Days of Infamy by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online

wasn’t wrong about that, either. The Army used Waialua Bay as a place to give its men rest and recreation. It looked to have taken most of them back to Schofield Barracks in the truck convoy that had blocked the bridge, but not all the olive-drab tents had disappeared from the beach here. The trucks would have to come back for the rest of the men.
    When they got to Waimea, though, the surfers had things to themselves.Oscar parked the Chevy across the road from the beach. He and Charlie pulled their surfboards out of the car, stuck them under their arms, and carried them down toward the sea. Oscar’s toes dug into the sand. It was softer than any he’d known on a California beach. He knew he’d feel that more on the return trip, when he was going uphill. Now . . .
    Now he didn’t want to think about the return trip. Easier to get out into the ocean when the waves weren’t so fierce. The surfboard went into the water. He lay down atop it and paddled with his arms. Ten feet away, Charlie Kaapu was doing the same thing.
    After Oscar had paddled out far enough, he turned the board around. The swells pushed him back toward the shore. He scrambled upright on the bobbing, tilting, darting surfboard and rode the crest of a wave all the way up onto the beach.
    He looked around for Charlie. There he was, separated from his surfboard, which washed ashore without him. “Surf’s not too easy, is it?” Oscar called.
    His friend gave him the finger. “This shit can happen down by Diamond Head, too,” Charlie said. He wasn’t wrong about that, either; he’d lost his front teeth within a couple of miles of Waikiki.
    They surfed all day. Oscar wiped out several times himself. He’d known he would, and didn’t worry about it. When the sun sank down toward Kaena Point, they put the boards back into the Chevy and walked into Waimea. A chop-suey house there gave them a cheap, filling supper.
    â€œYou don’t want to drive back in the dark, do you?” Charlie Kaapu hinted.
    Oscar smiled. “No. I was thinking we’d sleep in the car, put the boards on the roof, and go at it again first thing in the morning.”
    Charlie’s face lit up. “Now you’re talking!”
    Sleeping in the Chevy was a cramped business, but Oscar had had practice. Charlie hadn’t, or not so much, but he managed. His snores escaped through the glassless rear window.
    Those same snores helped wake Oscar around sunup. Yawning, he sat up in the front seat and stretched. He did some more stretching after he got out of the car, to work the kinks from his neck and back. He walked over and pissed at the base of a coconut palm. Only the waning gibbous moon looked down at him from low in the west.
    His belly growled. He wished he’d thought to bring along something forbreakfast. Nothing in Waimea would be open so early. And this was Sunday morning, too, so it was anybody’s guess if anything would be open at all.
    He couldn’t do anything about that. All he could do was put his board in the water. He looked out to the Pacific and muttered under his breath. The waves were no better than they had been the day before. If anything, they were a little flatter. Oscar shrugged. What could you do?
    When he got his board off the roof of the Chevy, the noise woke Charlie Kaapu. The big half-Hawaiian extracted himself from the car. As Oscar had, he stretched and yawned. “What time is it, anyway?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know.” Oscar didn’t wear a watch. But a glance at the sun gave him a fair idea. “About half past seven, I guess.”
    Charlie looked out to sea. He made the same sort of mutters as Oscar had. Then he went off to take a leak by the same palm tree. When he came back, he got down his surfboard, too. “We’re here. We might as well give it a go,” he said resignedly.
    â€œYeah.” Oscar nodded. “I was thinking the same