Bullet Train

by Kotaro Isaka

  The kid opens his mouth. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Save it. I’m not answering any of your questions,’ Kimura declares flatly. ‘We’re at Morioka, anyhow. Listen to me now. There are plenty of things that I’m guessing you don’t know. Who I was just talking to on the phone, how Wataru is safe. How he’s awake. You don’t know. I’m sure up to this point you’ve always looked down on adults, so certain that you had everything figured out. It’s like your cheap little question, why is it wrong to kill people. You’ve convinced yourself you know everything. I mean, you are smart. And you’ve been laughing at everyone your whole life, all of us morons.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Even now, the kid is trying his helpless act.

  ‘But there are things that you don’t know, and you never will. I’m not going to tell you anything. You’ll just stay in the dark.’

  ‘Wait, please.’

  ‘I’ve been alive for more than sixty years. So has she. You must think we’re old and used up, that we have no future to look forward to.’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘Well I will tell you one thing.’ Kimura raises the gun to the kid’s brow, presses it right between his eyes. ‘It’s not easy to make it sixty years without dying. You’re what, fourteen, fifteen, you think you can make it another fifty years? Say whatever you want, but you won’t know whether you can last that long until you get there. Could be an illness. Could be an accident. You think you’re untouchable, a real lucky boy, but I’ll tell you one thing you can’t do.’

  The kid’s eyes flash. This time it’s not the anticipation of victory, it’s rage, a liquid fire in his eyes to match the anxiety on his pure, perfect face. His self-esteem must be wounded. ‘Tell me what I can’t do.’

  ‘You can’t live another fifty years. Sorry, but my wife and I will live longer than you will. You thought we were so stupid, but we’ve got more of a future than you do. Ironic, huh?’

  ‘Are you really going to shoot me?’

  ‘Don’t mess with me. I’m a grown-up.’

  ‘Dear, won’t the number you called still be in his phone?’ asks Akiko. ‘You gave it back to him, but Shigeru’s number is in there. Shouldn’t we erase it?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about it?’

  ‘This one won’t be using his phone any more.’

  The schoolkid looks directly at him.

  ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ Kimura begins. ‘I’m not going to kill you yet. I’ll just shoot you so you can’t go anywhere, then I’ll carry you out. Do you know why?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Because I want to give you a chance to reflect on what you’ve done.’

  The kid’s face brightens a shade. ‘A chance … to reflect?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I’m sure you’re great at pretending to be sorry. I bet you’ve made it this far by fooling all the adults with your sorry act. But I’m not so easily fooled. Out of everyone I’ve ever run across, you stink the worst. I bet you’ve done all sorts of terrible things. Am I right? So I’ll give you a chance to reflect on them, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting you off the hook.’

  ‘But –’

  Kimura talks right over him, level and matter-of-fact. ‘You’ll be a long time dying.’

  ‘Really, dear, you’re terrible,’ Akiko says serenely.

  ‘But, but your grandson, he’s fine.’ The kid is on the verge of tears.

  Kimura erupts with laughter. ‘I’m an old man, I can’t see so well and I’m hard of hearing, I’m afraid your performance is lost on me. The fact is, you tried to hurt our grandson. That was a big mistake. There’s no hope for you now. Like I said, I won’t kill you all at once. Just a little at a time. And once you’ve thought long and hard and genuine about everything you’ve done …’

  ‘What happens once he’s done that?’ enquires Akiko.

  ‘I’ll stop cutting him into tiny pieces and start taking off bigger chunks instead.’

  The kid looks afraid, but he also seems to be trying to interpret what that means.

  ‘Hey, this is not a figure of speech. I will actually cut you into pieces. And I don’t want to deal with him screaming and crying, so I’ll start by making it so that he can’t scream, and I’ll go from there.’

  Akiko slaps him on the shoulder. ‘We’re not doing that again!’ Then she turns and fixes the schoolkid with a smile. ‘You know, I used to try to persuade my husband to go a little easier on people, but this time I won’t try to stop him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well,’ Akiko says, ‘you tried to hurt our grandson. Did you think we would let you die easy?’

  At that the boy seems to give up on stratagems and ploys, feeling himself sink inexorably into the quagmire, and he fires one last desperate shot. ‘Your son the alcoholic is in the bathroom, on the floor. He’s dead. He cried like a baby until the end. Your whole family is weak, grandpa.’

  Kimura feels a ripple of anxiety pass through him. Even though he knows that’s exactly what this boy wants to happen, he can’t stop it from growing. What keeps him steady are the words his wife speaks next, firm and with a note of laughter. ‘Yuichi’s a tough one. I’m sure he’s alive. He’d be too worried about Wataru to give in, I’m positive.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ Kimura nods. ‘A giant shoe could stomp on him and he still wouldn’t die.’

  And with that the Shinkansen pulls into Morioka Station.

  Nanao

  NANAO CAREERS OVER TO THE sink and splashes the snake with water, but it only squeezes his arm tighter, making him even more frantic. It’s going to cut off the circulation, I’m going to lose my arm! Panicking, he sets his arm on the lip of the sink and smashes his other fist down on it as hard as he can. It feels like he’s squashing a hose. The snake goes limp and slides off. Nanao looks away from the sink to the area by the door, where a few passengers are preparing to exit at Morioka. He scoops up the dazed snake and winds it into a coil, carrying it in a way he hopes looks like he’s carrying a small leather bag, hastily moving towards the trash bin on the wall where he discards it. He has a flash of fear that something else might jump out of the trash bin at him, but nothing does.

  Unlucky. Although it didn’t bite me, so maybe I’m lucky after all.

  The Shinkansen continues to slow and a high-pitched keen reverberates. Almost there. This absurd journey is finally over, he thinks with a wash of relief. But then he has a vision of himself being unable to get off the train, and fear jolts him again.

  Need to go back to car eight, get the suitcase. A handful of passengers waiting to disembark blocks the door. He really doesn’t feel like pushing past them. Questions rise in his mind, what’s happening with the couple and the kid, is the kid all right? But the episode with the snake has him so shaken up that he wants nothing more to do with what’s going down in car eight. He’s basically checked out. Then the shaking of the train ramps up one last time, taking his feet from under him. He tries to catch himself on the wall but misses and comes crashing down onto his knees. That’s it. I’m done.

  The brakes squeal. The train lurches wildly as it slides to a halt.

  Beside the platform the train pauses, exhaling ponderously. Then the doors slide open with a puff of air. The atmosphere in the train seems to lighten and a sense of release floods in.

  One by one the passengers step through the door to the platform. There aren’t very many, but they each take their time, watching their footing as they step down.

  A sudden bang splits the air.

  Sharp, like a steel nail being driven into a wall, a split second of violent noise.

  None of the passengers seem to notice. Maybe they think it’s just the Shinkansen catching its breath, or a lock sliding into place on the wheels, or some other typical train sound that Nanao wouldn’t be able to guess at, but they all seem to accept it as natural, the popping of joints in a tired machine.

  Nanao k
nows it was a gun.

  And probably in car eight.

  In the two facing three-seaters.

  Was the schoolkid shot?

  He looks towards the back of the train, but there’s no sign of Suzuki. He must have gone back to his seat for his things and re-entered the normal world, wondering why he had been hanging out with a strange man in glasses and a schoolkid.

  Smart guy. No wonder he’s a teacher.

  Nanao looks at the door to car eight. It stays resolutely shut, a silent, immovable sentinel, barring entrance to the grisly scene unfolding inside.

  He gets off the train at Morioka Station. Even though I was supposed to get off at Ueno! He almost shouts it aloud. It was supposed to be a five-minute train trip, but here he is, over two and a half hours later and five hundred kilometres to the north. And somehow he feels like he’s got nowhere. Sucked into a journey he had no intention of taking, baffled and exhausted, his body leaden and his mind like gauze.

  Men in suits are lined up along the platform. It’s a strange sight. Groups of five stand in front of each train car, making a human wall. The disembarking passengers look at the men uncertainly, trying to figure out what’s going on, but they all continue on to the escalators.

  Five men stand in front of Nanao with the disciplined ease of soldiers. Soldiers in suits.

  ‘You must be Nanao. Where’s the suitcase? And what are you doing in Morioka?’ is what Nanao fully expects them to ask. But they show no interest in him. It could be that they weren’t told what he looks like, but whatever the reason, they make no move towards him.

  Instead they surge into the train, all the men up and down the whole platform. The just-arrived Hayate will be sent off to the depot, or perhaps it will be cleaned before heading back to Tokyo, but the men have no qualms about interrupting the schedule as they search through the train, like they were ransacking someone’s house.

  They’re like a horde of ants swarming a great earthworm, hollowing it out. They sweep through the innards, thorough and implacable.

  It’s only a matter of time before they discover the bodies in the toilet, and the Wolf’s body where Nanao left it in the seat.

  Nanao starts walking at a brisk pace, wanting to get away as fast as he can. There’s a burly man standing at the front of the Hayate. Craggy dinosaur face and a body like a rugby player. Minegishi, no doubt about it. He’s surrounded by men in black suits.

  The army of ants burrowing into the Shinkansen are Minegishi’s soldiers.

  The conductor steps up to Minegishi. He must be protesting the disturbance in the train.

  The conductor seems to have realised that this reptilian man is the ringleader behind all this chaos and is pleading with him to call it off.

  Of course Minegishi doesn’t do anything of the sort. He just waves the conductor off, impassive.

  The conductor stands ramrod-straight and makes his case again. Nanao can’t hear what he’s saying but it’s clear enough that it’s not working, and the conductor passes by Minegishi towards the escalator.

  Something jabs Nanao in the back, making him jump out of his skin. ‘Gah,’ he squeaks as he whips round, already reaching for his attacker’s neck.

  ‘Hey now, no rough stuff!’ It’s a woman in a black pinstriped suit, looking daggers at him. ‘Maria.’ Nanao exhales, bewildered. ‘What are you – how – here –’

  ‘Relax, it’s really me. Not a ghost.’

  ‘Aren’t you in Tokyo?’

  ‘When you didn’t get off at Ueno I had a feeling we would be in this for the long haul. I knew for sure you’d run into trouble.’

  ‘Which I did.’

  ‘So I thought I should come to the rescue and I rushed up to Omiya and jumped on the train.’ Maria looks over to where Minegishi is standing. ‘That’s Minegishi over there, isn’t it? This is bad. We should get out of here. No good reason for us to be hanging around. What if he asks us about the bag? Too scary. Let’s go.’ She pulls Nanao by the arm.

  ‘I think he’s more worried about his son.’

  ‘Something happened to his son?’ But before Nanao can answer, Maria says, ‘Forget it. I probably don’t want to know.’

  They continue towards the escalator. ‘Where were you?’ asks Nanao. He had been all through the Shinkansen and hadn’t seen her. ‘You got on, but you never came to the rescue even once.’

  ‘Well …’ Maria says, her voice trailing off for a moment. There’s clearly something that’s hard for her to say. ‘I – I got on the Komachi.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘And there’s no passage between the Komachi and the Hayate! I couldn’t believe it! Why are they even linked up?’

  ‘Even a preschooler knows that!’

  ‘Well, there are some things preschoolers know that adults don’t.’

  ‘But how did you know I would stay on until Morioka?’ He almost got off at Ichinoseki. ‘What if I’d got off at Sendai?’

  ‘That’s what I imagined would happen, but …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘… but I fell asleep.’

  Nanao’s eyes bulge. ‘You fell asleep? With everything that was going on?’

  ‘I told you, I was up all night watching movies!’

  ‘Why do you sound proud about that?’

  ‘After we got off the phone I thought I would just close my eyes for a minute, and when I opened them again we were past Sendai. I called you, all worried, but you hadn’t got off, of course. That’s when I knew, with his luck he’ll be on till the end of the line.’

  ‘Everything I was dealing with, and you were sleeping.’

  ‘You’re the one who does the job, I’m the one who sleeps. Sleep is an important part of my work.’

  ‘I thought you were tired because you were watching Star Wars.’ Nanao pushes down his frustration and catches up to Maria, falling into step beside her.

  ‘What about Tangerine and Lemon?’

  ‘Dead. They’re in a toilet on the train.’

  Maria sighs. ‘How many bodies are there on the train, anyway? What is it, the corpse train? How many?’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Nanao is about to start counting them out, but decides he’d rather not. ‘Five or six.’

  ‘Or seven? Are you counting spots on a ladybird?’

  ‘But they’re not all because of me.’

  ‘It’s like you’re carrying everyone else’s bad luck around for them.’

  ‘Is that why I’m so unlucky?’

  ‘If it weren’t the case, there’s no way you’d be so unlucky. I think you’re probably helping everyone else out.’

  Unsure if Maria’s words are praise or mockery, Nanao says nothing. As they’re about to step onto the escalator a crash reverberates from behind. He can almost feel it. A tremor like a behemoth collapsing. The vibrations may not even be from sound, but from the gravity of what just happened. A voice cries out.

  Nanao turns to see the black-suited men crouching on the platform trying to support someone. In that same spot where Minegishi was standing so solidly, he’s now on the ground, toppled like a broken wooden doll.

  ‘What –’ Now Maria senses the disturbance too, and turns to look.

  A crowd has formed.

  ‘It’s Minegishi,’ murmurs Nanao.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Maybe he’s anaemic and fell over.’

  ‘We really don’t wanna get involved with this. Let’s get out of here.’ She pokes him between the shoulder blades.

  It’s true, nothing good will come of them staying there. Nanao speeds up.

  ‘There’s something stuck in his back,’ shouts a voice from behind. A clamour rises up around Minegishi, but by that time Nanao and Maria are already floating down the escalator. ‘It’s a needle,’ shouts someone else.

  Halfway down, Nanao turns to Maria standing behind him. ‘Think it was the Hornet?’

  Maria blinks rapidly. ‘Hornet? Oh, not the insect. The poisoner.’

  ‘I ran into
her on the train. She was selling concessions. But I took her out.’ Nanao’s voice is low and distant. Then an image swims into his head, of the man in the double-breasted uniform confronting Minegishi. ‘The conductor?’

  ‘What about the conductor?’

  ‘Wasn’t there something about the Hornet maybe being two people?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe a solo or maybe a duo.’

  ‘I was sure it was just one person, but maybe there were two of them on the train after all. They must have been after both Minegishi and his kid.’

  It might be that the woman pushing the snack trolley was responsible for the son and the conductor was taking care of the father at Morioka. Who knows.

  They come to the bottom of the escalator and Nanao gets off first, Maria just behind him.

  Now she steps up next to him. ‘You know, Nanao, you might be on to something. The Hornet became famous by taking out Terahara,’ she says, thinking out loud. ‘Maybe they thought they could put another big feather in the cap with Minegishi.’

  ‘Trying to recapture their former glory?’

  ‘That’s what everyone does when they’re out of good ideas. They revisit their past successes.’

  Apparently the authorities have been alerted to the disturbance on the train or Minegishi’s collapse on the platform, because cops and railway staff and security go running past Nanao and Maria towards the escalator. They should be cordoning off the area, but maybe they don’t know exactly what’s going on yet.

  I wonder if he knows, Nanao says to himself. If that conductor is one of the Hornets, does he know that his partner is dead? The question prods at him. Even though he was the one who killed her, Nanao feels a pang of sadness for the man. He has an image of a band with a missing member, waiting in vain for them to return.

  ‘By the way, what happened to the suitcase? Didn’t you have it?’ Maria’s voice brings him back.

  Crap, he thinks, but then there’s a swell of aggravation and anxiety. ‘Who cares,’ he says violently. ‘Certainly not Minegishi.’

  He feeds his ticket into the turnstile and steps through. But halfway in an alarm jangles and the little thigh-height gate swings shut.