Read Online All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka - Free Book Online
Authors: Hiroshi Sakurazaka
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flicking off the safety on the gun to answer.
I wrapped my mouth around the barrel, imagining that 9mm slug in the chamber, waiting to explode from the cold, hard steel.
I pulled the trigger.
8
The paperback I’d been reading was beside my pillow. I sighed.
“Keiji, sign this.” Yonabaru craned his neck down from the top bunk.
“Sir, yes sir.”
“Listen. There’s nothin’ to tomorrow’s operation. Sweat it too much, you’ll turn into a feedhead—end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out.”
“I’m not sweating anything.”
“Hey man, ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. Everyone’s nervous their first time. It’s like gettin’ laid. Until you’ve done the deed, you can’t get it out of your head. All you can do is pass the time jerkin’ off.”
“I disagree.”
“Hey, you’re talkin’ to a man who’s played the game.”
“What if—just hypothetically—you kept repeating your first time over and over?”
“Where’d you get that shit?”
“I’m just talkin’ hypothetically is all. Like resetting all the pieces on a chess board. You take your turn, then everything goes back to how it started.”
“It depends.” Still hanging from the top bunk, his face lit up. “You talkin’ about fucking or fighting?”
“No fucking.”
“Well, if they asked me to go back and fight at Okinawa again, I’d tell ’em to shove it up their asses. They could send me to a fuckin’ firing squad if they want, but I wouldn’t go back.”
What if you didn’t have a choice? What if you had to relive your execution again and again?
At the end of the day, every man has to wipe his own ass. There’s no one to make your decisions for you, either. And whatever situation you’re in, that’s just another factor in your decision. Which isn’t to say everybody gets the same range of choices as everybody else. If there’s one guy out there with an ace in the hole, there’s sure to be another who’s been dealt a handful of shit. Sometimes you run into a dead end. But you walked each step of the road that led you there on your own. Even when they string you up on the gallows, you have the choice to meet your death with dignity or go kicking and screaming into the hereafter.
But I didn’t get that choice. There could be a giant waterfall just beyond Tateyama, the edge of the whole damn world, and I’d never know it. Day after day I go back and forth between the base and the battlefield, where I’m squashed like a bug crawling on the ground. So long as the wind blows, I’m born again, and I die. I can’t take anything with me to my next life. The only things I get to keep are my solitude, a fear that no one can understand, and the feel of the trigger against my finger.
It’s a fucked-up world, with fucked-up rules. So fuck it.
I took a pen from beside my pillow and wrote the number “5” on the back of my left hand. My battle begins with this number.
Let’s see how much I can take with me. So what if the world hands me a pile of shit? I’ll comb through it for the corn. I’ll dodge enemy bullets by a hair’s breadth. I’ll slaughter Mimics with a single blow. If Rita Vrataski is a goddess on the battlefield, I’ll watch and learn until I can match her kill for kill. I have all the time in the world.
Nothing better to do.
Who knows? Maybe something will change. Or maybe, I’ll find a way to take this fucking world and piss in its eye.
That’d be just fine by me.
1
“If a cat can catch mice,” a Chinese emperor once said, “it’s a good cat.”
Rita Vrataski was a very good cat. She killed her share and was duly rewarded. I, on the other hand, was a mangy alley cat padding listlessly through the battlefield, all ready to be skinned, gutted, and made into a tennis racquet. The brass made sure Rita stayed neatly groomed, but they didn’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of us grunts.
PT had been going on for three grueling hours, and you
I wrapped my mouth around the barrel, imagining that 9mm slug in the chamber, waiting to explode from the cold, hard steel.
I pulled the trigger.
8
The paperback I’d been reading was beside my pillow. I sighed.
“Keiji, sign this.” Yonabaru craned his neck down from the top bunk.
“Sir, yes sir.”
“Listen. There’s nothin’ to tomorrow’s operation. Sweat it too much, you’ll turn into a feedhead—end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out.”
“I’m not sweating anything.”
“Hey man, ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of. Everyone’s nervous their first time. It’s like gettin’ laid. Until you’ve done the deed, you can’t get it out of your head. All you can do is pass the time jerkin’ off.”
“I disagree.”
“Hey, you’re talkin’ to a man who’s played the game.”
“What if—just hypothetically—you kept repeating your first time over and over?”
“Where’d you get that shit?”
“I’m just talkin’ hypothetically is all. Like resetting all the pieces on a chess board. You take your turn, then everything goes back to how it started.”
“It depends.” Still hanging from the top bunk, his face lit up. “You talkin’ about fucking or fighting?”
“No fucking.”
“Well, if they asked me to go back and fight at Okinawa again, I’d tell ’em to shove it up their asses. They could send me to a fuckin’ firing squad if they want, but I wouldn’t go back.”
What if you didn’t have a choice? What if you had to relive your execution again and again?
At the end of the day, every man has to wipe his own ass. There’s no one to make your decisions for you, either. And whatever situation you’re in, that’s just another factor in your decision. Which isn’t to say everybody gets the same range of choices as everybody else. If there’s one guy out there with an ace in the hole, there’s sure to be another who’s been dealt a handful of shit. Sometimes you run into a dead end. But you walked each step of the road that led you there on your own. Even when they string you up on the gallows, you have the choice to meet your death with dignity or go kicking and screaming into the hereafter.
But I didn’t get that choice. There could be a giant waterfall just beyond Tateyama, the edge of the whole damn world, and I’d never know it. Day after day I go back and forth between the base and the battlefield, where I’m squashed like a bug crawling on the ground. So long as the wind blows, I’m born again, and I die. I can’t take anything with me to my next life. The only things I get to keep are my solitude, a fear that no one can understand, and the feel of the trigger against my finger.
It’s a fucked-up world, with fucked-up rules. So fuck it.
I took a pen from beside my pillow and wrote the number “5” on the back of my left hand. My battle begins with this number.
Let’s see how much I can take with me. So what if the world hands me a pile of shit? I’ll comb through it for the corn. I’ll dodge enemy bullets by a hair’s breadth. I’ll slaughter Mimics with a single blow. If Rita Vrataski is a goddess on the battlefield, I’ll watch and learn until I can match her kill for kill. I have all the time in the world.
Nothing better to do.
Who knows? Maybe something will change. Or maybe, I’ll find a way to take this fucking world and piss in its eye.
That’d be just fine by me.
1
“If a cat can catch mice,” a Chinese emperor once said, “it’s a good cat.”
Rita Vrataski was a very good cat. She killed her share and was duly rewarded. I, on the other hand, was a mangy alley cat padding listlessly through the battlefield, all ready to be skinned, gutted, and made into a tennis racquet. The brass made sure Rita stayed neatly groomed, but they didn’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of us grunts.
PT had been going on for three grueling hours, and you
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