Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond by Michael Lister Page A

could carry in two small suitcases, had me locked up like a common criminal in Manzanar, an internment camp, as if I were some sort of a prisoner of war.”
    After hearing the Japanese man from the night before reference Manzanar, I had researched it a bit and found that it was a relocation camp for citizens of Japanese descent. Situated on the edge of the desert along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, Manzanar, California, was a beautiful, harsh, haunting place where something horrible was happening.
    “We got the so-called Civilian Exclusion Order,” she continued, “telling us we were going to have to move out of our homes. And our lives were changed forever. You are missing an arm and I know the story behind it. I also know about your great love and loss, Lauren, so perhaps you know a bit of how random, arbitrary, and capricious life can be, Mr. Riley. But you’ve never experienced true powerlessness. You’ve never been as helpless and hopeless as having your own country turn on you and tell you your life as you have known it was over.”
    “No,” I said. “I haven’t.”
    Lightning flashed in the distance out over the Gulf and there was a slight but perceptible shift in the atmosphere.
    “We became numbers. No longer names. No longer people. We were given one week to liquidate all our possessions. One week. I didn’t have much, but what I did I lost. Lost forever, do you get that? I was forced to leave it behind as spoils for those who happen to be of different descent.”
    When the lighting flashed again, I scanned the undulating waters for signs of the sub, but was unable to see anything in the brilliant but brief illumination.
    “You cannot imagine the fear and frustration, the confusion and acute uncertainty. What could we do? We could get next to nothing for the things we had worked so hard for or we could get nothing. I know a man who sold a thirty-room hotel for three-hundred dollars. His brother sold his new 1941 Ford truck for twenty-five. Family heirlooms from generations and generations ago for a fraction of what they would be worth if they had no sentimental value. But, of course, as familial treasures they were priceless.”
    As the lightning flashed again, it was obvious a storm was moving rapidly toward us.
    “When we saw our chance a small group of us escaped. We’ve come across the continent to hide in huts like savages. I lost my home, my freedom, my heritage, my life, and then my husband. I cannot take losing my Miki too.”
    From another coat pocket she withdrew a picture and handed it to me.
    The photograph was of a beautiful young woman with enormous, dark almond-shaped eyes and long, thick, shiny black hair.
    “Find her for me, Mr. Riley.”
    “Why me? Surely there’s someone else you can—”
    “There is no one else. I told you, we’ve checked you out thoroughly. I know you, the sort of man you are. I know what you have done for love. I also know you cannot go to the authorities, can’t turn us in.”
    And there was the real reason.
    The outer bands of the storm reached us and it began to rain—not hard or heavy, but constant and cold.
    If Bunko Matsumoto felt it at all, she gave no indication, and I wondered if she could feel anything at all anymore.
    I slipped the picture in my coat pocket and we stood there in silence in the rain for a long moment, no one moving, no one saying anything.
    “I’m waiting for an answer, Mr. Riley,” she said eventually. “Do I have your word?”
    I opened my mouth to give it to her, but before anything came out an enormous explosion rocked us all back and lit up the night sky with what looked like red and orange lightning made of liquid fire striking the earth beneath the silent, seemingly indifferent moon.

Chapter 15
    I t looked like the Gulf was on fire.
    Red and orange flames in the rain.
    Black smoke billowing up toward the milk-pale moon.
    A cargo ship ablaze, floating in a sea of fire.
    What I didn’t know then, what I found