THE ENEMY WITHIN

THE ENEMY WITHIN Chapter 15

15.

Kitamura secured his gas mask and took in the macabre scene inside the train tunnel. One black body bag after another was carried off. Anxiety welled inside him, threating to burst like a geyser.

"Lieutenant?" Colonel Jasper said, already on board the train.

Flashlight beams passed across the windows on the train car. Kitamura threw a last glance at the chopper, and then headed aboard the train.

No one spoke as they moved from one car to the next. There was nothing to say. Death was everywhere he turned. Arms and legs strewn akimbo on each corpse, eyes wide, staring into the darkness. Dried black fluid stained the seats and carpet. But it was a little girl that made Kitamura lose it. Her hands reached for her mother who had collapsed just out of reach. He knelt, lifting her wrist, and noticed her nails were painted blue with little white flowers. The nails were scratched and broken where she had clawed at the seat.

Kitamura hadn't planted the poison; he hadn't given the order, but it had been his plan and he'd burn eternally for it.

"Kitamura, down here," he heard in his headset. He didn't respond. He needed to breathe - to get the damn gasmask off before he blacked out.

"Lieutenant, respond," Colonel Jasper said from somewhere within the train.

Kitamura didn't trust himself to speak. Once clear of the tunnel and away from the body bags, he ripped off his mask and gasped in the night air. He sank to his knees, holding back the tears that would drown him if he let them flow. Rivers of sweat ran down his brow and beneath his uniform. At long last, he opened his eyes. Colonel Jasper stood before him.

Kitamura reached for his Lieutenant bars. "I'm sorry," he said. It was over for him.

"If I wanted your resignation, I'd ask for it. What I want is a solution. If not this, we keep trying," Colonel Jasper said. He took out his tin of chewing tobacco, grabbed a pinch and tucked it in the back of his gums. "Every battle has casualties, son. We're not at the end yet."

The Colonel turned to his soldiers. "Make it look like the train jumped the tracks and caught fire."

Kitamura's voice felt like grinding sandpaper in his throat. "What was it all for?"

Jasper grabbed Kitamura's arm and lifted him to his feet like he were nothing more than a stuffed animal. "What it's always for – saving more lives than we lose. We're still here. Let's find another way."

They walked along the tracks. From the beginning Kitamura had wanted to try another way, now he finally had his chance. But how could he salvage the damage that had unfolded here? The variable that mattered most was whether the teens were being coerced in whatever their objective might be.

"You're an advanced civilization," Jasper said, trying to reason through the same puzzle. "You send a ship to earth to contact someone. Why them?"

"Maybe that's not why they came," Kitamura said. He could still feel the indentations from the gas mask straps on his flesh. "They flew a long way for the limited message they sent."

Jasper continued in the same train of thought. "The ship may have only just revealed itself because it's no longer concerned about concealment. Whatever the intent, the time's come. Sequencing Complete."

"Exactly," Kitamura said. "The need for secrecy's passed. For all we know the ship's been there for years, just waiting for an event ... like the gathering of the four, for them to reach a certain age or developmental stage. That could be the Sequencing Complete element of all this," Kitamura said. "What if they're just a test run for what's coming?" If that were so, things were far worse than he imagined.