He’d had nightmares where he was trying to run somewhere but his feet seemed stuck in quicksand. This was one of those, except it wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. If he didn’t get to the mouth of the tunnel before the camp guards did whatever they did, he never would.

Their machine gunners kept on shooting down the shaft. They kept on laughing between bursts, too. Then they stopped shooting. Peterson could think of only one reason why they would do that. They must have lit the fuse, and they were all running for cover.

And he was too far away. He knew he was too far away. He tried to force more speed from his poor, abused carcass, but a shuffling shamble was all it would give him. Quicksand, he thought desperately. Quick-

He was one of the leaders of the mob of POWs. He’d got within a hundred yards of the tunnel mouth when the Japanese explosives went up. The next thing he knew, it was black, and untold tons of rock were coming down on him. Oh, good, he thought. At least I’m not bur OSCAR VAN DER KIRK JUMPED when somebody knocked on his door a little before eleven. Susie Higgins jumped higher. She’d seen horror out on the street. Oscar had just heard about it. “Who the hell’s that?” she said, her voice shrill with fear.

“Don’t know.” Oscar heard the fear in his own voice, too. The knock came again, quick and urgent. Two years earlier, whoever it was would have just walked in. Odds were long against the door’s being locked in those days. Now… Now was a different story. Oscar’s fear swelled with each tap. Anybody out after curfew was in trouble with the Japs. Anybody in trouble with the Japs these days was as good as dead. And so was anybody who helped someone in trouble with the Japs.

“Don’t let him in,” Susie whispered.

“I’ve got to,” Oscar said. “I wouldn’t let those bastards get their hands on a gooney bird, let alone a man.”

Before Susie could start a fight-and before he could lose his nerve-he threw open the door. “Oscar,” croaked the man in the hallway. He was about Oscar’s height, but only skin and bones draped in rags. His eyes burned feverishly, deep in their sockets. A powerful stench came off him in waves, a stench that said he hadn’t bathed in weeks.

“Who the-?” But Oscar broke off with the question unfinished. “Charlie? Jesus Christ, Charlie, get your ass in here!”

Charlie Kaapu gave him a ghost of the grin he knew. “Then get out of my way.” Numbly, Oscar did. Charlie staggered past him and into the little apartment. If Oscar had ever wanted to see a dictionary illustration of the phrase on your last legs, here it was in front of him. He was so shaken, he didn’t even close the door after Charlie till Susie hissed at him.

She gasped when she got a good look at the hapa-Hawaiian. He wasn’t just four steps from starving to death. Somebody-the Japs, Oscar supposed-had been beating on him with sticks. The welts showed it: on his arms, across his face, and, visible through the holes and tears in his shirt, on his chest and back as well. He was missing some teeth he’d had when the Japs got hold of him.

He sat down on the ratty rug, as if his legs didn’t want to hold him up-and they likely didn’t. “You think I look bad, you ought to see the other poor bastards up in the Kalihi Valley,” he said. “Next to them, I’m Duke goddamn Kahanamoku.”

“Here.” Susie ran to the icebox and pulled out a couple of ripe avocados and a mackerel.

Suddenly, Charlie’s attention focused on her like a searchlight. In the presence of food, he forgot about everything else. Oscar didn’t suppose he could blame him, either. “Let me have those, please,” Charlie said, an unusual restraint in his voice. He sounded like a man holding himself back from leaping on what he wanted.

“I was going to do something with the fish-” Susie said uncertainly.

He shook his head. His hair and scalp were full of scabs, too. “Don’t bother,” he told her. “I’ve eaten fish Jap-style plenty of times. And I don’t much want to wait, you know what I mean?”

Without a word, Susie gave him the mackerel and the alligator pears. Oscar didn’t think he’d ever seen her speechless before, but she was now. Charlie made the avocados and the fish disappear in nothing flat. He ate with a singleminded concentration like nothing Oscar had ever seen. Oscar didn’t try to talk with him till nothing was left but peel and seeds and bones. If he had spoken, he didn’t think Charlie would have answered, or even heard him.

“Oh, Lord, that was fine.” Charlie looked down at his rubbish. He’d even eaten the eyes out of the mackerel’s head. “I do that for days and days at a time, I start to be a man again.”

“Won’t be easy, not till the Americans get here,” Oscar said.

“Yeah.” Charlie Kaapu nodded. “I was hoping they’d be here already-all that shooting we heard down here from up in the valley. But I see it ain’t so. Some crazy Jap motherfucker almost shot me for the fun of it before I got here. ’Scuse me, Susie.”

“It’s okay,” Susie said. “I know about the crazy Jap motherfuckers. I know more than I ever wanted to.” She shuddered.

“What did they do to you, Charlie?” Oscar asked.

“Well, they taught me one thing-I ain’t never gonna screw around with no Jap officer’s special lady friend no more,” Charlie Kaapu said. In spite of himself, Oscar laughed. So did Susie. She clapped her hands, too. Charlie went on, “But you didn’t mean that. They tried to starve me to death. They tried to work me to death. When I didn’t start dying fast enough to suit ’em, they tried to beat me to death, too. The other guys there were POWs who were hard cases. Imagine what I’d look like if I was there three times as long. That’s them.”

“My God,” Susie said after trying to imagine that. “How come they aren’t all dead?”

“Lot of ’em are,” Charlie answered. “More dyin’ every day, too. But a hard case is a hard case, and some of ’em stayed alive just to spite the Japs. This guy named Peterson shoulda been dead months ago, but he was still breathin’ when I got away. One tough son of a bitch, you bet.”

“What the heck did they have you doing in the Kalihi Valley?” Oscar said. “I’ve been up there. It’s nothing but the river and trees, all the way back to the mountains.”

“Don’t I know it!” Charlie said. “What were we doin’? We were digging a tunnel through the mountains to the damn windward coast, that’s what. Digging with picks and shovels and crowbars and baskets, mind. The Japs didn’t give a shit if we ever got there. It was something to work us to death with, that’s all.”

“My God,” Oscar muttered. People had talked about ramming a tunnel through the mountains for years. He supposed they would have got around to it sooner or later. When they did, he supposed they would have used dynamite and jackhammers and all the others tools mankind had invented to make sure jobs like that didn’t take forever.

“Can I have a bath or a shower or something?” Charlie said. “I’m filthy, and I’m lousy, too. I hope you guys don’t get company on account of me.” Oscar hoped the same thing. He automatically started to scratch, then jerked his hand down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Susie doing the same thing. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so grim. And Charlie was filthy; the rank smell that came off him filled the apartment.

“Go ahead,” Oscar told him. “I wish I had soap and hot water, that’s all. You can wear some of my clothes when you come out. Toss yours out and I’ll get rid of ’em.”

“Will do,” Charlie said. “We’re about the same size-well, we used to be, anyway. I can’t get over how fat people look.” Oscar and Susie were both skinnier than they had been when Japan took Oahu, and they were better off than most people because Oscar caught so many fish. To a skeleton, though, a skinny man had to look fat. Charlie went into the bathroom, then stuck his head out again. “What was all the shooting about a couple of nights ago? That’s why I thought the Army would be back here.”