1100 hours, 13th August
We’re running out of fuel. Westvallen is trying his best to make sure that word isn’t spreading, but I heard it from Mendez. Apparently it’ll last for a few more days so we still have time to figure out what to do next. There’s only one thing to do though; go ashore and hike. I don’t know how long we’ll last out there on account of the killer natives, but we don’t exactly have a choice.
Well in other news, Kelly went and stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She was allegedly cleaning my quarters and found the photograph. The one of Keith. I wanted to snap at her for rifling through my things, but I was tired. Tired of all of it. I told her everything. That he was a good boy who liked his toy farm animals and that he passed away from polio when he was eleven. It’d been so long that I struggled to remember when it happened. It was embarrassing. How could I forget a thing like that? Kelly went and apologised for bringing it up, but I told her it was fine and that she should go fetch some food for the boys on the bridge. It gave me time to sit there and look at him. I miss him so much.
0600 hours, 16th August
It’s been three days since I wrote. Three nights of dreaming about dead crew members. The first night was Kelly. She was washed up on a beach. Crows were pecking at her eyes. Second was Mendez clinging to a piece of floating debris while a strafing Zero sent machine gun bullets ripping through his body. Third was Caradine. A Jap boat chugged by him as he waded there in the water. They threw a grenade in there with him. I suppose this is my life now. I just see all this when I lay down to rest.
Anyway. Westvallen finally found the stones he needed to tell the crew about the fuel situation. Needless to say, a lot of the men didn’t take it well. At first I thought he might have a mutiny on his hands, but then I saw ten to twenty sailors just throw themselves into the water. Just like the marine who fell in almost a week ago, they went straight down and never came back up. That’s when Caradine lost it. He just about went catatonic. Westvallen had to relieve him and confine him to the infirmary.
Tanaka came by my office this morning when I was trying to file all the paperwork for the poor bastards who did themselves in. Said he would’ve come by sooner, but Kitsch wasn’t doing a very good job with leading the troops so he had to pick up some of his slack. I brewed some coffee; not much of the stuff left so I’ve been saving it for special company. I asked him what he thinks about us needing to go ashore. He tried to sugar coat it for a while, but I eventually scalded him enough for him to drop it. He thinks everyone will die within minutes of stepping onto dry land. I laughed and said I’d give us seconds.
Right now, we’re readying goods to take with us after we abandon ship. I was trying to figure out which medical supplies to take and what to leave behind because we sure as hell can’t take everything. We’re going on foot and we don’t have pack animals or anything like that, so it has to be fairly light. Eventually I started thinking about it this way; if anyone gets hurt out there, we’re not going to have the luxury of stopping for long enough for me and Klein to operate. We’d have to either leave them or put them out. That helped me cut down quite a bit.
I also have to tend to the rest of the injured. The ones who are too weak to be moved. They’ll be resting soon enough, after I get the morphine ready.
1800 hours, 16th August
We set out from the ship an hour ago, just made camp in the forest. I don’t think I’ve ever been this exhausted and on edge all at once. For whatever reason, nothing leapt out at us during the hike. Twenty minutes in, some of Kitsch’s men started saying they heard noises coming from the mountains and the bushes. It took a bit, but I heard it too. Crying, sobbing, screaming. We were expecting to be boxed in and stabbed to Hell and back, but nothing happened. Everything was fine.
Before we left, just when it was time to leave the Respite, we couldn’t find Caradine. No sign of him anywhere. Best guess is that he leapt into the water. Just like that, Jackson became Westvallen’s new XO. Sticking to all those Navy rules doesn't feel productive to me, but when I told Tanaka that in passing a few minutes ago, he told me that ‘People need clear definitions of what they can and can’t do, because we inherently want to step on each other.’ Can’t say that I expected such a young man to see the world like that, but then again this war’s done a number on all of us. Tanaka and all the other fighting men especially.
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He stayed with me a while, kept his eyes on the trees. It suddenly struck me again how young he was, sitting there with his rifle, not quite ready to die for all of us but in line to do it anyway. I cried like a little girl. When he asked me what was wrong, I lied and told him that I was scared. He’s such a sweet young man. He took my hand, smiled at me, and said that he wasn’t going to let anything happen. I think we both knew how empty the promise was, but strangely enough it was reassuring.
I eventually managed to shoo him off and into bed. Kitsch has marines standing watch at all hours on rotating shifts, but I don’t think I can find it in me to go to sleep out here. Then again, would it be easier if they got me while I was nodding off? Would I not feel it? Maybe it would be like drifting away, just sleep seamlessly melting into death. I do have a way of making it easy, but I can’t. I have a duty to perform. The morphine is for the others.
1300 hours, 17th August
We were missing twenty something people this morning. No sign of a fight. I wasn’t short any doses of morphine either. You know what the most appalling part of it is? No one was that shocked. Things that can’t be explained have been happening to us since we got here, wherever ‘here’ is. Everyone’s resigned to it at this point. Even Kelly had a pair of dry eyes for once. She hasn’t been the same since Al kicked it. Mendez was one of the missing. Kitsch as well. I wasn’t that familiar with the others. Tanaka is in charge of the marines now.
It took a few hours to pack it all up and start hiking again. No one knows where we’re going. All of the compasses aren’t working at all. They’re not even going haywire or anything like that. Just dead. Like us, I suppose. Time to go, Westvallen’s telling me to get my nose out of this book. I don’t even know why I’m still writing in it.
-
I'm lost. I felt like I heard his laugh coming from the bushes. It’d been so long since I last heard it, but there was no doubt in my mind. Before I knew it, I drifted off from the group. I could see shadows of children in the fog, but whenever I got close, they faded away like there was never anything there to begin with. I must've spent ten minutes wandering around before I snapped out of it and realised what I did. I tried retracing my steps and searching for tracks, but everyone was long gone. They probably thought I vanished like the rest.
I've managed to find a small cave in the side of a cliff. I don't know what I'm going to do. I've lost track of the time. I don't have a watch on me and night doesn't seem to be a thing out here, so it's safe to assume that I'll never be able to figure it out again.
What do I do? When I go to sleep, I see everyone around me dead. When I’m awake, I hear my son. I can’t get away from it. It follows me wherever I go. I don’t think I can do it anymore. I can’t go on. I know that I won’t see Harry again and it’s too painful. I’ve left him. He’s going to be all alone out there and he’s never going to know what happened to me. Maybe that’s why I’ve been writing. I’ve known all along that I’m not coming home. This is all on the minuscule and incredible chance that someone finds this and can bring it back to him.
Harry, I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you fly off your bicycle and land face-first in the pavement outside pop’s grocery store. We’ve been through hell together, sweetheart. I’m sorry I never came back. Please, you have to know that I never stopped thinking about you.
-
I saw him. I saw Keith. I'd been sitting there in the cave for God knows how long, staring at the ceiling when I heard the laugh again. I don't think I've ever run that fast in my life. I pushed through a thick patch of forest and emerged in a clearing.
There he was. Sitting in the dirt and playing with some twigs. He rolled the sticks through the dirt as he narrated some story about how a massive herd of migrating trees was rolling down a hill towards the castle, so the king and his knights needed to get their woodcutting axes to scare them away. Keith loved telling stories like that. He was so imaginative. I used to tell him that it was no good to make up ridiculous things like that. 'It isn't going to help you in real life,' I said.
I knew that I was losing my mind so I took a deep breath, turned around, and walked away without looking back. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but I knew it couldn't be him. He's dead. Dead.