Loups-Garous

by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

Mio held up her plasma gun.

  The red light steadied on her forehead.

  “Crap, he’s going to get me. Hurry up, Ayumi! I’m gonna get killed here if you stay!” Mio withdrew as she said that.

  A gunshot.

  “Shit! That was too close!”

  “Mio!”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid. I’m a genius, remember?”

  “You’re an idiot,” Ayumi said and ran up the stairs.

  “Makino! You too!”

  Mio pointed just the barrel of her gun around the entrance.

  She was using the viewfinder to look inside the room. She was no doubt scoping the room with her goggles.

  “Here he comes! Stupid Makino, stop stalling! Get out of here!”

  “Aghhh!”

  “Aghh nothing! Seriously, you have to leave. Get away from here!”

  Mio screamed, and ran down the stairs.

  Hazuki followed.

  Seventeenth floor.

  “This way, Makino.”

  Mio ran to the seventeenth floor and across the main hall.

  There were several semi-private cubicles lined up with short partitions.

  There were glass dividers, lockers, and bizarre scientific instruments everywhere. It was like a maze.

  “He’s coming.” They heard running footsteps coming down the stairs.

  Mio hid behind a pillar.

  “Makino. Stay put right here.”

  Mio hefted her gun.

  The red laser beam traveled across the dark floor.

  Mio suddenly jumped out.

  A light shone on her.

  She flew to Hazuki’s side.

  A monitor exploded on a desk at the same time the gun sounded. The man ran. Mio, now on her knees, started to move.

  She stood up. Another gunshot.

  First a hole in the glass partition, then the whole partition shattered and collapsed into a rain of shards. Mio quickly ran around it.

  But every time she stood up he would shoot at her. She couldn’t run or charge him, and she obviously couldn’t attack. Was she going to wait till he was out of bullets? Or was she going to keep hiding?

  Still, her movements were explosive.

  Suddenly, Mio turned her back to the man and sank to the floor. At almost the same time a hole opened in the wall.

  “Shit! He thinks he’s hot shit just because he has a gun. Bang bang bang bang, stop it! Man, I can’t believe Rey Mao actually attacked this guy. This is unforgivable. Nicking Ritsuko and everything. It’s just not civilized to be shooting a gun at fourteen-year-old girls in a developed country. But you know what?”

  Her plasma gun made a beeping sound.

  “It’s also not normal for us to want to go upstairs. You think I’m going to let you get me, you pervert? You were prancing around so much I have your whole movement pattern down. Plus, I have all the blueprints for this building. Now. I’m here…That means you’re…”

  The numbers reflecting on Mio’s goggles scrolled rapidly down.

  All the lights on her body suit lit up.

  Whoosh. A shadow stood up.

  “Charge.”

  And as Mio spoke, she stood up, pointed the gun slightly left of where the man stood, and yelled, “Don’t fuck with little girls.”

  The man moved. Electric tendrils scattered all around Mio and a beam of light hit the ground.

  All the lights on the floor went out at once, and the monitors glowed with the reflection of the plasma burst.

  The sound of static crackling. A short burst of lightning.

  The last sound they heard was shoo.

  The floor was completely still.

  The man stood there, still holding up his gun.

  But he couldn’t fire it. Even the laser pointer disappeared. Then.

  Bam. The destructive sound reverberated through the entire floor.

  The gun—and the entire arm holding it—exploded to pieces.

  From the man’s ears and nose wafted a white smoke.

  He was dead.

  “Mio!”

  Mio pointed her plasma gun at the ceiling. Her hair was standing on end, and she just stood there with her eyes wide open.

  “Mio! Mio!” Hazuki slowly approached her, and Mio slumped to the floor.

  “Dude, that was scary.”

  “Scary?”

  “Yeah, because it was different than how I’d imagined it. I didn’t know what would happen. But this thing was like an electromagnetic oven. That guy is burnt to a crisp inside.”

  Hazuki placed her hand on Mio’s shoulder. It was trembling.

  “This makes me a k…” Mio stopped talking, looked at Hazuki, and hugged her.

  “I was about to piss myself,” she finished.

  CHAPTER 030

  ISHIDA STARTED SCREAMING when the walls shook. It was the most human look Shizue had ever seen on him.

  Her calm and collected mother was also suddenly deranged, right before she died.

  Kill me, just strangle me.

  There was no situation in which it would ever make sense to ask a patient you are treating to kill you.

  Anyone who thinks for even a second about what would happen afterward would never do that.

  The boy ended up killing himself.

  If he hadn’t, he would have been a convicted murderer anyway.

  Even if he weren’t apprehended for his crime, the memory of having murdered another human would stay with him.

  That was why Shizue had decided her mother was no longer human.

  She couldn’t forgive her.

  She hated her as much as she hated herself.

  Sometimes people just couldn’t think that far ahead.

  Looking at Ishida in his deranged state now made her realize all this for some reason.

  However.

  “Gra-ndfather. Gra-ndfather…Gra-ndfather,” Ishida muttered over and over.

  Then with his hands on the floor, he suddenly realized Shizue had been watching him.

  He cocked his head to one side like a veritable slapstick comedian.

  Then, as if playing around, he made his face rigid and, half facing her, glared at Shizue. “What’s your problem? What? What? What? What?” he kept repeating, now approaching her.

  “Hey!” Ishida kicked Shizue. Unable to understand his demonstration she just said, “That hurt.”

  “What the hell are you…Why are you looking at me like that? Hey! Hey hey hey hey!” Ishida kept kicking Shizue.

  “Stop that!” Kunugi said, and with his good arm pulled Ishida by the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you, Lieutenant?”

  Ishida grabbed Kunugi’s hurt arm and twisted it hard.

  Kunugi let out a ferocious scream and fell to the floor, but Ishida wouldn’t let go. “What? Why are you bothering me? What? Hey, say something. Speak!”

  Kunugi was gritting his teeth.

  Shizue took Ishida by the hand and said simply,

  “Stop it.”

  Ishida guffawed, let go of Kunugi, and drifted over to the ornamented door.

  He said, “What did I do wrong? Why? Everything was going so well. What happened to Takasugi? Why did everyone disappear? Has it all fallen apart? I’m okay. This is all trivial.” Ishida suddenly spun around. “I’m sure this is just an electrical malfunction. The electromagnetic waves are unusually strong. Maybe the medical equipment downstairs just malfunctioned. I can’t get ahold of anyone because the wires are all mixed up, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong.”

  “You think the secret door’s just going to open now?” Kunugi said, still lying on the floor. His voice was hoarse.

  Suddenly, the wall behind Ishida’s desk parted to the left and right, and indeed opened wide. Beyond it was another gate, and that opened too. Beyond that gate was an old wooden door.

  “What? It’s just a couple open doors,” Ishida laughed. “Right now, the tresspassers, Hazuki Makino and Ayumi Kono, are being captured. And that filthy undocumented brat Rey Mao too
. They’re most certainly restrained by now. Ritsuko Kisugi is being sliced open, and her delicious liver is being extracted. Anyway, this time, we’ll have plenty of ingredients. We can keep eating and eating and eating…” Ishida said proudly, spreading his arms as he uttered the words.

  “My great-grandfather will be so happy. When you’re 115 years old, eating good food is one’s only joy. And you two, yes…you will have to die. You’ll have to commit double suicide.”

  “You’re going to kill me too, after all?” Kunugi said.

  “Having an idiot like you in the police force is a waste of taxpayer money. If you live, my great-grandfather won’t be able to eat human flesh anymore. My great-grandfather is going to keep eating lots and lots of humans and keep living living living!”

  The ornamental door crept open.

  Ishida jutted his head out and peered around the door half-wittedly.

  Right next to his neck he heard a swoosh sound.

  Standing by him was a little girl.

  Ishida stared at the little girl’s profile, perplexed.

  Blood.

  She was covered in blood.

  “K-Kono…”

  The blood-soaked girl stood there unblinking.

  Ishida.

  Ishida, whose face still bore a perplexed expression, slowly collapsed to the floor.

  Blood was dripping from Ayumi’s aquiline jaw.

  In her delicate right hand was a unique-looking weapon.

  Kunugi raised himself. Shizue still couldn’t swallow what had just happened.

  “M-Miss. You…”

  “I’m a murderer. He was a criminal,” she said confidently, without so much as wiping the blood from her face.

  Shizue raised herself up too.

  “As you just witnessed, I killed this man. I also killed the police officer named Takasugi, and the man with the peacock tattoo on his head. I killed Ryu Kawabata and Yuji Nakamura. I confess to all of those killings.”

  “Kawabata and Nakamura?”

  “Miss Kono…” Shizue stood up. She thought herself so weak. If what she just saw was real, and if what this girl just said was true. Despite it all, this little girl was standing firm. Despite being drenched from head to toe in blood.

  Behind Ayumi was Hinako Sakura and probably the girl known as Ritsuko Kisugi. And behind her…

  Cat.

  She had the face of an adult. Ayumi walked into the room without so much as a glance at Ishida’s dead body.

  The others followed.

  Ayumi faced Shizue and politely thanked her.

  “Are you injured at all?”

  “I’m fine.” The counselor couldn’t tell them she was in pain.

  Mio Tsuzuki appeared in the doorway.

  And Hazuki Makino, covered in mud.

  They were all all right.

  They were all alive.

  No…

  These children had attacked the building.

  This impenetrable fortress, overrun by little girls.

  Ayumi kept her gaze straight ahead and walked through the room, past Ishida’s desk, through the hidden door, and past the gate beyond it.

  “Miss Kono,” Shizue called out.

  Ayumi turned around slightly. And then she opened the wooden door in the very back.

  Mio and Hazuki walked past Shizue and followed after Ayumi. Rey Mao, Hinako, and Ritsuko followed suit. Shizue lent Kunugi her hand to help him stand, and they followed after them.

  They passed the doors, the gate, the wooden door.

  The girls were lined up, two-by-two.

  The room was so white it was glowing.

  A huge window.

  The giant heavenly body.

  For some reason the moon shone brighter and closer than ever.

  It was encircled by a large inorganic machine, inside which was a small white bed.

  On it.

  On it was a tiny old man, shriveled and covered in wrinkles. He raised his head and looked their way. There were tubes sprouting from all over his body, and on his hairless head were several electrodes, cables leading from them.

  There was a small tabletop attached to his bed, and on it was a white plate.

  On the plate was one morsel of meat left over from his meal.

  Ayumi, dark red, stood at the side of the bed.

  Stood there silently.

  The old man looked at that crisp face with utter dread.

  “Are you a demon?”

  “I’m a wolf. I butcher everyone in my path. I’m a werewolf. Loup-garou,” Ayumi said.

  The old man let out a short laugh.

  “Are you here to ease my pain?”

  “No, I’m here to kill you,” Ayumi said, and grabbing all of the wires connected to the old man, cut them with her knife.

  Beep.

  The small lights all flickered and one by one were extinguished.

  The sound of the machines stopped.

  The fan stopped.

  The monitor went black.

  Even the lamp turned off.

  The machine stopped.

  The old man looked around him several times, looked at his wrinkled hands once, frowned his wrinkled face, and then quietly, so quietly, ceased to exist.

  The old man was not alive. He had been kept alive.

  Ayumi slowly turned on a heel.

  “Police officer. I have killed another man.”

  Kunugi lowered his eyes.

  “Miss Fuwa,” Ayumi said to Shizue. “Killing people is wrong, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Shizue tried to answer as calmly as she could.

  Not for her own sake but for the child’s.

  “Please arrest me. And then take me to prison.”

  Kunugi, however, turned his head.

  “I’m sorry, but, miss…I can’t do that,” Kunugi said. “I can’t arrest or convict any of you girls. I didn’t kill anyone, but I might have committed an even greater crime. In fact I’d understand if you wanted me arrested along with you.”

  “If no one is convicted of murder this tale won’t have a conclusion. This leaves me—”

  “There is no conclusion,” Shizue said, and she really believed it. “A conclusion is something the records will conveniently provide. In reality there is never any clean resolution. You can say it however many times you want with words, and you can even convince yourself of it, but humans aren’t that simple. Or, on another level, humans are much closer to pure than that. Confessing to a failed middle-aged cop isn’t going to start anything,” Shizue said.

  “I’m…”

  “It’s okay.”

  Shizue hugged Ayumi. Just the way her mother had held her once.

  “I understand. I’m entrusting this to the police, the law. That’s what you want.”

  “The police will be here soon,” Mio said. “I timed their arrival perfectly. Though they don’t know what happened here.”

  In that case.

  We could get out of here before daybreak. We could leave this impenetrable fortress.

  Shizue looked at the girls’ faces.

  This was an impenetrable fortress, but it was also man-made, not the work of gods. We can take it down.

  Despite the misery, despite the pathos, despite the horror. Despite the sadness.

  Even though so many people were dead now. Even though so much blood was spilled.

  Despite all this, Shizue was glad to see the girls were alive.

  Even if it turned out they had committed serious crimes.

  She was a horrible woman.

  In reality, people had died, and people had killed those dead.

  To be happy despite all that made her a horrible person.

  In the window illuminated by the full moon, Shizue could see her tired face reflected back at her.

  Shizue looked at the pathetic face and couldn’t stop crying.

  The moon was slow.

  And cold.

  “And then the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood.”
r />   –Charles Perrault

  CHAPTER 031

  IN THE END.

  There was no conclusion to the tale of Hazuki and the other girls.

  Actually, there is no need for fairy-tale conclusions in the real world.

  Everything just went along as usual without any more understanding, and at the end of the day, nothing changed.

  Yuko Yabe, Asumi Aikawa, Ryu Kawabata, and Yuji Nakamura, plus all the others who lost their lives, were almost thought of as people who’d always been dead when you read about them on monitors.

  They were branded victims.

  The myth-making of the lives of the victims was extremely compact and easy to understand. For example the Yuko in the monitor was completely different from the Yuko that had once been alive and breathing.

  It didn’t matter how many times Hazuki watched her surveillance video of Yuko, she could no longer recall the soft sensation or scent of her that day they carried her to Ayumi’s house.

  The Area 119 SVC Memorial Building was one day attacked by terrorists from some-ism, and since it took place on a non-workday, fortunately the casualties were limited.

  With all that blood, and all those explosions and that many deaths,

  How dare they call it limited, Hazuki thought.

  Hazuki was received warmly by her father.

  He did not ask any questions but said, “I was worried. I don’t ever want to worry like that again.”

  He scolded her lightly.

  Hazuki never found out what happened to Ayumi. Had no way of finding out.

  They were each interviewed by different people and afterward escorted home. She didn’t know what happened with Mio or Rey Mao either.

  In her interview Hazuki described everything she saw and heard, and didn’t think to lie or make up anything about Ayumi or Mio. Hinako and Ritsuko had no reason to hide anything either.

  They should have been punished accordingly.

  However.

  After the three-month summer break, Mio and Ayumi were present at the communication sessions. Hinako and Ritsuko too. No one said anything. Like nothing had changed from before. So there was nothing to ask.

  Because it was all the same.

  Hazuki had never talked to Mio before, and hadn’t even known who Hinako and Ritsuko were. Ayumi…

  She eventually also went forward and didn’t stand out.

  Ayumi was always looking outside during the sessions.