Page 55 of The Girls of Pearl Harbor
‘Do you think they actually bathe in there, or is it just for show?’
April laughed and shook her head. ‘Maybe they just lie in there?’
They all pulled faces, the entire room seeming too weird to understand, and quietly went back down the stairs and out the front door the same way they’d come in.
‘I have a feeling like we’ve just walked uninvited through someone’s home and we’re about to be arrested for it,’ April muttered.
‘Don’t be silly. It wasn’t like we forced our way in.’
Outside and back in the narrow street, almost too narrow for them to walk even two abreast, Eva tried to breathe through her mouth so she didn’t have to smell the air. It was so hot and humid, so full of people and things, she felt like she was choking.
‘Come on—let’s go back,’ she said, hoping Grace wasn’t about to take them anywhere else. ‘My stomach is growling.’
April took the lead this time, and Eva happily followed her, smiling back at the curious locals, wondering what they must think of them, scanning their faces as they did hers with open interest. It had been an unusual day, but for the first time she could remember, she didn’t have to force her smile, and it felt good.
‘Seriously, if they do use that bath, how would they dry it to keep the fur all fluffy?’ Grace asked as they crossed back toward the wreckage on their way home.
Eva laughed as she imagined some poor housemaid forced to dry out the fur each day. ‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, line the floor with fur maybe, but the bath?’
‘Oh, and imagine all the pee on the toilet seat! How would you clean it? And imagine how stinky it would get!’
They roared with laughter as they stumbled across the grass, still full of talk about what they’d seen. Grace might have had to drag them out today, but it had been worth every minute.
‘Did you hear that?’ Eva stopped walking, straining to listen.
‘What?’ April whispered back.
She waited, ears pricked. ‘I don’t know—it was like a groan or something.’
There it went again.
‘I heard it too,’ Grace said, her eyes wide as she took a step sideways and pressed into Eva.
The moan was low and guttural, and fear sliced through Eva as she slowly spun to see where it might be coming from. They were close to the downed planes again, and she had this feeling like they shouldn’t be there, like it was a sacred or dangerous place that they should have avoided instead of walking straight into it.
‘I think we should go,’ she said.
‘Are there wild animals around here?’ April asked. ‘Was there a warning about anything dangerous?’
Grace shook her head as Eva watched her. ‘Nothing I heard about. But I still think we should run,’ she whispered.
Eva looked at April, but April just stared straight back at her as the low noise met their ears again. This time they all heard it at the same time.
‘Run!’ Grace yelped.
They bolted, running in the direction of the hospital, but Eva glanced over her shoulder, half expecting a big cat to leap out of the long dry grass to try to catch them, but there was nothing there. Terror gripped her like a hand to her throat, made her think of her father, made fear pulse through every part of her body as she remembered what it was like to fight for her life, to try to stay safe.
Oh lord.‘Stop!’ she screamed, tripping as she fell over her own feet in her desperation to halt, wishing her eyes were playing tricks on her.
It wasn’t a cat. It wasn’t a predator.
Oh hell. Oh lord.
‘It’s a man,’ she gasped, stumbling sideways and dropping to her knees in the dirt, her legs buckling as she struggled not to sob.
A soldier, one of theirs, was dragging his legs behind him, bloodied hands fighting to thump down, one after the other, his face etched with pain as he used only his upper body to move.
He let out a guttural moan before collapsing face-first into the dirt.
