At the Midway Read online

  Why... they sounded like the Corps.

  A slick of light shot across the water as the sun started down. Strolling down to the beach, Anthony stepped into a boat and began rowing across the lagoon. On the way to Sand Island, he passed Private Lieber and his Japanese shadow... what was his name? No matter. They all called him Ace. Lieber saluted crisply. The Japanese followed suit. Anthony had tried to explain to the Orientals there was no need for them to salute him. But they did not seem to comprehend his reasoning.

  They were clowns, too.

  As he neared Sand, electric lights glowed to life around the relay station. This was a bit of ostentation on the part of the Commercial Pacific employees and the marines did not complain. It got uncommonly dark on Midway at night. Certainly, on clear nights a man could see well enough with the moon and stars shining down. But when the island's usual muck of wind and clouds returned, a man could become as lost as anyone in the Black Forest.

  Someone was on the shore ahead.

  "Hamilton! Take hold!" Anthony tossed out a line.

  Hamilton Hart caught it and secured the boat dockside.

  "Another marvelous evening."

  "Yes," said Hart in a monotone.

  Anthony did not really expect more from the cable station supervisor. For a man who oversaw the flood of cable traffic between three continents, he was remarkably terse. Anthony guessed he was ten years younger than his own thirty-five. Yet he stooped like an old man and wore the face of ages.

  Anthony knew better than to say more. He also knew he was about to make a fool of himself... again.

  "I like the way you've set the lights about the station and compound. Gives a touch of home."

  No response.

  After walking the length of the pier in commendable silence, Anthony continued, "You never said where you hail from. I'm out of Washington, myself. The city that is. Not much of a town, really. Even with all those monuments. But those lights around the station... they remind me of home."

  "I wish they'd turn the damn things off," Hart said crossly.

  "But I thought you.... Listen, Hart... about that Chink you hang around with. I hope he hasn't... well, influenced you. I mean...."

  "You mean, do I smoke opium?"

  "It's just that some of my men were over by his shack the other night. They could smell it. Bonehead's a dope fiend."

  "We know no such thing. And his name is Chung-Ho. Chung works in the company garden, and when he's free he helps with my balloon‑-"

  "Yes, I wanted to thank you again for your offer‑‑"

  "If you're thinking of searching his belongings, I'd advise against it. He hasn't done anything wrong. Neither have I, for that matter."

  "No, of course not. Only, when you do spend time with anyone, it's him. We just don't want you to Jorgenson out on us, that's all,"

  To 'Jorgenson out' was Midway vernacular for going mad. As incredible as it seemed, to newcomers at least, this desolate outpost had a legend. That it was a legend known throughout much of the English‑speaking world was due to no less a writer than Robert Louis Stevenson.

  In 1886 the General Seigel landed at Midway on a shark‑hunting expedition. One of the fishermen preferred dynamite over reel and tackle. While in the process of bombing the lagoon, he accidentally bombed himself.

  The expedition's fortunes did not improve after that. A storm came up and wrecked the schooner. Then the first mate, a Dane named Jorgenson, took to murdering the others. He'd killed two of them before the rest caught on. When they repaired the schooner and set sail, they left Jorgenson behind.

  But Midway was a shark‑hunter's paradise. Only a few months after the departure of the General Seigel, the Wandering Minstrel, a British bark, sailed into the lagoon. The captain assured Jorgenson that he was rescued. But another storm came up, wrecked the Wandering Minstrel, and left a new cast of castaways on the atoll.

  A few years earlier, soon after Brooks stumbled across the island, the U.S. Government attempted to establish a coaling station on Midway. Tons of coal were dumped on Sand Island. The government was estimating the cost of dredging a channel into the lagoon when the U.S.S. Saginaw wrecked nearby. The entire project was given up as a bad idea.

  As a result, however, several lighters had been left behind. Some of the men of the Wandering Minstrel constructed two sailing craft out of their remains. One was wrecked before it got out of the lagoon. The other put to sea. Its pitiful crew was never seen again.

  The remaining survivors slowly went insane. Their condition might very well have been due to scurvy. With no vegetables available, their gums rotted, they became weak. With the infernal screeching of thousands of birds constantly in their ears, their sanity crumpled.

  Jorgenson apparently returned to his murderous ways, and did in several more sailors. To escape the wrath of the other castaways, he convinced a Chinese boy who had been a cook's helper on the Wandering Minstrel to escape with him on a hastily‑built raft. After forty‑three days at sea, they landed in the Marshalls. By then, Jorgenson was a confirmed lunatic. The rest of his life was spent in an asylum, in a haze of babble.

  But it was what happened afterwards that made Midway famous in the literary world. A fishing schooner appeared over the horizon. The handful of survivors from the Wandering Minstrel cheered. Saved at last!

  But the skipper of the schooner was a very odd bird. A strange, gruff figure pale almost to the point of being albino. He acted as though he'd known about the Midway survivors in advance. More, he knew the Wandering Minstrel had had a substantial amount of cash on board her when she struck the reef. He demanded all the money as the price of rescue. Having no choice, the survivors turned it over.

  It was one of these survivors that Stevenson met in Honolulu. The novel that resulted, The Wrecker, became a best‑seller.

  Had he Jorgensoned out? Hart mused upon the possibility, then answered. "No, Lieutenant. I still have one or two atoms of wit about me." With that, he walked away, down the dark line of the shore.

  Anthony's blush was hidden in the cumulating darkness. He slouched. "I knew better," he berated himself. "I knew...."

  1902 Hours

  Hamilton Hart would have thrived on Midway but for one thing: It was not isolated enough. Within its two square miles, it proved difficult to avoid the other thirty-seven men on the island duo. Complete silence on land might have translated into peace of mind. As it was, with the marines around, barking at each other to ward off boredom, memories were triggered. Hart wanted no memories. He wanted something just short of death. Sometimes even that.

  Against the relay station a knot of marines took on a brilliant sheen under the fading sun and emphasizing arc lights. For a few minutes they looked like golden warriors. Then the sun failed completely and the glow became harsh--more appropriate to the purposeless stream of invective that flowed down from them. Would they have fulminated against life had they been seated on some exotic veranda in the South Pacific? Probably. Soldiers were like old men who spat seeds and stared. There was always something to curse about in this vale of tears. That was how most of Hart's men had been when he was a lieutenant in the Army.

  There was no way Lieutenant Anthony could have known that Hart's surly silence was his way of keeping a grip on himself--that he had Jorgensoned out long ago. He did not want to babble again the way he had babbled in the nightmare woods on the Kiltik. And it had not stopped there. He had babbled to the U.S. Marshal in Kotzebue. He'd babbled on the boat that returned him to San Francisco. He'd babbled to General Funston when he reported back to the Presidio.

  It was Funston who finally closed his mouth. He had been Acting Commander of the Pacific Division during the great quake and fire. He'd told his troops to shoot down any looters they saw. And shoot them down they did, by the score. When the general meant business, he made it clear in no uncertain terms. He turned a cold, deadly eye on Lieutenant Hart.

  "Pending investigation, I'm sending you to Angel Island. You will report to
the Twenty-second Infantry commissary at Fort McDowell and remain there until this matter is cleared up."

  Those words ended Hart's career in the Army. He would not--indeed, could not--resign until the expedition dispatched to hunt for survivors returned. But by the time searchers arrived upriver, winter had set in. Scavengers had disposed of the bodies of dogs and men and a blizzard erased all trace of the camp by the Kiltik and Salmon Rivers.

  Without proof of some sort, the Army could not prosecute Hart for dereliction of duty. Nor could they deal him a dishonorable discharge. But by Godfrey, they would not give him an honorable one. Hart's resignation was the best solution for all involved.

  "Numba One work on balloon tonight?"

  Hart shrugged as a tiny man in tattered trousers appeared like a tiny dust storm out of nowhere. Chung-Ho Chu was so tiny he could have been mistaken for a large doll. Hart was the only Occidental who'd taken the trouble to learn the Chinaman's real name. To everyone else, he was known as Bonehead. It was not exactly an insult. Inventing names was a cherished pastime on the atoll. Most everyone had a moniker, and few were flattering.

  No one knew how Bonehead had come to this spot over a thousand miles from Chengchan Tow, his home in the Shantung Province, or what his purpose was in being here. Hart wondered if it had anything to do with the movement in China to wipe out the opium industry. He knew Chung smoked the drug on occasion, but he had not lied when he told Anthony that Chung did nothing wrong--because nothing seemed wrong to Hart anymore. And when Chung spoke of dragons, the veridical shudder that bolted through Hart seemed to exclaim the reality of unreality.

  "I am one of the Lung Tik Chuan Ren," Chung had proudly declared. "I was born in the Year of the Dragon." Hart had the typical White difficulty with adjudging the age of Oriental people. Though unfamiliar with the Chinese new year calendar, by piecing together other remarks he concluded Chung had been born in 1880, which made him twenty-eight years old. "People born in the Year of the Dragon are good. They are not sly and don't trick others. They want things done right. But they have some problems. They want to be in charge. They are brickheaded."

  "I think you mean 'hardheaded.'"

  That night several months earlier Chung's words carried a peculiar smoky aroma Hart's way as he spoke. He nodded benignly when his English was corrected. "Parents most desire to have their children in the Year of the Dragon. It is exceptional luck. I am guaranteed a long and fruitful life."

  Chung was in one of his rare talkative moods, and Hart in an even rarer mood to listen. He had asked Chung to tell him about dragons. He learned that Eastern dragons were nothing like their medieval European counterparts. Rather than being destructive, their dragons were the source of sheng chi--the celestial breath that provided the essence of life. They gave man the seasons of the year, the earth, the wind and abundant warm sunshine. When human potentates refused to heed their advice, they were offended and instigated wrathful storms. The smaller dragons were practical jokers, turning rice into goo and punching holes in rooftops. While dragons originated in China, some had moved on to other lands. You could tell where they came from by the number of toes. Chinese dragons had a full compliment of five, Indonesian dragons had four, Japanese had three, and so on.

  Chung lived in a little shack set apart from the others. He socialized by approaching other Midwayans while muttering bitter non-sequiturs in what may or may not have been an established language, then scuttling away like a crab avoiding a foot. It did not seem appropriate behavior for a descendant of dragons. He was far from being a leader and--as far as Hart knew--had no children. His very existence made Chinese astrology every bit as flimsy and inaccurate as its Western counterpart.

  "Numba One sit all night looking at water again?"

  Hart wondered why, of all people, Chung had latched onto him, the island's only other bona fide hermit. It was as if the Chinaman's enjoyment of solitude was perversely increased by sharing it. But after his usual introductory inanities, Chung subsided into a tranquil silence; often following, sometimes not; sometimes seated next to Hart as he watched the moon-specked waves, as often disappearing like a puff of opium smoke.

  They settled down on a sandy knoll. It briefly bothered Hart that Chung might be parroting him by turning an extravagant gaze upon the ocean and sighing. But what did it matter, so long as he said nothing? Two diesel generators were chuffing inland--one for the fresh water distillery, the other for the relay station and its lights. The outdoor lights were a concession to Hart's operators, city boys who liked their paths well lit. They monitored intercontinental cable traffic twenty-four hours a day. If an emergency arose and they had to get Hart, they did not want to stumble through the dark to the company house.

  Lieutenant Anthony was right. Lit up, the station did indeed look like something lining Pennsylvania Avenue. A monument to man's ability to create artificial solace in lonely places. But to Hart's thinking, the fuel spent running the generators was wasted. The only lights truly needed were inside the station, where the telegraph operators monitored intercontinental cable traffic twenty‑four hours a day. And the distillery was not really needed. All one had to do was scrape away some sand to find water. Brackish, but drinkable.

  A swash of water drew his attention. For a moment, he would have sworn he saw a ship's mast. He noted Chung staring hard at the water's edge.

  "What do you see?"

  Without answering, Chung stood and began walking towards the beach. Something was out there, all right. But if it was a ship, Hart had no doubt someone would have seen it on the horizon before sunset.

  They were well beyond the light emanating from the station and compound. Yet Hart could discern Chung's outline against the stars, an animated simulacrum denting the night. Ahead of him something tall rose. It moved and for a moment Hart mistook it for a very thick mast.

  Light blew into the world. The marines at the station had noticed something odd seaward and had switched on a spotlight.

  The creature raised itself out of the water, its chest propped on the sand. The light seemed to explode off its wet skin, showing the entire length of its neck.

  Chung-Ho hesitated only a moment. He glanced back at Hart and said in a wondrous tone, "A dragon...." Then he added to the astonishment of the onlookers by continuing down the beach.

  "Bonehead!" the marines at the spotlight shouted. "Chung!" Hart added in a voice loaded with disbelief. But Chung either did not hear or was ignoring their entreaties. He had always been like a man in a trance. The presence of the beast did not shock him out of character.

  The creature was momentarily dazzled by the light. It swayed back and forth a few times in confusion. Then it saw Chung and froze--its perplexity compounded, as if it was not accustomed to having its meals walk right up to it.

  "Chung!" came Hart's frantic cry.

  The Chinaman stopped and looked down. "No toes!" he cried out. Then he raised his eyes. Man and creature stared at each other. The marines fell silent, stunned in every way.

  "Bonehead!" came Hart's final, horrified commentary.

  The creature slowly dipped, paused... dipped, paused... lowering its head in tentative stages, until it was directly above the man. One might have thought it was about to lick the man like a loving pet. It sniffed. As though picking a bug off a petal, it opened its jaws and took Chung-Ho between its teeth.

  The man's scream was short-lived.

  The ground began to shake. The thud of donkeys was a familiar one on Midway. They were descended from the draft animals that had been let loose after the construction of the relay station. Living off marram grass and the brackish but salt-free water only inches under the sand, they roamed in wild herds. But the profound counterpoint of mini-quakes was a new sound. The spotlight swung wildly.

  2020 Hours

  Lieutenant Anthony dashed into the quad when he heard the commotion. He could see the frantic shadows of men racing about the spotlight fifty yards away. There appeared to be something on top of the rel
ay station. It was rising in the air. He could not imagine--

  His heart thumped to his throat when he realized the thing was not on the building, but beyond it--alive and coming closer.

  "Name all the waters, all the countries, all the capes and major bays you would have to pass if you started at Chicago and traveled to Manila via the Horn."

  This had been the final question on his Marine Corps entrance examination. The Secretary of the Navy himself had chosen him for the honor, there being no state senator for the District of Columbia. Along with algebra, geometry of the plane and solid varieties, and geography, spelling was very big with the examiners. Anthony had prepped at Swaveley, a cram school open to the privileged sons of Corps' alumni. But with the Marine Corps Band practicing on the balcony in Band Hall at the Washington Marine Barracks where the test was given, spelling words like physiognomy, tonsillectomy and psoriasis had verged on the impossible.

  Yet he had passed and the next thing he knew he was staring across a river at Port Royal, South Carolina. The Corps had situated its School of Application at Parris Island, site of an old navy yard. There, Anthony learned small-arms firing regulations, drill regulations, tactics, organization, hygiene, rifle instruction, signals, engineering, security, and administration.

  None of which helped him with what he was seeing now. Miami and San Juan lay one thousand and thirty-two miles apart. Cabo Raso jutted between Cayenne and Sao Luis. The Corps did not bother teaching him monsters did not exist because that was a given.

  And here was a monster.

  Lieutenant Anthony's men carried their rifles wherever they went. He'd told them this was to prevent the Nips and Chinks from breaking into the armory‑‑contained in a small shed‑‑and overthrowing the ostensible government. In reality, this was a concession to Ziolkowski, who could turn a devil's jig at the sight of rust or verdigris on bluing. By making them keep their guns by their side, the sergeant could make certain they were properly maintained, and know who to blame if they weren't.