Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #12 March 2015 | Page 40

No no no!
He pushed the Captain away, screaming, “I’m sorry!”
The man fell to the cave floor, bellowing in pain.
“Don’t leave me!”
Hiroshi broke into a run. His head pounded. His chest
ached. His legs burned. He jammed his hands against
his ears, trying to block out the cries of the Captain
and the guttural hoots of the Lunarites as they descended on him.
The sounds soon faded. Hiroshi kept running. He
thought he detected a gentle upward slope of the cave.
“Yes,” he said. “Up, up, back home, back to Earth.
Back to mama. Back to mama.”
He was still muttering that when he ran into a Japanese patrol. He rounded a corner, one that seemed
indistinguishable from a thousand others, and found
himself facing a dozen men, spread out, rifles at the
ready.
“Don’t shoot!” the squad’s sergeant yelled when he
saw the approaching figure was a Japanese soldier.
Hiroshi collapsed to his knees, crying with relief.
He was escorted back to a Japanese controlled cavern,
where a command post had been set up. Hiroshi sat on
a f