All You Need Is Kill

It was a mystery novel about an American detective who is supposed to be some sort of expert on the Orient. I had my index finger wedged into a scene where all the key players meet for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in New York. The detective’s client, an Italian, tries to order an espresso after their meal, but the detective stops him cold. He starts on about how at Japanese restaurants, they bring you green tea after dinner, so you don’t have to order anything. Then he veers off on how green tea goes great with soy sauce, and oh, why is it that in India they spice their milk tea? He’s finally gathered everyone involved in the case in one place, and he talks a blue streak about everything but whodunit.

I rubbed my eyes.

Passing my hand over my shirt I felt my stomach through the cloth. I could make out a newly formed six-pack that hadn’t been there half a year back. No trace of any wound, no charred flesh. My right arm was right where it should be. Good news all around. What a crappy dream.

I must have fallen asleep reading the book. I should have known something was up when Mad Wargarita started striking up small talk about mystery novels. American Special Operators who’d crossed the entire Pacific Ocean just for a taste of blood didn’t have time to read the latest best seller. If they had spare time, they’d probably spend it tweaking their Jackets.

What a way to start the day. Today was going to be my first real taste of battle. Why couldn’t I have dreamed about blasting away a few baddies, getting promoted a grade or two?

On the bunk above me a radio with its bass blown out was squawking music-some kind of prehistoric rock so ancient my old man wouldn’t have recognized it. I could hear the sounds of the base stirring to life, incoherent chatter coming from every direction, and above it all, the DJ’s over-caffeinated voice chirping away with the weather forecast. I could feel every word pierce my skull. Clear and sunny out here on the islands, same as yesterday, with a UV warning for the afternoon. Watch out for those sunburns!

The barracks weren’t much more than four sheets of fire-resistant wood propped up together. A poster of a bronze-skinned bikini babe hung on one of the walls. Someone had replaced her head with a shot of the prime minister torn from the base newspaper. The bikini babe’s head grinned vapidly from its new home atop a macho muscle builder on another nearby poster. The muscle builder’s head was MIA.

I stretched in my bunk. The welded aluminum frame squealed in protest.

“Keiji, sign this.” Yonabaru craned his neck over the side of the top bunk. He looked great for a guy I’d just seen get impaled. They say people who die in dreams are supposed to live forever.

Jin Yonabaru had joined up three years before me. Three more years of trimming the fat, three more years of packing on muscle. Back when he was a civilian he’d been thin as a beanpole. Now he was cut from rock. He was a soldier, and he looked the part.

“What is it?”

“A confession. The one I told you about.”

“I signed it yesterday.”

“Really? That’s weird.” I could hear him rifling through pages above me. “No, not here. Well, sign one for me again, will ya?”

“You trying to pull a fast one on me?”

“Only if you come back in a bodybag. Besides, you can only die once, so what difference does it make how many copies you sign?”

UDF soldiers on the front line had a tradition. The day before an operation, they’d sneak into the PX and make off with some liquor. Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The shot they gave you before battle broke down any acetaldehyde left in the bloodstream. But if you were caught, they’d bring you up before a disciplinary committee-maybe a court martial if you screwed the pooch real bad-after taking stock of inventory once the fighting was over and everyone was back on base. Of course, it was hard to court-martial a corpse. Which is why we’d all leave notes before the battle explaining how the robbery had been our idea. Sure enough, when the investigation started, it was always some poor sap who’d got himself killed who had masterminded the whole thing. It was a good system. The people running the PX were wise to the racket, so they made sure to leave out some bottles that wouldn’t be missed too much. You’d think they’d just go ahead and give everyone a few drinks the night before a battle-for morale’s sake, if nothing else-but no, it was the same old song and dance every time. Good ideas don’t stand a chance against good bureaucracy.

I took the paper from Yonabaru. “Funny, I thought I’d be more nervous.”

“So soon? Save it for the day, man.”

“What do you mean? We suit up this afternoon.”

“You nuts? How long you plan on wearing that thing?”

“If I don’t wear it today, when will I?”

“How about tomorrow, when we roll out?”

I nearly fell out of bed. For an instant, my eyes settled on the soldier lying on the bunk next to mine. He was flipping through a porn magazine. Then I stared up into Yonabaru’s face.