Chapter Text
The rain whispered on the soft earth of the compound, gathered near the small trenches and the baseboards of the living quarters. The breeze answered as it drifted through the trees, brushing taro leaves against each other in a lullaby, scraping barbed wire against barbed wire in a discordant symphony.
The forest was silent. The hornbills were huddled in the canopy, brushing drops off their crowns with impatience. Even the frogs had forgotten how to sing.
He brushed rain-slicked hair back from his forehead and emerged from the cover of the palms that ringed the camp, boots squelching in the mud. He could no longer distinguish the earth from the rest of him; his body was caked in it, and he tilted his head back as he crossed the open field, letting the rain wash the dirt from his eyes.
The door to the bunker was hanging on one hinge, creaking slowly in the wind as rain gathered persistently just inside the entry. He reached out his right hand to brush the door open, and the wood felt slimy under his fingertips. Dead.
Stale beer, cigarette smoke, sweat, and grime – the smell was still there, but faint, in need of replenishment. Ten beds, lined up five to a wall, the mattresses tinged light brown with dust from last night’s storm. Water wound its way around the posts of each cot, seeping out under cracks in the wall, the same ones that let in rats, all those weeks ago.
He paused next to the first bed on his left, let his fingers brush over the thin blanket that was crumpled in a heap at the bottom. They hadn’t had time to clean up – they never did. They never knew if they’d be coming back.
He kept walking, all the way to the cot at the very end of the bunker, along the right-hand wall. He sat down gingerly on the very edge of the ruined mattress and forced himself to look – to really look.
To see the pin-up girls along the left-hand wall, the small picture frame that graced one of the two tables in the tiny building. A pack of cards and a box of cigarettes lay forgotten next to the photograph – on the other table, a half-full ashtray looked forlorn.
The bed next to him was made up perfectly, like it hadn’t been slept in. Tears, unbidden, started to roll down his cheeks, and he didn’t bother to brush them away. Nobody could say anything to him about them now.
A strong gust blew the door open and he startled at a rustle of papers coming from underneath the cot. Not really wishing to know and at once morbidly curious, he bent down to examine what had made the noise.
It was a black leather-bound journal. He started at it, wondering – all this time – why keep it so secret? What was in there that the world didn’t need to know?
And anyways, what was privacy amongst killers?
He sat down on the bed that looked as if it had never been inhabited, opened the journal, and began to read.