by Aaron Lee
***
I sat on the hood of the police car near the entrance to Kabukicho, clutching a piece of paper, breathless and scared. Behind me were three dead women and one dead man hanging from the arching sign over the road. They weren't dead when I got here a few minutes ago.
So now they were leaving live victims for me. I was beginning to think Jun was right, that they were playing games with those of us who were left. I didn't have any idea of where to look for Airi, or clues about her group so I had just parked the car near the west entrance to the station and started searching for anything out of the ordinary on foot. Out of the ordinary. I've realized that is a phrase highly dependent on the situation, because now the ordinary apparently consisted of me walking around, trying to avoid stepping over bodies that were still not decaying after nearly ten days. I didn't see any wire-cheeks and that should have made me feel better.
It didn't.
Something had gnawed at my consciousness and ate at my already frayed nerves. It wasn't like the palpable danger I felt in the Uncles' presence, but more like a lingering sense of something being wrong. Like waiting for the aftershocks you know are coming after a big earthquake, or expecting another bolt of lighting in the calm eye of a tropical storm. I imagined this was the way people from war-torn lands felt during momentary breaks in fighting. I had a bad taste in the back of my throat, like a bit of regurgitated stomach acid or bile. Something felt terribly wrong and I hadn't wanted to move too far from the little square in the middle of the small traffic circle and the perceived safety of my car. I had turned slowly and carefully, looking in all directions for anything that caught my eye. I had finally heard the men and women before I saw them. A croaking gargle had sounded behind me and if I had been carrying one of the assault rifles that were lying amid the remains of Zero Company near the Diet building, I would have accidentally killed the man who croaked. He had been draped over the Kabukicho sign with his back to me, so that his upside-down face pointed in my direction. I had never heard any of the wire-cheeks speak or make noises before, but I couldn't rule out any new improvements.
I had walked slowly toward the victims, not knowing what to expect. I wouldn't have been surprised if they all flopped down off the arch and came running at me. The man that had made the croaking noise noticed me walking and his eyes had widened a bit. As I got closer, I noticed his left foot was missing from the ankle down. I asked if he was OK, stupid, since he was missing a foot, and he gurgled out “Down. Get me down”.
I had pulled the police car over directly underneath him, stood on the roof and reached up to grab his leg when the other four corpses started screeching. I think it was all four anyway, I didn't take the time to check. I lost my footing, fell backward, hard, onto the windshield and somersaulted back to crack my head hard on the ground. I lay there for a few seconds, that awful constricting feeling of air knocked out of the lungs, with my ears ringing. For a second I had remembered the time I tried a back flip off a low concrete staircase to impress a girl, and the reverberating sound my head had made then as it hit the concrete. I had looked up to see that I knocked the man down from his perch, and the hands of one of the women opening and closing in time with her mouth, the eyes as far open as I've ever seen on anyone.
The other three bodies had looked at me, their eyes jiggling in their heads like they had just gotten off the teacups at Disney World if they had been cranked up to fighter jet speeds. I had stood up and walked over to the man on the ground, careful not to walk underneath the other four still draped on the sign. I’d given him some water from the car and he lay for a minute, breathing heavily. His stomach had looked strange somehow, like it was the wrong shape, almost like someone who had only a vague idea of human anatomy had put his torso together.
After catching his breath he was lucid, and explained that he was sure they had done something to him after he had passed out. He never said who they were, but I hadn't needed to ask. He didn't remember anything after passing out except for waking up to screams and finding himself draped across the sign, unable to move anything from the neck down, but still able to feel a tremendous amount of pain. I hadn't talked at all, even though I wanted to say something comforting. It just hadn't seemed right to interrupt while he was obviously in so much pain, and was obviously not going to be fine.
While he had been talking, he was interrupted by the worst screeching and wailing I've ever heard in my nightmares from the four hanging above us. I think I put my hands over my ears and looked at the face of the woman as she had screamed, opening and closing her fists while the eyes of the others shook and jiggled like they were dolls being shaken violently by a gigantic, angry child. I should have gotten them down, all of them, but I was afraid to touch them after that. The screams, even though blocked by my hands, and the jiggling eyes and convulsing hands had terrified me beyond explanation or reason, like they had seen or felt something so horrible and soul-shatteringly bad that they would never, ever recover. I wanted to look at something else, but I couldn't take my eyes away. After a few seconds they had stopped screeching and I took my hands off my ears and gladly looked down and into the man's eyes to avoid looking at his disturbingly misshapen torso. He’d said “Pocket” and stopped breathing. Or seemed to. I didn't like the idea of trying to find a pulse. I’d looked back up at the others and they had all been completely still, dead, if I could trust my eyes. It had felt synchronized, like they had been set to a timer. I had come here for a reason, to look for the group who had seen Airi, and these were the only people left around. I didn't want to touch him, but I steeled myself and felt around in the footless man's jeans, pulling a folded square of white paper out of his right pocket. It had my name on it.
Unfolding the paper, I found the following handwritten note from Airi.
Somehow I know you’ve survived. I know you’ll keep looking for me because you promised. Just like that time during the big earthquake when you walked home 15 km from work. So I know in my heart you must be looking for me now. Please don't give up, please, you will find me, I know it. I am so scared. Some terrible things are following me everywhere I go. I don't know what to do, so I keep moving. They scare me so much. Black dark things like shadows that make my skin feel strange when I see them. First I thought I was sick but it only happens when I see them following me. I met with other groups of people twice and both times I was glad because I thought I could finally sleep. But both times I woke up and people were dead or missing because of me. Because those things keep following me. They haven't hurt me yet, but I'm so afraid, I don't know what to do. So now I don't go with groups anymore, I just write a letter to leave with them and show your picture. Maybe you will get the same letter from someone else too. I will try to go back to Chidorigafuchi again as much as possible, but I'm so tired so I don't know if I can. Please keep looking for me. I'm so scared. I love you.
Your Airi
The tears had rolled out in a steady, nonstop cascade as I read her letter through twice. I had felt her emotions bleeding through the words so intensely that I found myself breathless and exhausted after reading it. It had been like every moment of our five years together, every emotion and memory and feeling were condensed and distilled there for me in that piece of paper. And here I was always thinking I was so tough. I knew I wasn't when it came to her though. A little cut on her finger, a fever or a stomachache and I started to come apart when I couldn't do anything to help her. And now here I was, with no idea where she was in this city, and she was confident that I would come looking for her no matter what happened. I couldn't let her down. I could imagine how scared and helpless she felt. She had always been a tough girl, but who could cope with something like the Uncles chasing you alone, dogging your every step, making sleep nearly impossible? I could only imagine how tired and strung-out she must have felt after days of being chased. At least she had given me a place to go. I could wait for her until she showed up, or stay close. The shark circling below the surface of my thoughts was fi
nally still and silent. I waited a few seconds to see if it would rear its head, but I felt nothing. It was getting dark, so I got back in the car and drove.
XX Days After
Over, all over. No more searching. She's gone. And it’s all my fault.
I've sat for the last days... How's long? Three? Four? Ten? I didn't know. I've sat, doing nothing but drifting in and out of consciousness. All the world a gray haze and my head filled with cobwebs and small rough stones grinding together and trying to come out of my ears every time I tried to move. I found a few empty bottles of whiskey on the floor next to me, but since I couldn't remember drinking them, that must be my proof. I laid on the pavement at the corner of Chidorigafuchi and Yasukuni avenue. I wished they had come for me in the night. I was dead or dying. Or worse, perfectly healthy.
