Unexpected Rescue

This story is taken from 'There is no Tomorrow.' also on inkitt.

Rebecca knew that only death awaited her now, after killing Mashito, the camp commander who had been raping her every day for months.

She got her mind used to that thought, finding peace with herself at last, seeing his head looking out at her in death; except, that was when she heard planes screaming overhead, gunfire; heavy guns; and bombs exploding at the eastern side of the island and approaching where she was.

The invasion had started, as Mashito had been warned it would. Airplanes came closer and began dropping bombs in the military compound near the hospital.

This was a dangerous place to be.

Mashito was not where he should be to give orders what to do with the prisoners, and no one dared act without his direct orders. Once that rigid and inflexible command chain that he had insisted upon, demanding loyalty and blind obedience was broken, it was difficult to put another together quickly, and no one dared take the initiative while he lived.

First, kill the officers. One of the rules of war even during Roman times. She had done that with one of them.

She should not be here. They would come looking for him, and her. With her heart beating at twice its normal rate, she turned her grass-filled mattress to hide the fresh blood, raised the planks, and poured out the bloody liquor she had washed in, dropping the empty saki bottles into the sand. She stripped off her bloody coat; it was too obvious, and threw that down too, leaving her naked. It no longer mattered. She had other things to do now.

She tossed Mashito’s head to the sand, leaving a pool of dark blood on the desk, and followed it herself onto the body there, barely eighteen inches below the floor. What she would never have considered even a year earlier, no longer bothered her.

Before she replaced the planking, she turned over the coconut matting, trying to hide the blood on it and what she had done, and slid the last plank into place under it, to hide her escape for a few minutes more, from anyone coming into that room to look for him. Blood dripped onto her; into her face and hair.

She crawled to the edge of the building, dragging Mashito’s jacket with her, some of his various belongings, and his head in it, along with the doctor’s briefcase, containing his diary. She was wary of snakes and spiders, but soon ignored those concerns. There were more important things to worry about. She could do more, now that everyone was distracted by the attack, and she would do more.

Feet pounded across the floor above her in their urgency to find Mashito, with his name spoken almost hysterically, loudly, in concern, but he could not answer, and he would not be soon found. Her room would be empty of him, and of her when they looked, with little sign in that darkened room of what had happened just moments before, unless they inspected closely and saw all of the blood that had spurted onto the wall and onto the floor under that mat, and that blood which had pooled on the desk from his head.

She could see it all, and hear it, the panic, the growing concern in their voices.

Where was he? Where was she? Where had they gone?

They rushed off to check his quarters and around the camp. They must have missed seeing him leave with her, and had missed seeing all of the blood. They were caught flatfooted, for once.

She saw American planes flying over, dropping bombs, flames leaping, sand erupting, trees being blown apart, adding to the confusion; strafing the enemy positions once they had taken out the anti-aircraft gun. She saw Japanese soldiers running everywhere, being cut down. The huts would be next. Her heart sang. They could kill her too and she would not care now. She had done her part. But then reality hit home. She did not have to die. Better to live. She had to survive to tell this story. Tell Madison's story and that of the doctor, and of Mashito... damn him to hell!

No one was leaving the hospital, but they soon would. At the corner of the building, she looked around to be sure she was not seen, stood up, flicked the lighter she had taken from Mashito some days earlier and touched it to the grass roof, watching it take hold and begin to spread rapidly across the roof in the brisk wind off the ocean, and then touched it to the walls, and did the same along the length of it as she dragged everything with her. It would be inside the hospital in seconds where the floor and grass wall joined. Fragments of flaming grass began to rise into the hot air through the netting that held the grass in place, and was carried on the sea-wind to the roofs of other buildings in the compound.

She picked up what she could, in Mashito’s jacket, and ran, miraculously unseen, into the thick brush, away from the hospital and down to the beach to hide, and escape from what was happening behind her. She did not even care that she was naked; didn't notice. She was laughing almost hysterically with what she had done. She would not be heard over the noise all around her.

She listened to the rising voices of concern within the hospital; could envisage the mayhem as they struggled to get out of the blazing building, and then heard the screams, as blazing grass fell into the room from the collapsing roof and with the flimsy wall being sucked in on them after that, setting other fires from which few would be able to escape, considering the speed with which the building, with its grass walls was being engulfed.

They would not find either her, or him now, under the ashes of that hospital, if anyone was alive to do so, nor would they learn what had happened. Retribution would not immediately follow her unless she were seen and caught. The prisoners of war would be rescued, rather than murdered, without the autocratic Mashito to give that order. At least for a while.

She had achieved much more than she had ever believed possible.

Pausing to catch her breath, now that she was farther away, she pushed Mashito’s notebook into the briefcase along with his swords across the top of it, ready to take on others with them if she met them, put on Mashito’s darker jacket, also bloody, that would allow her to blend in to the vegetation better, but which covered too little of her, leaving her relatively pale lower body and legs visible. She picked up the severed head, and tumbled down to the beach, carrying the briefcase in her other hand, intending to remain hidden for as long as she could, and wait for the ground invasion force which she knew must be coming.

She ran down the hill, not understanding how she had been able to escape without detection, looking around her, and back up the hill as she ran, afraid of meeting anyone, or being seen. She could see the flames leaping high into the sky behind her from the sudden inferno that had been the hospital. No one had been able to get out. The grass on the roof and walls had been very dry. Then one of the grenades exploded, followed by others.

She ran.

That was when she ran into a group of soldiers.

She thought they were Japanese. They had found her again already? Or had they been waiting for her? Then she saw that they were marines, moving steadily along the beach to the western part of the island. The air attack had been a distraction to hide their landing.

Seeing nothing through her tears and almost hysterical fear, she ran directly into the man leading the force, almost bouncing off him.

She had not seen them, but they had watched her precipitous descent, seeing a mostly naked western woman; seeing everything about her, and could hear her sobs, cries, and hysterical laughter, as she stumbled, fell, rolled and regained her feet to continue, constantly looking back over her shoulder, breathing heavily, but never letting go of what she carried with her. That was why she had not seen them.