Nen (18 page)

“Err… I don’t think we should do that...it could be dangerous.” Kenso said softly.

“Come on Kenso, be a man, “ Mami said, “Let’s do something for the group. Well, if you are not going, you stay. I am going with Dr. Sarah.”

“But…Mami.” Kenso muttered.

Mami ignored her boyfriend and turned towards Gupta. “Gupta, do you think it is okay that we leave you here alone?”

“Go ahead ma’am, I am fine now. I will take a nap in this first class hotel room.” Gupta said with a laugh.

“Kenso Odaka!” Mami said in a loud voice that startled almost everyone. “Like what Howard said, we can contribute because we understand Japanese. Let’s go.”

Kenso shrugged his shoulders and said with a sigh, “Well. I won’t let you go alone.” He held Mami’s hand and squeezed it. Then he looked at Sarah and Kevin and said, “Please do not be mistaken. I fully understand the importance of finding food and I am glad to be able to help.”

“We’re really shorthanded, Kenso. And you had followed Paul around so we do need your guidance.” Kevin said. To which Sarah nodded her head slowly.

“No problem, Kevin. By the way, I think our Mr. Park is secretly stocking up food supplies in his room. I saw him carrying bags of fruits to his room a while ago.”

“I’ll talk to that brute later. But let’s find that kitchen first.” Kevin said, and he got to his feet. The two couples stood up, bid Gupta goodbye and left the room.

Gupta stared at the ceiling for a few minutes after his newfound friends left, then closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. Little did he realize that fate was going to pull a prank on him and on that score, he wouldn’t have a chance to see his newfound friends again.

CHAPTER 29

“Ew, this place really stinks.” Kevin Tan muttered in an almost inaudible tone with one of his hands cupping his nose and mouth.

“Yeah, look at this mess. I can’t imagine people having their meals here. Even for people that walked this place seventy years ago.” Sarah said, pointing at the rows of decaying tables and chairs that lined the length of the cook house. There was heaps of garbage scattered all over the place but everyone was sure that the pungent stench that was violating their nostrils was not the smell of garbage. It was something else.

Kevin, Sarah, Mami and Kenso were standing at the doorway of a large dining area that they had just stumbled upon deep within the labyrinth of narrow corridors and half-collapsed buildings. The former dining area for the Japanese soldiers (or some would call it the military cook house) was a fairly big establishment, capable of feeding at least a hundred soldiers at one time. Old fashioned fluorescent lamps and paddle fans hung crookedly from the ceilings above their heads. All the fans were dead and only one of the maybe twenty fluorescent lamps was emanating the lone brilliance that could barely illuminate one-tenth of the huge dining chamber.

“This is even bigger than the standard cookhouse I visited when I was in the Singapore army.” Kevin said.

“You were in the army too?” Kenso asked.

“Yes, all male Singaporeans have to serve the army for two years when they turn eighteen.” Kevin answered; his hand was still cupping his nose.

“But I bet he can’t fight any battle now. He put on so much weight after he left the army.” Sarah slapped her fiancé on his bulging belly and laughed.

“I still know how to fire a gun. I was a star sniper you know.” Kevin said, smiling ruefully at Sarah.

Kenso ran his beam of flashlight across a wall at the far end of the dining hall and they could all see a dark rectangular shape that looked very much like a traffic door leading to the kitchen.

“Shall we take a look? I think that’s the kitchen.” Kenso asked, dancing his ball of flashlight at the traffic door.

“Must we?” Mami asked, squeezing Kenso’s arm tightly. By then, she had realized the kind of fear that her boyfriend had mentioned and how she wished that she was back in the living quarters, having a nice conversation with Gupta or getting some well-deserved beauty sleep. But the fact was she’s not inside the living quarter but standing in an unknown territory and shuddering in fear.

“Why not? I hope the kitchen is not so stinky. Maybe there’s a four course dinner waiting for us there.” Kevin said, feeling uneasy but decided to crack a joke to lighten everyone up.

“Let’s go.” Kenso said, leading the group to the traffic door ahead, stepping around piles of trash and broken chairs amongst rows of dining tables.

The kitchen traffic door hissed shut behind them, and they found themselves in a sizable kitchen lined with steel cabinets, hooded stoves, porcelain sinks and old fashioned refrigerators. In one corner, there were a few toppled shelves right next to a storeroom. Loads of tin boxes and cartons were scattered all over the floor beside the storeroom. Kevin noticed a halogen lamp dangling above his head with a pull cord. He gave the cord a yank and the entire kitchen brightened up with a yellowish glow.

“Look over there! I think we just hit the jackpot!” Kevin said, gesturing excitedly at the clutter of tin boxes and cartons.The two couples moved to the fallen shelves where the sea of tin boxes and cartons were. Mami picked up one of the boxes and inspected the Japanese wordings printed on it. “It’s biscuits. Can we still eat them? The expiry date is long overdue.”

Sarah came closer and she studied the box Mami was holding. Then she tore open the box made of cardboard and poured some biscuits into her cupped hand. The blackened biscuits from the last century disintegrated into tiny chunks upon hitting Sarah’s palm. And there was a pungent smell liberated at that instant.

“Nah, we can’t eat this.” Sarah shook her head.

“Here, these are air tight. I believe they can still be eaten.” Kenso said, opening up a tin box and taking out some hardtack crackers that were sealed in air tight wrappers. Before anyone could stop him, Kenso had opened up a packet and placed the hardtack into his mouth.

“Yummm. It’s delicious. You guys should try some.” Kenso said, his Adam apple moved up and down as he swallowed the hardtack crackers.

“Don’t look for me if you get stomach upset.” Sarah joked as she picked up one of the air tight packet and studied the crackers inside. After a moment, Sarah popped two hardtack crackers into her mouth and handed a packet to her fiancé.

“Honey, these hardtack crackers are fine. In fact they are more than fine, they are delicious. Have a bite.” she said, munching the hardtack, which at that moment tasted like the best food she had ever eaten in the world. So Kevin started eating not one but three packets of hardtack and Mami followed suit.

“Hey, there are more tin boxes over there.” Kenso said, pointing to a huge storage cabinet with an ajar door a few feet away from him. He hustled across the grimy kitchen floor and yanked open the cabinet door.

“What the-” Kenso yelled as a large piece of what seemed like a buffalo or some kind of a large animal skeleton and several pieces of heavy bones dropped out of the storage cabinet and fell on him, instantly pinning him to the sticky floor.

“Arrrrghh!!!” Mami screamed as she watched Kenso falling on his back and the rib cage of the animal skeleton pressing hard on his face and chest as he fell. Kenso struggled with all his might to push away the mayhem of bones lying on top of him but the more he tried, the more his hands get entangled in the animal skeleton. After a while he stopped as he realized that he was trying to fight off a heap of harmless animal remains in the skeletal form which he had seen before many times in the Museum of Natural History.

Kevin and Sarah threw away their hardtacks and hurried over. They went on their knees and helped removed the more bulky bones that were pressing on Kenso’s chest while Kenso himself pushed over the remaining pieces which were much lighter in weight. Mami was too in shock to do anything and she just stood and watched, like a beautiful statue of an angel with big watery eyes.

“Are you okay?” Sarah asked, lifting the last few pieces of bones away from Kenso.

“I’m fine. Scare the hell out of me, though.” Kenso said as he sat up slowly, staring intently at his girlfriend. “Mami, don’t cry. I’m fine, really.”

Mami lunged herself forward and wrapped her arms around Kenso. Beads of tears spurted out from her eyes and rolled down her rosy cheeks as she stammered, “Honey, for a moment… I..I..thought you were…”

Kenso burst into laughter and said, “I’m okay dear, look, it’s just animal bones…” Kenso stood up and froze for a moment as he finally had a better view of the animal skeleton that almost crushed him.

“Kind of a strange animal this is.” Kevin interrupted, unconsciously speaking in a Yoda-like tone.

“My goodness…what in the world was this… thing?” Kenso raise his voice and at the same time brushing dirt off his shirt.

“Looks like a cow with a lion’s head.” Sarah commented, “But there’s a horn between its eyes. I have never seen such an animal before.” She moved closer to study the pile of bones on the ground.

“It’s huge.” Mami added, “Could it be as big as a rhinoceros?”

“It could be, Mami. Judging from the rib cage alone, we can assume that this creature was about the size of a full grown buffalo, it might be bigger than that, like a rhino.” Sarah said.

“Hey guys, look here. What do you think this is?” Kevin asked, his widened eyes were glued to a slush of unknown substance on the cement floor right behind the storage cabinet door. Like a child who was playing in the schoolyard, he quickly grabbed a spatula from a shelf beside the kitchen stove and started poking at the mound of sticky substance without any second thoughts.

Kenso and Sarah moved forward and crouched down to take a closer look at the slimy substance which appeared leathery and semi-translucent under the pale fluorescent lights.

“Umph, could this be snake skins?” Kenso asked.

“It does look like snake skin except for the fur over here.” Sarah said in a whisper, taking the spatula from Kevin’s hand and using it to prop up the skin-like thing. She held it against the fluorescent lamps and stared at it for a moment, then she touched the slimy substance with her index finger.

“Hey, are you serious? What are you doing?” Kevin asked his fiancée, his face amusingly bewildered.

“Yeah, it’s disgusting.” Mami muttered as she watched a blob of slimy liquid flowed down Sarah’s index finger.

“Huh, it’s warm, which means that this skin or fur or whatever you call it, is not something from the past. Some animal or creature had just shed its skin here probably a few minutes ago, right here in this storage cabinet!” Sarah said, her face suddenly glowered with an expression of disbelief and a cloud of fear.

Kenso stares around, expecting some sharped teeth animal to jump out from the dark enclaves of the kitchen and snapped his neck off but there was nothing. He shrugged his shoulders and said to his friends with a weary smile, “I have a bad feeling about this. Let’s grab as many biscuits as we can and get out of here.”

“I agree with you totally, let’s go.” Kevin said.

CHAPTER 30

Mami’s pulse quickened as she tried to keep up with Kenso, Kevin and Sarah who strode briskly out of the kitchen and snaked their way fast through the toppled chairs and disarrayed tables in the huge dining area or cookhouse. They were almost sprinting toward the front door like angry diners who had had such horrible meals that they could hardly wait to exit that awful restaurant. Just like the rest of the group, Mami was juggling boxes of hard tacks beneath her arms and she found it hard to keep those boxes from slipping away while she increased her pace. She could hear Kevin cursing when he accidentally bumped his legs on some fallen dining tables or chairs. Finally, they were out of the cookhouse and back in the long corridor that was dark and creepy. Sarah flipped the switch on her flashlight and Mami had no idea how she could do that with all those boxes in her hands. Thinking that she could do likewise, Mami pursed her lips, took out the flashlight from her deep pocket and emulated the same action but two boxes of biscuits simply slipped away and fell to the ground.

“Oops,” Mami said, her cheeks reddened but it was too dark for anyone to notice.

Kenso turned around, bent over and picked up the fallen boxes. “Let me carry these, dear.” he said, his masculine voice firm and assuring, which made Mami almost want to cry.

“Thanks honey. I am trying…” Mami said, almost sobbing full gear.

“Is everything alright?” Sarah asked.

“Everything’s fine, let’s go.” Mami said.

“That’s good, I am starting to have a bad feeling about this,” Sarah said, shining her beam of flashlight down the dark corridor ahead.

And at that juncture, a gurgling snarl echoed down the long corridor, approaching them like rumbling thunders from a distant.

The group of four froze for a moment, their eyes as wide as saucers, goosebumps rash out across their backs and hairs on their necks stood up in a flash. Then Kevin said something about running and then all four of them bolted down the corridor in the opposite direction at top speed.

Whatever that made that hair-raising snarl or growl seemed to be following them but when they tried looking over their shoulders as they ran, they could see nothing but darkness. Mami was the last in line and she gave it all to pick up her pace but was always three to four steps behind Kenso and the rest.
Is there something behind me?
Mami couldn’t help having that thought as she raced down the corridor. Kevin came to a halt suddenly and he let Sarah, Kenso and Mami go pass him.