Nen (8 page)

With his hands by his sides trembling a little, Wong was recollecting similar scenes in a typical black and white war movie that portrayed soldiers gearing up for a mission and lining up their trucks and tanks neatly before moving out of base camp.

“This is… this is a big discovery!” Wong stammered as he picked up his hatchet from the ground.

“Shhh…,” Howard gestured Wong to keep his voice down, “Doesn’t seem to have anyone here but just be careful.” Pointing to the rows of bunker barracks far ahead, Howard whispered, “Let’s do a quick survey of the camp. If the trucks can come in, there must be a way out.”

The vehicles at the parking lot were pretty much worn down. Almost all the tyres were deflated and a thick coat of brown rust firmly draped the bodies of the vehicles that were almost concealed by turfs of creeper plants.

Howard and Wong went pass the parking lot, pausing for a moment to look at the trucks and the power generator. That dinosaur age generator had been powered by a barrel of diesel fuel that was connected to it via a rubber hose. Although the machine was tucked away at one corner of the parking lot and it looked really old and dilapidated, you’d never know if it could function by just looking at its external enclosure.

Wong tried to crank up the generator and to the surprise of both men, it roared into action! Bundles of thick electrical cables ran from the power generator to the bunker buildings but nothing happened except for the rhythmic buzz and whirrs of an old machine that was awaken after decades of hibernation.

Howard and Wong surveyed the area around them for a few minutes before they bolted across the parade ground toward one of the bunker complex at the far end.

There was not a single soul in the awfully quiet military base which was surrounded on three sides by steep cave walls that were at least a hundred yards up in height.

Howard and Wong tried to scan the area for a road out but it seemed that the bitumen path from the parking lot came to an end in front of a large two-story building with heavily bolted roller shutters.

Unable to open the roller shutters, Howard and Wong went around the perimeter of the two-story building and they found that there were multiple wing blocks attached to the main building. They walked quietly and scanned the deserted building and its wing blocks from outside and they suddenly stopped when they thought they heard a loud thud coming from what looked like a humongous barn in a farm.

Howard and Wong approached the huge barn. On closer look, the barn appeared to be an old barrack. A wooden door was ajar and a strong breeze was causing it to bang against the door frame. A Japanese flag depicting the rising sun was billowing at the top of the barrack. The two men stepped into the building via the unlocked door. Outside, the barrack was splashed with khaki paint, Japanese war slogans overlaying greyish-green camouflage patterns, closely resembling a military hangar except that it was much smaller. The opposite end of the barrack was interconnected to blocks of short-rise buildings spaced out on a gentle slope which extended all the way to a distant cave wall in the northern direction. Some of these annex buildings had collapsed and clusters of broken building structures and debris was an eyesore up the slope. Inside, the barrack housed a small foyer near the entrance and a long hallway with rows of wooden doors and small windows on both sides.

Howard beamed his flashlight on the wall beside the doorway and flipped a switch. The fluorescents on the ceiling stuttered at first but after a split second of low pitched humming that seemed to come from the inner walls, they took turns to light up, one after another progressively from the foyer all the way to the far end of the barrack.

“Unbelievable. I think this place is powered by that old generator outside.” Wong said.

Howard shrugged his shoulders and let out a long held breath. “I guess so, Wong. See these lamps? Can’t believe these first generation Japanese fluorescent lamps actually stood the test of time. Come, let’s go over there.” he said, switching off his flashlight and tucking it away.

The two men walked slowly along the hallway, heading towards the opposite end of the barrack. Howard led Wong past a number of closed, unmarked wooden doors. At about halfway down the long corridor, he stopped and pushed open one of the doors which was left ajar. Beyond that door was an austere little room with a laboratory layout. There were two long tables of outdated laboratory equipment and electrical devices, all covered with cob webs and a thick coat of dust. A wooden cupboard and a shelf containing thick manila envelopes stood obscurely against a wall. Seeing that there was nothing unusual about the small laboratory, Howard closed the door gently and continued walking down the hallway, with Wong closely behind him.

The barrack was really not an ordinary barrack per se and it was certainly much longer and bigger than they had first thought. Before they reached the opposite end where a looming iron door stood, they had walked past several rooms and had peered into them for a moment or two through the oblong windows that came with each room – There was an arms depot filled with racks of old rifles and ammunition boxes, a defunct medical clinic with huge bottles of unknown liquid lying around and a couple of tiny living quarters that were in complete mess. Those laughable quarters were so tiny that it seemed like dwarfs or hobbits once lived inside them.

Howard looked up at the tall and rusty iron doors that stood before them like a towering robot with ironclad body. There wasn’t any key hole on the door and the external door bolt was not chained up at all. A simple twist on the rusty door handle would open it if it was not bolted from inside. There was also an iron plated sign on the door that was covered with dust and soot. Wong rubbed and dusted the sign with his shirt sleeve and attempted to read the Japanese characters written on the sign. As the Japanese Kanji had some similarities to the Chinese written characters, Wong was able to tell what was written on the sign.

“It’s a storage facility. Shall we?” Wong asked nervously.

“Let me do it,” said Howard and he twisted the door handle in a clockwise direction and gave the door a light push. The door creaked opened. With hatchets firmly clutched in their hands, both men entered the dark room behind the door. They froze. The first thing that struck them was an extremely pungent stench in the room - a nose piercing smell of rotten food or garbage that bombarded their nasals without any warning. Other than that, it was eerily quiet and for a moment, Howard thought that he could even hear his heart thumping heavily against his chest. Scanty lighting from the hallway fell upon a small area about two feet away from their shoes. Beyond that was total darkness.

“Yucks, what’s that smell?” Wong covered his nose with his hand and flipped the switch on his flashlight.

The moment his flashlight projected a beam at the dark storage room, Wong howled in fear and staggered backwards, his legs had turned rubbery and Howard managed to catch him before he hit the ground.

“Steady man, I saw it too.” Howard said to Wong. Taking the flashlight from Wong, he thumbed a wall switch. The fluorescent lamps on the ceilings crackled and then the entire storage room lighted up.

Inside a twenty by fifteen feet windowless room, Howard and Wong were staring wide-eyed at a gruesome, dreadful scene that could not possibly be real. Just three or four steps away from them was a heap of human skeletons piled up to a man’s height - skeletons of Japanese soldiers with their torsos, limbs or even heads cut off. Almost every human skeleton was grossly mutilated just like the one at the tunnel entrance. Some of them were holding on to their rifles or pistols and there were hundreds of bullet holes on the surrounding four walls and the rear side of the iron doors. Samurai swords with age old blood stains protruded in all directions on the mountain of skeletons. From the way they were jutting out between the rib cages of some of the corpses, one could deduce that several victims in this mass grave had been stabbed to death by razor-sharp samurai swords.

The floor was sticky and sludgy and a crimson layer of unknown stuff swamped all corners of it. The air was downright rotten and the sticky stuff on the floor could have been degenerated human remains that had gradually dried up over the past decades. Both men were unable to tear their gaze away from the carnage for a while.

“What…what happened here?” Wong broke the silence.

“Beats me Wong, I’d never seen anything like that.” Howard said with a sigh. “It’s a slaughter house here. These soldiers were dead for at least seventy years and no one in our world knew about it. I presume nobody had survived the killings and that’s the part that worries me.”

CHAPTER 16

“What’s taking them so long?” Nelson asked, frowning.

“Do you think they have found the way out?” Paul grunted. He wanted a cigarette badly but he had left his last pack in the hotel room.

“Hope they are fine. Maybe they are still in the tunnel.” Nelson said. He was smiling sympathetically.

“They must have left us.” Henry Parker sneered, twitching his skinny shoulders. His body seemed to be trembling as he talked.

“I don’t think Howard would leave us here.” Sarah heard the conversation and commented.

“What makes you so sure about that?” Henry retorted. He wasn’t moving but he seemed to be twitching inside his skin.

“Because we could have died and Pauline crushed to death by the falling debris if it was not for him. Without Howard, we would not even be here in the first place.” Sarah’s voice rose a note. She stared into Henry’s shifty eyes and said firmly, “What have you done so far Henry? Besides giving negative comments and putting others down?”

“You…you…I have done nothing wrong. Why are we following Howard’s call every time? I suggest we go back to the chamber and wait for help.” Henry blurted out his thoughts.

“No way am I going back, Henry.” Paul said, pointing to Gupta who was chatting with the two children beside the plunge pool, “Gupta is injured and he shouldn’t really move so much.”

“But aren’t you guys walking with him?” Henry said in an outright thoughtless and selfish demeanor.

Johnny was sitting on the ground not far from Paul and after he heard what Henry said, he got on his knees and grabbed Henry by the throat. “You stinking bastard. Another word from you-”

“Let go of him, Johnny.” Paul cried out as he pulled Johnny back. Johnny let go of his grip on Henry’s neck unwillingly. He took a step back and stared blankly at Henry who had started wincing and then shuddering uncontrollably.

“What the hell, are you faking it?” he questioned as he could not believe that he had possibly caused any harm to Henry’s neck.

Henry’s face had turned blue and his hands back circled vigorously, seemingly trying to retain balance. His hands went to his own neck and to the surprise of everyone, he suddenly arched backwards and fell on his back. Like having a seizure, Henry was twitching and shaking violently on the ground. He seemed to be coughing but there was no sound coming out of his mouth. His face was contorted and he looked like he was out of air and had something lodged in his throat.

“What’s going on?” Johnny cried, not knowing what to do.

Sarah was down on one knee holding Henry’s head up and looking into his twisted mouth. With amazing dexterity, her arms went behind Henry’s back and sat him up in an upright position. “Lift him up!” Sarah shouted to the men around her.

Paul and Johnny came forward and grabbed Henry’s arms. In one swoop, they lifted him up so that he could stand on his knees while Sarah moved behind Henry to perform the Heimlich maneuver or abdominal thrusts.

Sarah’s fiancé Kevin, Mr. John Chan and Kenso-san came running towards them and soon a circle of people were standing around Sarah and Henry.

Dr. Sarah performed five cycles of the Heimlich maneuver which did not seem to dislodge the blockage in Henry’s throat. Realizing that something was amiss, Sarah quickly laid Henry down on his back again and started tapping his chest, his back and his neck. Next, she placed her ear against his chest and listened. By then Henry was no longer struggling and his face was as black as coal. Sarah started to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Henry while the others looked on.

“Come on Henry,” Sarah cried as she threw her weight on Henry to compress his chest. In between the chest compression resuscitations, she would pinch his nose and blew air into his mouth and checked his pulse. She did cycles of that for more than five minutes before she finally stopped.

“He’s gone. I’ve done more than what was required.” Sarah sighed and wiped the perspiration from her forehead using the back of her hand. The glow in Henry’s eyes was long gone but his eyes were still wide opened. Sarah helped Henry closed his eyes with her cupped palm. She then took another minute or so to examine Henry’s neck and chest before she stood up and looked into the baffled eyes of the others.

“Choked to death but there was really nothing down his throat. It’s really weird.” Sarah said with weariness and despair. “It is also possible that there was something in his throat at first but it somehow vanished.”

“Was he chewing gum or eating something?” Kevin asked his fiancée.

“No, dear, we were talking to him and he did not seem to have any food in his mouth.” Sarah said.

“Yeah, he was making those sarcastic remarks and I…and I killed him.” Johnny blurted. His eyes were red and watery.