Amal watched a soldier emerge from one of the rooms along the corridor. He wasn’t wearing camouflage like the others, and carried only a pistol strung to his belt. From the same belt hung a samurai sword. Anticipation sent Amal’s heart into a flutter. It was exactly what he needed—a Japanese captain with a sidearm.
The acrid odour of gunpower wafted in, reeking of an undignified death. Amal hoisted Anton up by the armpits and led him to another bed at the far end of the ward.
“Stay here and pretend you are very scared.”
“I am very scared!” wailed Anton.
“Good.” Amal grinned and tucked him into bed and pulled up the sheets for him. “You must fall and lie very still when he shoot you, okay? Don’t blink!”
“Of course I’ll fall when he shoots me! What are you talking about, Amal?”
Amal did not elaborate. He returned to his place by the doorway and waited until the captain entered the next ward before diving under the bed of the first patient who lay nearest to the doorway.
The gambit, however ludicrous it seemed, might just work.
Pistol shots rang out from behind the wall, and true enough the Japanese captain came tramping in a moment later. He had an weathered face framed in a light beard. In the shadow of his netted helmet his eyes darted about in a frenzied sort of manner, as if livid over something.
Without warning he turned and, having failed to notice Amal hiding under the bed, shot the first patient between the eyes. He then turned his attention upon Moustache Monty, who lifted his arms and held up the Red Cross armband. Moustache Monty was midway through the word “Geneva” when a pistol shot cracked open his skull. He slumped across the bed and whatever remained of his head fell into Amal’s view. A thin stream of blood pelted onto the linoleum.
After the Japanese captain executed the two other Caucasian patients in a similar fashion he began marching towards Anton like the Reaper himself. Just then Amal emerged and stole up to him from behind, brandishing a steel pipe that had once been a section of a bedpost. With a well-placed blow he knocked the pistol from the captain’s hand. The weapon clattered to the floor, still stringed to the belt. A slash from his pocket knife cut the pistol free.
He then feigned an accidental kick and sent the pistol skittering to the edge of Anton’s bed and followed up with a punch to the side of the captain’s face, deliberately holding back such that the blow did not knock him out. The captain staggered, and seizing the opportunity Amal dived for the weapon and deliberately slid it under the bed while pulling out the one he kept hidden in his trousers. When he turned around the Japanese captain was upon him like a feral beast, teeth gnashing, utterly oblivious to an important detaiclass="underline" the Nambu pistol in Amal’s hand wasn’t strung like his.
The captain grasped Amal’s wrists in the wrestle. Amal led him away from Anton’s bed and deliberately gave in, allowing the captain to wrench the weapon from his hand with convincing effort. Amal pushed himself away, as if in fear of the coming execution. The Japanese captain, his face tightened into a look of dark triumph, lifted the weapon to a spot between the eyes and pulled the trigger.
The Japanese captain took pleasure in observing how the blast had ejected Amal’s left eyeball from its socket and taken out a piece of skull from the back of his head. He appreciated the backward jerk of head and the spray of blood. They were all very familiar to him—signs of Death to a single twitch of his finger. He watched Amal fall, and was pleased.
Anton anticipated the sorrow as he watched his friend fall. But it didn’t come because he saw no blood, no wound whatsoever. Amal had fallen like a victim in a children’s play. He lay on the floor unmoving, perhaps even unbreathing. He is only sleeping, Anton told himself. But it all made no sense.
Before Anton could grasp what was going on he found the Japanese captain before him. He was staring down the muzzle of the pistol when a great flash and a tremendous bang sent him reeling back onto the bed. There he lay in shock, mouth agape and eyes unblinking. He was profoundly astounded by the fact that he lived despite the shot. More surprisingly however, was the fact that the Japanese captain, having sated his murderous hunger, strode away as if Anton had truly been executed to his fullest satisfaction.
The captain left the ward and hollered off a series of commands, telling his soldiers that its occupants were dead. Groups of them rushed past the ward bearing their bayonet-tipped rifles. From neighbouring wards came the cracks of rifle shots. It went on for a good while before they began to thin and then stopped altogether.
Back in the first ward, Amal stole forward and peeked over the window sill. The soldiers who had been guarding the western façade of the hospital had been called away. In the wake of the carnage, they must have reasoned that the occupants of the wards were either rounded up or dead.
He went over to Anton and tapped him on the foot, making him jerk with a start. “That window, ah,” he pointed. “Not high, about four feet. You jump down and crawl your way out. You will see an old path. Follow it up the slope, okay?”
Anton clawed frightfully at Amal’s arm. “I don’t understand any of this. How’d you—”
“No time to explain, lah. You better go before they find us alive.”
He helped Anton to his feet and ushered him, hobbling, over to the window. He pressed the toy cricket clicker into Anton’s hand. “Count to thirty after you reach the path and then press this hard.”
Anton threw a leg over the ledge. “You’ll come with me?”
“Right behind you.”
Just as Anton was about to leap off the window he grasped the sill and turned back. “Where’s Vivian?”
“She okay, lah! Don’t worry.” Amal slid his arms beneath Anton’s armpits and lowered him. “Quickly go! And don’t forget what I tell you, ah!”
Anton slid down the wall and found himself in a backyard thick with foliage. Beyond a narrow, mossy drain a bluff led up into the forest along a trail worn out by frequent use. Anton took a backward glance and did not see Amal. Cautiously he hobbled forth as sporadic gunfire erupted from some part of the hospital grounds he could not see.
The Japanese captain returned.
Microscopic neuro-transmitters implanted in his brain had tricked him into thinking that his victims were lying dead in the ward. They provided visual cues attesting to the authenticity of the thought and allowing the captain to virtually “see” Anton’s blood on the walls and sheets; the realism of its spray calculated by means of fluid trajectories and artificially projected through his optic nerves.
But there was a peculiarity: the “bloodied” bed was now empty.
The captain scrambled towards it, unable to reconcile the death of his victim with the sudden disappearance of the body. Acting upon instinct he looked beyond the window and beheld a dead man hobbling away in flight, and his bearded jaw fell open.
“Nan da, omae wa?” he shouted—a harsh, guttural voice. “Tomare!”
Anton, still running, failed to realise that the sudden blare of the Japanese language was directed at him. Only upon the second shout of tomare did he venture a glance behind and see the captain staring incredulously back at him.