by Kei Urahama
This time his response was immediate: “No. I read the Bible for the first time here. I didn’t much care for it, so just show me God like you promised.”
Mazaki didn’t remember such a promise but decided to play along anyway. After all, he still had the gun in his hands. Mazaki wasn’t afraid, but it would be arrogant to expect another of God’s miracles to come so soon. If the history in the Bible was true, the God he was dealing with was considerably capricious and deeply jealous. It was better not to tempt fate.
“Well, be patient. Everything has to be prepared. But if as you say, you’ve already touched the holy book once then I’ll let you see the Lord immediately as you wish.” As he said this, Mazaki placed his hand on the iron door in the front of the room. Suddenly he halted.
“But where did you find it, the Bible? We’re short a lot of Bibles here. We don’t even have half the number of copies as we have believers. If you don’t mind, please let me know where you found…”
Nagoaka interrupted Mazaki.
“At the hotel next to here. So let’s get the mass or whatever started. I’ve been ready a while now. If you say you’re going to show me God, I’ll gladly do whatever ritual you want. But… no weird drugs.” He glared at Mazaki with his bloodshot eyes.
“No way would I use drugs. It’s an invention of Satan.” Mazaki’s words surprised even himself a bit to hear. Ah, the hotel next door.
The luxury hotel had towered next to the apartment building before, but the majority of the building had vanished to the other side of the wall of the holy shelter. Now it was so distorted in proportion that it made one lose one’s sense of balance just looking at it, as only a small part of one corner was left. Mazaki wondered why this policeman had searched the ruins of such a place. The building was a kind of blind zone, that was certain. Once I finish this ritual to make him a holy man, I will gather a small group of believers to search the place.
As it was, Mazaki had tasked some of the believers with transcribing portions of the Bible in the same fashion as the Buddhists had once done with the Sutras. To transcribe the entire text was too much to ask. Still, the task had the advantage of immersing the more skeptical believers in the Holy Scripture.
“So, are you truly ready?”
Mazaki spoke but opened the door not awaiting reply, revealing the thirty-third floor to Nagaoka’s eyes, where the corridor extended to the top floor just below where the penthouse would have been.
The holy light filtered from above, dyeing their faces red.
The corridor had been cut off abruptly by the wall just four meters in front of them. The holy wall glowed bright red like the burning bush, inclining at an angle to overhang their heads.
This was the altar that Mazaki himself had chosen for conducting the consecrated sacraments. Having said that, there was nothing resembling an altar in the area. Just one common looking round table covered in wax was placed before the wall. A single dish and two sets of knives and forks and a candlestick were all that waited on the table.
Nagaoka snorted a laugh through his nose. “It’s just a wall. So many times I’ve…” then his jaw dropped as Mazaki had expected. “What’s that?” he spoke, shocked by what he saw before him.
The cross scored into the wall had finally caught his eye.
“You once tried to hurt this sacred wall with the gun, right?”
Mazaki spoke as he approached the table then put a candle in the candlestick holder.
“Then what happened?”
“It didn’t do anything. The bullets bounced off and almost hit Mikami standing next to me. It didn’t even leave a scratch. I checked it later even. How… did you do that? A rock drill from a construction site didn’t even work.”
“It is the power of faith.” As Mazaki spoke he walked around the table and put the palm of his hand flat against the smooth surface of the wall. Patterns began to float along it, like the layer of oil that roils across the surface of a bubble.
To caress the skin of a beloved woman, you move slowly and gently along. As always, an electrifying pleasure passed from within his very core along to the point of contact on the palm of his hand. As his fingertips reached the cross, he managed not to groan in response to the rippling waves of pleasure. He could feel the cross pulsing hot under his hand.
“So, let’s begin.”
Although he tried not to let impatience creep into his voice, he couldn’t help it. It was Mazaki who could wait no longer. He began chanting the words of consecration with a trembling voice, not even looking back at Nagaoka.
“Now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, purify the offering. With me, for this new congregation who hope to share in your power, here the blood and body of the Lord Jesus Christ…”
Counting days the old way, nearly a week had passed before Mazaki learned the secret of the holy wall.
That day, the great and dreadful day of the Lord when he watched from behind the slats of window blinds on the twenty-seventh floor, trembling in fear, as people were captured and taken to the air by the angels. On that day he’d been a sinner of little faith. Of course he had equated that day with the Rapture, and he’d assumed those being taken upward were the chosen of God being lifted to heaven.
Yet those few faces that were visible, jutting out from the spheres of the angels, were not at all joyous. They were screaming in absolute terror. Their shrieks echoed across the sky. This was much too violent a way for angels to uplift the chosen, right?
One angel had even flown close by a side window, grazing the head of a woman it had captured against the handrail of the balcony like a cheese grater. A gob of her blood and brains had spattered the window through which he’d peered. He realized his mistaken assumption at that point. They were not being lifted up by the Rapture. They were being harvested by the Lord as if they were grapes of His vineyard. Just as in the anti-prophecy of Revelations Chapter 14…
‘The angel thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. The winepress was trodden outside of the city, and blood came out from the winepress, even to the bridles of the horses, as far as one thousand six hundred stadia.’
The Bible contained real and literal prophecies, this Mazaki began to believe. While he had kept contact with the evangelical fanatics, at the base of his heart he had never felt taken in by their delusional beliefs. However, as he witnessed the very spectacle of the Apocalypse outside his window, Mazaki was forced to revise his beliefs.
Still, pride didn’t allow him to believe their infantile, ad hoc interpretations of the Bible. It was even doubtful that such people as these “chosen of God” evangelists had survived the Armageddon at all, unless there were other shelters out there such as this one.
After ‘The Passover’ of the angel invasion, he didn’t leave his room but began instead an earnest study of the Bible. Eventually the receptionist, Chikama, had pounded on his door, but Mazaki had withdrawn to hide deeper inside. Even once they’d used the master key on the door and clattered at the chain drawn across it, he’d not answered and continued to concentrate on his studies of the Bible.
Yet, after a week, Mazaki noticed he had been overcome by severe hunger and thirst for the first time in his life.
Forced to pry his bloodshot eyes away from the pages of the Bible, he tried to stand up and go to the kitchen but was hit by a wave of vertigo and dropped, his limbs tangled on the floor. Gradually he made it to the kitchen by dragging himself along. Yet somehow, the food that should have been there had been devoured.
The refrigerator was emptied of everything, even down to emergency provisions such as biscuits and bottled water. Scattered about the floor were empty bottles, empty cans licked dry and empty bags as if some beast had devoured it all.
He realized the beast must have been himself. Somehow during the time he’d been absorbed in the Bible, the details of his daily life had become a foggy daze and nothing remained of his original stock of
food. Nowhere in his apartment was even a crumb left.
Will I die from hunger? Mazaki thought in a panic. Could I really die like this? Me, a man with a net worth far greater than this luxury apartment I’ve purchased, spread out in different bank accounts around the world? I who have survived the brutal attack of the angels? Will I starve to death?
No, it won’t happen that way. I’m supposed to be one of God’s chosen. He somehow dragged himself from his kitchen and, like crossing a vast desert, made it into the hallway with his last reserves of strength. Then, with a final burst of raw effort, he managed to shove the heavy door open and stagger outside his apartment for the first time in nearly a week.
The corridor was shrouded in darkness. Even the red light normally shining dimly like a setting sun through the gap in the door was gone. He’d passed into true darkness. Felt light-headed, disoriented. Almost doubted he was even conscious. Still, he found the wall and slid along it down the corridor exploring the doors of the other residents.
The twenty-seventh floor where Mazaki lived had seven apartments in all. He was apparently the only survivor on this floor, so there had to be food in the other apartments. The first door he came to was 2703. He fumbled with the knob in the darkness and fortunately found it to be unlocked.
It was only a momentary relief. As he swung the door open, a chain-guard stopped it short of nothing more than a slight gap of only ten centimeters. He growled instinctively like a beast but lacked the strength to even shake the door. Reluctantly he angled for the next apartment.
He suddenly that he’d forgotten to leave his own door open. I should have used a shoe or something to prop it! But even returning to check his door was beyond his strength. Somehow by sheer force of will, he reached the entrance to apartment 2702 located on the east side.
As he took hold of the knob the thought crossed his mind that if it was locked, then he wouldn’t be long for this world. He would curse the door from the bottom of his heart. Later he realized what a sacrilege it was to even allow such a thought. It was a mystery why he was not struck dead on the spot by a shaft of lightning from the Lord. Yet, God forgave me generously and provided me with a holy miracle.
The door swung open. In the room the shining wall of the Lord was awaiting him. To quench Mazaki’s starvation and thirst…
It’s almost perfect timing. The relief on the wall in the shape of the cross, twitching and pulsing, increased in size. The wall of the shelter had a hardness that could repel a bullet. Yet now, under his palm, it had transformed to living flesh with a moderate elasticity.
Mazaki removed his hand from the cross of meat reluctantly and took the knife from the table. He could glimpse the figure of Nagaoka standing by, holding his breath. He ignored it as he turned back to the cross, selected the portion of it that he was about to widen and, putting his left hand forward, drove the tip of the knife carefully through it. A red, soggy liquid began to seep immediately from the wounded slit. This point on was the part that required an artist’s touch. As he slowly drew the knife down the slit, he tugged at the sliver to pull it slowly away. When he confirmed his aim was true, he quickly finished the slice and scraped away a piece of meat from the end of the holy cross, wet with the blood of Christ.
“The Lord is the day before receiving the Passion, he takes the holy bread in his hand, tore this giving thanks to the Almighty, and gave to his disciples.” Saying this, he put a piece of the holy flesh taken with his left hand onto the dish on the table.
“The Lord has said, ‘Take and eat. This is my body for you. Drink it. This is my blood of the covenant shed for many people, to get forgiveness of sins.’”
Nagaoka had been staring at the flesh of Christ on the plate with his wide, red-rimmed eyes. With a fork above the plate, Mazaki held out his offering to his new follower.
“Now, you eat this. Then you are also sanctified. You will receive eternal life by becoming a chosen one of the Lord God.”
Nakaoka received it, and consumed it.
PART THREE DOMESDAY
(960 hours after the appearance of the Dome)
Chapter 25
After Nagaoka’s Communion, Mazaki’s followers spent an entire day descending the stairs, then almost three days waiting for the way of pilgrimage to be ‘paved’ while remaining in the entrance hall on the first floor. Their journey to the amusement building of Orion Garden had begun.
To pave the way for the pilgrims meant to eliminate anything that would stand in their way. In short they needed to hunt the freely roaming zombies and isolate them in the garden.
Surprisingly there were no fatalities. Other than some slight injuries they were able to locate and confine all the zombies within the Dome in only three days. Seven zombies had been wandering near the Orion Garden square, and except for one reptile type they confined all in the apartment garden area.
The unfortunate groom who’d leapt from the rooftop in his wedding attire remained, having crawled into the rubble of the collapsed hotel. The believers opted to block off the entrance, effectively confining him as well.
“Witness the power of faith.” Ishida said spontaneously on the day of the believers’ departure when he heard the news. Chikama, who had taken part in the mopping up operation due to his position of responsibility, was the source of this information.
“Certainly that as well,” Fukazawa said, “but we could have done the same with the advantage of numbers they have. Unfortunately we don’t.”
“It’s due to apathy and fatalism,” said Ohizumi. “We are overcome by a sense of nihilism such as the Jews during the Second World War, confined in concentration camps by the Nazis, and the white-collar political criminals sent to Siberia in forced labor camps in Stalinist Russia. In both situations, those who gave up hope first were the first to die.”
“Of course people will not die here,” Fukazawa said, looking back through the glass wall of the lobby that had been barricaded up to about an adult’s height. To the other side of the glass and panels was the camp of the zombies. The area now housed nearly their entire population within the Dome. In the narrow garden there were eleven zombies in all. Because they constantly fed on each other the angels regularly trafficked back and forth, repeating the futile process of resuscitation. Ishida no longer felt fear or anxiety over the appearance of an angel.
For almost a week, Ishida, Ohizumi and Fukazawa killed time in the first floor lobby. It was true that Ishida was curious about the migration of the religious fanatics and their sudden operation to mop-up the zombies. Mostly though, he spent time on the first floor because he still shared the apartment with Kyoko Takasaki, who he could now barely tolerate.
Since the incident when they couldn’t prevent the angel from taking the top half of old Tanahashi’s body, Kyoko no longer ventured outside the room. She’d withdrawn into her shell.
As her lover, Ishida knew it should fall upon him to stay by her side and comfort her, but he simply couldn’t. He couldn’t bear the dark depression and unresponsiveness to him even when speaking directly to her. If even she could regain her prior acrimonious attitude to some degree, but now she only rarely spoke, and then weakly with words such as, “I’m sorry but could you just leave me alone for a while?” Then, as he would leave the room he would hear her take up sobbing on the other side of the door. Exhausted with her repeated behavior, Ishida increasingly called upon Ami Fukazawa to bear the burden of caregiver in his stead.
The vertical move of Mazaki’s believers beginning around that time became a good excuse for Ishida to leave Kyoko in the rooms above. Put simply, he abandoned her.
Ohizumi was always in the first floor lobby. Since twisting his ankle on the stairs, he’d taken to sleeping in the managerial office on the first floor. Although Ohizumi’s ankle and foot had swollen to the point that he couldn’t take off his shoe without cutting it away, it had recovered at a remarkable rate. Within three short days he was able to walk without a cane.
Ohizumi explained this pro
udly through his rather creepy hypothesis that invisible nanomachines were functioning pervasively within the space of the Dome, even inside a ‘living’ human body such as his own.
Even as his foot was almost healed, Ohizumi continued staying on the first floor and passing the time by playing Japanese chess against Fukazawa, who occasionally ventured down to the guest lobby. At these times Ohizumi would proudly lecture on some aspect or other of his new hypothesis. Ishida also joined in these sessions. Fortunately, the nearly forty believers gathered in the entrance hall ignored their little group of three occupying the corner of the guest area playing sinful games (they used real money to bet on the games of chess and cards) or indulging in heretical debates. Perhaps they didn’t much care as their heads were busied with Mazaki’s sermons delivered in the Parkville lecture hall and their ‘holy war’ against the zombies. Thus they had no time to bother with the impious few.
But on the last day the believers spent in the apartment building, one man among the believers stepped out just prior to their departure, and approached the sofa where Ishida sat. A number of concerned believers came after him but he raised a hand to caution them away.
“Please, all of you go on ahead to light the candles in the church. I need to speak with them.” And so the rest departed, obeying his bidding. With Onuki, the chairman of the electronics firm, at their lead, they formed a column and filed out through the front door now standing open.
The man remained silent for a while, standing next to Ishida, watching the believers leave the building. After nodding to the last of his departing companions, he finally looked to Ishida and opened his mouth.
“Well, why don’t you come to the church?” the guru asked the unbelievers with a smile.
Ishida had seen the man preaching from a distance many times but it was the first time to observe him up close. Ishida thought that even from this proximity Mazaki didn’t appear very charismatic.
He was a thin man dressed in an expensive gray business suit that didn’t fit his body. He looked more like an experienced salesman than a guru. His short cut hair and even the weak, cleanly shaven jaw didn’t match any image Ishida had ever had of a cult guru-type. He didn’t have particularly piercing eyes, was of average height… Kousuke Mazaki was a man ordinary by any standard.