by Ben Stevens
But now Trouble’s hand was slowly beginning to slide upwards…
‘Don’t…’ said Miyuki, her voice little more than a murmur.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t want this,’ returned Trouble, as he turned so that his body was closer to hers’, his hand remaining in place. ‘You think I didn’t see how you were looking at me, the times I turned up when you were hanging around with the others – in the park and such?’
‘Yes, the others,’ said Miyuki, as though by trying to change the topic of conversation she could somehow avert this steadily encroaching nightmare.
‘You said… others might be here… Are they coming… soon, do you think?’ she continued, trying to make her voice sound natural but well aware that it sounded anything but.
‘There’s no one else, baby,’ replied Trouble, grinning now. Miyuki had loved his grin, before, Showed just how handsome he was, as well as tough. But now she saw – realized – that it was in fact the leer of an extremely unpleasant young man, who’d brought her all the way to this lonely spot with just one intention in mind…
‘Please don’t…’ murmured Miyuki, as Trouble began to stand, his groin just inches away from her face as his fingers started unbuttoning the fly of his jeans.
‘It’s okay, baby,’ returned Trouble, leering down at her as his bulge began to grow. ‘You just have to suck it at first, nice and slow… Then I’ll stick it in you. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle – just so long as you don’t try and struggle, or do anything stupid…’
As Miyuki truly realized the trouble she was in, she began to cry.
‘Please…’ she said, her voice choking. ‘I just want to see my mother… at the hospital…’
‘I’ll take you there myself,’ declared Trouble, still in that soft voice. ‘After…’
With that, he took hold of her left breast with his right hand through her school shirt. His left hand producing his erect penis – which was (in accordance with the whispered rumors Miyuki had heard from a few of the older girls) larger than average.
‘No, no,’ said Mayumi, trying to pull away. But Trouble just pushed his cock closer towards her mouth.
‘Start sucking, you little bitch, or else,’ he said, his voice remaining low-pitched but also now harsh and urgent. ‘No one here to help you – no one at all. So, you’d better start being nice to me…’
It was then that something snapped in Miyuki. The same sort of thing that had made her pick up a heavy wooden chair in the classroom and bring it smashing down onto the heads of her teacher and a fellow student. A raw desire for survival – a refusal just to roll over and die without fighting tooth-and-nail first.
So at the same moment as she stood sharply up, Miyuki also shoved at Trouble’s chest with both hands. Not expecting the sudden movement, Trouble staggered a few paces backwards – giving Miyuki the chance to swing the lower part of her leg hard up into the gang-leader’s groin.
The shrill scream emitted by Trouble contrasted greatly with his low-pitched voice of before. Cradling his damaged testicles, his exposed penis now presumably flaccid, he stared at Miyuki with eyes almost glowing red with rage.
‘Fucking little… bitch…’ he hissed.
Miyuki shot past him, towards the door kept closed by the large concrete block. Unmindful even of the possibility that one of those creatures might be just outside. Wanting only to get away from Trouble, and out of this derelict building.
She gave a small cry of fear, for a moment lacking the strength to shift the concrete block.
Then Miyuki gave another squeak of terror, sensing the young gang leader beginning to move behind her, his desire to get hold of Miyuki and do whatever to her overriding even the pain in his balls.
This extra spurt of fear leant Miyuki a momentary spurt in strength. The concrete block was pulled to one side, the door swung open by itself and Miyuki was back out in the sunlight.
She stumbled into the open, a line of tombs stretching out in front of her beyond the long grass and general debris surrounding the house. She gave a sob, knowing that Trouble was behind her, determined to do whatever it took to rape her.
This was the type of animal she’d been admiring all these many months. The type of animal she’d considered was cool personified. He’d taken her here pretending to have her best interests at heart; and yet all the time he’d known that no one else was coming and so he’d be all alone with the fifteen-year-old schoolgirl with the short skirt and the big tits named Miyuki…
He gave a yell as he followed her out. Shouting the type of words very few Japanese men ever said, even in extreme anger. Stated his intention of sticking it straight in her ass. Said that that would teach the little bitch some manners.
Despair had almost fully enveloped Miyuki’s mind when she suddenly remembered. She was currently down on her knees right by the very rock which Trouble had lifted up in order to get the flat-headed screwdriver which undid the two long screws holding the door closed. And Trouble had put it back – obviously this was the recognized place where the screwdriver stayed – so that it was there now…
Miyuki pulled at one side of the rock with both hands so that it rolled over and there was the screwdriver. Trouble’s hands were on her shoulders and he was still stating his determined intention of fucking her when Miyuki suddenly turned and with her right hand stuck the screwdriver hard into Trouble’s left shoulder.
The gang leader gave a shrill scream, the screwdriver going in two or three inches. (He was wearing a black T-shirt, the red writing upon which stated: Fuck off.) He staggered backwards, both hands reaching for the handle protruding from his shoulder, staring at it with a shocked expression. He gave another agonized yelp, pulling it free, then gave a fiendish grin as he stared at Miyuki with wide, almost feverish eyes.
‘Gonna use this to carve your face, bitch,’ he said, giving a slight, but still maniacal burst of laughter.
Miyuki felt her stomach freeze; she was on her back, now, frantically trying to ‘row’ backwards with her elbows. But it was hopeless; Trouble was above her and he now had the screwdriver and his hard-on and he was really going to make her regret the fact that she’d ever hopped on his fucking motorbike and travelled with him up to this lonely mountainside cemetery behind an ancient temple –
…With a snarl, the creature wearing the monk’s black robes (the prayer beads now dangling from just one clawed hand) burst out from around one side of the derelict building. The thing with the bulging, marble-grey eyes and bloody, saliva-flecked jaws fell upon Trouble, who in turn tried to fight it off with his fists. But it was hopeless; Miyuki knew already just what sort of blows these creatures could take and so Trouble’s punches weren’t causing this former monk any problems whatsoever.
With anther snarl, drool falling from its bottom lip onto the gang leader’s now-petrified face, the creature’s claws battened onto Trouble’s shoulders and dragged him up screeching to the opening jaws.
Unusually, the creature didn’t this time take a bite out of the still-living human’s neck. Instead, the teeth sank deep and hard into the middle of Trouble’s face, pulling away with a mass of pink, red and white showing between the jaws, Trouble’s shrieks of agony and the sight of his horribly mutilated face causing Miyuki to cover her eyes and give another sob of utter terror.
…But then she forced herself to pull her hands away, knowing already what was going to happen. For Trouble’s wretched cries quickly subsided, and the monk-thing dropped that young man’s body back on the ground, as though the creature in the black robes had abruptly lost interest in its prey…
And then it happened –
Trouble’s screams had quickly become gurgles, which soon fell into silence, as though he’d simply drowned in his own blood. The entire centre of his face was missing, in any case. It was a hole; an ugly mess of torn flesh, cartilage and bone. He lay there for a few moments, on the grassy ground, his eyes fixed and open…
And then he began to stir, groaning, rising b
ack up as Miyuki saw those same eyes quickly turn from brown to grey – a dull, dead grey. The same color as those eyes belonging to the monk, whose attention was also now fully fixed upon the schoolgirl who was still lying upon her back.
Time to change that last fact. Miyuki got hurriedly to her feet, the two creatures lumbering after her as she began to retreat away from the derelict building. Again thinking about what her dying grandfather had told her, concerning that sword…
A bullshit story, right? A fantasy created by a semi-senile and slowly decaying mind? But here were two creatures staggering no great distance behind Miyuki, with it being a certainty that there were others up on this sprawling mountainside cemetery.
As such, if she had any hopes of surviving – and, moreover, of somehow getting to the hospital where her mother had been taken a week or so before – then she needed to get hold of some sort of weapon.
…I put the sword under one of the tombs belonging to the Takeyama family, who – you won’t know this – were famous translators during the Meiji era Miyuki’s grandfather had told her. People have been visiting those tombs – six of them, in a line – for years. So there are signs all over the mountain, showing people the way there. The sword’s under the second tomb, as you enter the plot through the gap in the low wall…
Shit! Another creature suddenly reared up in front of her, coming from round one of the many stone walls. This one had its right arm gnawed off up to the elbow; but the other hand raked for Miyuki’s face, the fingers like talons.
Miyuki ducked past on the snarling creature’s armless side. Still the teeth gnashed close by her face – uncomfortably close.
But there was a sign for the Takeyama tomb. An arrow pointing in the direction Miyuki was travelling anyway. She carried on, careful not to run too fast, trying to keep her breathing steady but with the occasional sob escaping her heaving chest.
She risked a look backwards and there, like a nightmare, were the three creatures somehow no further away from her than if Miyuki had been going at their own, lumbering gait. How the fuck were they keeping up with her like this?
Another sign now directed Miyuki up a flight of crumbling stone steps, and then right. The creatures rasping and snarling behind her. Were they somehow getting… quicker… at moving? Was she even doing the right thing, attempting to locate this alleged sword? Shouldn’t she just concentrate on getting off this accursed mountainside, before finding a band of survivors she could join…?
…And yet Miyuki had seen first-hand what it was like in this part of Tokyo; people were having to fend for themselves, fighting for their very lives against the ever-increasing number of things. The police, the fire-service – Miyuki had seen the men belonging to these emergency services being overrun by the creatures just like everyone else. Police officers emptying their pistols into the things which just kept right on coming…
Stupid. Miyuki had been wondering what the situation was like in other parts of Tokyo, perhaps even across Japan itself – had never once thought to check the internet on her mobile. She could also try to ring her mother, if she wasn’t captured and devoured within the next few minutes…
Another sign declared that she was now just ten meters from the six tombs, Miyuki passing by another tomb that was still-only half constructed.
Family lines died out… people moved away from the area… So disused tombs were continually being demolished and new ones being built in their place. With space at such a premium in Japan (in death as well as life) the situation could hardly be otherwise.
Whoever had been working here looked to have left in a hurry. Tools were still littered about the site: sledgehammers, spades, pickaxes, crowbars…
It was this last item that made Miyuki think ahead – concerning the tomb she was going to now. When her grandfather’s ashes had been placed in the Yoshida family tomb located elsewhere on this sprawling mountainside, Miyuki had been present. A short service, conducted by a chanting monk. (The same one, Miyuki now realized, who was currently pursuing her along with the faceless nightmare that had once been Trouble and the creature that was missing its right arm.)
…In any case, when it had come time to put the grandfather’s ashes underground, the thick stone slab covering the entrance to the void that was underneath the tomb had had to be prized off using a heavy steel crowbar – a job performed by one of the temple’s janitors. A short ladder went down into the ground, where in the square-shaped, earthy-smelling cavity were several wooden shelves containing the ashes of any number of Miyuki’s ancestors, dating back a couple of hundred years…
So now Miyuki grabbed the crowbar that was lying there before seeing the six tombs in a short line ahead, enclosed by a low, moss-covered stone wall.
She was almost there… The second tomb after that gap in the low wall, her grandfather had said…
With a shriek, Miyuki fell to one side, knocked over by the creature dressed in builders’ wear that’d just emerged growling from out of nowhere. The thing was pinning her down, his drool running into her face, the teeth snapping as it continued to make those guttural, hungry noises…
And the other things were getting nearer. Miyuki could now hear them, snarling. In a few moments they’d be on her and –
With a wild yell, summoning up some sort of primeval power, Miyuki dragged the crowbar she was still holding so that its point was pushing into the area under the creature’s chin. Managed to push her other arm – the left – under the creature’s body, so that she was then able to take hold of the bar with both hands.
Pushing the bar up, up… The thing snarling as the point pressed ever-harder into its larynx, Miyuki wondering if it actually felt any pain, or even the slightest discomfort. After all, she’d seen these things walking around with their very throats ripped out – so what was happening now probably wasn’t going to help save her…
And yet – the thing’s head was at least being forced backwards, one of its hands now breaking off its clawed grip of Miyuki’s shoulder to take hold of the crowbar and try to force it away from under its throat –
Miyuki seized her chance, rolling away from under the thing’s body while it was distracted. Pulling the crowbar free of its grasp almost in the same moment – and then bringing the metal object crashing down onto the thing’s head.
She felt the impact shattering the creature’s skull like an eggshell, the sensation even being transmitted through the metal. But there was precious little blood, and although its misty, marble-like eyes rolled backwards for a few moments, still it began to rise…
As heavy as the crowbar was, it was still little use as a weapon, Miyuki realized. Heavy even to lift, far less swing around as she’d need to be able to do if she was to stand a chance of fending off the four creatures now after her.
No – right now, she had to prize that thick, square-shaped stone covering from the ground below the second tomb and just hope that she’d find the sword lying in the void inside. Plus, she had to do this now, the things all the time staggering closer towards her…
She ran through the gap between the low stone wall. The second tomb from this one – there it was, the stone moss-green and covered with lichen. Crumbling in places through ceaseless exposure to the elements. Miyuki jabbed the point of the crowbar under the thick stone slab and immediately a small chunk of stone broke off, so that with nothing to resist it the crowbar flew up into the air and out of Miyuki’s hands, landing with a steely clang on the stone surface that was before all six of the tombs in a line.
Miyuki gave a moan of mixed frustration and terror. There wasn’t the time for any of this. The things were getting closer, closer…
Picking up the crowbar, Miyuki tried again. This time nothing broke off from the stone slab. It lifted slightly – it was so heavy. There was no way Miyuki was going to be able to lift it clear of the entrance into the cavity...
Again somehow summoning up the fierce, unnatural strength of before, Miyuki slowly pushed the slab sideways. Havi
ng to change her grip, move the crowbar along slightly, a rich, earthy smell emerging from the hole that was now half-uncovered.
And there was the short ladder leading down. The metal rungs severely rusted – so what hell state was this sword going to be in?
No, realized Miyuki as she went to climb downwards, just enough space created so that she could get her body inside. The things bearing down on her…
No – this tomb had been created well over one hundred years ago. The sword had been put down here – fifty years before? And wrapped in an oily cloth, so that its blade would not rust. So that it would be able to be used immediately…
And there the sword was, wrapped in thick cloths, on the thick wooden shelf which also held just one jar of ash. So important had this translator named Takeyama and the five others been, it seemed, that, following their cremation, they’d each been given a tomb entirely to themselves – or rather, to the large jar of ash which contained their remains following their cremation…
No time for abstract thought, Miyuki reminded herself severely. Just get the sword and get the hell out of this pit underneath the tombstone. Things were almost upon her anyway – all four of them. She tore off the oily cloths, the blade of the sword a dull silver, the handle wrapped in dark leather. The weapon felt solid, weighty enough but not too heavy – this she could wield in any way that took her fancy. It gave Miyuki a feeling of renewed confidence, as she quickly climbed back up the ladder.
She reached the top to discover that there was not a moment to spare. All four things had now entered through the gap in the low wall and were bearing down on her. The large hole in the centre of Trouble’s face, below the eyes, was a messy pink color, white cartilage and bone showing – and yet there was no longer any blood flowing. That had stopped as soon as Trouble had become a thing. Miyuki was beginning to notice a pattern emerging here.
