blade to poke at the belly of the dead man on the chair.

“Damn it, I am quite sure I saw him…” Paul jolted to his feet before he could even finish his sentence. He was taken aback by a slight expansion on the chest of the corpse!

“Shit! he’s alive.” Paul cried, tumbling a few steps back. Nelson and Johnny scrambled to aim their rifles at the dead man who was starting to breathe!

“Fire! Johnny, fire now!” Nelson urged.

“No, you fire.” Johnny shouted. Both of them trembled with fear but neither of them squeezes the trigger.

“Are we taking him down? Paul!” Johnny shouted at Paul, waiting for him to give his cue.

“Wait!” Paul yelled, putting up his hand to stop his pals from engaging the ‘zombie’. The four bewildered men noticed that the corpse’s chest had stopped heaving up and down and then something moved up his throat. From the ugly opening that was once the man’s lower jaw; a rat emerged and plopped into his lap. And when it did, a great flood of its brothers and sisters poured out from the dead man’s throat. All in all, six large greyish rats emerged from that ghastly opening and plunged to the ground. Paul axed down two of them but the others scurried out of the doorway and disappeared.

The corpse in the armchair remained motionless for a long while. It was as dead as it should be.

Paul stared at the two puddles of blood and gore on the ground and said, “Thought we were dealing with a real zombie here, thank god it’s only rats.”

“Rats, I hate rats. They must be having a party in his tummy.” Nelson said in a repulsive tone of voice.

Paul shifted his gaze to another pile of organic splatter under the armchair, a tiny pool of blood and bones that had dried up ages ago and pretty much amalgamated to the hard cold ground.

“I think I found his lower jaw.” Paul said, “Look here, it’s totally shattered. And I believe those are his broken teeth.”

“Are you telling me that somebody butchered him with a samurai sword, and then blew his lower jaw into pieces? What kind of crazy shit is this?” Johnny asked.

Paul pulled out the samurai sword from the dead man’s chest and examined it under the dim light. “Maybe that somebody had used this flawless sword to chop off his lower jaws before punching it into his heart.”

“Whoever did this must be a cold-blooded psychopath.” Kenso muttered. “This man is not even armed.”

“I noticed that too Kenso, he was not armed at all.” Paul said.

Nelson strode gingerly to the table beside the corpse and he brushed away some cob webs that were covering four chests of World War Two Imperial Japanese radio equipment. One of the chests held the transmitter, another chest held the receiver, the third chest was a gasoline powered generator and the last one contained two large cans of engine oil. There was also a complete headset hooked up to the transmitter set.

Nelson could identify the make of the radio station. It was a Japanese
Type 94-2
radio station which he had read about when he was in high school.

He smiled at Paul and said to him with certainty, “It’s a 94-2 vintage, man. And I think this zombie here was a radio specialist like me when he was alive.”

Paul moved forward and he turned some of the knobs and switches on the radio station, trying to power it up but to no avail.

“Damn it. Nelson, do you think you can fix this?” Paul asked Nelson.

“I dunno. It’s really old school,” Nelson said, looking closely at the radio transmitter and turning a few knobs on its metallic panels. “I need some time to figure this out.”

“Hey, what about these? Found them in a box over there.” Johnny said.

Paul, Nelson and Kenso turned around and they saw Johnny carrying a few sets of bulky radio sets in his arms. “They are walkie talkies right?” Johnny asked.

“Yes, these are one of the world’s first walkie talkies manufactured for military purposes, known as handie talkies at that time.” Nelson said with a smile, pausing to wait for someone to commend him on his vast knowledge on communication electronics. Nobody did that and Nelson’s smile faded from his face.

“Well, these handie talkies are known to be robust and durable. I bet we can still use them. If not, I can fix them.” Nelson said.

“That would be great. Lucky to have you here, Nelson. Let’s bring those back.” Paul said, remembering then that he should pay some compliments to Nelson. In any case, Nelson might be the only person capable of fixing the walkies and the radio stations in that cavernous army barracks.

“Kenso-san, discover something interesting?” Paul noticed that Kenso was standing at one corner of the room and he appeared totally engrossed. He was peering at some dusty documents and files stacked against a wall. For a moment, he seemed to be ignoring Paul’s question. Then he looked up and said, “Pardon my lack of knowledge but I think this room was the command center of the entire facility. See, they kept all their top secret documents here.”

Paul, Johnny and Nelson threaded past the hideous corpse to peek at the documents that Kenso was talking about. Unfortunately, all the documents were written in Japanese and they could only rely on Kenso to translate.

Kenso rustled through a stack of brown and dusty papers and shook his head. “Hmm, these are definitely letters from the military high command in Tokyo. But besides the addresses, the top secret stamping and the sender name, the entire content was encrypted, look.” Kenso handed over the documents to Nelson.

Nelson scanned some pages and said, “Well, if this is an extremely secretive military operation, I am not surprised at all that they’d encode all their messages and data here.”

“Let’s go now. We still need to scout for supplies at that vegetable garden.” Johnny said, feeling the weight of the stuff he carried taking a toll on him, gradually turning his sore arms and strained legs into a kind of unbearable stiffness inside his body.

“Yep, but I think we have to come back later so that I can lay my hands on the radio station. This thing may be our only hope to put a call out.” Nelson said.

Paul nodded with a smile and he clapped Nelson’s shoulder before he stalked out of the command center room, holding the samurai sword in his hand. Johnny handed some handie talkie sets to Nelson before the two men walked out of the room with Kenso right behind them.