by JT Sawyer
He looked ahead down the dimly lit passage that snaked to the right. Shiro knew that the Hashimoto Tunnel wound beneath the city center, eventually emerging near the Yodo River, two miles distant. If they could make it there, perhaps they could secure a small boat and head upriver to one of the hospitals further inland. He thought that maybe the rest of Japan was unaffected and the government would quarantine this prefecture. They just had to hold out until help arrived. Or maybe the Kami, the spirits of the land, had come to reclaim this world and everyone in it. He fought back the Shinto beliefs his mother had imparted to him in younger days, trying to brush them off as relics from the feudal world. Shiro ran his hand along Takumi’s forehead and felt the searing heat as the young man’s yellowing complexion seemed to deepen further.
Shiro heard moaning behind him and turned to see a woman in her mid-thirties holding her pregnant belly. The other Japanese around her were inching away from her. By her accouterments, she looked like other American women he had seen in Los Angeles while on Yakuza business trips. She better keep quiet and not go into labor right now or we’re going to have more of those things upon us.
He felt Takumi’s grip upon his shirt sleeve and turned to the fever-stricken brown eyes of his brother. “Shiro, I knew you’d come for me. Mother always said you were the one who would set things straight in our family. Shiro the faithful.”
Shiro held back a faint smile, squeezing his brother’s hand. “You always were a terrible liar, Takumi. Mother only saw you when we were all together—and rightfully so; you were untainted by the demons in our family’s past. Takumi the sure-footed and pure-hearted—that’s why I used to call you mountain goat when you were little. Do you remember?”
Takumi smiled then turned on his side, flinching in pain as he coughed. The young man reached up and touched Shiro’s hand, running a finger along a comma-shaped scar on the middle knuckle. “I remember you being a good man once. Life has asked too much of you, Shiro. One day, I hope you can be free of this burden that our father put upon you.”
Shiro squeezed the hand back and tried to remember what it felt like to smile as he forced out a faint grin.
Takumi coughed again, spitting up blood onto the pavement. “Maybe we can get back home and go out on the boat again and I can show you what a good fisherman I’ve become.”
“I would like that. Takumi, king of the ocean. I’m so proud of you, brother.”
The young man’s smiling lips went straight. Takumi leaned his head down on the cold pavement as the whites of his eyes slowly clouded into a mustard color. The bulging carotids in his neck grew flat and his breathing became raspy like a damaged belt sander until it faded completely; the man’s grip slid off Shiro’s hand.
Shiro knelt down, lightly shaking his brother’s arm. “No, you must not leave, not now. I’ve finally come for you. We can live as a family once more.” His voice began cracking and he forced his tears back. He arched his back and balled both of his fists. Though he cared little about what the others behind him would think, it was culturally ingrained to cloak one’s emotions and he felt the iron fist of a thousand years of tradition grinding on the walls of his soul. He tried to contain the grenade-like anguish building up inside him as he stared into Takumi’s silent face.
Shiro passed his fingers along Takumi’s eyelids, closing them. He leaned over the body in a deep bow that turned into an embrace lasting several minutes. Then he stood, forcing his rubbery legs to extend as he staggered beyond a wrought-iron gate along the damp tunnel, his fist pounding on the wall with each sluggish step. Thirty feet ahead he stopped at the confluence of another passage and peered into the inky interior. A single tear rolled down his cheek and his ribs shuddered as he let out a muffled breath. This world has left me nothing—no brother, no family, no dignity. Everything is gone. Now perhaps the spirits will come for me so I no longer have to live in this hellish land.
He slid his hand down to the tanto knife in his belt and removed the soiled blade from its wooden scabbard. Shiro straightened up and stared into the dark expanse of the tunnel before him as he clenched both hands around the handle of the blade and aimed the tip at his lower abdomen. He had fought his entire adult life to purge himself of his Shinto upbringing but always found himself drawn back to it, if only for the comfort it provided to balance out the violence of his occupation. The veneer of his psyche was peeling back and he found the animistic nature of his religious beliefs pushing to the forefront. “If you will not allow me to atone for my sins in this world, then I will force you to meet me head on in the next,” he growled into the dark. As his stomach tightened and his grip crystallized, he heard a faint voice behind him. His eyes darted along the ceiling, wondering if it was the spirit world taunting him, then he heard it again, followed by faint footsteps shuffling along the damp concrete. He lowered his blade and turned at the ghostlike apparition coming into view in the dim light.
“Please help me?” the blond-haired woman said, clutching her protruding belly. “My baby is coming—please, I need help.”
Shiro’s eyebrow’s scrunched together in irritation, wondering why this geijin was intruding upon his plans. He needed to leave this purgatory and had already paid his toll. “The others can help you. Go back. I am…I am of no use to anyone.”
The woman kept moving forward, her stride shortening as she forced out each breath. Shiro deftly slid the blade back into its sheath as she collapsed into his arms. “You saved us on the streets above. I need your help—please,” she said as her breathing intensified.
He could still see the slumped figure of his brother in the distance. He just wanted to run into the darkness to finish what he had started—to free his soul from the tomb that his life had become. How much more was he going to be tormented before his sentence was served in full? The pale woman squeezed his forearm with a climber’s grip, pleading with her eyes.
Shiro removed his leather jacket, revealing his heavily tattooed arms. He laid it on the ground then placed her gently down on it. He removed the sheathed blade from his beltline and held it firmly for a second, letting out an exhale, then setting it beside him.
He whispered in a commanding tone to the others that he needed them to come up and to lock the service gate in the tunnel behind them. As they quietly closed the rusty gate, sealing off Takumi, before scurrying along the dark passage, Shiro knelt down beside the woman, his taut facial muscles slightly loosening.
“I’m Nora—what’s your name?” she muttered in between frantic breaths.
He sighed, gritting his teeth as he looked straight ahead into the dark tunnel ahead of him, his mind swimming in another reality. “So it appears this world is not through with me yet.”
“What?” she said with a puzzled expression.
He reluctantly pulled his gaze away from the abyss and looked down at her while he nodded his head. “Shiro,” he said with a pause. “My name is Shiro Hatsumi.”
Chapter 6
The evening before departure, Shane told everyone on his handpicked team to assemble at 1830 in the small briefing room outside the armory. He and Matias were silently doing an inventory of their weapons, magazines, rocket launchers, suppressors, and ammo crates. Jared walked in, tossing his weathered tan pack on the metal table.
“You called and I came—now the rest of the free world is once again safe,” Jared said with a grin as he walked over to the Glock 19s laid out in a row. “What, no, ninja swords—we’re going to Japan and we don’t have swords?”
“I’ll see what I can do for you when we arrive, Bruce Lee,” said Matias.
“Uhm, Bruce Lee was Chinese—you probably meant to say Sonny Chiba or Toshiro Mifune. Now those guys were bad-ass Japanese warriors. Nobody did it like Mifune, you know, like in that samurai flick.”
“Which one, you mean Sanjuro?” said Shane. “Quite a movie—which one of those guys would you have been, Jared?”
“Uhm, you know, the, uhm, dude who took down the bad guys at the end.”
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Shane just frowned. “You never even saw the film, did you, you bullshit artist. I can always tell when you’re lying because you’ve got this little tell you do with your right hand, tucking the thumb into your beltline like that.”
Jared looked down and hastily removed his hand from his waist, folding his arms across his chest. “How come you know so much about it?”
“Whenever I was deployed and we had long bouts of time on transport ships, one of the guys who was a Kurosawa film buff would always pop in a samurai DVD. I’ve seen ’em all.”
Jared smirked and shook his head towards Matias, who was holding back a smile. “Of course you did. Why am I not surprised? But I can almost bet you’ve never seen Sonny Chiba in Sister Streetfighter, have you?
“Sonny who?” Shane said, patting him on the shoulders as he walked towards the doorway and motioned for Pavel, who was walking down the steps to join them.
“You’re right on time. Come on in and let the pain begin,” said Shane as he started to roll up his shirt sleeve.
Pavel rested his black medical bag on the table and opened it up, removing a clear plastic cylinder lined with syringes. The rest of the group trickled in behind him: Eliza, Carlie, Amy, and the two pilots, Hadley and Comstock. Carlie dropped her pack in the corner and stood with her hands on her hips at the other end of the table opposite Shane. Pavel moved up towards Shane and removed the plastic cap from the needle, sticking him in the left deltoid above his tattoo of a sea serpent.
“This will take effect immediately but full coverage will not occur for another twelve hours so make sure to avoid any encounters with the undead on that plane ride, OK,” the older man said in his slight Russian accent while patting Shane on the other arm.
Carlie moved up next and stood in place beside Pavel. “So do all the operators get these or are we the only lucky ones?”
“Oh, you are lucky alright, my young duchovna, but, yes, all of Duncan’s special operations units get inoculated along with medical staff and frontline personnel. After that, we will be busy for the next three months making another batch of this,” he said, injecting her in the etched muscles of her shoulder. “Or until you get back home here with the device on my shopping list. In the meantime, this vaccine will provide immunity against blood-borne pathogens spread through the bite of the undead. As for those who have already turned, their fate is, regrettably, sealed.”
Before he moved over to the next person, Pavel reached down and held Carlie’s hand, squeezing it firmly while whispering to her in Russian, “If I had had a daughter, I would have wished she was like you. You are what is best in a leader—in a woman.”
Carlie could see the paternal warmth in his eyes but also trepidation that they might not see each other again if this mission failed. She smiled while returning the grip on his hand, holding back her emotions at his compliment and knowing that he was saying farewell with a concern she dared not fathom. “And a greater comrade I never knew. You’re a good man, Pavel, and you have given us hope again—given me hope that we will fix this broken world.”
The admiration and fondness Pavel and Carlie felt for one another filled the space between them. Then the older man nodded before pulling away and resuming his work.
***
After they had completed their packing and weapons inspection, Shane informed them that they each had one hour left to take care of any last-minute business or goodbyes. Carlie took this time to walk up to the roof of A-Wing where she often went to seek solace before and after missions. The silent space away from others allowed her to clear her head and the fragrant saltwater breeze let her mind drift to happier days of her youth when she was with her brothers and father along the east coast. The sky was relatively clear and she stared up at the moon. Carlie closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to purge the recurring images of Osaka that were still fresh in her thoughts.
While she was often brimming with anticipation before a mission, the one they were about to embark on filled her with dread. They had avoided most of the large cities all these months for a reason but when they did go in they had a reasonable sense of what they were facing and knew the escape routes out. Japan had been a silent abyss since the early days of the pandemic. She and the others found it discomforting that there had been very few radio transmissions emanating from that country, meaning that it must have been devastated more than other regions of the globe or had completely succumbed. Even obscure places like Belarus and Uruguay had survivors that relayed messages on occasional ham radio broadcasts—but not Japan.
Carlie was usually the first one in line to board the plane when departing for a mission but this time she cringed at leaving. Now, they had to cast their fate into the wind with no hope of a rescue team to fly in and retrieve them if things went south. As the low cumulus clouds above were dyed plum-orange in the dawn light, Carlie looked out at the grounds of the base below, thinking it could be the last time she set her eyes upon the place she called home.
Chapter 7
When the first rosy slivers of dawn penetrated the horizon, Shane and his team gathered their gear from the armory and strode down the long hallway that led from A-Wing to the airfield. Duncan met them in mid-journey and proceeded to walk with them beside Carlie and Shane, briefing them on last-minute details.
“Remember that the satellite intel is nearly non-existent now due to the erosion of technology so the pilots will be flying old-school, probably like on missions you did in the early days.”
Shane shot an eyebrow up. “How many years do you think I have under this hat?” he said.
“He does look like an old fossil sometimes,” said Matias from behind with a grin.
Duncan continued his lecture without noticing the interjections, his face taut. “As discussed yesterday, comms will be spotty at best from malfunctioning relay stations and the aforementioned SAT-com degradation from their unchecked orbit drifts in space. We will have a broadcast out with significant updates on shortwave radio every two hours at this frequency,” he said, handing a stack of index cards which all bore the same number to Shane, who took one and passed them along to each member. Although they would have radio contact with Fort Lewis for part of the flight, the individual comms they had would only work between themselves.
“The ham radios loaded in the cargo are already dialed in to the correct frequency but any shortwave or improvised transistor radio will work, though you won’t be able to relay any messages. We’ll keep you posted regularly on the location of the Olympia whenever we get updates from the sub commander.”
The hallway terminated at the large double-doors that led to the airfield. On either side were two guards who pivoted and swung open the heavy doors.
As they walked in two rows onto the airfield, their cumbersome packs and duffle bags bobbing against their bodies, they saw the rooftop of A-Wing lined with people. All manner of intel personnel, operators, team leaders, and other members they had come to call brothers and sisters were silently watching their procession to the waiting C-130.
Shane stopped and looked over his shoulder at the hundred or so people filling the edges of the roof while the rest of his group did the same. He glanced back at Duncan whose face normally bore an eternal look of confidence and saw a solemn expression, his eyes still fierce but backlit with a haunting uncertainty.
The individual personnel that flanked them from above raised their right arms in unison, holding their salutes as Shane turned around and resumed leading the group to the rear ramp of the plane. He and the others dropped their gear in the center of the cargo hold and then strode back down the ramp. Duncan met each person with a firm handshake, the roar of the engines serving as their farewell symphony. The personnel on the roof were still standing at attention. Shane moved a few feet out from under the fuselage along with the rest of his group, each one of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside him to return the salute. His boots felt firmly rooted on the blacktop as if they had grown tendrils into the earth b
elow. Though he had always been the first one to spring at a new mission, Shane found the fibers of his soul yearning to remain tethered to that spot as he looked out at the faces of his brethren in the distance. He felt his heart already racing with longing for the place that had become his home. The rush of countless joyous moments with Carlie swept over the fields of his mind. He forced himself to do as he had done on many missions in younger days and bid a permanent farewell to his countrymen, knowing he wouldn’t see these shores again. He swiftly lowered his tense hand in a salute then pried his boots free and turned towards the ramp, giving Duncan a final nod as they filed back into the belly of the plane.
Chapter 8
Once the plane had disappeared from the horizon, Duncan returned to his office in A-Wing. He searched the cobalt-blue skyline one last time from his window for the faint image of the C-130 and then he sat down on a rolling chair beside his oaken desk. The same desk that had been occupied by his predecessor Conrad Lavine. The same nightmarish considerations that Lavine had faced bore down on Duncan’s shoulders and he felt like there was a concrete hand preventing him from moving. Duncan took out a key from his pocket and opened a drawer, extracting a manila envelope. Inside were numerous pages of handwritten notes indicating the current food stores present at Fort Lewis. The number “68” was circled in heavy black ink, like a crater was trying to contain the pressing meaning of what lay inside. Sixty-eight fucking days of food left for our current personnel. How am I supposed to feed all these people after that? He slid another paper over the first one and studied the handmade graphs which showed the fishing productivity rate from the boats out in the bay and the yield of produce he expected from the two-hundred-acre garden. His eyes kept racing over the same figures he’d already seared into his brain as if they might spike in prominence if he blinked his eyes any harder.
