"I want to see her," Martinez muttered.
"Juan, I don't think that's a good idea. Give the other nurses a chance to clean her up. You don't want to remember Angela as she is now."
"I need to see her!" Martinez howled, before collapsing into tears. The priest embraced him, patting the shell-shocked soldier on the back.
"In good time," Father Kelly said. "You'll see her in good time."
Wierzbowski and Buntz were waiting for Martinez when Father Kelly brought him to the hospital. The doctors had patched up Wierzbowski with temporary dressings over his bullet wounds. The bloody bandages reminded Martinez of the bright red poinsettia flowers his mother loved to grow, back home in New Mexico. Buntz had climbed out of the bomb-blasted Stores building after the enemy attack was over, little the worse for his brush with death. He and Wierzbowski nodded to Martinez, neither of them finding any words to speak.
"She's through here," Father Kelly said, ushering Martinez through a door and along a corridor. They passed a large pile of discarded uniforms covered with blood and dirt. A soldier's helmet sat to one side of the debris, the metal crumpled like a discarded love letter. Martinez couldn't help wondering whose head had been inside that helmet. Was it one of his unit? They had lost half a dozen good men to Japanese bullets and bombs, not counting Sergeant Aimes. It was hard to imagine life without his rat-a-tat-tat voice barking orders at them, berating their efforts to match his standards.
The priest stopped outside a closed door and knocked on the blank wood. It opened and two nurses emerged, their faces hollow and numb. One of them was Ruth, who had been Angela's best friend among all the hospital staff. She looked right through Martinez, not even recognising him. When the nurses had gone, Father Kelly patted the young soldier on the back.
"You can go in now, son."
Hitori stood on the edge of the aircraft carrier, watching the white caps on the waves below as twilight settled over the Pacific. He wondered how Suzuki and the other kyuuketsuki fliers had fared on their mission to the Philippines. No doubt there would be losses, but he hoped they had acquitted themselves well against the enemy's guns and grunts. Kimura had proven himself an able lieutenant on Oahu, though he displayed a sadistic streak that troubled Hitori. Would each successive generation of vampyrs be more violent, more brutal than the last? If that were so, what future would they have in the Japanese Empire's war with the Americans? Yes, the kyuuketsuki had sacrificed much in the service of the emperor, but did that also mean sacrificing their humanity?
Something else was troubling him, something Constanta had said as they had stood on that balcony in Tokyo, three months ago. Hitori shook his head, unable to believe so little time had passed since he had become a vampyr; it felt more like a lifetime, a lifetime of lifetimes. How long would eternity feel if these three months were anything to go by? But there was no use wondering over such enigmas. He had more urgent issues to address than eternity.
"When the war of the humans is over, the vampyr nation will rise up to start a new war, the war of blood, a crimson conflict to decide the future of the world. We shall take our rightful place as the dominant species. Humans will be to us as cattle are to humans: fodder, nothing more, nothing less." Those had been Constanta's words, and at the time Hitori had not questioned them. Standing in the presence of his sire was intoxicating, like drinking too much warm sake on a hot night. Now he had seen the consequences of his deal with that devil and borne witness to his own animal savagery.
Imagine a world where there are thousands of vampyrs like me, Hitori thought, swarming across cities and continents. It was one thing to use the worst weapons imaginable to win a war, but what about during peacetime? He was building an army of kyuuketsuki, vampyr samurai more brutal than any fighting force seen in history. What happened when the war for the Pacific was over? What would be their next target? Hitori shook his head. As a soldier, he'd learned not to care about faceless civilians, they were the enemy and that was all, but what about his wife, Aiko, and their son Noriyuki? What would happen to them during Constanta's unholy war of blood?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Kimura's footfalls. "Quite a day," his lieutenant commented, joining him at the ship's edge.
"Quite a day," Hitori agreed. "History in the making."
"And we were there! We fought the enemy at Pearl Harbour as our bombs pummelled their navy into submission. According to what I've heard from our pilots, the Americans don't have a fleet anymore; the Pacific is ours for the taking. This war could be over within a few months."
"Don't be so certain, Kimura. The Americans I encountered on Oahu were many things, venal, proud, cowardly, brave, but they weren't very different from our own people. We Japanese believe ourselves superior to them, grandly saying we have an empire. When I looked inside the minds of the Americans, I saw that they believed much the same about themselves. To them, we are little yellow men, a race of tiny and insignificant people."
"But they must know differently after today? We destroyed their navy, and attacked their islands with impunity. We proved our superiority today."
"Perhaps, but I fear we may have merely woken a slumbering giant, forcing it to pay attention to what's happening across the world. Once that giant puts on its armour, America will not be so easily undone again. What we did today was sting a mighty beast. I fear the retribution for hurting its pride will be terrible and relentless."
"But surely-" Kimura protested, before a gesture silenced him.
"Trust me," Hitori said, "the war for the Pacific has only just begun. I'm certain we shall play an important part in the years to come, the battles ahead."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fiends of the Rising Sun
is
David Bishop's
tenth book for Black Flame and his eighteenth published novel. Born and raised in New Zealand, he worked as a daily newspaper journalist for five years before moving to the UK. After a decade editing such acclaimed comics as
2000 AD
and the
Judge Dredd Megazine
, he quit to go freelance and moved even further north to Scotland. Besides being a prolific scribe of pulp fiction novels, Bishop also writes scripts for radio drama, comics, computer games and articles for magazines.
The long-awaited book of his definitive 2000 AD history,
Thrill-Power Overload
, is being published during 2007.