Outbreak Company: Volume 10

by Ichiro Sakaki

  Could it be that even the exploding truck had been planted? That it had all been an act, the perfect way to “just happen” to block off an entire highway?

  “The US Army... Just to catch us, they might be sealing off the entire area to keep bystanders away... These accidents... They aren’t accidental at all...”

  Surely I was overthinking it—wasn’t I? I waited for Minori-san to say something, like “Even they wouldn’t go that far.” But she just grimaced and didn’t answer at all.

  Instead, fiddling with her own phone, she asked the driver, “I’m sorry, but could you put on the radio? We need traffic information, anything about accidents—”

  Then she stopped right in the middle of her sentence.

  The only sound that came out of the radio when the driver turned it on was white noise. It wasn’t that we couldn’t find a station. These digital car stereos were supposed to find a channel automatically. If all we were getting was senseless noise, it meant either every radio station in the vicinity had simultaneously stopped broadcasting, or...

  “...They’ve got us,” Minori-san said grimly after a moment.

  “Oops... There goes our internet connection,” I said, watching as my phone disconnected from the web. There was something wrong with the signal. The little antenna symbol on the screen showed no bars at all.

  “All signals are being blocked,” Minori-san said.

  “You’re kidding...”

  “We can’t communicate with the outside world. You were exactly right, Shinichi-kun.” Minori-san sounded absolutely desolate.

  No phone. No internet. And no residential houses anywhere in sight. We were completely alone, without even a way to summon help. Not that I could imagine the police or the JSDF waltzing in to help us, considering that we were supposed to be a state secret to begin with. Even Reito-san had said something about the number of people you could trust to keep things confidential.

  At any rate, this meant that now the US Army could go ahead and attack us without attracting general attention. Presumably, it would involve heavy equipment that made the soldiers earlier look like child’s play. I’m not saying there were going to be tanks, but maybe armored vehicles or attack helicopters—things our magic would be virtually helpless against.

  “Is—Is okay?” Elvia asked anxiously when she saw our pale faces.

  I was desperate to reassure her, but the truth was, there was virtually nothing that was okay about our situation.

  “There’s a JSDF training facility right near the Sea of Trees,” Minori-san said. “If we could link up with the unit there, we might just be able to...” She looked around at me, Minori-san, Petralka, and Elvia.

  It would have been even simpler if we could get the JSDF to come get us, but if the armed forces were too obvious, it might cause an outcry among a certain group of people who didn’t even feel the JSDF should exist in the first place.

  And so...

  “We have to keep going,” Minori-san said, “and fast.”

  She was right: it was our only choice.

  After that, all any of us did was look out the windows, our faces drawn. The one thought on our minds was that we wanted to get to our destination absolutely as fast as possible. We all stared outside less out of vigilance than from a sense that maybe the harder we looked, the sooner the Sea of Trees would appear.

  How much farther do we have to go?

  With no other cars on the road, the drive went very smoothly... too smoothly. I thought about telling the driver to go as fast as the bus was able, but if something sniped us while we were running hundreds of kilometers per hour, at the absolute limit, we would have nowhere to go. The bus might flip over, might even explode.

  “...Come on...”

  I was desperate to make it all the way to Mount Fuji without anything happening. But then—

  “There they are!” Minori-san shouted, her voice agonizingly loud in the tense atmosphere of the bus.

  “Where...?!” I looked around, but all I could see was the idyllic scenery.

  Then I raised my eyes slightly, following her gaze—and I saw something out of my wildest nightmares. A brutalist lump of gray steel was going right over our heads with a roar.

  A military helicopter. A CH-53D Sea Stallion, unless I missed my guess. I seemed to remember them being in the news about ten years before, when one belonging to the US Army in Japan had crashed.

  Unlike anti-tank vehicles and other attack helicopters, CH-53Ds didn’t have any rocket launchers or machine guns or other obviously nasty weaponry. But these vehicles, used for personnel transport, were capable of carrying dozens of fully armed soldiers, and probably mounted at least a 0.50-cal machine gun to help back them up. “Backup” might not sound so bad, but it would only take one of those 12.7mm slugs to put a human being out of commission for good. Bulletproof glass? In the face of a military weapon designed to contend with armored vehicles and aircraft, our windows might as well have been made of tissue paper.

  “Minori-san—” I turned to the WAC beside me. “Tell me there’s no way the Japanese government hasn’t noticed this!”

  “They probably have. Considering there’s even a communications blackout and everything.” Minori-san was checking that she had an extra clip for her P228. The usual softness had gone out of her tone, telling me just how bad things had gotten.

  “Okay, so that means the JSDF should be on its way, right?”

  “I don’t think so,” Minori-san whispered, looking distraught. “You know perfectly well what would happen if the Self-Defense Force got in a fight with the US Army, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so...”

  Japan and America were allies and friends, at least on paper. That meant our armed forces were supposed to be friendly with each other, too. Sure, the JSDF was sometimes criticized as not being aggressive enough toward foreign incursions into Japanese waters or airspace, but when that incursion came from a nominal ally, things got a lot more complicated very fast. It was hardly even a question of what Japan’s rights to “self-defense” were anymore.

  Short version: if we were going to get out of this, we were going to have to do it ourselves.

  Our microbus picked up speed.

  Automobile versus helicopter: it was all too obvious which one was going to win in a race. I guess our driver just couldn’t stand the idea of simply stopping the bus without trying anything.

  But then—

  “Whoa!”

  The bus decelerated violently, as if the Sea Stallion had landed right on top of it and was pressing it into the ground. The driver turned the wheel hard from right to left, trying to wriggle out from under the chopper, but it wasn’t going to solve our problem.

  “We d-dob’t beel so good...” Petralka had gone pale, unable to endure the bus’s rocking. She was hugging her bag of anime merchandise tightly, fighting nausea.

  “Itosejamu, donimu irerasu...” Majesty, stay strong... Myusel rubbed Petralka’s back encouragingly.

  “Sorry, Petralka,” I said. She was just going to have to deal with it for the time being. We couldn’t stop. We couldn’t even slow down.

  That was when I noticed the wall in the road up ahead.

  No... Not a wall. A semi trailer. A big semi truck, like the one we’d blown up earlier, sitting sideways across the street.

  Crap. They really had us.

  We couldn’t turn back, and we couldn’t shake the helicopter. There were no other cars around, meaning no witnesses, meaning the army could do whatever they wanted with us.

  What they wanted was to get confidential information, so it seemed unlikely that they would kill us immediately, but...

  Is this because we beat up their other agents and ran away?

  We had used magic and Elvia’s physical strength to overcome the first American agents who had tried to kidnap us in Akihabara. Maybe that led them to think Japan really had something big to hide, and convinced them to use force to get at us if necessary.

  �
��Shinichi-sama, Minori-sama! That...!” Elvia was shouting and pointing behind us.

  We turned around to see Reito-san’s car, apparently out of control, doing a huge flip. The hood had a massive dent in it, probably down to the engine—had it taken a hit from the helicopter’s machine gun?!

  As we watched, speechless, Reito-san’s sedan ended up upside down on the shoulder of the road. It didn’t actually explode, but it didn’t look like they were going to be driving it anywhere, either.

  “Reito-san!” I shouted, unable to restrain myself—but thankfully, it looked like the people in the car were safe. I saw Reito-san and the others crawl out through a window. There were no obvious injuries.

  As for our bus, it slowed down—and then stopped.

  The semi blocking the road was right in front of us. We had to stop, or we would have run smack into the huge, metal trailer that sat there like a wall.

  “What do we do...?” I whispered, frantic.

  My brain could hardly keep up with the situation. Seriously, what could we do? How could we get out of this?

  Myusel and Elvia looked just as vacant as I felt. Even Petralka, who had been feeling so poorly a few minutes before, had all but forgotten her nausea in the face of what we were dealing with now. Pale, she was looking at Reito-san’s car.

  Then I had a thought.

  “Th-That’s it... We can just use magic again...!”

  I grabbed a sprite bottle. Myusel saw me and did the same. We had already made this work once on a similar trailer. If Myusel and I both used Tifu Murottsu at the same time, we might be able to destroy this one, too.

  But wait. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough. Even if we destroyed the trailer, if we couldn’t get it moved out of the way, there would be no point. And I didn’t know if Tifu Murottsu would have any real effect on the Sea Stallion, which could retreat higher into the sky at will.

  Then I caught my breath: the door of the trailer was opening.

  Almost immediately, soldiers began pouring out, just like before. So far, they had been using the exact same tactics as last time, but then—

  “What are those things...?” Petralka breathed as she watched the US military encircle our bus.

  All the soldiers spreading out around our vehicle wore heavy equipment. Bulky body armor, along with black-visored helmets that I associated more with the police than the military. Even Minori-san’s handgun probably couldn’t stop these guys.

  And that meant...

  “We’ve got to do this! Myusel!”

  “Right!”

  By now, Myusel knew exactly what to do. We each opened a window on opposite sides of the bus and threw out the bottles, smashing them on the pavement. We intoned our spells in unison, stuck out our hands.

  Our voices overlapped: “Tifu Murottsu!”

  Under the circumstances, I decided to aim not at the truck trailer, but at the soldiers getting steadily closer. Myusel’s and my wind magic each scored a direct hit on three of our assailants, blowing them away. But...

  “It didn’t work?!”

  Almost immediately, the soldiers sprang back to their feet. Apparently the shields and body armor were more about absorbing impacts than stopping bullets. I could see some kind of mat stuck to the insides of their shields. I guess after seeing us use Tifu Murottsu on two different groups of their operatives, the Americans had started to come up with some countermeasures. They might not have identified our magic as, well, magic, but they didn’t have to know what it was to be ready for it.

  But so quickly...? I was reminded of just how terrifying a national entity could be when it really got serious.

  “Tifu Murottsu!”

  It didn’t matter. We couldn’t back down. Myusel and I released a series of Tifu Murottsu spells, knocking the soldiers down repeatedly, but each time they got back up. In fact, the more we hit them, the more they seemed to learn; they started staying close, shoulder to shoulder, moving in formation to help resist the effects of the magic.

  It was hopeless. This wasn’t doing anything. But we really had no other cards to play. Myusel and I grabbed more bottles, more magic stones, letting off additional Tifu Murottsus. Until...

  “.........Uh-oh.”

  I discovered we had finally run out of supplies.

  “Master...!” Myusel looked at me, her face absolutely bloodless.

  We had used enough sprite bottles that we might be able to continue casting Tifu Murottsu for a while yet—but we were, if you will, out of gas.

  “What do we do?” I asked myself, but I wasn’t getting any brilliant ideas for how to turn the tables here.

  We couldn’t use magic, and our guns wouldn’t work. Those were all the weapons we had.

  Obviously, fighting hand-to-hand was out of the question. Our opponents were armed and armored, and outnumbered us by better than ten to one. This wasn’t some video game; one lone hero couldn’t clear out dozens of anonymous underlings. Myusel and I didn’t really know how to fight, anyway.

  Things were looking hopeless.

  That was when the Sea Stallion landed directly behind us. The rear hatch opened, and someone emerged...

  “Him...!” Elvia snarled.

  Amidst the crowd of heavily armored soldiers, this person stood out in his black suit.

  “What? Elvia, do you know him?” Minori-san asked.

  “He’s the one who captured me and Shinichi-sama!” she said hotly. Apparently there was enough magic left floating around for the rings to work.

  “That was while you were with the Russian agents, Minori-san,” I clarified.

  Alan Smith—that was what he had called himself, anyway; it probably wasn’t his real name. An American agent who had tried to abduct me, Myusel, Petralka, and Elvia in Akihabara. I guess he had come to finish what he started. Maybe he was angry that a bunch of total amateurs had escaped on him.

  “Get out of the vehicle,” Mr. Smith ordered us in Japanese.

  Naturally, we didn’t move. We couldn’t.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it seems the Japanese government is hiding something—something big. Would those techniques—something akin to ESP, perhaps—be part of it?”

  He was asking the questions; we had no choice but to sit in the microbus and listen. But none of us said anything. We had no reason to give him information, and Myusel and the others were especially uninterested in helping the guy who had tried to kidnap them. Plus, Mr. Smith didn’t have a ring; they might not even have fully understood what he was saying.

  Mr. Smith, however, just shrugged; he seemed to have expected our resolute silence.

  “In any event.”

  As he spoke, the soldiers flanking him raised their M4A1 carbines and started shooting.

  The guns didn’t make that much noise; maybe they were equipped with special silencers. It was just a sort of muted bump-bump-bump. Then the windows of the microbus shattered into a million pieces. Reito-san had told me this glass was supposed to be bulletproof... but apparently not bulletproof enough to withstand high-penetration rounds from small rifles.

  “You can walk out of there on your own feet, or we can drag you out. That’s really the only choice you have,” Mr. Smith said, looking at us with a thin smile. “Believe me, this ends the same either way.”

  “Ugh......” Minori-san groaned and bit her lip. She still had the P228 in her hand, but she was probably thinking that one measly handgun wasn’t going to do us much good in this situation. A single careless shot could get her riddled with automatic-rifle fire.

  Petralka sat silently, also chewing her lip. For the most part, she appeared calm—maybe being an empress gives you a lot of practice at that—but I could see her hands shaking where they rested on her knees.

  Elvia looked lost, her gaze wandering from the inside of the bus to the American military outside. She was physically the strongest of any of us—but while she might be able to at least escape on her own, she couldn’t single-handedly turn the tide of this engagemen
t. She knew all too well now what a gun could do.

  “Master...”

  Then there was Myusel, who was looking into my face. What should I do? her big purple eyes asked me. There was anxiety in them, no question, but they hadn’t been completely consumed by despair—a sign, maybe, of how much she trusted me.

  But as for me... I couldn’t say anything. I wished someone could tell me what we should do.

  I stood in the center aisle of the microbus and thought desperately. Was there some way to break out of here? We didn’t have to dispatch the entire American military force, we just had to all escape. If we could make it to the wormhole near Mount Fuji without them catching us, we won. But...

  Even if by some miracle we got away from here...

  Obviously, the Army would chase us. And what would happen if we went directly to the wormhole then? Wouldn’t it just give away the other world, the secret the Japanese government had been working so hard to keep? But if they captured us and forced confessions out of us, the secret would be just as blown.

  If they did get us, Japan would have to either rescue us, or shut us up permanently.

  And one of those things was a lot simpler than the other.

  I looked from side to side, then down at the floor of the bus. Could there be a bomb hidden in the vehicle’s innards? It would protect confidentiality, if nothing else. Obviously the American military wouldn’t want this operation to go public, considering that they were arbitrarily undertaking illegal action in a sovereign nation. An exploding bus would help cover their tracks.

  Argh. This was awful. We really seemed completely trapped!

  What to do what to do what to do?!

  If only I could at least get Myusel and the others back home to Eldant... Argh, but... how?!

  My mind circled and circled the same thoughts, but that didn’t get me anything new.

  “Come on, now, I’m not going to wait all day,” Mr. Smith called from outside.

  Crap! We were out of time! Fast! I had to do something, fast...!

  “Like a bunch of disobedient children. Fine. I’ll take you by the scruff of the neck and—”

  Before Mr. Smith finished, I saw Myusel blink and look off in a strange direction.