Maohden Vol. 2

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “Be my guest. She’s all yours.”

  “That is fine with me. I’ll make sure she doesn’t end up Gento’s.”

  Not exactly a logical exchange, whether qualified as normal discourse between the two of them, or normal discourse for Demon City. In either case, neither of them appeared the slightest bit suspicious of the other.

  “I’ll stop by on a daily basis. Sorry to have to insist, but keep up the investigation.”

  “That I will.”

  “Help yourself to my bank account to cover the costs.”

  “How generous of you. Running a senbei shop must be a more profitable enterprise than I imagined.”

  “Give it a rest.” Setsura got to his feet.

  “Don’t forget your coat. I have a blanket handy.”

  He plucked up the black slicker and followed Setsura, casting it across his shoulders as he reached the door.

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Mind what?”

  Mephisto’s hands rested on the shoulders of the visitor. His face drew close to the nape of his neck.

  Perhaps no one on earth could imagine such a look of wanton intoxication on such a graceful countenance. The beauty of both of them upset the common sense of the world.

  “Hey,” said Setsura, slapping Mephisto’s right hand with his left. Though it might have looked more like the one lay atop the other.

  Mephisto’s smile rose to his lips like a pair of rose petals. “What a heartless man you are. Is there not someplace in that you of yours that would be taken by some part of me?”

  “I am only taken by the fact that you are taken by me.”

  Setsura continued on his way, leaving Mephisto’s hand, the affectionate turn of his fingers, suspended there in the air.

  The door opened and closed. The sudden draft buffeted Mephisto’s pale face. The dusky shadows were beginning to fade, the night in its final throes.

  “So little time to woo one’s dearly beloved.”

  The Demon Physician gazed forlornly out the gray window, before turning to the computer display of the refrigerator containing the body parts he’d retrieved from the Coliseum.

  Walking down Yasukuni Avenue, like wending his way through murky ocean depths, Setsura recognized several figures in front of him. He heard them before becoming aware of their brisk movements, the sound of nails being pounded into wood.

  Staring through the breaking dawn, he murmured to himself, “Night of the Falcon?”

  The cut of his features was unchanged, but this was the nonchalant mien of an ordinary senbei shop owner. Not slackening his pace, he passed by the construction site. The men in work clothes were silently erecting what looked like an altar.

  Two hours earlier, when Mephisto strode down this same road toward the hospital, the street had been empty. Already the structure was three feet high by ten feet long and wide.

  These were fast workers, wearing mask-like expressions as they concentrated on the task at hand, laying down a board, hammering down the nails with a single blow each. Two seconds, two nails. With the metronomic precision of a machine.

  Setsura paused. Masked by the echoes of the hammers, he heard something else.

  A feral roar.

  It came from directly before him. Then from his right, coming down Yamate Street, an exchange of howls.

  “Two-headed dogs having breakfast, eh?”

  Setsura scratched his head. A second later, from the other side of the lane of asphalt reaching towards Yotsuya—from Yoyogi and Harajuku—from every direction this “boardwalk” seemed intended to reach—they steadily approached.

  Four-legged beasts. Dogs. The number of heads didn’t match the number of bodies. The two-headed dogs of Shinjuku were the most famous of the strange fruit sprouting from those genetic repositories unleashed by the Devil Quake.

  Six feet long, some growing as big as nine feet. Brutal in disposition, the natural enemies of all other living things, specializing in unrelenting attacks. Their rugged jaws and diamond-hard teeth could crush concrete. The gouges left in the south wall of the New Isetan department store—where they sharpened their fangs—were testament enough.

  Even worse, each of the two heads acted independently from each other, and with a keen intelligence. One could attack from the front, and the other from the side. If a foe faced them from the rear, guaranteed one would be baring its fangs in that direction too.

  The dogs formed packs that hid out in abandoned buildings and caverns beneath the piles of debris. Some proved even too violent for the pack and were driven out. These man-eating rogue males prompted extermination drives, though in the more remote neighborhoods and street corners the legs and arms of torn-apart human beings could still be found.

  Even commando police in full riot gear could at best hope to inflict enough wounds to discourage them.

  Barking and howling in a choir of feral call and response, thirty dogs all but flew down the avenues. A normal person could hold them off for five seconds at most, before being devoured down to the marrow of their bones.

  Setsura glanced at the construction workers behind him. “Well, a man’s gotta do—”

  With a nonchalant look on his face, as if he’d wandered here from parts unknown with no grasp of the gravity of the situation, he touched his right wrist with his left hand. The teeth marks left by Yamada’s head still marred the skin.

  “Probably shouldn’t rely on this. The left will have to do.”

  He yawned and stretched and rolled his neck. Pulling these all-nighters was getting to him. He heard a shrill screech and the flapping of feathers. A pair of wings turned through the air directly over his head at the height of the three-story New Isetan department store, lazily tracing a circle in the sky three dozen yards up in the air.

  A brown raptor with a wingspan of ten feet. The long, narrow, hooked beak was plainly that of a bird, but this avian species was not only the product of natural selection but of genetic experimentation gone mad.

  The fine fur covering the body supported by those wings, down to its stubby legs, resembled that of a wet rat. The black pearl eyes on either side of its small head gazed down at the beasts below with a cruel hunger and loathing.

  Loathing. The creatures in this city did not stalk their prey merely to fill their bellies, but to quench their hatred and anger. Nothing less could be expected from the forces of nature here in Demon City.

  There was no need to rush. Let the two-headed dogs tear the flesh apart and lap up the blood and there would be more than enough left over. The bodies of these flying things might be rats, but their instincts were all bird.

  Perhaps recognizing the cries and howls echoing between the air and ground, creatures that were a cross between a leech and a frog poked their heads out from the manholes, from behind the stone gates of Hanazono Shrine, mewing and squeaking.

  The construction workers kept on working.

  The light of dawn was still a long ways off here on Yasukuni Avenue. But the faces of the charging beasts were plain as day. Bloodshot eyes burned like hot coals, fangs jutted from snarling mouths like railroad spikes. Twice the normal number per body. They had smelled human prey. There was no going back now.

  The heads suddenly flew into the air. And not only those of the dog in the lead. As the ones behind caught up with the ones in front and sprinted through the same space, their heads went flying as well.

  The dogs bounded towards Setsura, headless bodies spraying blood. He waved his arms in annoyance, as if batting away a swarm of flies. The thrashing corpses thumped to the earth.

  A fish going under the sashimi cook’s knife and then swimming away with only the head and skeleton remaining would be no stranger a sight than these headless dogs.

  Setsura Aki had performed no lesser handiwork with his wires.

  Spouting fountains of blood, the dogs continued their blind advance on Setsura and the construction workers, before slumping futilely to the pavement. On the verge of colliding with Setsu
ra and the others, there came a sound like grinding steel, as the severed heads gnashed their teeth.

  It was hard to say whether the instincts of these creatures or Setsura’s skills at dismembering them was more horrifying.

  Thirty two-headed dogs lay on the ground, their blood staining the asphalt. The construction workers continued their work on the altar as if nothing had happened.

  Setsura looked up at the sky. With a great stir of wings, the black shadows descended upon the dismembered bodies below them and sprang upwards again. The twitching corpses disappeared one after the other.

  But even for these huge rulers of the sky, the six-foot-long animals proved too much to handle. Their wings beat the air. They opened their mouths and let go of their spoils. The mutated inheritance of their rat-like legs meant these birds of prey had to rely on their beaks.

  Unaccustomed to the situation, some drove their beaks into the asphalt, producing a shower of blue sparks. When the blood-crazed birds went after the construction workers—covered with the gore from the charging dogs—Setsura flicked his left hand. With a sickly tearing sound wings rent apart, and they frantically beat a retreat from Yasukuni Avenue towards Oume.

  The rest gorged themselves and flew off into the dawn sky, becoming small dots on the horizon.

  Setsura turned around. With no words of thanks, no words at all, the construction workers simply kept at it with the same monotonous regularity. Their eyes blank, their complexions as pale as their uniforms, they had no idea what they were doing as they did it.

  These were living zombies, dosed up with narcotics and industrial strength beta blockers at the ward government building before being dispatched to conduct this extremely dangerous early morning work.

  A single round of treatments was said to take a third of a year off a man’s life. But the attraction of triple overtime pay meant that there was no shortage of applicants.

  Pressed on by the blue light of dawn, Setsura took his leave of them. Even after he left, the construction workers remained consumed by the work at hand, lost in the steady rhythm of hammering nails.

  Neither were they the slightest bit interested in what manner of sacrifice would be offered there in the morrow’s ceremony.

  Part 4: Demon City Downpour

  Chapter 1

  Setsura didn’t return to the safe house. He stopped at a payphone on Yasukuni Avenue. Three minutes later, he hailed a taxi coming from the station and gave the cabbie an address.

  He settled back in the seat and closed his eyes. The gas turbine engine whined soothingly in his ears as the car wound between the mountains of debris.

  The cabbie was driving in anything but a soothing manner. The tires squealed as he banked through one turn and then the next. Setsura didn’t open his eyes. He was aware of the cabbie watching him in the rearview mirror, lips creasing into a smile, before wiping it off his face.

  “Hey,” he said into his headset. A panel of bulletproof glass insulated the front seat from the back. Setsura didn’t react in the slightest. “We’re almost there.”

  Setsura still didn’t answer. He seemed sound asleep. The cabbie was licking his lips by then. Nothing but suckers and easy marks flitted their way home first thing in the morning. A man as good-looking as his passenger would sell for a pretty penny at an underground gay bar or host club.

  If he put up a struggle, he’d roid up and have himself a free sample before delivering the merchandise. Just imagining the writhing, moaning body was getting him hot and bothered already.

  They came to an intersection. The address Setsura had given was on the right. The cabbie made a left. The transmission hummed. He spun the steering wheel.

  The taxi turned to the right.

  A startled shout rose in his throat. “Left! Freaking piece of shit!” He cranked on the wheel with all his might.

  The next intersection approached. He tried to turn the car again. The steering wheel didn’t move. He paled, realizing that his own arms were being held down. He had to stop. He raised his foot and stomped down—on the accelerator.

  The taxi jackrabbited away from the stop. The green line on the digital speedometer wound hard to the right. Fifty miles per hour, sixty, seventy—the cityscape became a blur outside the windows.

  The cabbie shrieked. The car was being driven by somebody that wasn’t him, his hands moving in directions he didn’t want them to go. His whole body broke out in a sweat—or more like whatever passed for his soul trying to flee through every pore on his body.

  The car came to a halt, and his passenger yawned. “Wow, got here in a hurry. Shinjuku’s private taxis really go above and beyond the call of duty. You take your life in your hands, but the service is first rate.” He covered his mouth with his hand and stifled another yawn. Checking the meter, he expressed surprise. “No fare? A free ride, to boot!”

  The cabbie checked it himself. The meter was indeed pegged at zero.

  “I’ll be getting out here.”

  By this point, the cabbie was barely surprised to find his own hand moving to the lock release and pressing the button. Any inclination to inquire about the strangeness of it all evaporated away.

  “Thanks for the lift.” With a polite nod, the young man strode away.

  “Hey, wait!” the cabbie called out, happy enough that he still had the ability to speak. “I know it was you that done it! You gotta fix this. I won’t do it again! Promise. C’mon, give me a break.”

  The passenger turned around.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Swear on my mother’s grave.”

  “All right, then. But it may sting a little.”

  “F-fine. I can take it. Just do it.”

  The cabbie felt something thin and narrow being drawn out through the tips of his limbs. The world went black. The pain was indescribable. He pitched forward without so much as a twitch.

  Setsura looked down at him with an almost discouraged expression. He raised his left hand in front of his eyes. “There was a time when I would have been impressed with myself. But now I’m not so certain—whether I can beat him or not.”

  After a two-minute walk, Setsura came to the mountain of rubble he remembered from before. The remains of Tohan in East Gokencho. In front of it and to the right was the convenience store. Beneath it, Gento was digging out something of utmost importance to him.

  Scanning his surroundings, he felt a draft. The wind was picking up. The dawn was ready to rule the day, but dark clouds were already challenging its supremacy, sweeping across the sky over his head. He could almost hear them roaring above him like a smoking steam engine. Shadows raced along beneath his feet.

  He paced away from the convenience store. In the distance, the houses and shops were rolling up their shutters. Setsura stopped in front of the mortuary. The shutters were still down. The dirt excavated from beneath the convenience store had been brought here through the tunnel.

  A clanking sound came from behind the shuttered doors and windows. With a painful screech of metal, the shutters began to lift. They were half open when a forty-something woman appeared. The lady from the convenience store. Followed by a middle-aged man. Probably the owner.

  The last was a teenage boy. They were all wearing pajamas.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the lady said, as if gazing upon a movie idol. “I was so hoping you would come back to visit us. Unfortunately, Hyota-san isn’t in right now. He left a short time ago with a young woman.”

  “A young woman?” said Setsura, furrowing his brows.

  “That tart of a girl with the sexy body and the big gun.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “Well. After throwing us a party, she went off with Hyota-san. She’s one crazy nympho bitch. Sure knows how to go down on a man and take it in the face. A real pro.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Setsura sighed. “An evil brood.”

  “So the word’s gotten around already?” said the man, scratching his bony chest, his left hand tucked into the
waistband of his pajama bottoms. “If so, then there’s no way you can leave.”

  “Are we gonna kill him?” the teenager asked with glittering eyes.

  “Patience, patience,” the mother said, patting him on the head. “This is not the place. Let’s go in the back.”

  The boy had already done an about face. “This way,” said the father, pulling his hand out of his waistband. He was holding what looked like a silver fountain pen, except there was a hole where the nib should be. The hole was the size of a .22 caliber bullet, though the lack of rifling suggested it fired a tiny missile.

  The three-inch weapon could penetrate the body armor worn by commando police. A built-in laser guidance system made evasion impossible.

  Setsura did as he was told without protest, and went around to the back of the house. A section of land had subsided there, revealing a concrete slab. The basement of the building.

  “Thanks to this, this dig has been one big pain in the ass.” The father sounded bitter.

  “Hey, don’t go flapping your lips in front of him.”

  “What’s the problem? He’s going to die here anyway.”

  “You didn’t ask Hyota for details?” Setsura said to him.

  “About what?”

  “Oh, nothing. So, how far has the excavation gone?”

  “It’s done already.”

  “You’re done?” A hard edge crept into his voice.

  “We hauled it out thirty minutes before you arrived. The mortuary owner took it away. Who knows where? At any rate, now we go our separate ways.”

  The woman said with a sarcastic smile, “Irreconcilable differences, you know.”

  “Then you’d better be on your way, wouldn’t you say? There’s nothing to be gained from picking a fight with me.”

  “Oh, we already got paid to get rid of you. Though it’s looking like a lot of money for nothing now.”

  “Hyota, eh?” Setsura said, mostly to himself.

  The man nodded. “One little nasty son of a bitch you don’t want to mess with.”

  “I asked before, but Hyota had nothing more to say?”