by Kei Urahama
Ignoring them, Ishida began to run. How many meters distant are the stairs opposite here? Probably not even fifty. When I was in elementary school, how fast did I run the fifty? How many seconds? Ten? Twenty?
One, two, three… jumping over the top of a flat zombie with an arm growing freakishly from its back rather than its shoulder… four, five, six… thrusting away with both hands at a skinny face with glasses fused to it…five, how many seconds was it? Oh yeah, it’s six, seven… One of the followers whose ribs protruded from his chest like a folding fan blocked his way. He pushed off from it, but got his foot tangled up in something and fell awkwardly. Shit! It was just a little further. Couldn’t make it… Once again he was grabbed from behind by his shoulders and lifted up. He heard some English words in his ear. No such thing as a foreign zombie… It was John!
John let go of Ishida and took up the fire extinguisher again and carefully aimed the frothy spray at the eyes of the nearest zombies, eyes which were sometimes not even on their faces. Yang was in front of Ishida before he even had time to notice.
He peeled away the zombies from the girl, who’d stood spellbound by angels before, but who was now being attacked near Yuji.
The staircase was right there. Ishida rushed to the girl and tried to get her up the stairs, grabbing her hands. As soon as he grasped her hands, she shrieked and tried to shake him off. Of course. “It’s alright. I’m not a zombie.”
At that moment, the sound of a horn echoing in the square made Ishida’s heart stutter. He turned to see a single, silver minivan shoving its way through the zombies at the front of the slope.
The rescuers finally showed up. But who’s that driving? “Kyoko!” Beside her is… “Ami too…”
“Why?” Why did those two come here?
For now the girl was back on the stairs. Yuji next to her, covered in bite marks all over his body, was still firmly defending her. Near them, John and Yang ran up to help. At the middle of the stairs, the fat boy was bleeding from his head and didn’t look so good, being cared for by a man and woman dressed in gothic black. Who still needs help? But there are only zombies left…
“Ishida! Get on the stairs!” Yuji shouted.
Nagaoka, whose oddly flat head rose up before Ishida, blocked Yuji from view. Had he fallen to the bottom of the stairs or was he pushed down by someone? Shit! This was the fucker who killed Fukazawa. Ishida punched his face but it didn’t feel like flesh on impact, more like hitting a magazine. Nagaoka’s face folded back perpendicular to his body, disappearing from view. To Ishida, it was like an illusion that his punch had blown up the head and neck, and he looked at his own fist in surprise.
Then the horn sounded again and Ishida froze. I must really not like hearing that sound after so long.
The minivan Kyoko drove arrived at Ishida’s cringing side. A cop with no neck or head was still standing in front of him. Giving a kick to its leg made it fall.
“What are you doing?! Quick! Get in!” Kyoko shouted.
It...It’s really Kyoko! Ishida was almost in tears.
No, is this me crying? A warm drop had fallen on his cheek.
The patter of drops hitting the body of the minivan sounded out. A closer look revealed it was red drops of water hitting the surface. Another large drop of liquid hit Ishida’s cheek and splattered. No doubt. This is the rain. But what color is this?
The rain started falling harder, as if gaining momentum.
Since the advent of the Dome, rain fell for the first time, and in a bloody color worthy of hell.
Chapter 45
When the famous former actress and new rock singer slid open the door of the minivan, the screenwriter jumped inside. The vehicle was swarmed, but instead of fans this time it was zombies.
As Ishida hurriedly closed the door, shutting out the undead believers behind him, the minivan lurched forward and sped away from the stairs where Yuji was with a sudden burst of acceleration. The blood colored rain continued to dye the white clothing of the zombies. Tominaga was still lying prone, chunks of him missing, being eaten by the mob pressed around him. A large amount of blood flowed from the body that no longer moved and spread across the concrete of the square. The whole area was dyed in real blood.
As if this wasn’t enough, the blood-colored rained continued to fall.
“Are they going to leave us?”
Basket Worm, awake after his fainting spell, spoke next to Yuji. Yuji looked at the face of the sloppy, fat man clenching his teeth as he pressed a woman’s handkerchief to his head. Blood had already stained the handkerchief through and flowed from between his pressing fingers. It was a trivial thing compared to all the tragedy around him, but surprisingly Yuji felt queasy and almost vomited. Perhaps it was because survival had become a possibility. His common sense had been paralyzed until that moment.
“Oh! They’re coming back!” Todo shouted.
Looking up they saw the minivan turn as if its driver was parallel parking, then speeding straight toward the stairs in reverse. John and Yang, who were fighting back the zombies at the base of the stairs, retreated quickly to Yuji and Maki.
The minivan hurtled backwards, almost overshooting but then braking to a halt in the nick of time. The back hatch popped open, and Ishida yelled from within.
“Come on! Get in fast!”
For the briefest moment, John and Yang looked at each other, and then jumped down the stairs. Instead of getting inside, they placed themselves to either side of the hatch on guard. “You there first! Hurry up!” Yang cried out.
“Maki, let’s go!” Yuji tugged at Maki’s hand but she wouldn’t get up. She smiled faintly at Yuji, a vacant look on her face.
“I… I’m too tired… to keep being human,” she breathed in a fading voice.
“What the hell are you doing?! Get going!” the Basket Worm above them screamed. Yuji ignored him and peered into Maki’s face. No time to hesitate here now. The body of the minivan didn’t completely block the stairs. Both sides of the hatch would soon be crowded with zombies. Yuji dug his fingers into Maki’s arm. He caught her wandering gaze and spoke quietly to the pupils of her eyes.
“Maki, now, let’s go. Come with me.”
As if awaking from a dream, Maki blinked twice then saw Yuji as if eye to eye for the first time. Seeing her faint nod, he pulled her down the stairs. Protected by the two foreigners, Yuji and Maki jumped into the back of the minivan with its back seat folded flat.
“Are you both okay? Quickly, move in further.” Ishida ushered them toward the front. Kyoko was looking back from the wheel. “Fast, get those others in! We’re almost out of gas. I can’t run the engine forever.” At that same moment, Ami Mizuno in the passenger seat asked, “Where is he?! Is he on the stairs!” Ishida apparetnly hadn’t told her that Fukazawa was dead. Before Yuji could say anything, Yang looked in at him and yelled, “Get me something to use as a weapon!”
Looking in that direction, Yuji saw both the hands and face of a zombie grinding against the window, wet with the rain of blood. The minivan was already surrounded by so many hungry dead. They wouldn’t be able to break the windows but the back door was completely open.
“Get further to the front!” Ishida pushed at them and searched under the back seat blindly. “What about this?” He took out a folded tripod for supporting lights. It had been a kind of keepsake for the director. As soon as Yang took it up he shoved back the nearest zombie with a thrust. On the other side of the minivan, John was fighting back a zombie using the fire extinguisher like a club.
The fat man with the bloody face leapt in the back door. Ami looked at his face and screamed, thinking he was a zombie. “It’s okay, he’s the…” Yuji stammered, having forgotten the real name of the Basket Worm. The fat man pushed himself over the backseat and crawled in next to Yuji and Maki, holding his bloody head as he crumpled into a ball.
“Quick! Get the van moving!” The space had become confined and the luxurious seat was soggy with the rain and blood Basket W
orm had brought in. Yuji felt like it had become contaminated with hazardous waste.
Over Ishida, Todo and Ryoko were visible coming down the stairs. The vampire duo. Then Ryoko staggered on a step wet with the blood rain. Todo narrowly kept her from falling, but the red, electronic pet she clutched in her hands shot out of her grasp and tumbled down the stairs to disappear under the van.
Ryoko shook free from Todo and ran down the stairs, bending under the van. “You fool! Leave it!” Ryoko ignored Todo’s cry and reached under the car. Her arm was snagged in the hands of a zombie crawling out from under the van. “Flat one!” The squashed zombie had slid under the vehicle and stretched out its hand further to grasp Ryoko’s black hair. Todo grabbed her from behind and pulled desperately. It became a tug of war between a zombie and vampire. When Ishida prepared to jump from the van to help, the door was shoved closed by someone else.
“Move the van now!” It was Yang. “Go on ahead and unload the kids then bring us some weapons!” he shouted this as he moved to the stairs to help Todo.
“But…” Kyoko hesitated in the driver’s seat.
“Let’s go,” Ishida said in a hoarse, quiet voice. “It’s running out of gas, right? Much longer and we’ll all be dead and if we don’t move the van they can’t help her.”
“Wait! Where is Fukazawa?!” Ami shouted leaning back from the passenger seat. “We can’t go back without him!” Her eyes cast about desperately.
“Fukazawa is dead.” Ishida said. Ami’s face lost its expression immediately, as if a director had yelled ‘Cut’. In silence she turned forward in her seat. Yuji didn’t know if she was weeping or not. Outside, Ryoko continued screaming incessantly.
“Kyoko. Get moving. Go home.”
Kyoko did as Ishida said, accelerating the minivan forward. Through the window streaked with bloody rain, Yang was visible holding aloft the iron tripod over the head of the flat zombie that was under the car. Before the strike descended, he was out of Yuji’s sight. The hands of zombies that tried to clutch at the car, smeared at the red stains and slipped away.
The vehicle moved forward, mowing through the undead as if they were stalks of rice in a paddy.
Yuji had left the apartment under negative circumstances, but now he didn’t feel uncomfortable at all that Ishida called the place home. It was probably the same for everyone in the van, he thought. There was only one place left to call home in the Dome. Everywhere else had been taken over by the dead. No longer defined by their humanity, but by their hunger.
Oh, Dad. Where did you disappear to? Yuji stared outside the window but there were only the dead. The red rain beating against the windows intensified. It was like the twilight world was now dyed a darker shade of crimson, a deeper darkness. The figure of his father or even an undead in his father’s image, would be impossible to see.
Maki put her hand on Yuji’s harm, the boy deep in his dark thoughts. As she had done the time before, she moved closer and rested her head on Yuji’s shoulder. He could barely remember the last time she’d clung to him, but it had been out of fear. This time was different. Despite all the dangers around them, there was no fear or anxiety conveyed by her touch. Yuji put his hand over hers and held it tightly.
Chapter 46
Hiromu Ohizumi woke up in the rain.
The first thing mirrored in his eye was a red, floating sphere above, reflecting a full field view of the world of darkness around him. Was this… Mars? A drop of water had hit his eye, blurring the world around him into a fuzzy red. Oh, finally lost my glasses then. But of course it isn’t Mars. That’s the ceiling of the Dome and I’m in the bottom of the crater formed when that little eco-sphere formed around the burning truck. The illusion is a pretty good one though. For a moment there things got reversed and I felt like I was looking down on the red planet from space. A real pivotal sense of wonder…
Reddish drops of water fell one by one, starting to beat against his face.
One of the drops fell on his lip and spilled into his mouth.
Sweet. What is this liquid? Literally honey-dew? Parable and metaphor are apt to become reality in this parallel universe. Is there any meaning to it all?
The drops of rain became increasingly large and drenched Ohizumi’s unmoving face.
Anyway… how could I have fallen in a spot like this? Seems like I’ve got some other injury here. I can’t move. It’s a pretty deep wound really. But this time he had a feeling that even the nanomachines throughout his body couldn’t handle the damage. They would be insufficient in number. Just to fix him would take all the nanomachines that must adhere to the inner surface of the sphere. But in order to be taken there it would have to be after the ‘I’ who is thinking right here would already be dead. But why don’t they revive ‘me’ along with my body? There’s no way they might understand that ‘I’, the very cornerstone of the human concept of the inner ego, is simply an abnormality or disease that needs a cure, right? But then again… if you really think about it then it all makes sense.
A species with an advanced civilization wouldn’t necessarily respect the ‘ego’ or ‘personality’. Individuation within a species would be an early stage phase. The evolved species would consider individuality an unnecessary component, especially if that lower, lesser species were facing some sort of catastrophic, extinction event. The same could be said of civilization really. Personal ego and individuality becomes more distinct and proliferated only when the civilization is close to its demise or collapse. The appearance of the solitary individual is a sign of civilization’s end. Diversity strategies are no longer necessary for a species that’s finished establishing a stable, advanced civilization to the point of mastering the technology of immortality. They would no longer fear the end of the world, wouldn’t need ‘ego’ or ‘personality’.
Instead it would be seen as an affliction they’d overcome in their distant past.
But I am me. I don’t want to admit that I am only an adaptation strategy of DNA.
Another raindrop fell into his mouth. It tasted like syrup sweetened more than necessary to hide some bitterness. Like my mother made me drink as a kid, from the cap of a small medicine bottle when I had a cold.
Rich, nourishing sweet rain. Literally a rain of grace. But why now? Why release this blessing mana now?
Ohizumi had a startling realization.
No! It’s not a blessing for ‘us’. This is meant to be a blessing rain for those who no longer have an ‘I’, their immortals. Their numbers have increased so quickly, beyond the critical point of preserving the starving whole. That must be the answer.
Ohizumi suddenly coughed violently. His own blood erupted from his throat, mingling with the alien blood raining from the sky as more alien life forms flowed back into his mouth.
The bullet from the policeman must have grazed my lungs. No, I was shot in the right shoulder so it must have been the smoke inhalation that damaged my lungs. Either way, it’s a blessing that I don’t feel much pain. Because ‘I’can keep on thinking without disruptive pain…
But my body is an essential part of ‘I’, right? No… or is it the opposite? Well, anyway whatever is a grace for my body is also for ‘me’. What was Mazaki supposed to say at the theater? He could hardly remember but there was a certain moment he said something about hungering no more, thirsting no more. The Gospel. He said there was good news.
Could he have predicted this rain? But I can’t even ask him anymore. The ‘I’ of that man has already been erased by the one he believed was God. His hungry body, freed from ‘I’ is wandering in search of food on the ground.
Oh Yuji. Will he be safe? When I last saw him he was with that girl who always looked at the sky, heading for the stairs of the square. No, when I looked back after running away, he and that girl were certainly safe on the stairs. But after that his memory was fuzzy. Because I fell in this hole and passed out. They must be okay. I wonder… are those two lovers? That girl looking up at the sky and angels with such a yearnin
g in her eyes?
Oh… Yuko. You always liked watching the sky. You said you loved to watch the clouds and invited me to open fields so often. At first I was annoyed that you wanted to do it so much but in the end I enjoyed watching the sky too. In my case, it was exclusively the stars shining in the night sky… Oh, I want to see the stars just one more time… Yuko. See that starry sky with you…
Ohizumi lost consciousness at that point.
This time, earthling tears mingled with the alien rain spattering his face.
EPILOGUE
- DOMESDAY -
Yuji Ohizumi dreamed of a great city shining in silver.
The dream began with survivors gathered near the pyramid on the square bathed with bright rainbow colors, all of them gazing upward. He realized that this must be a dream of the past because his father and mother were also there. The two were huddled together, hand in hand, looking up at the sky, smiling. It’s the first time in my life I’ve seen them this way. Even within the dream, Yuji lucidly concluded this.
When Yuji looked up along with the others, he saw the Dome’s ceiling melt and disappear.
It looked less like melting, more like someone was blowing grains of red sand away from a plate. But as it fragmented, the particles just disappeared. The Dome gradually faded away and the outside world was exposed.
There was a bright, night sky with pinkish cloud trails and colorful, bright stars visible between the clouds composed of constellations he’d never seen before.
The Dome had disappeared at its zenith, an ever-widening circular hole. The edges of the hole fell away like a red tent being hauled down around Sirius Palace. Great buildings became visible on either side of the apartments and everyone’s eyes came to marvel at the new buildings instead.