by Kei Urahama
Ohizumi had a son, a junior high school student named Yuji. He had somehow managed to get a day off from school and was trapped inside the Dome with his father. Ohizumi’s wife, however, had been out shopping when the wall first surrounded them.
After the angel invasion she hadn’t returned. Of course it was possible she had been in some place other than the department stores of Orion Garden. But the odds of this were quite low. Her daily routine was to purchase the necessary ingredients for dinner at the basement grocery stores of the Garden. Perhaps she, along with tens of thousands of others, had become a part of the wall on that day. For his part, Ishida did feel the occasional bout of sympathy for the guy.
“Well hurry then.” Kyoko spoke as she moved toward the entrance. Ishida and Fukazawa followed her with flashlights in hand.
Ohizumi hurriedly returned to the room from the balcony. Ami shut and locked the glass doors quickly behind him. Unlike the one in which Ishida stayed, the glass door of this room hadn’t been paneled over.
“Be careful,” Ami said to her husband then stared at Ishida. Ishida didn’t meet her eyes, just nodded vaguely as he exited.
They switched on the flashlight at the entrance. The corridor was nearly pitch black.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do but let’s do it quickly,” said Fukazawa as he slung over his shoulder a video camera he had left at the entrance. He finished checking the battery and settings. “I’m ready.” The purpose of Ohizumi’s visit thus became clear: to shoot a video of the event, whatever it would be.
What would happen? Fukuzawa must have sensed his fear and nudged Ishida’s arm with his elbow.
“Don’t worry. No matter what happens, nobody will die in this horror movie.”
Saying this, he went out into the darkness of the corridor first. Fukazawa had always been that way. No matter what the situation he couldn’t help saying something sarcastic.
The sound of Ami closing the window curtain came from behind.
Whatever happens, it won’t be anything remarkable. Ishida found himself hoping this as he stepped into the darkness behind Fukazawa.
Chapter 10
Opening the heavy steel fire doors and entering the hallway past the non-functional elevators led to the door of the emergency stairwell.
There were two atriums of emergency stairs in the building, both in the center located to the east and west sides of the elevator lobby. Ishida entered the west side stairs. Since the generator on the B-2 floor was not running, the stairwell was in complete darkness. The stairwell on the east side actually was dimly illuminated, the source of the light being the red light of the Dome itself that had cut through the area overhead.
The ones who had recently climbed the east side stairs were the Apocalypse believers who were brainwashed by Masaki. They had ascended slowly, taking occasional breaks, aiming for the light overhead, which they called “God’s Light”. For a time the stairwell had a gothic flavor, as the believers ascended one after the other cradling lit candles in their hands. Since that eerie procession they didn’t spend much time on the lower levels.
“To keep followers isolated is a basic tactic in cult brainwashing techniques.” Ishida recalled the words Fukazawa spoke while shooting video of the pilgrimage going up the spiral stairs like a string of fireflies.
Once inside the stairwell, they saw the lights of Chikama and others coming from below. They headed one flight down to meet them on the eleventh floor landing. In addition to Chikama there was Hiroshi Shimada, a medical school prep student, and Yoko Mimura, a nurse’s aide. Ohizumi’s son was not present.
Shimada and Mimura were clasping hands firmly, moving forward in the darkness. Amongst all the survivors, only these two had any medical knowledge, and even theirs was basic at best. In the month since the Dome had appeared, no one had died of illness or major injury, at least not within this building. Broken legs while ascending or descending the darkened stairs had been suffered twice, but nothing more major than this. Fortunately this young man who was only the slightest hint of a doctor and this young woman who was barely a nurse had not yet seen much demand for medical competence. They were valuable assets nonetheless. Ishida had to wonder at the wisdom of bringing them to a potentially dangerous situation.
“What on earth now?” Shimada hissed in a belligerent tone to Ohizumi. It was no wonder, as Ohizumi had recently tried to force the young man to examine one of the zombies. Ishida hadn’t been present at the time, but it seemed like the end result had been quite miserable. After all, before the examination, the zombie had been shot dead by the policeman, Nagaoka. Before the angels arrived it was thrown down from the veranda of a room on the sixth floor. Ishida only heard the gunshots that time as well.
Ohizumi did make a contribution to the collective survival of the group through his scientific knowledge. It was this man who, after the Dome’s appearance, had shut down the automated generators in order not to waste precious fuel and also had decided the food ration amounts based on the caloric intake necessary for survival. And in addition, the miraculous pulley device mounted in the stairwell to transport provisions to the residents of the upper floors had been an ingenious invention of his devising. Yet, aside from all this, there was no doubt that the man was a first class troublemaker for the building survivors to the same degree that the cult guru Masaki was.
“Room Eight on the eleventh floor. Did you bring the key?”
Ohizumi held out his hand to Chikama, ignoring the question of the ‘prep’ med student.
“No, I’ll open the door.”
Now it was Ohizumi’s turn to be ignored. Chikama left the stairwell, entering the eleventh-floor corridor.
“He hates you,” Fukazawa said to Ohizumi, before following after Chikama. Ohizumi only shrugged slightly. To tell the truth, these two mostly got along pretty well. Ishida imagined the reason for this was their similarity in nature. Both were intensely self-absorbed and bluntly direct in their speech. Also both of them did not even try to hide that they were enjoying this unusual situation.
“Finally our time has come.” Ishida once heard Fukazawa say to Ohizumi.
Am I jealous of these two? Ishida wondered.
During this extraordinary situation, they had both been able to apply knowledge gained from their previous vocations to assist in survival efforts. Ishida on the other hand, as a scenario writer, carried nothing of use into this new environment. Since being trapped in this very real horror world, Ishida had not written a word. Even the emotional energy required to keep a simple day-to-day journal seemed to abandon him. Ishida’s inspiration for writing seemed to disintegrate here. No, it was worse than that. These days he felt like nothing more than a shell of his prior self. And somehow things felt more pleasant this way.
Compared to Ishida’s current vacant state even the zombies seemed more active. At least they had their insatiable hunger for living flesh. They didn’t need to overcome a sense of apathy like Ishida did. In a way he felt the zombies were better than he. My dad might have thought so anyway, he thought.
Everyone entered the hallway and passed through the elevator lobby area. There were ten apartments in total on this floor accessible through the round corridor. Except for room 1108, all the rooms remained empty. The only occupant on this floor was the old man, Shiro Tanahashi. The doors to all the unoccupied rooms were propped open to allow exterior light from the windows beyond to reach the dark corridor. Still the hallway remained murky. The gloomy red darkness created an atmosphere similar to the interior of a deep sea submarine from war movies. Six bodies moved forward through the shadows while their flashlights created multiple shafts of light that bounced forward erratically.
Upon reaching the door labeled 1108, everyone fanned out, unconsciously creating a semi-circle at a slight distance facing the door. After a moment of silence, Chikama gave a resigned sigh and took one step forward.
“Mr. Tanahashi. It’s Chikama from the front desk. Are you okay? Can you open
the door please?” He called out loudly as he rapped on the door.
Another silence.
Everyone listened intently, holding their breath, yet there was only silence beyond the door. Suddenly Ishida’s stomach gave a comical gurgly, high-pitched groan. “Oops. Sorry,” he said, but no one even moved, much less laughed.
Chikama sighed once more and took out a spare key, thrusting it into the door knob. Before he turned the key, he looked back at everyone.
“Are you certain it hasn’t changed him yet?” The fear was there for all to see. He was afraid a hungry zombie would burst out the moment he opened the door.
“Don’t worry. It’s still not in the room. Mr. Tanahashi is most assuredly still alive.”
Kyoko spoke with certainty but it sounded just a bit like she was reassuring herself as well.
Still Chikama turned the key. The sound of it clicking within the lock echoed uncomfortably loudly within the corridor.
“It’s showtime.” Fukazawa stepped back and held up his video camera.
The smell peculiar to the elderly, mixed with that of urine and feces, emanated from the room. Yet nothing but silence answered the repeated calls from Chikama and Kyoko.
The layout was the same as the rooms directly above where the Fukazawas lived. Perhaps because an old person lived there it was, in contrast to the Fukazawa residence, sparsely furnished and contained a stale kind of silence. Kyoko had visited several times to deliver food and water. Tanahashi, a widower, lost his wife to illness long before he had moved to this apartment. Young believers had started visiting his room since a week before, making the deliveries of provisions instead of Kyoko. They had persistently encouraged Tanahashi to move upstairs with them, as had most of the other senior citizens, but he had flat out refused. According to Kyoko, the old man’s favorite phrase was, “I won’t have anyone babying me!”
The interior was deeply gloomy throughout. The entire surface of the windows was banded over by tightly overlapping duct tape, not even one sliver of a gap left open. Yet the red light emitted by the angel somehow still invaded the room. Through the sallow, thin tape itself, the round contours of the angel drifting over the balcony were visible. Wanting to get out of there as soon as possible, Ishida focused his efforts on trying to locate the old man.
Maybe he was just gone. Who knows? Maybe he finally gave into the persuasiveness of the stubborn persistent and moved upstairs. Ishida started to feel some relief thinking this until Fukazawa’s voice broke out.
“There he is.”
The old man was in the bathroom. Over Fukazawa’s shoulder, Ishida could make out his half-naked figure slumped in a sitting position next to an empty bathtub, his head hanging forward. His entire body was as white as fresh plaster. A large amount of blood had pooled over the floor tiles around him. From his pale wrist, bright red blood continued to dribble out, increasing the reservoir of blood on the floor. The anxious fear Ishida first felt after the appearance of the Dome revived within him.
“Still alive.” Fukazawa muttered as he lowered the camera.
Suddenly wading through the dazed spectators, Shimada surprised all by rushing inside the bathroom. Mimura also attempted to push forward, but once she saw the scene inside she stopped, shaking her head. “Oh… too late,” she mumbled. Unlike the prep student Shimada, Mimura had enough experience to recognize a lost cause, perhaps because the amount of blood loss apparent on the floor. “Yoko, fast! Gotta stop this bleeding!” Seeing Shimada yelling as he lifted the injured arm of the old man, she moved forward beside him and withdrew a bandage from the first aid kit.
“Hang on, Mr Tanahashi!” Mimura lifted up the old man’s head.
“What…?” Shimada blurted out, confused by what he saw.
Once the upper body of the old man was shifted upward, Ishida could see it too. Wearing only his boxer shorts, the old man’s bare belly was wound with multiple layers of wire. Strange how Ishida immediately understood the old man’s intent. He had secured his body to the faucet on the bathtub by wire in order to stop the angel from removing his corpse.
“It’s like Odysseus,” Fukazawa sighed. The usual tone of cynical irony was lacking this time.
Ishida’s earlier prediction was wrong. The old man clearly refused to become a zombie. Ishida had never seen a gesture as vivid, as strong as this before. It increased the sense of abject misery even more. Ishida couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Damn! I can’t even give artificial respiration. Someone get me a pair of pliers or scissors! We have to get this wire off!” Shimada shouted at everyone in the doorway.
Ishida was more than happy to leave the space. He and Fukazawa guided Kyoko, who had entered last, back out of the bathroom, using their bodies to block her view of the grim scene inside. Kyoko’s face was pale, trembling lips pressed tightly together. “Grandpa… he looks exactly like my Grandpa…” Ishida remembered her commenting on this before. Much more than Ishida, Kyoko’s feelings for the old man were deepened by association. Ishida had to avert his gaze from her lost expression.
Speaking of which, where is Ohizumi? As Ishida thought this he heard Ohizumi’s alarmed voice. “It’s inside!”
Ohizumi was monitoring the sphere through the windows in the master bedroom, directly below the room where Kyoko and Ishida were freeloading. When Ishida looked in the room, the sphere was already half-way through the glass window.
“Fukazawa! The camera!” Ohizumi shouted, his back pressed against the wall.
“No kidding,” Fukazawa muttered as he came up behind Ishida. The sphere passed through the window, wobbling forward into the center of the room. The bedroom suddenly filled with a lurid pink light. There was a black mark where the sphere had traversed the duct tape pasted on the window.
Could it pass through a living person like this? Ishida recoiled in horror but was impeded from moving backwards by Fukuzawa pressing against him.
The angel moved straight toward Ishida.
As it nearly touched him, Ishida flung himself sideways, falling to his hands and knees on the corridor floor. Fukazawa also threw himself to the other side at the same moment, shoving down Kyoko and rolling on top of her.
The angel lurched through the door into the corridor. Kyoko screamed in terror. It passed slowly over Kyoko and Fukazawa piled in overlapping tangled heap. The width of the corridor to the bathroom was too narrow for the sphere, so both of its sides disappeared into the walls. Two thick black singes were scored behind it as it moved forward. A strong metallic odor filled the corridor. Ishida recalled that he had smelled this same odor immediately after the appearance of the Dome.
Kyoko kept screaming. Thinking quickly, Ishida grabbed her ankles and pulled the two bodies out from under the sphere. Kyoko was safe. But one dark line remained on the back of Fukazawa’s shirt. He had been in contact with it. “Shit, how can I explain this to Ami?” As Ishida thought this, Fukazawa raised his head. “Shimada! I’m coming in!” he yelled. Apparently he was unharmed.
The angel reached the bathroom door. The only escape route was now blocked for the two living people inside with the corpse between them, Tanahashi now clearly being dead.
“Fukazawa! Get off me!” Kyoko struggled to get out from under the man and totter to her feet. The sphere was now completely inside the bathroom. Mimura started screaming inside. Ishida managed to grab and restrain Kyoko from rushing to her aid.
“Fukazawa, where is the camera?” Ohizumi asked as he looked on from further down the corridor. If I get out of this alive I’m definitely going to beat the shit out of that guy, Ishida thought.
“It’s sitting there. Go on and get it if you want.” Fukazawa spoke while scratching his back with a pained expression. Ishida left them there, moving toward the bathroom after Kyoko.
Standing just outside the bathroom now, Kyoko stared at the scene. “No. We have to stop it,” she murmured and, against all reason, moved forward. She entered the bathroom and grasped the naked feet of the man protruding f
rom the bottom of the sphere. The sphere had ingested down to the old man’s wrinkled abdomen, which had been bound with the wire.
At the moment she grappled with the corpse’s feet, Kyoko’s head touched the bottom edge of the sphere. Ishida could see from his vantage point that it had only touched her hair. “Have to get her out fast…” When Ishida tried to lean down to grab Kyoko, the color of the sphere changed. The pale pink glow transformed to a dazzling red, like a signal flare, then the brilliance faded and turned to a glossy shade of blood red. The sphere began to slowly retreat into the back wall.
It took nearly a full minute for the thing to recede into the bathroom wall. Ishida stood frozen as if in a dream, only able to numbly watch the insane spectacle transpire before him.
Then it was gone, leaving the shivering Shimada and Mimura clinging to each other in the narrow space along with Kyoko, now soaked in blood and motionless with exhaustion. Kyoko’s hands still clung to the old man’s feet as the bathroom space returned to darkness.
“Kyoko?” Ishida at last stepped forward into the puddle of blood on the bathroom floor. He put a hand on Kyoko’s shoulder. She collapsed forward onto the old man’s lifeless, outstretched legs.
Kyoko moaned, her face pressed downward. Good. She’s only fainted. We’ve got to get her out of here before she comes to. Ishida moved to pry her hands off the old man’s lower body.
Yes, the sphere had only taken the upper portion of the man. It just abandoned the lower half wearing the underwear there on the bathroom floor.
The old man’s body was cut cleanly in half, right around the stomach where the wire was wound.
“We’d better get out of here before it comes back,” said Fukazawa leaning over Ishida’s shoulder as he watched Kyoko being cared for in the corridor.
Fortunately Kyoko had only temporarily lost consciousness. All the blood on her body was the old man’s. Yet she’d had a terrible emotional shock and couldn’t even stand without support.
