Domesday

by Kei Urahama

  Saying this, he closed the door leading to the staircase up from the park loudly. No one doubted his word. Yuji suddenly felt the decision their leader, Todo, had made was very right. With a sense of anxiousness he glanced at his watch, a gift from his parents.

  The time was approximately 2:50 pm.

  Chapter 27

  Mazaki and Ohizumi continued a heated debate all the way to Parkville. However, Mazaki was the one who did most of the talking as Ohizumi listened, a rare experience for the sci-fi author. Ishida was left to tag along behind them like a servant or side-kick.

  “Mr. Ohizumi, have you read the Bible?”

  “No, I haven’t read it all the way through. I’ve read bits of Genesis, The Gospels, John and Ezekiel. That’s about it. And I must say it’s quite an old story.”

  “That sounds like something you’d say, but you should read it straight through once. It’s an absolutely amazing book. Especially for a writer like yourself it would be an ever-flowing fountain of inspiration. For example, recently I came across this passage reading the Book of Amos.”

  Mazaki stopped at the entrance of the Orion Garden and picked out a Bible with a thick black cover from his briefcase full of other red-cover copies. He flipped through it.

  “Ah, here, Section 8 Chapter 5, Amos.

  ‘He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name;’ and something similar to this was in Job as well…’”

  “What are you trying to say? Are you implying that the names of this place being Sirius and Orion aren’t a coincidence? Now that’s just silly.”

  “Is there a possibility that the aliens who have kidnapped us came from Sirius?”

  “That I sincerely doubt. Did you know Sirius is a binary solar system? Among those two suns, one is a young star only about three hundred million years old and the other is a burnt out former red giant. There wouldn’t have been enough time or the proper environment to evolve an advanced technology such as this. The Pleiades star cluster is an estimated one hundred million years old. Still it’s too young for life to be born.”

  “For life to be born there, yes, but what if life was brought there from elsewhere, like planetary seeding? If that life had already been evolved to some extent…”

  “That is possible, but your story has a faulty assumption from the start. Why is it necessary to adapt all reality to a description found in the Bible? If the book is as thick as it is, and full of metaphor and symbolic expressions, you can find as much fantasy as you can find something resembling fact that is applicable to any given situation. In the end such a correlation to real events is just random happenstance. Your story is quite plausible but if that part of the mystery is solved then why do the aliens have to come from Sirius or Pleiades

  “That’s strange. On the one hand you’ve already encountered aliens here in the Dome, but you discount outright the alien that they encountered in the Bible as a naïve delusion. Okay, but then you say that even though reality does match with the Bible then it is only a coincidence. Well then, let’s just take a look.”

  Mazaki, closing his eyes, opened to a random page in the Bible and put his index finger there. After taking a long, slow breath, he opened his eyes and read a few sections from where his finger had landed.

  “Oh, Revelations Chapter 11 Verse 3,

  ‘And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will be clothed in burlap and will prophesy during those 1,260 days. These two prophets are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of all the earth.’

  So… 1260 days. In other words, forty-two months, three and a half years.”

  “What about it? It’s just more meaningless symbolism.”

  “Do you really think so? Here it speaks of two witnesses, that is ‘two prophets’. Is that just a coincidence? You and I are both prophets, are we not?”

  “Okay now. Setting aside the question of you, but come on, me as a prophet? Please.”

  “No? Aren’t you a sci-fi writer? Every science fiction author is also a prophet in the sense of predicting the future, and at the same time, there is also the prophet who safeguards the world of the Lord.”

  “Yes, a science fiction writer could be seen as a prophet of the modern day Apocalypse…”

  “Especially the sci-fi writer is, don’t you think? It isn’t just limited to sci-fi, yes? To a certain extent all writers involved in the past century’s media were prophets of the Apocalypse. For example, even the romance novelist couldn’t escape from the influence of the final days prophecies found in the Book of Revelations. If you were a romance novelist, you would have been writing about the Apocalypse of human love. The twentieth century is the era of the Apocalypse concept which has prevailed over the whole world via the media. Mr. Ishida, as a visual artist, you understand this, right?”

  Mazaki suddenly looked back making Ishida flinch involuntarily.

  “Err… yes indeed. Stories based on destruction or catastrophe scenarios were more popular last century than ever before. Destruction of the individual, the community, the world… but really such end-of-days stories have been popular since before last century as well. No story can escape the fact that an end will come someday.”

  Ishida managed this rambling reply but at the same time wondered how he got suckered into this debate between madmen.

  “You don’t have to think so philosophically. In brief, throughout the twentieth century, via a variety of media, the prophecy of the Apocalypse has been delivered to the whole world, even augmented by various writers. That’s the important point.

  In the Gospel of Matthew it says,

  ‘And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come. ‘

  And actually the end has come. In the previous century we were continuously shown the trailer, so to speak, to keep our minds ready for the real end of days.”

  Mazaki quit speaking, closed the pages of the Bible and began to rub the cover like a lover’s skin.

  “Mr. Ohizumi, you just said it is mere coincidence when reality and the Biblical prophecies match up. But if our own reality, that is to say our own power of thought to deduce what is reality, was constructed to match the Bible, then what would happen? Which is to say, what if our path of reality was predestined to be as the Bible says?”

  “Hmm… What would happen?” Ohizumi said a bit uncomfortably as he shook his head.

  “If so then coincidence would not exist. Everything would be written in the Bible in advance. Oh, it’s already time. We have to hurry.”

  Mazaki hurried toward the church where the believers were waiting. Ohizumi followed after, still dragging his right foot a little as he tapped the pavement with his cane. Ishida followed the two prophets, his thoughts tangled in confusion.

  They were further delayed from reaching Mazaki’s church when halfway up the stairs Ohizumi halted. He leaned over the handrail overlooking the slope leading to the pyramid square, and to the crater about five meters in diameter scooped out of the slope. According to Ohizumi, based on a closer examination of that hole they might be able to estimate the relative thickness of the Dome itself. But since the time of the sermon was imminent they decided to investigate after Mazaki’s ritual, and so Ohizumi reluctantly moved on.

  After entering the Park Building, the three hurried to the cinema complex on the fourth floor via the emergency stairs. Ishida observed that Ohizumi reached the top landing without apparent fatigue or distress, his leg being almost fully healed. Yet he continued to use a cane as a kind of affectation. It had been less than two weeks since his accident, but he showed an incredible resilience. This of course made Ohizumi’s bizarre hypothesis that all of the Dome’s interior, including the survivor’s bodies, was filled with nanomachines seem not so far-fetched after all. The thought
of a nanomachine virus populating his body made Ishida feel a pervasive creeping itchiness that he wanted to scratch away.

  As the three arrived at the cinema, the clock on the lobby wall read 2:55. Despite their many pauses along the way, it had taken only five minutes from the apartment to the theater. Again Ishida was reminded of the small dimensions of the world where they were trapped.

  “Okay then. I’ll see you later. I have to prepare a bit so please go on inside the theater and wait for me. It’s the one to the far end there.”

  Mazaki and a few followers who greeted them went into the employee waiting room. Ishida and Ohizumi were left behind in the dark, empty lobby. Lit by candlelight, it looked like a haunted house attraction in some theme park. The ‘Now Playing’ posters dimly lit by the swaying candlelight added to this effect. Ishida suddenly felt as if someone was watching them, and he shivered involuntarily with fear.

  “Should we wait here for Fukazawa to show up?” Ohizumi said to Ishida as he stared at a horror movie poster labeled “Coming Soon”. Two glowing, fiery monster eyes looked out from the poster, and Ishida realized the unsettling sense of being observed most likely came from this. Even with this knowledge, the chill in Ishida’s spine didn’t let up.

  “No, let’s go on inside. It’s a bit creepy out here.”

  The two continued down the passage to the last theater and opened the heavy door, stepping into the darkness.

  Chapter 28

  There they are! I don’t know that one’s name but the other is undoubtedly Ohizumi. Just as I thought, the other one is his accomplice. Now everything fits perfectly. As it was written in the holy text there are two men of the beast, both false prophets. Jiro Nagaoka was spying on the men in the lobby hidden in his vantage spot behind the door of the restroom. He waited with bated breath, mulling over fragments of the Lord’s words and combining them like pieces of a puzzle.

  ‘Then the beast was allowed to speak great blasphemies against God. And he was given authority to do whatever he wanted for forty-two months. …And he required all the earth and its people to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.’

  Two beasts. But which beast is the false prophet? Mazaki or Ohizumi? Ohizumi recently broke his leg falling down the stairs. I remember clearly him being carried by the med student and the nurse. Now he’s walking normally. Then is he the one that is the ‘beast whose fatal wound had been healed’? But who cares which one. I’ll get rid of both the beast as well as the false prophet. Both will die by the hand of the angel of the Lord and be ‘thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur’ and as promised in the Book the ‘feast of God’ will begin and all the people, regardless whether children or adults who were fooled by them, will be pecked of their very meat. I will not let them be unleashed for three and a half years!

  It’s also written in the Gospel,

  ‘In fact, unless that time of calamity is shortened, not a single person will survive. But it will be shortened for the sake of God’s chosen ones.’

  I will. I’ll shorten that period. Otherwise there are only a hundred people left. Everyone will be brainwashed by them and they’ll get the mark of the beast.

  No one will be saved.

  Before that happens I’ll end this.

  Startled by the noise of the door of the employee waiting room, Nagaoka quickly retreated into the darkness behind the restroom door. Through the gap in the door and wall, he could see Mazaki cross the lobby, accompanied by several of his attendants, to enter the theater. One of the attendants followed close behind, reverently carrying a large metal container in both hands.

  Nagaoka knew what was inside. At that moment, that unforgettable yet strange taste of blood, the hideous taste of meat that the false prophet offered on a dish, revived in Nagaoka’s mouth. Mazaki will feed all believers the flesh of that unclean devil as a sacrament. He should have felt nausea but instead Nagaoka was filled with a hunger close to starvation. Lord Christ, please forgive me. I was polluted by them.

  Even while silently invoking this prayer, Nagaoka knew it was not enough to earn forgiveness. Confirming no one was in the lobby, he left the darkness of the restrooms to gently press his ear against the theater door and wait. Only the faint sound of Mazaki’s preaching voice could be heard, and no other sound filtered from within. Nagaoka deduced from this that noise from the lobby wouldn’t reach inside the theater either. Once the preaching of the false prophets began, those inside whose ‘synagogue belongs to Satan’ would not try to get up from their seats until the end. The time had come. Before he started, Nagaoka took out an old, worn copy of the New Testament from his chest pocket, silently intoning a prayer as he held it to his chest.

  This Bible he clutched to his chest was not one given by Mazaki, but one he’d acquired on his own.

  He’d found it in the ruins of the hotel on the north side of Sirius Palace. Or rather, it found me, Nagaoka thought.

  It was only three days after the Dome emerged and angels filled the air that he came across the book. The high-rise hotel that was once the pride of Sirius Palace had lost its greater mass to the other side of the wall, its only remaining part on the south-east side like a neglected morsel of cake devoured by a giant. The new height of the structure was only three floors and only a few rooms remained undamaged. Nagaoka and Mikami, the ex-guard, had entered the ruin to rescue any survivors who might be trapped inside.

  In the end no survivors were found. There was an empty room with the faint odor of perfume still lingering in the air that Nagaoka had searched. One lone travel bag had been sitting in the corner as if someone had just packed and was preparing to leave. Yet the room was empty. The occupant had either fled or been kidnapped by an angel. Finding no one, Nagaoka was turning to leave when he spied a book on a bedside table. It was a copy of the New Testament with a torn cover. For some reason it later weighed on his conscience, but at the time he’d left the room without touching the book or anything else in the room.

  As day followed day in the Dome, Nagaoka, who had been a low-level policeman in a small, neighborhood precinct, became the person in charge of security due solely to the fact he had a pistol. When the cursed dead began to appear it fell on him to take the lead in any dangerous missions.

  Prior to the Dome, low-level public service cops like him had to bear the brunt of citizens’ derision, effectively police bashing, fomented by management-level police managers’ scandalous misconduct and corruption as exposed by the mass media.

  But the people who made sport of criticizing cops before now changed their tune since something serious happened, and they opted to rely on his protection. So what, Nagaoka had thought at first, since he took pride in his chosen occupation.

  But when the zombies began to appear one after another from the suicides, Nagaoka started to feel his limitations.

  Ohizumi had used flattery to lure him into supporting his attempt at an autopsy. But something broke in Nagaoka when he’d been forced to shoot the woman zombie as a result.

  Come to think of it, Nagaoka realized, Ohizumi and his trap was the design of Satan from the start. The man ensnared in that trap withdrew to his apartment in depression. Many times in his seclusion, he put the gun to his own head. But one day, as if bathed in light, the memory of that book arose in his thoughts. He ventured to the hotel room. There, Nagaoka touched the holy book for the first time in his life.

  After that, he took every opportunity to go to that room and indulge in reading the Bible. He could have brought it back to his own room, but somehow he felt this was wrong. Of course no one else knew about this. When he went to the hotel, he lied to everyone saying that he was going on patrol.

  They were like secret trysts with a lover. Yet this lover’s name was ‘Erudition’ and bestowed on him much knowledge.

  What was happening here, the supernatural state of things, had been predicted already two thousand years before. God is real, and Satan also exists. Christ’s second coming will occur after the
Armageddon. If you believe in the Lord, you will survive the Apocalypse and spend a thousand years in the kingdom without misery, ruled by Christ and His followers. Then, after the rebellion of Satan is put down, they will receive eternal life in the City of God called New Jerusalem.

  But once again Nagaoka fell into Satan’s trap. The bullet he’d shot to save the boy, who he hadn’t recognized at the time to be the very son of Ohizumi, had instead detonated the truck behind him. The truck with a little girl inside.

  He was so craftily trapped and doubted God and came to seek salvation from false prophets, the other agents of Satan, hell and men. And then he… Nagaoka shook his head to escape the horrible memory.

  Why did I so easily fall into Satan’s traps not once but twice?

  “For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones… So if someone tells you, ‘Look, the Messiah is out in the desert,’ don’t bother to go and look. Or, ‘Look, he is hiding here,’ don’t believe it! "

  I was warned of this by the holy book in advance. I should have noticed sooner that when Mazaki quoted from the Bible, he only quoted from the part that the Jewish devil wrote.

  How was I so easily fooled?

  But now I have the answer. It was all the providence of the Lord. The Lord predestined me to do it all from the beginning. The Lord allowed me to infiltrate the army of Satan. In order to destroy them and prepare the way for the second coming of Christ. Everything was God’s plan.

  Nagaoka started moving quickly. He returned to the restroom approaching a private stall that he’d wired shut to prevent believers entering. He cut the away the wires with pliers. Stacked inside were three large cardboard boxes that had taken him several days to lug there. He pulled them out into the restroom and arranged them on the floor. Taking a combat knife, he cut the duct tape that sealed the three boxes.

  “Now I’m equipped to destroy Babylon,” Nagaoka muttered then breathed a final short prayer.