“Well, what are you waiting for?” the lieutenant colonel said. “Come along with me, and you’ll see what’s what.”
They went. Trucks waited behind the building. Again, Stas wondered if they would head to a camp instead of an airstrip. He got into one anyhow. The only other choice was running, and he couldn’t do that… could he?
The trucks rattled out of town. His rear end knew when dirt replaced paving. He couldn’t see out except through the back. Most of what he saw was the snout of another truck right behind his.
After an hour and a half or so, the truck stopped. The senior officer had ridden up front with the driver, on a more comfortable seat. He jumped down and yelled, “Everybody out!”
Out Stas came. He smiled happily-it was an airstrip. The NKVD hadn’t nabbed him yet. Only after that thought was out of the way did he notice the planes there. They had to be Pe-2s-they sure weren’t anything he’d ever seen before. And… they made the SB-2 look like it just got its dick knocked off.
They were lean and long-nosed. They looked more like German Bf-110s than any other plane Stas could think of off the top of his head, and they weren’t much bigger. They’d be fast, the way the SB-2 had seemed fast when it was new. And they’d pack a punch, too. All of a sudden, Stas wished he could do that pale-eyed lieutenant a favor, because the fellow had sure done one for him.
Even though Shanghai lay under Japanese occupation, Hollywood movies still reached the theaters. Not right away, of course: The Wizard of Oz must have been out in the States for a year before it crossed the Pacific and the Sea of Japan. But here it was at last.
By himself or with his buddies from the Corps, Pete McGill would have chosen a Western or a gangster movie, or maybe a French flick with a bunch of chorus girls high-kicking in their scanties. Holding hands with Vera like a lovestruck teenager… the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion seemed a better bet.
He knew the story; he’d read the Oz books, and had them read to him, when he was a kid. Most Americans had. Vera hadn’t, so she didn’t. And she gasped when Kansas black-and-white turned to the Technicolor Land of Oz. Well, Pete almost gasped, too. That and the trick photography and the song-and-dance numbers were pretty amazing, even if it wasn’t a movie he would have chosen for himself.
“This Wizard in the Emerald City, he will help them?” Vera whispered in Pete’s ear. She’d got into the spirit of it, all right.
He cared more about the feel of her warm, moist breath than about all the wizards in the world put together. Smiling, he whispered “You’ll find out” back at her.
Down the Yellow Brick Road capered Dorothy, with Toto and their unlikely companions from Oz. In the distance lay the Emerald City. Its palaces gleamed against the painted sky. If you couldn’t find what you were looking for in a place like that, you probably couldn’t find it anywhere. And they were on their way.
The bomb in the theater went off just before they got there.
One second, Pete was listening to swelling, cheerful music and watching colors brighter than any he’d see in real life. The next, there was a roar and a crash. The theater went dark in the same split second as two walls and part of the ceiling fell in.
As soon as Pete heard the explosion, he tried to throw himself flat and to sweep Vera down with him. He reacted at a level far below conscious thought-he was a trained Marine. He was halfway to the grimy, threadbare carpet when something clipped him behind the ear and darkness deeper than the one inside the movie house engulfed him.
Some while later-he never knew how long-he came back to himself without fully realizing he’d been knocked for a loop. He kept trying to yank Vera down to the deck. Only then did he notice she wasn’t in the circle of his left arm any more. And only after that did he notice that every square inch of himself, with the possible exception of the soles of his feet, hurt like hell. He couldn’t account for why, not at first. Had a bunch of Japs decided to stomp him? This felt even worse than he thought that should have.
Then memory, as opposed to reflex, came back. He’d been watching the movie. There’d been warnings the Chinese underground was getting frisky. One of the things they shouted at you over and over while you were a boot was Anything that can happen can happen to you! Be ready for it! He hadn’t been ready enough.
Or had he? He was still here, anyhow, wherever here was. “Vera?” he said-or tried to say. Only a croak emerged. His mouth was full of blood and what he guessed was plaster dust.
When he spat, a chunk of tooth came out with all the glop. That, at the moment, was the least of his worries. “Vera?” he said again. This time, he could more or less understand himself.
A face appeared above him. One second, it wasn’t there; the next, it was. So it seemed to him, anyhow. He was still drifting in and out of consciousness. The face wasn’t Vera’s. It belonged to a skinny, middle-aged Chinese man. Next thing Pete knew, the fellow’s hand was in his pocket, grabbing for his wallet. He tried to knock it away, but his right arm didn’t want to do what he told it to. The Chinese man disappeared. So did Pete’s cash.
Then another Chinese looked him over. This guy spoke to him in bad French. “Don’t get it,” Pete managed.
“Ah,” the Chinese man said, and tried again in English: “You hurt? Where hurt?”
“Fucking everywhere!” Pete said. He tried to use his right arm to point. The pain almost drove him under. “Arm especially,” he gasped.
To his surprise, the Chinese man produced a syringe from a small leather case and gave him a shot. He felt better right away. If that wasn’t morphine, he didn’t know what it would be. As he drifted toward sleep on a warm cloud of contentment, the Chinese man started bandaging him. A doc, was Pete’s last clear thought. How about that?
When he really came back to himself, he was inside the American consulate. The shot was wearing off. Every nerve screamed. The Navy doc who took care of the Marines didn’t want to give him more dope. “You aim to end up a junkie?” the white man asked.
“Right now, buddy, I don’t give a fuck,” Pete said fervently. Muttering, the Navy doctor stuck him. This time, Pete didn’t go away as the pain receded. “Where’s Vera? How’s she doing?” he asked as soon as he could think of anything outside his own torment.
“The woman you were with unfortunately did not survive the explosion,” the doctor answered, his voice disapproving. “I was told she must have died very quickly and did not suffer.”
Pete wailed. Even drugged, even with his own hurts still tormenting him, he yipped like a puppy taken from its mother. Tears poured down his face. He wanted to kill the doctor for telling him something like that. He wanted to call the man a liar, too. He wanted that more than anything, but he knew he couldn’t have it.
“She can’t be dead,” he said. “I loved her.”
“I’m sorry, son.” The Navy doctor didn’t sound one bit sorry. “You ask me, the Chinese aren’t doing themselves any good with these terror bombs. The Western powers will just decide Japan can do whatever she wants to put down maniacs like that. I bet the Chinks are a bunch of Reds, trying to give Stalin a helping hand.”
Pete hardly heard him. He’d just betrayed his own hopes. I loved her. Morphine didn’t keep him from noting the dreadful finality of that past tense. He believed Vera was gone. How could he live without her? He had no idea. He didn’t much want to try. He wailed again.
That made the doctor give him another shot. This one wasn’t morphine. It knocked him for a loop, whatever it was. When he woke up, it was the following afternoon. He didn’t want to believe that, but the strips of sunlight coming in through windows he knew faced west gave him no choice.
He looked around the sick bay. He was the only guy in it. If any other Marines had been watching The Wizard of Oz, they’d either got off scot-free or they’d bought the whole farm.