The Biter

by Reki Kawahara

Unaware of what the word meant, Minoru tilted his head.

  “Disengaging is a phenomenon where, after a host dies, the Third Eye leaves the body and floats into the sky as it glows,” Yumiko explained. “It nearly always happens the moment the heart stops.”

  “Uh…into the sky…?” Minoru muttered as he looked up.

  Yumiko and DD looked up just the same. The ceiling, covered in concrete and exposed piping, had a dark hole with a diameter of about five centimeters bored into it. But it wasn’t the Third Eye that had made it.

  Bringing his face back down, Minoru spoke as he recalled his memories of a few minutes earlier.

  “Um…the Biter’s head was blown off in front of me… His body collapsed just like that… But I don’t think there were any glowing things flying around…”

  Hearing this, Yumiko’s eyes grew wide.

  “Oh, but there’s a hole there.”

  “One of the Biter’s teeth that was blown off embedded itself in there and left the mark. See, if you look closely, you can see something silvery deep in—”

  Before Minoru could finish his sentence, Yumiko yelled, “This is bad, DD, it didn’t disengage! We have to extract the Third Eye fast or…!”

  Simultaneously, the three of them looked at the headless corpse of the Biter laying a little way off.

  The head was still missing. But at some point, it had stopped being a corpse.

  The right arm, bent at a strange angle, was trembling as its fingers dug into the pavement. It was trying to lift up the torso.

  Unable to believe what was happening right before his eyes, Minoru just blinked over and over as he clutched Norie’s body to him tightly. But the thing that used to be the Biter’s corpse didn’t stop moving. It tried to distance its torso from the ground with awkward movements, the joints of its arm making disgusting crunching noises.

  The bleeding from the neck had mostly stopped already. A large amount of viscous liquid oozed from the massive lower jaw, half of which remained, covering the exposed cross section. Foamy pink bubbles continued to rise up and then burst; was it because air was going in and out of the trachea?

  “…But… It doesn’t even have a head…,” Minoru whispered in a hoarse voice.

  The Biter had compared himself to a shark. But there was no way any shark could live after losing its brain.

  Despite this, the thing that had been a corpse just a few dozen seconds earlier was moving more and more intensely. Finally, even its legs were shaking, and once the soles of its shoes touched the ground, it tried to stagger to its feet.

  Thick new flesh was rising from the place where the head had come off, fusing with what remained of the lower jaw as it widened into a shape that resembled a trumpet. Minoru thought it looked exactly like the mouth of a lamprey—but immediately after this crossed his mind, countless sharp teeth grew in, bursting through the writhing flesh.

  With a whoosh, air mixed with a mist of blood erupted from the dark hole that had been the Biter’s esophagus.

  Every time the broad chest moved like a bellows, blood that had flowed into the trachea was expelled.

  After these motions continued for a few seconds, the thing that had been the Biter suddenly stopped moving.

  Underneath the round “mouth,” some of the flesh moved around, wet with mucus—

  Deep within the flesh that had divided into left and right like a vertically opening eyelid, it was just as if a red, glowing orb was showing its face. Even Minoru immediately understood that it was the Third Eye that had latched on to the Biter.

  That was definitely an eye. Its color and structure were completely different from a human eye, but he clearly felt the magnetic gaze it gave off.

  Next to Minoru, DD gave a low groan.

  “Is this…a physical transformation–type Ruby Eye doing a runaway? It’s like…a completely different creature…”

  “A…runaway…?” Minoru asked in return.

  Not looking at him, DD explained in a hoarse voice, “That’s what we call it. When a host takes a fatal wound and their heart stops, Third Eyes normally disengage right away. But in some cases when the brain takes serious damage but the body’s still fine, the Third Eye itself starts to control the body.”

  “What happens…after that…?”

  “In all the earlier cases without exception, the Ruby Eyes started to attack living things around them indiscriminately. But their hearts stopped right away because of massive blood loss and they disengaged.”

  “B…but his bleeding’s already stopped…”

  “This is the first time we’ve seen a runaway with a Ruby Eye that transformed its own body like the Biter did. The fact that it can heal wounds this bad… Seems like even if we wait…”

  “It seems pointless to wait,” Yumiko whispered in a resolute tone, finishing DD’s thought.

  “I can’t imagine it surviving for long, but this doesn’t seem like a situation where we can expect an immediate disengagement, either. We have to do something about it before that thing gets out into the city or something.”

  “Something…like what?”

  “Kill it again.”

  Yumiko looked at Minoru with completely calm eyes.

  “It’s okay, DD and I will take care of it. Get out of the parking garage with your sister.”

  “B…but will you be okay against that guy with only the stun baton…?”

  As they were talking, the monster was trying to complete even more transformations.

  Its arms grew thick like a bodybuilder’s, the sleeves of its suit ripped all the way to the shoulders, and the expensive-looking watch on its left wrist popped off into the air like it was nothing. The centers of its enlarged hands split horizontally, and it looked like sharp fangs were growing from there, too. It seemed like the hands alone, not to mention the round mouth on the head, could break Yumiko’s favorite stun baton with no problem.

  But Yumiko nodded with an expression of determination, and a faint smile played at the corners of her lips.

  “I’ll show you how my ability is really used,” she said, hiking her skirt far up with her right hand. A holster of a different shape from the one on her right leg was attached to the upper part of her slender left leg. From it she pulled out a large combat knife with a shing sound.

  The blade, imposingly thick and easily twenty centimeters long, glinted in the glow of the emergency lights.

  Slowly leaning forward, Yumiko whispered in a low voice, “DD, cover me.”

  “I’m supposed to be behind-the-scenes support, but sure…,” he grumbled.

  DD stuck his right hand into the bottom of his camo-print vest and, surprisingly, pulled out a small handgun. It was automatic and equipped at the end with a tube that seemed like a silencer. That’s all Minoru knew, but if DD was bringing it out in this situation, it had to be real. He took the safety off with an experienced hand and pulled back the slide with a slight shick sound.

  When DD whispered, “Okay,” Yumiko turned to Minoru behind her and said, “Once we start attacking, back away slowly so you don’t attract the thing’s attention. When you’ve got enough distance, go up the slope and outside.”

  “O-okay.”

  He wondered what he was supposed to do if Yumiko and DD didn’t come out, but he didn’t have time to ask.

  Yumiko and DD caught each other’s eyes and—

  “Go!”

  On this brief signal, DD pushed off from the asphalt first.

  The underground parking lot was big, but it was laid out in a grid pattern with thick pillars standing in rows. He started running in a straight line, heading for the pillar to the left of the runaway Biter.

  The monster’s red eye swiveled around and followed DD’s small form.

  “Gruf,” it groaned, rounding its back like a beast about to set upon its prey.

  Aiming for its upper body, DD took one shot after another with the handgun in his right hand. With a scritch, scritch sound like something being clawed at, the fabric bar
ely covering the Biter’s body burst here and there.

  “Groh,” the Biter groaned again.

  His countless teeth growing in concentric circles moved furiously, but he didn’t collapse. Scratching at the ground with both hands, he took a stance similar to a crouching start facing DD, who was running toward him from the right side.

  The moment the monster’s left side was exposed, that’s when it happened. Yumiko took a big step forward with her right foot, stepped on the asphalt floor, and pushed off.

  Although it was a casual step without a bit of force, Yumiko’s body vanished into thin air in an instant.

  It made a pop like the sound of an impact, and a large amount of air came rushing toward the space where Yumiko had been a moment earlier.

  “Gogwaaaaa!”

  The monster gave a rage-filled, thunderous roar, and Minoru hurriedly shifted his gaze in front of him.

  By then, Yumiko’s attack against the monster had already succeeded. The combat knife was stabbed deep into the left side of the monster, which had been chasing DD and trying to rush at him. Yumiko’s hair and skirt flew about furiously in the wind as she clutched the knife, telling of the fearsome power of her charge.

  Retreating cautiously while carrying Norie as he’d been instructed, Minoru thought inwardly, I see now.

  To borrow Yumiko’s words, the acceleration—that is, the kinetic energy—created by pushing off from the ground with her left foot was amplified dozens of times, sending her charging straight ahead at a furious speed. That was Yumiko’s ability.

  In that case, the knife was certainly many times more compatible than the stun baton. The speed of her charge simply added to the strength of the weapon. On top of that, after seeing that furious charge that could only be described as teleportation, it was probably impossible to escape even with the reaction time of someone who possessed the Third Eye.

  The monster seemed to have taken a deep wound in its lung, and another huge amount of blood spurted from its mouth.

  “Gagrooooo!!” it screamed in agony and rage.

  Still, without falling, it tried to cut Yumiko down with the fangs growing on its right hand.

  But right before the attack hit her, Yumiko tilted her body back and pushed off from the floor with a thump—then disappeared. A spray of blood that flew from the wound in the monster’s side was caught in the swirl of air that rose up, shooting around the room as a mist.

  Yumiko appeared about ten meters back, the soles of her sneakers making a scraping noise as she braked. Then she pushed off from the ground in front of her again. With a pop in the air, she vanished.

  She reappeared this time plunging the knife deep into the Biter’s back, retreating again in an instant. By the time her opponent responded and swung its arm around, she had already traveled far away.

  With deep wounds in two places, the monster reeled and fell to one knee.

  Even the runaway Biter, with its extreme healing ability, seemed unable to replenish the blood it had lost. It had bled a huge amount from Yumiko’s two knife attacks and from when its original head was blown off. For an ordinary person, that amount was probably enough to make them lose consciousness or die.

  The red light emitted by the Ruby Eye blinked irregularly like a badly connected electric light.

  Red mucus sprayed from its mouth every time it took another heaving, rushed breath.

  Finally, the monster fell to both knees as if it couldn’t endure the weight of its huge body. The mouths that had appeared on its palms raked the asphalt with crunching sounds, but it no longer seemed to have the strength to stand. The interval between the flickers of the Ruby Eye’s light grew longer and longer.

  What in the world are you? Minoru murmured in his mind, holding his breath as he watched over this scene.

  The Third Eyes came down from space, latched on to humans, and gave them strange powers. Even after the host lost its life because the power became too great, the Third Eye manipulated the unconscious body and tried to attack other living things.

  Just what meaning was there in that? What could be necessary about this kind of ugly and miserable conclusion?

  It seemed like Yumiko and DD were thinking the same sort of things. They both came to a stop, watching the monster with pained expressions.

  Finally, Yumiko clutched the knife in both hands and readied it on her right side. She put out her right foot and squatted down.

  The monster raised its upper body up high, seeming to sense something.

  Yumiko pushed off from the ground.

  The air crackled. A dust cloud swirled up. Charging through a distance of about ten meters in an instant, Yumiko drove the knife into the heart at the center of the monster’s chest, which was wrapped in thick muscle—

  There was a shrill metallic clang. Orange sparks rent the air.

  Minoru’s eyes widened. Inside the torn shirt where the heart should’ve been, a fourth mouth had appeared.

  The inside of the vertically torn skin was flesh colored like a pomegranate, and there was a row of sharp fangs around the edges. The mouth wriggled furiously, determined to bite through the blade of the knife it had firmly in its grasp.

  For just a moment, Yumiko wavered between letting go of the knife and retreating or plunging it in as it was. And the monster didn’t overlook this paralysis.

  It flung its left arm out furiously, smashing right down the side of Yumiko’s body. Without an ounce of resistance, her delicate body was sent flying and slammed into a concrete pillar a few meters away.

  “Ah…”

  At the same time, Minoru sucked in a breath…

  “Yumii!”

  DD readied his gun and charged. Yellow flashes burst one after another from the end of the silencer. But by covering its body with both its thick arms, the monster kept the bullets from hitting its trunk.

  A dry metallic sound rang out, and Yumiko’s knife held in the monster’s chest splintered from the middle. Just like that, the mouth ground up the thick blade like it was biting through a cracker.

  “Graaaaa!!”

  Possibly having regained energy from eating the metal, the Biter leaned back its massive frame and howled loudly. The one eye set in the main mouth glittered a deep red like the color of blood.

  DD pulled the trigger twice more. One shot missed and the other hit the monster’s right leg. But he wasn’t able to fire the next shot. The monster’s right arm stretched out more than five meters like a snake, bit into the barrel of the gun, and took it out of DD’s hand.

  The gun was instantly smashed, snapping sounds accompanying its destruction, and the mouth on the monster’s right hand swallowed it. DD instantly tried to jump back, but the monster dealt a heavy blow directly to his side with its left hand.

  “Guh…”

  DD went flying with terrifying force, slammed against a far-off pillar, and toppled to the floor.

  Without even glancing at the seemingly unconscious DD anymore, the Biter’s one red eye turned to Yumiko once again. She was still conscious but wasn’t yet able to stand. The massive body took a huge leap and landed right in front of her. It leaned far forward and stretched its round mouth more than five centimeters, mucus dripping on Yumiko’s gray skirt and getting it dirty.

  At this point, Minoru probably could have escaped the threat of the monster if he had run at full speed up the slope and gotten away from the arena as instructed.

  But that option didn’t even occur to him. Before he knew it, Minoru was already shouting loudly.

  “Stop—!!”

  When the Biter, who had been trying to eat Yumiko, twitched at the sound of his voice, it turned its strangely formed head 180 degrees around to face backward, the red eye inside the mouth looking at Minoru.

  The monster’s response was quick. After leaving Yumiko, it charged straight at Minoru with movements like that of a large primate, the fangs on both hands digging into the asphalt. The thick smell it gave off, the most brutal Ruby Eye smell he had ever e
ncountered, was a direct hit to Minoru’s five senses.

  “Grrrrr…”

  The wet groan escaped from the hole in its trachea. Despite having lost its head, the body was now even larger than when it had been human. It was closing in on him right before his eyes. The fangs, which were growing in layers on the head, squirmed noisily. The mouths on its chest and hands clicked open and closed, over and over.

  Taking a determined breath and getting ready to activate the protective shell—Minoru shuddered violently.

  He couldn’t do it.

  If he used his power now, Norie would be flung from his arms and out of the shell.

  The four jaws moved in on Minoru, who was frozen in a half-standing position, and Norie, who was still slumbering.

  What amounted to many hundreds of fangs were glinting in turn.

  While time flowed slowly as if it were being compressed, Minoru suddenly recalled a certain scene three months ago.

  It was mid-September.

  A typhoon had passed through in the middle of the night, and there was still a strong wind when Minoru went out for his daily early-morning run. Minoru had run the wet streets from his house to the Arakawa River. As he looked up at the clouds that flew past in the sky with tremendous speed, he suddenly had an idea and headed for a bridge he never crossed.

  The state of the Arakawa River was completely different than in the daytime. True to its name, which meant “wild river,” the riverbed was filled with swirling muddy-brown water. He could almost feel in the soles of his shoes the pressure of the water that thundered as it struck the girders of the bridge.

  While he was staring down at the swirling surface of the water, a voice played inside his ear.

  You can’t do that, Mii. You can’t ever go near the river after a typhoon.

  It was a kind voice that had spoken to a young Minoru a long time ago, the voice of his older sister Wakaba.

  Why had he forgotten it? If he had remembered, he wouldn’t have come to see the river.

  He lost more memories of his sister every day. The only memories piled up in that place were bitter and painful and sad.

  If…

  If he jumped into that river now…then would the raging current wash everything away for him? Would it carry him to the place where his sister and father and mother were waiting?