He was afraid of the light. The screeching of the birds and the grunting of a wild pig somewhere in the vine-shrouded wilderness beyond the beach terrified him. He knew he was being followed. The sounds of the birds and monkeys and pigs mingled with the sigh and crash of the surf of the Celebes Sea on the beach. There was a kind of madness in the noise that balanced the gibbering in the lurking shadows of his brain. He made himself roll over and stared at the morning sky through the palm fronds overhead. The sun was massive, red, swollen, as if it had gorged on something. Like the red ball of the Jap battle flags on a beach like this, Holcomb thought, on an island like this, in this same Pacific so very long ago. Maybe everything was a dream, a reflection of the barrage and the Jap kamikazes screaming down over the beach. Maybe he had dreamed the twenty years in between, and here he was, back again in the reality of war. But he knew it was no dream. The war was long over. There were no Japanese hiding just inside the line of trees that leaned out over the littered beach.
