by Aaron Lee
***
I sat in the car, in the middle of the intersection of route 413 and Meiji Avenue, still catching my breath. My heart was still pounding. I looked through the windshield at the two smashed cars, one half on top of the other's roof. They must have been going fast when they hit. Broken glass littered the ground at the corner of the sidewalk near where the big Gap store used to be, a mini Honda work van smashed through the plastic partitions that were put up after the Gap was torn down. I wanted to get out and wipe the bloodstains off the rear window, but I felt drained and useless, like a pile of jelly.
I had driven all the way down Hakusan avenue, past the government offices and financial buildings, some with broken windows and some with bodies in front. The imperial palace hadn't looked any different than usual. It could have been a regular Sunday afternoon if there had been a smattering of people walking around the outer gardens and joggers doing laps around the moat.
I went past the National Diet building, its gates uncharacteristically wide open, an overturned national police force tactical bus on its side, most of its mesh armor screens torn off and littering the street. A dozen Zero Company troops in black armor lay on the ground torn to pieces, Howa Type 89 assault rifles scattered in the mix, some of them broken in half. I had only seen Zero Company on the news before, so seeing them in person made the whole scene that much more surreal. From the blue uniforms it looked like a few riot police were in there too. I wanted one of the guns, even stopped the car and got out, but I couldn't wade into that mess. I always imagined myself tougher, but I learned a few things about myself in that moment. I just couldn't go in there. And since the guns didn't do trained, armored men any good, how would they help me?
I had driven past the National Library, ironically remembering that I always thought it would have been the best place to hide in a zombie attack. It had thick stone walls and easily defended windows high up in the walls. Airi and I went there one summer day because we were bored, and it was listed in one of the Tokyo things-to-do magazines as an interesting place. It was more crowded than we had both thought, but it was dead quiet. All of the signs warning you to keep quiet, and the people seriously studying government histories and politics for some reason was suddenly too funny and we both ended up laughing out loud. Irritated stares followed us all the way to the door and into the summer heat. I could never remember exactly why we both laughed, but we just looked at each other and knew something was funny.
But this time all was dark and it was hard to believe there would ever be laughter in the world again. There wasn't much point in laughing by yourself. When you went down that road, it just seemed like insanity was only a few steps away. No matter what, I had to find her. I found myself, at times like this, sitting and talking to myself, like I was going over events so I could remember them correctly. Maybe I was talking to Airi because I knew she would want to know every single thing I did, and what happened when we were away from each other. She was alive as of yesterday morning. I just had to hope she still was.
After passing the library, I had sped through Moto Akasaka, and slowed down next to the gates of the Akasaka Gosho compound. I guessed there was no hoping that the crown prince and his family were safe inside. The gates looked like they had been wrenched off the hinges, and a few bodies in black suits of what I can only assume were Kunaicho security lay bloody and torn, some of them with missing parts. It was stuffy in the car, so I had rolled down the windows hoping for fresh air, but all I got was that stale light breeze that hadn't gone away all week. It sometimes felt like a giant bubble had been placed over Tokyo, sealing something in, and once in a while some colossal exhaust fan was turned on to keep the city aerated.
It was good to have the car. A search on foot would have taken forever. Maybe the rest of my life if I worked out a system. If she really was moving around, she had to be traveling in something or maybe even with someone if she was lucky. I know now that she hadn’t gone to work, but was I stupid for looking there to begin with? I sometimes wondered if the sudden bouts of sleep were clouding my judgment. Where would she have gone? I would have sat and waited at Chidorigafuchi if it had felt safe. In fact, I was sure she would have too. She had to be with other people. Why else would she keep moving around otherwise? She would have been scared and preferred to wait in one place. She must have found people who convinced her that it was safer to keep moving. Maybe she was even looking for me now.
I had taken one last look at the gates and the slain security guards, hoped she was OK, and took off driving. I went through Aoyama and decided to take what I thought was a shortcut to Harajuku where she worked. We had walked down the street a dozen times but I never realized how narrow it was until I tried to take the car down it. Less than a hundred feet in the street narrowed so much that the car scraped against a telephone pole. I had thought for sure that I could make it through, but once I saw how close the car was to the other side of the street I realized only a seriously compact car could have made it. I was trying my best to back up when I noticed someone standing in a doorway.
It had been over a week since I had seen anyone, and the surprise froze me in my seat for a handful of heartbeats. She stood in the doorway of a boutique that sold some local designer's brand of small fashionable items, one of those places Harajuku is filled with. I think Airi and I had been in the shop once or twice. She stood just staring at me, probably just as shocked to see another person as I was. I tried to open the side door but it was wedged tight against the telephone pole. It's a good thing it was. She went from stock-still dead scarecrow staring at me to lunging at the car. She leaped onto the trunk, pounding on the rear window, leaving greasy bloody streaks on the glass. It looked like the skin on her arms was missing from the elbows on down. I saw what could have been the edges of bright bone and white ligaments. If it had been dark out, I'm sure her eyes would have had that same dull glow I saw at Tokyo Tower and Nakano Broadway. I put the car in reverse and hit the gas, but the car was stuck tighter than I had first realized. A crunching, scraping slow reverse only moved the car a few inches before it ground to a halt. The girl slid off the trunk and shoved herself headfirst through the broken rear passenger window, fragments of shattered glass pattering onto the back seat. In the glance of her face I caught in the rear-view mirror, I saw the relaxed, unhurried, almost sleepy face of a college-age girl who probably had worked part time in the boutique. That typically pretty face was indelibly-flash burned on my memory at that moment. The dreamy expression contrasted so starkly with the frantically tearing, pounding arms that it could have belonged to another person. My heart hammered so hard I thought I was seconds away from passing out. At that moment, I wished for nothing more than a security cage like the ones on police cars in the States.
I shifted into L, getting dizzier by the second, and slowly ground the car a few inches further out. She was in the back seat up to her waist, legs flailing frantically as her fists pounded on the seat. I jammed my foot on the gas and the fenders screamed as it hesitated, then shot backwards, suddenly free. The girl's lower body must have been between the car and the telephone pole because I heard a wet cracking and she was suddenly yanked out the back window as the car catapulted out of the small street.
I stopped the car in the main street and looked back to see if the girl was still coming for me. All I saw was a misshapen mound on the pavement.
Which brought me up to now, sitting at the intersection with my heart still pounding. The girl had looked a lot like Airi.
