P.G. Centre. Girls. Seven of them. Pretty. Not one over sixteen. Curls. Pigtails. Bangs. Pouting little lips— smiling, frowning, shaping emotion on emotion. Sparkling young eyes—glittering, twinkling, narrowing, cold or warm.
Seven healthy young bodies restive on wooden chairs. Smooth adolescent limbs. Girls—pretty girls—seven of them.
An army of ugly shapeless men, stumbling in mud, struggling along the pitch black muddy road.
Rain a torrent. Buckets of it thrown on each exhausted man. Sucking sound of great boots sinking into oozy yellow-brown mud, pulling loose. Mud dripping from heels and soles.
Plodding men—hundreds of them—soaked, miserable, depleted. Young men bent over like old men. Jaws hanging loosely, mouth gasping at black wet air, tongues lolling, sunken eyes looking at nothing, betraying nothing.
Rest.
Men sink down in the mud, fall on their packs. Heads thrown back, mouths open, rain splashing on yellow teeth. Hands immobile—scrawny heaps of flesh and bone. Legs without motion—khaki lengths of worm-eaten wood. Hundreds of useless limbs fixed to hundreds of useless trunks.
In back, ahead, beside, rumble trucks and tanks and tiny cars. Thick tires splattering mud. Fat treads sinking, tearing at mucky slime. Rain drumming wet fingers on metal and canvas.
Lightning flashbulbs without pictures. Momentary burst of light. The face of war seen for a second—made of rusty guns and turning wheels and faces staring.
Blackness. A night hand blotting out the brief storm glow. Windblown rain flitting over fields and roads, drenching trees and trucks. Rivulets of bubbly rain tearing scars from the earth. Thunder, lightning.
A whistle. Dead men resurrected. Boots in sucking mud again—deeper, closer, nearer. Approach to a city that bars the way to a city that bars the way to a…
An officer sat in the communication room of the P.G. Centre. He peered at the operator, who sat hunched over the control board, phones over his ears, writing down a message.
The officer watched the operator. They are coming, he thought. Cold, wet and afraid they are marching at us. He shivered and shut his eyes.
He opened them quickly. Visions fill his darkened pupils—of curling smoke, flaming men, unimaginable horrors that shape themselves without words or pictures.
“Sir,” said the operator, “from advance observation post. Enemy forces sighted.”
The officer got up, walked over to the operator and took the message. He read it, face blank, mouth parenthesized. “Yes,” he said.
He turned on his heel and went to the door. He opened it and went into the next room. The seven girls stopped talking. Silence breathed on the walls.
The officer stood with his back to the plastic window. “Enemies,” he said, “two miles away. Right in front of you.”
He turned and pointed out the window. “Right out there. Two miles away. Any questions?”
A girl giggled.
“Any vehicles?” another asked.
“Yes. Five trucks, five small command cars, two tanks.”
“That’s too easy,” laughed the girl, slender fingers fussing with her hair.
“That’s all,” said the officer. He started from the room. “Go to it,” he added and, under his breath, “Monsters!”
He left.
“Oh, me,” sighed one of the girls, “here we go again.”
“What a bore,” said another. She opened her delicate mouth and plucked out chewing gum. She put it under her chair seat.
“At least it stopped raining,” said a redhead, tying her shoelaces.
The seven girls looked around at each other.
Finally they were silent on their chairs. One of them took a deep breath. So did another. They all tensed their milky flesh and clasped fragile fingers together. One quickly scratched her head to get it over with. Another sneezed prettily.
“Now,” said a girl on the right end of the row.
Seven pairs of beady eyes shut. Seven innocent little minds began to picture, to visualize, to transport.
Lips rolled into thin gashes, faces drained of colour, bodies shivered passionately. Their fingers twitching with concentration, seven pretty little girls fought a war.
The men were coming over the rise of a hill when the attack came. The leading men, feet poised for the next step, burst into flame.
There was no time to scream. Their rifles slapped down into the muck, their eyes were lost in fire. They stumbled a few steps and fell, hissing and charred, into the soft mud.
Men yelled. The ranks broke. They began to throw up their weapons and fire at the night. More troops puffed incandescently, flared up, were dead.
“Spread out!” screamed an officer as his gesturing fingers sprouted flame and his face went up in licking yellow heat.
The men looked everywhere. Their dumb terrified eyes searched for an enemy. They fired into the fields and woods. They shot each other. They broke into flopping runs over the mud.
A truck was enveloped in fire. Its driver leaped out, a two-legged torch. The truck went bumping over the road, turned, wove crazily over the field, crashed into a tree, exploded and was eaten up in blazing light. Black shadows flitted in and out of the aura of light around the flames. Screams rent the night.
Man after man burst into flame, fell crashing on his face in the mud. Spots of searing light lashed the wet darkness—screams—running coals, sputtering, glowing, dying—incendiary ranks—trucks cremated—tanks blowing up.
A soldier runs headlong across a field, screaming, his eyes insane with horror. A gigantic boulder rushes at him from the black sky.
His body is driven into the earth, mangled. From the rock edge, fingertips protrude.
The boulder lifts from the ground, crashes down again, a shapeless trip hammer. A flaming truck is flattened. The boulder flies again to the black sky.
A soldier falls to his knees. His head jerks back. In the light of burning comrades, he stares dumbly at the white foamed wave that towers over him.
It crashes down, sweeps his body over the muddy earth, fills his lungs with salt water. The tidal wave roars over the field, drowns a hundred flaming men, tosses their corpses in the air with thundering whitecaps.
Suddenly the water stops, flies into a million pieces and disintegrates.
A running soldier collides with a lion. He cannot see in the darkness. His hands strike wildly at the shaggy mane. He clubs with his rifle butt.
A scream. His face is torn off with one blow of thick claws. A jungle roar billows in the night.
A red-eyed elephant tramples wildly through the mud, picking up men in its thick trunk, hurling them through
