No attempt was made to keep us from retiring with the skeleton of
Yount. As soon as we were back, and had placed it against a side of
one of the LCVP's for burial later, the Shadow Men again began their
inexorable march.
"Sailors!" I called. "Break out the flame-throwers."
We surrounded ourselves with a sheet of flame, hot beyond anything used
in World War II. We sprayed the stuff into the faces of the advancing
Shadow Men; we blotted them out.
They were erased as if they had never been.
At my command the flames stopped--and the Shadow Men were still coming
on.
* * * * *
Not very hopefully, I gave the command to use the flames again. We
still had tricks in the bag, but if they proved no more effective than
what we had so far used--I shouted my next command:
"Stand by to charge! Hang onto weapons! Go between them! Don't touch
one of the shadows! _CHARGE!_"
I didn't tell the marines to face in any given direction. I merely
wanted as many of them as possible to get through the closing cordon.
With a wild, defiant yell the leathernecks charged. As I ran I looked
for some opening through the concentric circles. If flesh or skin,
clothing or equipment, touched one of the shadows--
It was the queerest ducking and darting game I had ever played. We must
not run into one another, we marines, or we might push one another into
the shadows--and we knew what had happened to Yount, would never forget
it.
It was like trying to dash out through a crowded theater, save that in
a theater you didn't lose your life if you happened to touch anything.
I got through, out behind the last circle of Shadow Men. As soon as I
was clear, in the cool, starlit waste beyond, I turned and looked back.
The circles were still closing, with the LCVP's in their approximate
center. To my right and left other marines were emerging from among the
Shadow Men.
I looked, and looked away. Some of my own marines were a sight to turn
the stomach. It's hell to see an apparently healthy marine standing,
stupidly staring at the skeleton of his arm, to the shoulder.... I saw
no skeletons in the sand after the marines came through and the Shadows
went on. I breathed a sigh of relief. A marine could get along with one
arm, and even the skeleton of the other might have possibilities; but a
dead marine was dead and done.
I turned and looked back at the closing circles of Shadow Men. As the
strange platoon closed in, more and more shadows stepped out of the
circles, to form still more concentric circles.
The middle LCVP happened to be the center of the closing circles. The
first Shadow Man reached it and stopped, right in the LCVP. Others
closed in there--and merged with the first. The Shadow Men were piling
themselves into a black heap within the landing craft.
Still the Shadow Men marched inward, converging on that central spot.
The heap of blackness in the center did not grow larger. It was as
if there were some sort of hole there, into which the shadows were
pouring, like water into a funnel.
The last ring of Shadow Men stepped into the LCVP--and vanished.
Well outside the place of disappearance, looking as if they were
participants in a nightmare, were the marines. Every last officer and
man, with most of our weapons, had got through the cordon of Shadow Men.
It could have been a dream, but for the skeleton of Yount, there by the
LCVP, and the fact that several men had touched the shadows and been
severely injured. Four hands were missing--save for the bones. One man
had lost an ear, but he laughed. "It could have been my whole head!" he
said. "What's an ear?"
"We got through with extraordinarily good luck, sir," said Haggerty.
"What do we do now, sir?"
"What can we do, except wait and see what happens next, Captain?" He
had no answer for that.
Automatically, we buried the skeleton of Yount. First his closest
friends went back to the spot where his body had disappeared, and
hunted for remnants. They didn't find so much as a button of his
uniform or a screw from his weapons, or any part even of the steel
blade of his trench knife. The detached shadow had absorbed everything
of Yount save his bones.
The shadows were, in some fashion, chemical, that seemed clear enough.
But beyond that we were all stuck. They were not human. They were
maneuverable, plainly; but not _self_-maneuverable. Who, then, or what,
controlled and manipulated the Shadow Men?
The Shadow Men, it gave us a shiver to note, left no footprints. Nor
had they in any way affected the landing craft.
After the starlit funeral, we re-formed as we had been before the
sudden appearance of the Shadow Men.
"Mother of God!" cried Krane, the trumpeter. "It's starting again. But
this time it's different!"
We all whirled to look. Coming out of the northwest was a group of
scarecrow figures. They didn't look like our Shadow Men. I didn't
recognize them at first, though I could hear their hoarse panting,
their rasped words. They staggered like men far gone in hunger and
thirst. One of them fell on his face, struggled to his knees, came on.
"Japs!" cried Haggerty. "Japs! Attacking, too, and this is nineteen
forty-nine!"
It couldn't be true, yet it was. There were rusty rifles in the hands
of the Japanese, rifles that plainly would not work. As if to emphasize
this, they began to throw them away.
One of them called out to us, in English:
"Water! Food! We surrender! We surrender!"
Japs? Surrendering? In Cuba--or thereabouts!--in 1949? I was tempted
to laugh, until I remembered something that was absolutely no comfort
whatever: in other parts of the world, a long way from Cuba, Japs
still were holding out against patrols that hunted them down, Japs who
somehow hadn't got the word that the war was over, or else refused to
believe it.
* * * * *
I was proud of the marines when the Japs asked for food and water. Not
one of them spoke up and said, "You don't need either one here." I knew
then that every marine regarded it as at least _possible_ that what was
happening to us was a top-brass secret, or series of secrets, of our
own government. I doubted it because of what happened to Yount. The
government doesn't risk human lives on a whim. But the possibility was
there. I hadn't expected Yount to tackle me, either, or to hurl himself
into the shadow which slew him.
We all had canteens, none of which had been emptied. And no landing
would have been properly simulated without food. We let the Japs come
among us, then Hoose, who spoke some Japanese, and Matzuku, a Jap
corporal who spoke some English, got together.
The Japanese were seated with their backs against an LCVP and canteens
were passed to them, together with our special rations. They drank as
if they had forgotten the glory of water, ate as if they had forgotten
how. I gave them a little time. We did not pull in our defensive rings,
even though it could be seen that they were not especially useful. When
the Japs seemed more or less sated, I got Matzuku and Hoose together
and began asking questions.