The sullen eyes float in clouds watching, watching, watching, the long yellow river that once flowed red, red. I feel them: tens upon tens, hundreds hidden in the shadows, I feel the raining tears and acid storms. There, only steps away, behind the walls, behind the barbed wire, behind the hush of nothingness the zaimoku marched. They were stacked as lumber on East Zongsha Street.
Silence, silence, then the silence screamed from within the walls, within the souls, inside the minds as they slowly suffered and slowly died. Now their gaseous ghosts drift away, burning in the fog, lost in the haze of broken promises. The promises of food and safety, of protection were long forgotten. The scientist's chemical lies oozed day by day in Ei 1644.
Yung was a lucky one, surviving her first few days at the hospital. She saw many friends walked off in small groups and only a few returned. When they could speak, they told her of the snakes the invaders used in experiments, of how the victims swelled up and died in pain after the bites. They watched as others screamed and mercifully died from the chemicals they were given, and they told of those who survived for days as the experiments continued.
Some of her surviving friends helped to stack "lumber" carting the dead bodies from the examination rooms on squeaking carts, a sound they could never forget. Outside they placed the lumber along that horrible street in Nanking, where the stench of death made them choke. In their own small ways they tried to honor their friends, just as the Japanese degraded them. A blouse would be buttoned, hair pulled back, a naked body would be quickly covered, it was all they could do, but at least it was something.
