The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [80]
He had finally been able to eat, but the K rations were just as awful as ever. Welty had given him a chocolate bar, but that didn’t sit any better in his gut. Before dark the lieutenant had gone through the platoon telling them all not to forget their Atabrine tablets, what was supposed to protect them from malaria. Maybe that’s what I got, he thought. Not sure what’s boiled up in my gut, and I don’t know what the hell malaria’s supposed to do to you. I’ve seen a few of the others taking a haul-ass squat in the brush, and nobody’s said anything about some tropical disease. Funny how nobody’s scared of snakes anymore. Haven’t seen a single damn one, and that Nambu gun changed a lot of these idiots. Yeah, there’s worse things to worry about. He poked his stomach, felt the painful response, thought, no, you’re not sick. Just tied up in knots. Some of these green beans they got in those fields would help, for sure. Hell, I don’t see why that fertilizer should change anything. The damn Okies seem fine, and they eat this stuff all the time. Their own crap. He pondered that for a long moment. Well, maybe I’ll skip the beans. He thought of the unfortunate goat herd, all that fresh meat we blew to pieces. Nobody ate any of that, but hell, if the Okies raise them for food, they can’t be all bad. It’s just meat. Real meat, not this stuff in the K rations. Hell, maybe we been eating goat all along. They’re not gonna tell us one way or the other. He felt his stomach rolling over, a hard knot down low, whispered, “Oh hell.”
He probed Welty with his foot, heard a low grunt, Welty awake, alert, sitting upright.
“What is it?”
“Sorry. I gotta hit the head. Bad.”
Welty was up on his knees quickly, the M-1 coming up. He leaned close to Adams, the whispers staying low.
“The password … you remember the password?”
“Lollygag.”
“Say it out loud.”
Adams knew the routine, that if any man left his foxhole in the dark, he had better make sure his buddies knew who he was. The password was one of those delicious pieces of lore that inspired someone’s clever inventiveness. The intel officers had spread the word that the Japanese couldn’t properly say the letter l, and so every password contained a mouthful of l’s. Yeah, he thought, I guess if some Jap overheard our password, and hollered out rorrygag, it wouldn’t be too good for him. Adams felt the turmoil increasing in his gut, tried to see the small pile of dirt that marked the hole they had dug, just beyond arm’s reach of the foxhole. The luxury of a slit trench for the whole platoon was a thing of the past now, each duo digging their own small latrine close by. It wouldn’t do for anyone to get lost in the dark, password or not. He stayed still for a brief moment, then forced the word out loud.
“Lollygag.”
The sound burst through the silence, another voice responding, Ferucci.
“Why?”
“Head.”
“Make it quick.”
Adams pulled himself up out of the foxhole, one hand already on the buckle of his belt. He waited for the silence to return, knew there were eyes in the dark, that he was probably a dull shadow to the men close by, every one of them nervous, their weapons ready for any kind of deception.
He crawled to the hole, knew it wasn’t deep, but the urgency was getting worse, and he pulled at the belt, was startled by muffled footsteps, saw a shadow in front of him, moving quickly. What the hell? Somebody using this hole? Wait a damn minute! The shadow had moved away from him, but then came the sound of a stumble, a startled cry in one of the foxholes. The shouts were loud, a scream cutting through the darkness. Adams stayed frozen, low on his knees, strained to see, heard a shot, a flash of fire coming from the next foxhole. He was blinded, but he knew that the shot would bring more, a lot more, and made a fast crawl, tumbled down onto Welty, who cried out as well.
“What? What’s going on?”
The struggle continued nearby, and now another cry, shouts again, another shot from farther across the field, and then the chaos began, flashes of fire from