Virus: The Day of Resurrection

by Sakyo Komatsu

  “The special train bound for Ōfuna will be departing shortly,” croaked a husky voice from the loudspeaker. “It is unclear when westbound service for Ōfuna on the Tokaido line will be restored. Presently, there is a train derailed at Hino Station on the Central line.”

  The wall of people began to rumble toward the ticket gate like an avalanche. Angry voices, wailing cries, and the restraining admonishments of station employees all ran together in a deafening roar that resounded throughout the building. Suddenly, there was the sound of a gunshot, and the form of a soldier holding a smoking carbine aimed at the ceiling rose up before the trembling multitudes. The confusion and chaos ceased for just a moment, but then began to turn back in the opposite direction. Someone threw an empty juice bottle, which struck the soldier right in the side of his head and knocked back his metal helmet, exposing a tense, tanned, youthful face. The soldier staggered drunkenly for a moment, his face went pale, and then he recovered his grip on the gun. After he had straightened his helmet, he fired another shot at the ceiling.

  On June 8, all commercial air routes were shut down on orders from the government. This was because nationwide there had already been more than a dozen accidents caused by the sudden deaths of either pilots or air-traffic controllers. The national railways, including city and suburban lines, were running, albeit with reduced service. For safety purposes, two people worked as a team, driving the trains slowly, but even that couldn’t stop accidents from happening.

  Here and there on the roads, cars that had had accidents lay flipped upside down, burning. The drivers had died as they were driving them, and because the wreckers couldn’t clear them quickly enough, traffic on the roadways—main highways included—was gradually falling into a state of paralysis. The state was suppressing the sale of gasoline in an effort to ease the gridlock on the roads caused by accidents.

  Now, all of the expressways were being superseded as the transportation methods of choice by boats. Boats were slow, but the people piloting them had greater margins of error, and they were generally less dangerous. However, as crises still occurred because of problems with harbors and lighthouses, travel by night was forbidden, and most boats were being used as emergency transports for the necessities of life, starting with foodstuffs. Very few of them were available for purposes of general travel.

  The autonomous activity of workers in all manner of vital industries—particularly in the key areas of electricity, traffic, transportation of goods, and communications—was outstanding. Labor unions, which had at first taken an intensely critical stance toward the less-than-thorough nature of the government’s measures, had at a certain stage turned around and undertaken to secure the most vital industries voluntarily. This was because they had agreed to do so when the government, in declaring martial law, had appealed directly to the unions instead of placing the key industries under military supervision. The ones who objected most vehemently to this included a number of executives, venture capitalists, and oddly enough, far-left political parties. A number of the capitalists had had to cope with having the org charts of their businesses thrown into chaos, as the labor unions had taken it upon themselves to exercise “management from the bottom up.”

  “The more they work the more the damage spreads!” the CEOs argued. Without even a verbal promise from the government of any realistic compensation, they also opposed keeping their businesses in operation for no other reason than the good of society. The far-left parties had at first opposed the labor unions’ move to “prevent” social disorder, preferring instead to point out the failures of the government’s measures, contribute to the chaos themselves, and demand the resignation of the cabinet en masse (an appeal which was later rescinded). The workers, however, were greater in number than either of the other groups, and they managed to push through the opposition.

  “I just don’t get it,” muttered a communications worker nearing the age of retirement. “This whole situation somehow feels a lot like the national unity movement just before the war. Back then too, we were hearing about a ‘crisis for the Japanese people’ and a ‘national crisis.’ The Japan Federation of Labor was dissolved, and we ended up with the Industrial Association for Serving the Nation. I was still young, but I remember how we got caught between solidarity with our coworkers and the crisis the country was facing. We kept getting sucked deeper and deeper into the national unity government. We knew the foreign countries were completely merciless. At least we thought we knew. But that was because they really fed us that line, so we were lost in the illusion of ‘our great duty as citizens’ with the farmers and the shop owners and everybody joining hands … and that’s why we did it. I was young, but still, there are similarities this time too. We’re under so-called government control now, after all.”

  “You can’t see what’s happening for what it is even at your age?” asked an old man who had already retired and was now working as a custodian. He smiled toothlessly. “This is completely different from what happened back then. The ‘enemy’ isn’t somebody in some other country; it’s influenza. I have no problem with calling a truce with the conservatives in the government and cooperating with them. Actually, I think it’s what we need to do because, frankly, this is no time for infighting. If you ask me, that bunch in the government now should be looking for the chance to ditch their responsibilities and head for the hills. Then they should think about what in the world happens next after this ‘state of emergency’ is over. Even in the present conservative government, we’ve got some really good men. It pains me to say it, but as politicians, these guys are a cut or two above the progressives. They’re really giving it all they’ve got, so I don’t see them running away. At times like these, I feel pretty grateful to live in a country like Japan, without all the egotistical leaders like they have overseas. They’re all stingy, but at least there aren’t any big villains. They’ll all do their best in their own way. Devoted public servants. That’s what they are. Don’t give me that look, now! Words always have two sides. But more than that, they should be thinking about what things will be like between the different forces in society once this craziness is over. ’Cause when the disaster is over, the ‘undamaged’ people who ducked away from this fight are sure to come out of the woodwork and end up holding power. Age should count for something, so you need to think these things through in the most calm and collected manner and teach the young fellows. That’s why we need to be on the lookout for the ones who think they can profit from all this ruckus. After all, lumberjacks and roofing tile makers profit from typhoons, food companies profit from food shortages, and pharmaceutical makers profit from colds and flu …”

  When this is over.

  The old men were thinking mainly of when this disaster would be over. The old men had had plenty of experience with living through disasters, and they knew how these earlier disasters had ended, and what kinds of things had come about after they were over.

  When this is over.

  Everyone was thinking that this disaster had to end sometime—that for humanity, disasters were transient things.

  The population of Europe had been cut in half by plague in the thirteenth century, and yet Europe had lived on. Fifty million people had died of Spanish flu, and yet these deaths amounted to nothing more than a scratch or an abrasion for the civilization that existed at the dawn of the twentieth century. There had been two world wars, earthquakes, major floods, and famines, but humanity survived. Some believed that the human race could survive even a nuclear war. And come July, nuclear weapons would be done away with altogether. Many patient people were pouring their efforts into reconciling this upheaval to their daily lives, silently enduring their difficult circumstances. It was rare for people to get such terrible flu.

  “I wish this thing would just hurry up and run its course so things can go back to normal,” they would say. For a long, long time, for over a thousand years and several centuries, the Japanese people, snug in the comfort of their little civilization, had
held an unconditional trust in their society and in their land. They didn’t know, however, that within civilization was something akin to a point of no return, and once things unraveled beyond that point, all of the various elements of the civilization that supported a sophisticated and vibrant human society would begin to work retroactively toward utter dissolution.

  And beyond that dissolution there awaited what was, in the long history of the planet Earth, a quiet, exceedingly familiar drama which was entitled The Extinction of a Species.

  The riots remained small-scale and sporadic. People still believed in tomorrow, and so they worked to preserve the public order. Viewed globally, however, Japan was a rare example of peace in the world. In Europe and the Americas, countries were sliding from states of social unrest into utter anarchy. Already, there were many countries in which rioting and looting, widespread panic, and bloodshed were growing ever more generalized by the day. In Japan, people were fleeing from the cities to regions where it at least looked like the Tibetan flu had not yet raged to its fullest. Skirmishes had erupted here and there between those trying to get away from the cities and the local residents who wanted to keep the interlopers out of their towns, but that was the worst of it. However, even in regions where Tibetan flu had not yet spread, “sudden death syndrome” made its appearance. Eventually, with the evidence before their eyes, doctors had no choice but to confirm the fact that there was a second, truly terrifying disease going around that was being masked by Tibetan flu.

  By that time, however, the entire framework of modern medicine was already well on its way toward utter collapse. With two thirds of researchers having been lost, it was fair to say that there was almost no hope left for the discovery of the MM-88 contagion, with its complex and obscure infection mechanism, which caused that infuriatingly complicated viral disease. And even if it were to be discovered, what could possibly be done about it? There had been people at the Germ Warfare Research Laboratory in England who held all of its secrets, but every one of them had died in early June.

  In this way, Japan and the rest of the world, having lost the chance to learn the secrets and the cause of the disaster that was assailing them, continued on desperately in their fruitless, if praiseworthy, efforts.

  Desolation arrived in almost no time at all. On June 10, regions throughout Japan’s four quarters were designated as power-conservation zones, and the following day, June 11, those restrictions on the use of electricity were expanded nationwide. Daytime power for use in homes ceased altogether. Because of this, battery-powered transistor radios and television sets skyrocketed in price. In big cities, running water was available only at certain times of the day. This went nationwide as well on June 14—the same day that trains stopped running on all branch lines throughout the country. Newspaper companies and broadcasters, growing desperate, tried to ensure their continued operation. Newspapers which had, just one month before that, reached volumes of sixty-four pages in their morning and evening editions, which had been filled with full-page advertisements and silly filler stories as they competed for column inches, had now been reduced to putting out eight-page morning and evening editions, published in half-sized tabloid format and as wall-newspapers because the paper companies couldn’t find enough workers to deliver them.

  While all this was going on, the reporters labored all the more desperately to relay fully what was happening in the world. It was as if the entire rich, gaily-colored fabric of society had been torn away all at once, exposing a severe, bony framework of functionality—a skeleton of minimum bare necessity. The news arriving from throughout the world and throughout the nation was all bad; every last bit of it. The opinion was even put forward that it would be better to stop publishing newspapers altogether because all they were doing was discouraging their readers. Even so, the reporters did not cease their activities. Naturally, editorial writers continued writing words of encouragement, and after they had fallen, the second-string reporters took their place. Beyond informing and encouraging their readers, the reporters believed that newspapers now had a vital function of allowing people to call out to one another in the midst of chaos. Even if the news was bad, to stop publishing it would throw the people into the midst of a dark silence in which they would despair. And so at least they continued putting out the paper, supplying an image of “society” and “order,” based on a nigh-instinctual belief that maybe the population could be helped by it. To somehow continue giving the people a symbol of order, they climbed over the corpses of their fallen colleagues to keep the presses running. They knew that Japan might be destroyed. Even if nobody spoke of it, reporters who were used to thinking in terms of the big picture could foresee the worst-case scenario. However, even if the nation were destroyed, even if everyone floating in the sea after a shipwreck drowned in the end, it would still be just a little better if they could die calling out to one another, rather than being lost in the midst of pitiful, solitary darkness.

  In like manner, the television and radio stations continued working as though possessed to maintain their programming schedules. Despite the fact that thirty percent of local stations had already gone silent—and despite the fact that almost all of the flagship stations had cut their broadcasts to a combined total of four hours a day for morning, noon, and night—still, they kept on broadcasting. Aside from international and domestic news, broadcasting stations put a great effort into producing entertainment programming. They were like parents on the verge of freezing to death, trying desperately trying to coax smiles from their freezing children. One radio station—transistor radios had spread far and wide—continued playing popular songs both old and new, as well as pop tunes and jazz twenty-four hours a day.

  Day by day, the desolation spread throughout society, and all manner of local religions, both old and new, began to run riot with ferocious energy. Some people danced wildly, others packed into small houses, jostling against one another as they chanted sutras.

  “The end has come for this world because human beings have never done anything but evil. Everyone will fall into Jigoku now.”

  “Brothers! Surrender and you can all be saved!”

  Yes, what else could they do except pray? People who prayed were people who were still fighting. The career intelligentsia and the leaders were completely ineffectual, but some of the priests, preachers, and thinkers were still crying out. But were their cries of any help? Even people who knew perfectly well that their prayers would not be rewarded were praying now as well. If there had ever been a time to pray, this was it. The trains were stopped, and now the electricity was starting to disappear. When fires broke out, they weren’t extinguished; the flames just spread wider and wider. At the roadsides, in the houses, in the entrances of the stations and office buildings, countless corpses lay, swelling up and rotting. The humid climate gave vigor to maggots and bacteria, and some bodies had already skeletonized. The stench of death that hung over the world was horrible, and the wings of desolation sounded a great wind as they spread out over the land. Bodies were everywhere: in cars that had been torn apart in collisions with telephone poles, in the muddy water of half-planted rice paddies, on the lawns of parks and in shrubbery, in trains that had stopped in transit between stations, at roadsides, at the doorways of houses, and even in the water of stagnated canals. Even in high-end residences and hotels, there were often a number of bodies lying around, barely covered by the white cloths laid over them. The public housing projects were already huge graveyards. Beside a sandbox lay the putrefying corpse of a small child, left uncollected because his parents were already dead.

  The city of Tokyo, which had once overflowed with twelve million people, was now turning into a vacant necropolis. The cars that had once crowded its streets were gone now. The windows of empty buildings, the grid of highways now desolate and without motion, the subways that no longer ran—impossible to enter now because of the hydrogen sulfide released by an abundance of rotting corpses.

  Blue methane flames rose u
p from vents here and there along Ginza Avenue, and the entire city was suffused with a stomach-churning miasma.

  The sight of things that moved was becoming rarer and rarer in the city, and whenever a human form did occasionally appear during this time, it was a silent member of the Self-Defense Forces, executing his futile mission to dispose of the bodies. They wore gas masks whenever working in the city, and the strange rubber masks made them look like carrion-eating ghouls. At first, they handled the bodies with great care, as though dealing with casualties of war. But by the end of the first week following the commencement of operations, the soldiers were no longer capable of worrying so much about public opinion. They dug holes and pushed the bodies into them with bulldozers. At last, the disgusting work that had picked up nicknames such as “Auschwitz ops” and “Banana ops” began. Bodies were collected matter-of-factly, stacked up in large heaps, doused in gasoline, and burnt with flamethrowers, recalling the time when a large shipment of bananas that had arrived from cholera-stricken Taiwan had been burned upon arrival at Kobe Harbor.

  Heavy columns of thick black smoke rose up from the pyramids of dead bodies, billowing up into the oppressive gray sky of the rainy season, and loud pops came from the bodies as they swelled up amid the heat of the flames. The voices of people reciting sutras came spilling out from nearby houses as though they were crawling along the ground. Then at last the rains of what might have been called a record-breaking rainy season arrived, falling long and heavy, like a curtain falling on the bodies and the desolated land.

  By June 30, eighty million people had died throughout Japan. However, at that time, somewhere under twenty million were still living.