“
The man’s arm finally snapped at the elbow and the dagger dropped, and now Solomon Saunders held the dagger, and it was the worst way in the world to kill or be killed, and he felt his stomach erupting and scalding lava spilling over and eating up his insides as he raised his arm and hesitated, and the other soldier grabbed at him, and then Solly came down with a vengeance, and he felt the steel tear ruthlessly into human flesh like it was a chicken, and back and down, and he didn’t hate this man beneath him. “I don’t hate you, goddamn your hari-kari soul!” And down and back, down and back, and hot tears flooding Solly’s cheeks and nausea in his nasty throat and down and back, the man’s chest was a dark bloody geyser gushing blood, his pleading eyes his desperate eyes. “I don’t hate you, Tojo, damn you. I don’t hate you! I don’t even know you—damn you!” The boyish soldier gave up the ghost just as Solly’s steam gave out and he fell forward on top of this very very dead young stranger from the islands of Japan, and all was peace and all was quiet, and brotherhood and all that crap, even as the battle raged around the lucky living bastards who were dying on the strip for freedom.
”
”