Jules was breathing the fresh air outside the cave, walking and whistling along with the birds. He finally sat near the Chinese-Japanese woman he proposed some weeks earlier.
It was August 6th, 1945, and the sun was shining. It was exactly five o’clock in the morning.
But something was about to disturb them, something big. Three stolen armored Japanese trucks dusted the new pair’s eyes when they sped up toward the cave. Jules saw bullet holes everywhere on the trucks.
Jules gulped and he approached the men coming down from them. Raden was one of those men. He hurried down with a caliber gun on his lap. He was sweating really hard. His jacket was red from the blood of someone not him.
“What happened?”
“The Japanese, they know we’re here. They’re planning to attack us this afternoon. We gotta tell the others.”
Raden’s English was so much better as Jules taught him every Sunday.
The man rushed toward the base’s secret door carrying the loads of guns. He was almost limping from the weight of it.
“How did they know?”
“No time to explain, American. We need to tell Axell.”
So they did. Axell put a really upset face to everyone. He anticipated for this, but he didn’t really think the day would come.
Within five minutes, every speaker in every hallway and every room and even every toilet barked orders from six different languages, telling them to prepare themselves for incoming attack.
Jules and some of the younger resistance soldiers barricaded the cave mouth with as many sand bags and thick crates as they could find, stacking them on top of each other for cover in the upcoming battle.
They also installed trip mines, TNTs, calibers, mortars, even shelled RPGs everywhere in the frontline. The good thing for them was that there was only one entrance to the base, and that was to attack the cave. Airstrike would be so hard to do as giant trees basically shielded the cave from everything, and bombs wouldn’t be strong enough to damage the cave’s roof, or to penetrate the base’s walls.
But the Japanese were well stacked, better than them at least.
Everyone gathered in the cafeteria with Axell standing on the table in the middle of the room. He was speaking in English but translated by three other men so everyone could understand.
“So the plan is to defend the cave mouth as best as you can, throw them with hell and blow them up with rage. In the meantime, the third team would move our children and women and the helpless ones through the emergency exit in the back. We have to distract them and hold them long enough, and maybe even beat them if we could. This battle will last long, and last long we should be!”
And there was it, the end of the peace in the stronghold of the HFW. Men and kids were arming themselves, covering their bodies with the barricades and sand bags, aiming their sniper rifles and machine guns to the appointed area.
Seven minutes had passed. Nothing happened.
No bomber descending the sky, no mortars launched to out convenient position, no tank…
Tanks could be heard marching bloodily like everything they saw before. For the second time, Jules, John, Asher, Jai, Hal, and Blake were forced to do that again, to defend something they knew not going to hold.
Birds flew after trees and more trees were getting rid out of the way, flattened by the giant iron wheels of the tank.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this again,” John said, gripping his hands to the SMG.
YOU ARE READING
Darkness Dissolves When the Door Opens
Historical Fiction[60.000-70.000 words] Trapped in a Japanese occupied island, Jules West and other allied soldiers were fighting for their survivals. Facing losses and mental breakdown were not their only problems since the whole island tried to kill them. It had b...
