by Aaron Lee
***
Once I got to Odaiba, I wasn't sure it was a good idea. It was getting dark though, and I still couldn't stomach the idea of sleeping inside. Hundreds, probably thousands of fish were strewn on the shoreline. None of them were rotting, but they were most certainly dead. Flotillas of countless dead seagulls drifted back and forth with the current in the bay, tangled in clumps of seaweed and inflatable water testing enclosures.
We used to come to Odaiba on sunny days in the summer, eating boxed lunches on the beach and watching the fish jump out of the water. Airi was never one to wonder much about the nature of animals, but one time she was watching the lazy fish acrobatics and wondered aloud what it was like for fish to jump out of the water. Was it the same for them as when humans jump into the water? And are they thinking yahoo! and enjoying themselves? It was times like those that never seemed far away in my mind, driving me to find the woman that I shared the best part of my life with.
I wondered if there was anything left of that girl who looked like her as she had clawed her way into the police car. Maybe she had been thinking on some level, wishing she could stop herself from trying to kill me. I parked the police car on the small access road right behind the grass, and it still had bloody streaks on the trunk and back window. I cleared a big section of grass using a rake I found. Piles of the seagulls heaped like garbage on the sand in front of the boardwalk across from the patch of grass I sat on. I didn't want to touch any of them. The water looked odd, like its tint was slightly off, and the current was sluggish like it had been thickened with gelatin. I wondered how much poison you'd have to dump in Tokyo Bay to kill all of the fish. I guess at least I didn't have to worry about them flopping over the sand with glowing eyes to try and kill me. Sleep escaped me that night under the muted spring sky and field of dead birds.
Day 9 After
Last night brought little rest. I drifted off from time to time but I mainly lay on the ground watching the seagulls drift with the tide, and waiting for sections of Tokyo to go dark. The big, triangular wedge of the Yokoso Rainbow building winked out after midnight, but Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower stayed strangely bright. At one point I jumped up at the sight of one of the Tokyo Bay symphony cruise ships, but it was dark and drifting slowly sideways, surrounded by a halo of dark objects in the water that turned out to be human corpses when I looked through my binoculars.
I decided to go to Chidorigafuchi to leave messages every two days. Maybe if I established a pattern we could meet there eventually. A little before dawn I saw one of the high rise apartment buildings near Tsukishima catch fire. It burned, quietly orange, reflecting off the windows of the nearby office buildings like the sparks of summertime fireworks. I wondered about the other survivors, burning buildings like the book store in Kanda. Before arriving at the beach last night, I had driven around Odaiba and seen huge stacks of lumber in the stockyards near Telecom Center waiting for delivery trucks that would never arrive. If I set those on fire it would be sure to attract some attention. Even if they didn't have a car, the survivors could cross the bridge on foot and I could just wait for them near the warehouses. But after a few seconds mulling it over, I realized it was a stupid idea. I had no guarantees that anyone would come even if there was a huge fire. I wouldn't if it was me seeing a titanic blaze from miles away. I'd think that the Uncle Deadly gang was trying to lure me into a trap, and so would those survivors. I guess we were destined to walk the city alone, surviving day to day and just hoping to bump into each other by chance. There was no way we'd meet otherwise.
