Domesday

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Domesday Page 1

by Kei Urahama




  KEI URAHAMA

  DOMESDAY

  __________________

  Domesday copyright © 2000 Keiichiro Urahama

  The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author represents and warrants that he either owns or has the legal right to publish all material in this book.

  All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published in 2012 by Lantis k.k.

  Bellza Roppongi 302

  4-1-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku

  Tokyo, Japan 106-0032

  ISBN: 978-4-9906524-0-1

  DOMESDAY

  Written by Kei Urahama

  English translation by Mika Deguchi, John Cairns

  Edited by Kyle Hedlund

  Cover illustration by Ken Crane

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART TWO

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART THREE

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  EPILOGUE

  __________________

  Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.

  - Isaiah 26:19

  "The world ended in the 1980s. The creative world, that is, really died out back then. So, I’m not that surprised to see real zombies appearing now.”

  "But Dad, I was born after the 80s. You’re saying the world was over before I was even born."

  - conversation between father and son

  PROLOGUE

  (678 hours after the appearance of the Dome)

  "You ready?"

  Breaking the silence with his shrill, hoarse voice, Yoshida started the engine. The vehicle’s dim yellow dome-lamp lit up, causing the five youths to emerge abruptly from the darkness. Their faces shone, emaciated and exhausted. Only their eyes glared out with any intensity. Almost at once, they instinctively looked away from each other. Their faces too closely resembled the ravenous zombies confined with them inside the shell that had appeared only one month past. Such a short time ago, one month, but it had become their entire known world.

  Behind the driver’s seat, Yuji Ohizumi looked past Yoshida’s head at the bleak view of the B4-level parking space illuminated in the circle of their car’s headlights. Columns of cars were lined up on the two-tier parking system, most of them luxury vehicles neatly manicured and awaiting the return of their owners. Their owners would definitely not be coming back. They were now nothing more than so many unclaimed steel boxes. It sent chills down Yuji’s spine, reminding him of the cold corpse storage of a morgue out of some horror film.

  You ready? Who was Yoshida kidding? Nobody was ready. This was so obvious since nobody responded to the man's oddly bright, shrill voice.

  "Well then… Let’s go. Let’s go shopping!"

  So slowly, like a tiny submarine exploring the deep-sea floor, the four-wheel drive vehicle carrying Yuji and the others passed through the darkness of the parking area without even the advantage of the building’s emergency lights. At the moment the wheels entered the ramp sloping upward, Maki Kato, seated next to Yuji, shifted toward him and clutched at his arm. Maki was a senior in high school, two years older than he. Under normal circumstances it would have set Yuji’s heart fluttering, but unfortunately nothing was normal here. Things labeled “normal” had vanished from the world… since that day. Yes, even his mother had disappeared. “Normal” didn’t exist. “Normal” was dead. And maybe his mother died with it as well… as Yuji had once secretly hoped… a long-held desire held deep within.

  Suddenly, the noise of the horn jarred Yuji from deep thought. Had it only been a few seconds? He’d slipped into a fugue state, feeling nothing besides an odd euphoria and the centrifugal force of the vehicle spiraling up the ramp. Recently there had been vague moments like this. Without realizing it, one could drift off from consciousness like a dreamer but not wake up again. Yuji knew it was a common occurrence amongst the survivors, but it was no comfort for him to think of being amongst their ranks. Many had already succumbed to the fugue state, eyes staring blankly, drool threading from their mouths. Yuji didn’t want to become like that. It was no different from the zombies outside.

  In response to Yoshida’s horn, another car horn echoed through the darkness. It was the truck carrying John the American and several others. Now a total of eleven people had slipped out of the apartments and banded together. The truck was behind their vehicle on the B2 ramp, lighting up the interior with its bright headlights. Although it was an artificial light, it still took some time for Yuji’s eyes to adapt since he hadn’t seen such brightness in a long time. Before he could wipe away his tears, the two vehicles reached the ground level.

  Switching off the headlights, the familiar lurid red light returned. It filtered through from the other side of the barricade constructed at the parking lot exit. The light had a similar quality to that of an autumn sunset but lacked any clear direction. Without apparent source it was pervasive like a poisonous fluorescent gas. This was the quality of the light of the Dome. A light most definitely not of this world.

  The barricade was fashioned from a single moving company truck, some zelkova and camphor trees cut down from apartment frontage, and a mish-mash of sturdy furniture and other appliances such as large TVs that were now useless anyway. The truck, parked next to a two-meter wall, served as a makeshift sliding door of the barricade. When Yuji and the others arrived at the large steel plate in front, that the apartment residents called the “zombie blocker”, it was already moved to the side so the “door” could be easily opened. Already waiting in front of the barricade were the apartment building’s former security guard, Mikami, and the former apartment administrative staff member, Chikama, as well as another man whose name Yuji didn’t know. Yuji himself hovered at the edge of the fugue state. My own father’s not even here with me.

  “I won’t see you off.”

  His father, usually reticent with his son, had spoken these last words only a few hours before. When Yuji had announced his intention to leave the apartment, his father only uttered one word: “Understood.” Even the tone of his voice didn’t betray much opposition. It left Yuji with conflicting feelings toward him. Rage, yes (but who would dare to show their only remaining relative such feelings), but also pity for this man so altere
d from his former state by the drastic changes in his world. For Yuji, these two feelings whipped past his mind’s eye like alternating faces on a spinning top.

  “Four roaming zombies, clustered around the pyramid in the center of the square. A crawling one is roving between the restaurant and the basement doors. One more location unknown; we can’t see from our vantage points up here.”

  Still in his guard uniform, Mikami was speaking to Yoshida. He looked dependable with a pike crafted from a long iron bar from an athletic club in his left hand and a hand-held radio in his right. Yuji figured someone else in an apartment upstairs was on look-out reporting to Mikami via radio about developments in the square. The ground floor windows on the west side of the apartment building overlooked Orion Garden where Yuji and the others were preparing to go.

  Even for a look-out, a pretty limited area to cover in this new world, though.

  “Well, that stray zombie is a crawling one, so unless you get out of the car, it shouldn’t be dangerous. If you want to go, now is the time.” Yoshida nodded silently as he listened to Mikami. His forehead glistened with sweat, no trace of the brainless courage from before.

  “You’re really going?” Chikama approached the window as he spoke. He’d sort of continued in his role of apartment administrator and now handled food and water rationing as well as other survivor-related matters in the building. After the Dome’s appearance, he had been the first to organize a rescue party to round up isolated survivors. Though only in his twenties, he was the true leader of the apartment building group. At least that’s how it seemed to Yuji. Some elderly apartment residents still insisted on their authority over Chikama, based on their previous status as clients. Also some religious nuts in the building would never acknowledge his role as their leader, either.

  “Perhaps we could delay your schedule a little? I’ve been planning to take an exact census of the Dome survivors soon. Would it be too late to move after that?”

  “No, I’ve already decided.”

  Yoshida, being another who refused to accept him as leader, flatly refused Chikama’s proposal. The two men were incompatible. Many times Yuji had heard Yoshida disparaging Chikama behind his back, claiming the apartment manager was nothing more than a windbag.

  “No choice then. But please help me on the survey. I’d appreciate it if you told everyone about it in advance.”

  “Fine but get the truck out of the way now.” Yoshida growled, obviously not intending to help Chikama with anything.

  “Well, be careful then.” Chikama nodded to the four others in the car before heading to the driver’s seat of the truck. Yuji felt a shadow of fear cross his heart as he watched him move away. Would there be anyone like him in the new place where Yuji was headed? Someone like Chikama who continued with business as usual despite the insane world surrounding them all?

  “Shit, about time!”

  Yuji felt anxious hearing Yoshida murmur under his breath. Takashi Yoshida was eighteen years old. Tominaga, sitting in the front passenger seat ahead of Suzuki and Maki, was about twenty. Suzuki, seated opposite Yuji in the backseat had shut out the outside world with his headphones as usual. Ever since they’d departed, Tominaga up front kept yawning repeatedly but saying nothing. Both Tominaga and Suzuki acted like they were bored with “reality” but the fact was that “reality” had long been extinct. The foreigners in the truck behind were a bit older and more reliable, but this car was just full of immature kids. Of course I’m the youngest, but…

  Yuji had just turned fifteen in September of this year. He was already skipping junior high school by then, a so-called truancy case, but at least the outside world flowed normally back then. Looking at the date on his watch, a birthday present from his parents, Yuji was taken aback. The digital display read “9:07 pm – Nov 19th”. Not even two months had passed since that day, his birthday. By the calendar, only one month had elapsed since the ordinary world vanished. That’s impossible, Yuji thought. It seemed like years since they had all become trapped in this strange new world. Time flowed so differently here.

  Yoshida impatiently revved the engine. Mikami approached again, rapping the rear window next to Yuji.

  “Shit, what now!?” Yoshida snarled in his high-pitched voice.

  “Yuji, open up,” Mikami said, gesturing for him to open the window. When Yuji did so, Mikami passed him the hand-held radio.

  “Your father wants to talk to you.”

  Hearing this, Yoshida snorted a laugh. “He can’t be serious. You’d think it was goodbye forever—not this hundred meter drive.”

  Ignoring him, Yuji took the receiver.

  “Hello…Dad….”

  Yuji’s group intended to move across the Orion Gardens complex to the Amusement Park building. As Yoshida said, it was about a hundred meters as the crow flies from the apartment building. Before reaching their future home, though, they planned to detour by the department store building, another hundred meters from the parking lot they’d just left. It was literally right around the corner and wouldn’t have taken more than a minute to reach on foot under normal circumstances.

  But this was no ordinary world. One hundred meters was equal to roughly a quarter of the diameter of the entire domain. If the calculations of Yuji’s father were correct, they were all trapped in an area with a radius less than two hundred meters. This was their new world within the Dome, dubbed the “eco-sphere” by his father, a sci-fi writer.

  What had happened to the greater sphere of the earth itself beyond the opaque wall, the prisoners inside had no idea. Every attempt to either contact the outside or destroy the wall from within had failed up until then. The thick barrier didn’t seem to allow radio waves to penetrate. Worse, Yuji and the rest had not bathed in sunlight for a month that felt more like years.

  A sense of defeat had spread amongst those trapped inside. The earth outside no longer existed. Or so some had chosen to believe. They insisted that there was nothing left beyond the Dome. If their claim was true, the entire world now consisted only of what was contained within this two-hundred-meter radius. It was simply a matter of following the fifteen-meter-wide road in front of the apartment building to get them across the complex of Orion Garden to where Yuji and the others planned to live from now on.

  Iron rails, at one time road-side barriers that had lined the recessed garden surrounding the apartment complex like a dry moat, now fashioned most of the barricade to the survivors’ residence. This meant that now, if they veered to the left, there was nothing to prevent their car from tumbling off the raised road into the garden below.

  Trouble came immediately after their four-wheel drive vehicle left the precarious exit area and entered what felt like the safer, gentle slope across the road. A colonnade of camphor and sycamore trees surrounded the gardens. The thing jumped out from its hiding place in the shade of a tree in ambush.

  “Fucking Roach!”

  “Yoshida yelled and stamped on the accelerator. From the backseat, Yuji and the others couldn’t see a thing. They just felt the jarring of the car bumping up then down again, but they could guess what happened.”

  One of the zombies that his father called a “Reptile Type” and Yoshida called a “Roach” or “Flat One” bolted out and the driver couldn’t avoid hitting it. Both front and back tires bounced over it like a speed bump.

  In this instance, Yoshida’s cruelty was a good thing. Being a flat-type zombie, the car rolled right over it. But the light truck behind them wasn’t so lucky. The driver tried to swerve to avoid the thing but accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes.

  In the next instant both of the truck’s right tires jerked into the shrubs along the slope dropping toward the center of Garden Square. The hill led to the bottom of the square, which fell to the depth of a basement.

  Then came the inevitable. Yuji looked back at the truck, already flipped with its left tires spinning in the air, sliding down the slope on its right side. The three people who’d been crouch
ing in the truck’s open bed must have jumped or been thrown. They were now scattered on the slope. John the American, who must have jumped off first, was prone and reaching out to Yuji’s car swearing, “Fuck! Shit!” It was the first time Yuji had heard an American use these four letter words outside of a film. Yang, a Korean man, was standing up near John. He didn’t look injured but kept shouting in his native tongue. Probably more swear words, but Yuji couldn’t understand a single sound.

  Yoshida jammed on the brakes, cursing.

  “Thank God. Nobody’s dead yet.” Maki spoke for the first time since their departure. Twisted back, looking out the rear window, her gaze was directed not at the overturned truck but skyward. More precisely, Maki was staring up at where the sky had once been but now stood only the Dome’s interior surface. Yuji quickly understood what she was up to. She was looking for an angel. If someone died then an angel would come down for sure.

  “We have to go back and help them, quickly!”

  Tears welled up in Yuji’s eyes.

  “Duh! I know that. Otherwise we’re fucked!” Yoshida struggled desperately to switch gears. Beside him, Suzuki kept shouting, “Come on! Come on! Come on!”

  Yuji glanced back and realized he was in hell.

  The plan had been to bypass the slope leading to the central square and make for the department store on the left before heading to the amusement building on the opposite side. But now they were angling down to the slope into the middle of the square. Into the nest of the living dead.

  What had once been human but now were monsters were already converging on their car. Some crawling, some dragging a lazy leg just like in horror films, all were moving at a slow but steady pace. Yuji tore his gaze from the monsters and turned back to the apartment they had just left. The gigantic glass walls towered with the red dome as a backdrop, reflecting a deeper shade of red themselves. Yuji’s father was probably watching from somewhere within that building. Through the hand-held radio he’d learned it was his father who had assumed the role of lookout, keeping them apprised of the dangers below.

 

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