Excerpt from the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

     The rest of the platoon may or may not be dead; he thinks he can still hear some of them crying out, but it’s hard to tell between the pounding of the incoming surf and the relentless patter of the machine gun. Then he realizes that some of them must be alive or else the Nips would not continue to fire their gun.
     Shaftoe knows that he is closer to the gun than any of his buddies. He is the only one who has a chance.
     It is at this point that Shaftoe makes his Big Decision. It is surprisingly easy—but then, really stupid decisions are always the easiest.
     He crawls along the log to the point that is closest to the machine gun. Then he draws a few deep breaths in a row, rises to a crouch, and vaults over the log! He has a clear view of the cave entrance now, the comet-shaped muzzle flash of the machine gun tesselated by the black grid of the net that they put up to reject incoming grenades. It is all remarkably clear. He looks back over the beach and sees motionless corpses.
     Suddenly he realizes they are still firing the gun, not because any of his buddies are alive, but to use up all of their excess ammunition so that they will not have to pack it out. Shaftoe is a grunt, and understands.
     Then the muzzle swings abruptly towards him—he has been sighted. He is in the clear, totally exposed. He can dive into the jungle foliage, bu they will sweep it with fire until he is dead. Bobby Shaftoe plants his feet, aims his .45 into the cave, and begins pulling the trigger. The barrel of the machine gun is pointing at him now.
     But it does not fire.
     His .45 clicks. It’s empty. Everything is silent except for the surf, and for the screaming. Shaftoe holsters his .45 and pulls out his revolver.
     The voice that is doing the screaming is unfamiliar. It’s not one of Shaftoe’s buddies.
     A Nipponese Imperial Marine bolts from the mouth of the cave, up above the level of Shaftoe’s head. The pupil of Shaftoe’s right eye, the sights of his revolver, and this Nip are all arranged briefly along the same line for a moment, during which Shaftoe pullso the trigger a couple of times and almost certainly scores a hit.
     The Imperial Marine gets caught in the netting and plunges to the ground in front of him.
     A second Nip dives out of the cave a moment later, grunting incoherently, apparently speechless with horror. He lands wrong and breaks one of his leg bones; Shaftoe can hear it snap. He begins running towards the surf anyway, hobbling grotesquely on the bad leg. He completely ignores Shaftoe. There is terrible bleeding from his neck and shoulder, and loose chunks of flesh flopping around as he runs.
     Bobby Shaftoe holsters his revolver. He ought to shoulder his rifle and plug the guy, but he is too confused to do anything for the moment.
     Something red flickers in the mouth of the cave. He glances up that way and sees nothing clear enough to register against the deafening visual noise of the jungle.
     Then he sees the flash of red again, and it disappears again. It was shaped like a sharpened Y. It was shaped like the forked tongue of a reptile.
     Then a moving slab of living jungle explodes from the mouth of the cave and crashes into the foliage below. The tops of the plants shake and topple as it moves.
     It is out, free and clear, on the beach. It is low to the ground, moving on all fours. It pauses for a moment and flicks its tongue towards the Imperial Marine who is now hobbling into the Pacific Ocean some fifty feet distant.
     Sand erupts into the air, like smoke from the burning tires of a drag racer, and the lizard is rocketing across the beach. It covers the distance to the Imperial Marine in one, two, three seconds, takes him in the backs of his knees, takes him down hard into the surf. Then the lizard is dragging the dead Nip back up onto the land. It stretches him out there among the dead Americans, walks around him a couple of times, flicking its tongue, and finally starts to eat him.