When Jules and the other search team walked back home, they didn’t speak a word. The two farmers still soaked in terror and sadness as they just saw their son’s head detached to the body.

Rake leaned right beside Jules, speaking with the lowest volume his voice could produce.

“Who the hell did this?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you think the blur you saw yesterday was indeed a Japanese stalker?”

“Rake, I said, I have no idea.”

“Japanese are sadists, but this is on another level.”

They arrived back home when the sun was high in the sky. The whole area was as quiet as a cemetery, meaning that something must be wrong.

And yes. At the middle of the two houses, which lied a small patio for chilling, stood some Japanese men. Jules was about to remind the others, but the sudden hit on the back of his head jolted his body downward, dizzying him off. Suddenly, the search team was already hauled to the patio.

Jules kneeled beside Cortland and Rake, their hands tied with tie cables. The man who seemed to be in charge was a big, fat, Japanese corporal who produced a small smile of pride. He looked vicious and evil.

“Now the party is complete. Everyone is here. Now, I can introduce myself.”

No one seemed to bother but to give him an angry look.

“My name is Corporal Akira Yamako, and I am currently in charge of every enemy movement in Semarang.”

Behind Yamako were the two girls, Putri and Wahyu. Their faces were red, their eyes turned jelly, they must’ve cried so hard when that bastard kidnapped them. Their parents were also screaming all the time when they saw the two children being hauled behind the Japanese soldiers.

Suddenly, Jules’ heart beat faster than the speed of light. His pulse tensed and his mucles clenched. The sudden adrenaline of anger and madness rose within him, growing little by little like a cancer. Seeing that boy’s head like that sickened everyone, but Jules felt a completely different thing. He was very angry. Men like him were responsible for the death of his family. But this time, Yamako was three times more sadistic than every single Japanese man.

That boy, innocent, confused, scared, was kidnapped by this horrible bastard and must’ve been tortured alive just for fun. The thought of that grumbled Jules’ mind. His eyes shot Yamako’s face, and deep down he swore to kill that man for every horrible thing he did.

Jules opened his mouth. “You killed that boy in the woods.”

Yamako turned his gaze to Jules who was burning up with rage. His whole body shivered with anger and hatred, filth and disgust.

“Yes I did. You found it? Thank God. That kid wiggled a lot when we got him.”

“You fucking bastard!” Rake’s hiss was loud. Too loud.

“Don’t be so angry, American. He’s just a useless local boy that got nothing to lose.”

Yamako kept smiling and that made Jules ever madder. The man was a maniac, a brutal motherfucker who deserved to die a slow death.

But the sudden gunshot broke the tension away. Yamako yelped and checked his body for wound, but found none. The soldier next to him fell to the ground with a hole in his chest. Blood rushed out three seconds after.

Dozens of farmers charged from the corn fields with shotguns and axes, running as fast as they could and chopped those soldiers’ heads one by one. 

The Japanese men started barking orders. They got confused and completely wrecked. Jules shoved a soldier to the ground with his head.

The fight broke off. The Japanese was clearly outnumbered, so they immediately ran for their Jeeps and started driving away. 

Yamako shouted some words. “You cannot run away from me! Not one single man! Mark my words!

They blew dust to the air when they fled. Their last truck exited the area. The Japanese ran like cowards.

The farmers didn’t lose a single person in that battle. But the battle itself was far from over. Yamako would send troops hollering from the sky like ninjas. They must prepare for a land invasion. 

And what did they do after that?

Cortland shook Jules’ shoulder. Jules expected a blow in the face, but that didn’t happen.

“We need to defend ourselves. I have the right tools.”

Cortland led the now uniformed men through underground cellar they didn’t know before, and opened a concealed room. All typed of rifles, pistols, shotguns, even katanas, and American swords were there. Chinese WW1 grenades and Dutch claymore weren’t missing too.

“How? What?”

“I’m a collector myself. Better dig in before it is too late.”

The two dozen surviving soldiers entered and reentered the cellar for more and more supplies. They charged the terrace with claymores, set the pasture with mines, and placed the caliber gun in the right position before the well. 

“Cortland,” Jules started when Cortland was cleaning his shotgun. “You have to go. You have to protect your family and run away, we will be here, distracting them. You have to go away as far as possible. Take the children and women with you.”

“This is my land, I’m not leaving.”

“Cortland, think about your family. Think about these kids. We don’t have a chance at winning this, but we can delay them from getting to you. You must go!”

Cortland finally nodded.

The farmers, being loyal to their masters, agreed to join the fight. They said they have nowhere else to go, and no one would accept them. 

Cortland helped sixty-six kids and twenty-eight women to five trading trucks. His family was among them, readying themselves to go. 

“Be safe,” Jules said. “And I’m very sorry.”

“Son, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

Cortland closed the truck’s door and started driving away toward south. They used the back road leading to the valleys and would emerge on the city of Salatiga, away from those Japanese monsters.

Now back to the preparation of battle. All ninety-two local farmers were already ready. The allied soldiers still surviving also armed themselves and got to their defending position.

The Japanese had more men, and better equipment, and the air force.

They only had some untrained men and no backups. There would be no escape. 

But their spirits kept them together, and although they couldn’t win against Yamako’s company, they fought until their last breaths. At least they would die in such a heavenly place besides loyal friends and brave warriors.

So they worked. They filled bags of dirt and placed them in the efficient areas. They placed themselves above the balconies, down in the terraces, behind the wells, hiding in the barn and pastures. They planted landmines and claymores all around the field. 

There was no turning back. They needed to do this one way or another. There was no escape, and everyone knew that. People would kill them if they ever exited Cortland’s lawn, so they prefer to die there, in the honorable land, fighting one more time, until their bodies couldn’t hold anymore.

These people had seen too many deaths. Mortal living was a disease. But the spirits of these bold soldiers would never die.

And the storm began, and they didn’t realize it was starting, until the sound of the Japanese fighter plane entered the area.

 “Brace!” Glenn shouted, commanding everyone to cover themselves while the attacking fighter descended. Its motor was hauling in the sky, and seconds after that, the sound of the plane’s blazing gun started raiding the area could be heard from miles away.

The spruce roof splashed. Bullets cut through everything, decimating furniture, ornaments, antique pots, everything. Men screamed from that direction. One farmer took the hit. He was screaming audibly.

And the plane didn’t do anything anymore. It just returned to the dark horizon and flew away. The damage was less severe than anyone thought it would be, but celebration wasn’t the next thing they had in mind.

“Do you hear that?” Rake shook Jules’ shoulder so he paid attention.

And yes, Jules heard it. Tanks. More than one.

“Well, here we go guys.”

Asher rushed upstairs, jumping through the holes and wreckages the fighter made. He prepared his sniper on the indented balcony and scanned the fields. 

“Jesus. Tanks. I see four. No… five.”

Yamako sent five bold Renault NC-1 tanks, and they came like giant monsters sweeping and driving over the tons of planted corns, destroying hundreds of work hours for the farmers and millions of dollars for Cortland.

Jules and the others expected three tanks, not five. They covered themselves behind the dirt bags placed in the terraces and balconies outside the houses, since the houses would be sitting ducks targets for the destruction machines.

“I see Yamako and his men waiting at the back. They’re too far for my scope.”

Jules was sweating. He saw no way of surviving what’s to come, but on the other hand, he was very excited to meet his mother and sister again. Rake was covering his fear. He did a pretty good job at that. Glenn was just persistent. Asher was rather chill. The others probably scared shitless, but prefer death than capture.

The next thing they saw was one of the tanks aimed its turret at Cortland’s house. The bang echoed through the air. The tank just launched its first shot. It sprung through the air. It hit nothing but grass meters away from anyone. Fire burst from there, burning the vegetation on that area.

But the second shot was luckier for the opposing. It hit Cortland’s house. Jules saw behind him the impact. The whoosh when the house exploded was like standing near a bombed city. The wind dashed to his face when it hit, at the same time every glass in the house turned into pieces of unworthy sprinkles. The walls and the roofs collapsed. Asher hurried and tumbled, but he safely slid down before the tank destroyed the house he was on.

And after that the house was just engulfing fire. Fire, again. In a house, again. Jules had enough of this.

But they had more tricks than the Japanese had ever predicted. The Japanese thought they would be easy targets willing to die. They didn’t know about Cortland’s ‘collections’. They didn’t know that the corns were basically a minefield now.

The boom came from the furthest tank. It jumped to the air with remarkable blazing fire from beneath it. Everyone was surprised, especially Yamako, who was infuriated that the Allies could destroy a tank that fast. The tank accidentally drove on one of the mines they planted.

The tank just got decimated in mere seconds. Jules and the others cheered briefly, celebrating their success on destroying their first target without an effort.

And another boom came from the second tank. This time, the tank just madly blew up. The whole place was illuminated by the bang. The tank also clashed an active claymore, but Jules and the other installed more than one that created a huge chain reaction. The explosion was cataclysmic.

Yamako was so angry that he lost two tanks in the first twenty minutes of the battle, and Jules’ little resistance army suffered zero casualties until that moment. For one second, hope flashed in front of their eyes. Their spirits returned, and they cheered when the candle lit up on the third tank. Flame also ate it, and the lethal mines once again did their jobs.

The tanks sent some more shots. In the third, they catastrophically blew up tens of men hiding behind the dirt bags near the dog house. Those dogs just howled and barked uncontrollably. The fence broke out after the detonation and twenty-eight German Shepherds went lose, escaping the cataclysmic area with their strong feet.

The tanks charged again, this time, they aimed the worker house. It blew up within seconds, killing three or four men with one blast.

John appeared beside me with his loaded panzerfaust, his favorite wife. He aimed, and missed.

“Shit. Haven’t work with this baby for too long.”

The fighter plane reappeared. Apparently Yamako turned coward as he realized he was losing the game, and cheated. It burst fire, shooting over everything below it. The caliber gun operated by Jai gave the fighter hell, but he missed every shot as it was moving too fast.

The fighter turned around, ready to fire some more. 

“Stay down!” Glenn shouted.

The fighter gave them a punch to the stomach. Gabriel the Brit lost his head because of it. The fighter returned to the sky and diminished to the darkness.

“They’re charging. Trucks with men are coming. Better prepare ourselves,” Asher said, and he shot another bullet with his sniper rifle.

Their eyes glimmered seeing what happened. Yamako sent flamethrower troops to burn the entire acres of fields. It was like setting the Amazon rainforest with fire, and the farmers raged with what they did.

“Is that truly fucking necessary?”

“No, Rake.”

John fired his panzerfaust for the second time, and it was a strike. The bang was louder than anything they heard all night. He got a tank and it blew up before their eyes.

One tank left.

The tank swept its turret like a head shook. Now it aimed, at John, Jules, and Rake.

“Hell!”

They literally bounced out of the area. Their bodies came tumbling down, showered by fountaining dirt. Rake regrouped with Glenn and Ezra, while Jules and John joined Jai and Asher in the other end of the area.

One farmer just crazily ran through the riots of battle clutching a sticky mind in his arms. He successfully plucked it to the tank’s body, but everything exploded before he could get to a secure place.

“Jesus mercy Christ.”

“Just keep firing, Jai.”

The infantries clipped the farmers’ heads one by one. They were close, but they were opened and unprotected. They hid behind gazebos and benches, and threw grenades at the join forces every minute.

The closest blast of grenade was five meters from Jules’ nose. His ears just rang non-stop, he felt like he’d been inside a giant bell and it been hit for the first time. His brain seemed to turn to a scrambled egg, toasted inside his now mushy skull.

Everything around him was quiet. Everything around him was fire. Everything around him was death. And the heaven they knew was gone.

The Japanese forces gradually pushed closer and closer. Mortars were launched, rockets were fired. The air turned into smoke, covering the once pretty panoramic fields into another battlefield of graves.

The Japanese outnumbered and outmaneuvered the Allies. Acres of corns were now bushes of ash. The smell was unbearable. 

And their numbers kept thinning, and thinning, and thinning, until they knew for sure that defeat was imminent.

“We need to fall back,” Jai said while his forefinger was still on the caliber’s trigger.

“To where?” John shot back.

“I don’t know.”

“There is nowhere to go.”

An idea slatted Jules’ head. “East! We’re going east.”

“You mean the minefield jungle?” John was apparently still very superstitious about the minefield.

“Don’t be silly. That place is safe. If you all want to get out of here alive, go east.”

Jules only wanted to give up. He wanted to just walk to the open area and got shot in the head. He didn’t want to escape or to run toward the jungle, but something in him, a small part of his brain told him to run. It was like a whisper, a soothing tone that spoke to Jules’ ears while everywhere around him was just chaos.

‘Run.’

John hesitated but then nodded. “Okay, we’ll try that.”

As they speak, more and more people died. A farmer right beside them was blown up by a grenade and his legs just scattered all over the place. He screamed using all of his voice until he ran out of blood and died on the scene.

John screamed, “Fall back! Fall back! We’re getting out of here!”

The Japanese army pushed harder and harder. It felt like that Yamako had endless stocks of men.

Jules ran first, leading the way toward east, followed by John behind him, and then Jai, Asher, and the others. The farmers didn’t join them, but they nodded to each other and charged toward the enemy line. 

John noticed this. “Wait, I said fall back, not push in.”

But it was too late. A moment of silence occurred before the giant chain of explosions. Those farmers sacrificed their lives. Each of them apparently grabbed a grenade and blew themselves up along with dozens of the Japanese men.

The sky turned yellow. Everyone stopped breathing for one second, spectating the massive sight that happened before their eyes.

On the other side of the battlefield, Yamako fisted his Jeep’s dashboard until it bended a bit. His elite troops were being enormously defeated by farmers and a small team of Americans. He already lost sixty-four men just battling these people, and he lost his temper.

Jules saw that that was their chance of escape. Smoke walled them from the rest of the Japanese army.

Glenn, with his dazzled and disbelieved face, saw Jules walked slowly toward him. The air was sternly quiet. Birds continued chirping and wind didn’t stop blowing.

“Glenn, we need to get out of here now. This is our opportunity.”

Glenn’s face was still pale. He just nodded one time, but his gaze was still glued to the sight.

“I can’t believe it,” Rake said suddenly. “They just blew themselves up like that. They realized they still have children, right?”

No one answered.

The battle was over. There were too many victims from both sides.

“Jules is right,” said Glenn suddenly, shaking his fear out of the way. “We need to move. Let’s go!”

So they marched away, heading east. They had nowhere to go, no one to rely on. 

No one but each other.

Ten lucky men walked for hours. Sweat dripped from their noses, down to their chins. The sun was as hostile as enemy bombers, but they had to walk because they had no other choice.

The tree line formed in front of them. Towering trees shadowed over the places below it, and the sound of danger and horror echoed from inside the jungle. 

Rake sighed. “Looks like the Amazon.”

Asher nodded. “Feels like in a horror movie.”

They decided to rest after their daring escape. Corn leaves were stuck to their uniforms and they brushed it off them. They had no food, almost no water to drink, and certainly no friend or destination. They fled without purpose. They ran without hope. The only thing that kept them from surrendering was the fondness of each other. They didn’t want to see more men died, but everyone felt the same. Everyone was willing to sacrifice their lives for one another.

Jules sat on a bulging root. He stared at his bloody arms which were shaking. Jules clutched it so hard, but the trembling would not stop. His legs, on the other hand, were boneless. He couldn’t feel anything up to his head but the pain of shock in his chest. 

The images flew through his mind, everything that had happened to him. He experienced darkness like ordinary breakfast. He saw Ava, choking on the piece of glass stuck to her neck. He watched his mom, Chloe, burned and died in her own room. He saw his father, who was so kind to him, got home one day and screamed confusing words at him and his mother, and just left without saying goodbye. He watched so many of his friends died. He saw a kid being decapitated. He was a mess, and no one understood grieve better than him.

But why was it always someone else? Why can’t it just be me? Why should all of them die, and not me? I envy the dead. 

“You’re okay?” Rake sat next to him and offered his almost empty bottle. Jules declined.

“Not really.”

“Yeah.” Rake sighed. “Everything’s been fucking chaos lately. We finally got some relaxation and happiness, and the world also took that from us.”

“Do you think Cortland and his family made it?” The words came out of Jules’ mouth without him intending them.

Rake shrugged. “Realistically, man, I don’t think so. Yamako’s men would probably already round them up as we speak. They would be executed before dawn. But well, I’m not God. I have no idea.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I hope you’re wrong though. They’re really nice people.”

“Yeah, that sucks, true. But well, war is war and casualties are pretty ordinary.”

“I don’t know why we still live... Why I still live. It’s like, I act as a burden to everyone I meet. Cortland lost his farmers and everything he owned because of us. He and his family might not make it out alive also because of us. But the deaths of Ava and my Mom, that’s definitely on me. I watched bombers dropped bombs on battleships rather than… rather than just get home as soon as possible and protect them.”

“Dude, without you, we won’t make it this far. You reminded us of this forest, and we might still have a slim chance of surviving those barbaric soldiers. You also saved me back in Samarang, in that post office building, remember? You matter, bro, and don’t think otherwise.”

“But I feel… I feel that people died for me, not the other way around. I am a soldier, Rake. I am assigned to protect people, not to let them die. How many must die for us? For me!”

“Jules, you don’t decide those kinds of stuff. You don’t know what will happen in the future, or why, or when. You can’t stop what you don’t know. You just have to live with what’s left and deal with it. Don’t look to the past, but witness the future.”

“I don’t think I can, though. Even Ava comes every day to my thoughts.”

“Ava also comes to my mind every day. But not looking at the past does not mean forgetting the past.”

Jules didn’t speak more after Rake’s words. And Rake left to give Jules some space. Jules felt miserable, buried beneath piles of sadness and there was no way in repairing the losses he felt.

And everything Jules knew was about to be wiped out from his heart. The nightmare had come, and it came unexpectedly.

The explosion came out of nowhere. Jules’ body flew from the ground, twisting in the air with intolerable speed. His back crashed a pine tree. Jules fell to the ground, and everything was then black. Darkness consumed him once again. The last thing he heard before he fainted… was the screams of his friends.