The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness

by Yukako Kabeif

  “Kahah…”

  As she coughed, she glared at the three-wheeled taxi as it continued into the rotary, caring not a bit that it had bothered her. A wealthy-looking couple with large bags stepped out of the taxi. The eastbound morning train would be arriving from the north soon, and from the bench in front of the plaza, she could watch as the station sucked up all the people who were ready to travel.

  She didn’t have much of an appetite, but she pulled herself together and started to eat again; her lunch was a bean sandwich she had bought at a junk-food stand in front of the station; it had sauteed beans and smashed vegetables pressed between hard bread. They would be walking a lot today, so she had resolved to make sure to eat. As she mused, something suddenly occurred to her, and she turned to the radio sitting next to her on the bench with her bag and asked, “Corporal, Harvey doesn’t eat, does he?”

  “He eats,” the radio answered readily, but in this case, Kieli’s “eat” and the Corporal’s “eat” didn’t have quite the same flavor.

  As of this morning, Kieli had been traveling with Harvey for four days, but she had never seen Harvey have a meal in all that time. No, like the radio said, she had seen him put things in his mouth, but it was always something like dried meat that seemed inedible to Kieli, or hardtack that was like rocks, and he gave the impression that he was thinking about something completely unrelated — just putting the food inside his mouth, chewing it up, and sending it down to his stomach — and when he got tired of it, he would stop. It was like he had no attachment whatsoever to the act of eating.

  When she thought about it, as far as Kieli knew, she had never seen him sleeping, either. He would close his eyes, but if she talked to him, he’d immediately open them and answer her. He would just seem extremely annoyed about it.

  I wonder if the Undying don’t need to eat or sleep. Kieli had a hard time picturing what it would be like not to have to eat or sleep. Not sleeping meant that the world never pauses; there’s no sense that today will end or tomorrow will come. She wondered what it would feel like to live in that monotonous routine for decades.

  “All life functions for Undying are maintained by their hearts’ unlimited power source, so they don’t need to take any thought for how they live. That’s how they get to be failures at life, like him.” “Failure at life” was a really harsh way to put it, but it wasn’t far off the mark. “On top of that, their hearts give them blood with abnormal cell-regenerating powers that make them immortal. Convenient bastards.”

  Kieli listened, fascinated, to the radio’s half-ranting explanation as her molars ground up the hard-to-chew smashed vegetables from her bean sandwich.

  She wondered if that strange coal-tar-like liquid that gathered around his wounds like a living thing contained something — something Kieli couldn’t even imagine — that rapidly healed even fatal wounds. And it was the power source in his heart that sent it out — even Kieli could imagine this one. To be more precise, she could remember something she had seen with her own eyes. That rough black stone that was like a machine but also somehow not unlike a living thing.

  “Those stones — the hearts of the Undyings — what in the world are they made of?”

  “They say they’re a crystallization of ultrapure energy sources. Before the War, they mined everywhere, getting a hell of a lot more highly pure fossil fuels than they can now, and built up an energy civilization on the planet. They gathered the essence of all that technology and made the Undyings’ ‘cores.’ But they lost both the resources and the technology in the long War, and all that’s left now is the scrap coal that moves those top-heavy clunkers.”

  She took in the radio’s cynical comment and cast a glance at the rotary, where she could see a few three-wheeled taxis parked in a line, with huge fuel tanks sitting on their roofs, practically crushing them. She had learned some of the history of fossil fuels in school. An ugly war broke out over those resources, enveloping the entire planet, and when the resources dried up, the war naturally died out, too. Not only was it meaningless, but it wasted all kinds of labor on efforts that did nothing but harm and brought destruction over the entire planet.

  The area surrounding the station’s entrance suddenly got very busy. Apparently the train had arrived, and flocks of people came flowing outside as if pushed along. The taxi drivers, who were camping out around the ashtrays in the rotary, smoking, instantly exchanged their bored expressions for courteous smiles and started hunting for customers.

  Kieli gazed emotionlessly at the activity in front of the station and kept chewing her breakfast; by the time she finished, both the arriving and departing passengers had settled down and the flow of people had thinned. The lucky taxis that had apprehended passengers with deep pockets passed in front of her, spewing black smoke and noise as usual.

  She scowled at the exhaust fumes as she swallowed the last bite of her bean sandwich, and just then, she happened to catch sight of a three-wheeled taxi coming her way.

  That instant, the taxi’s front wheel suddenly changed direction and charged toward the bench Kieli and the Corporal were sitting on.

  “Waah!” Kieli screamed, reflexively pulling her legs up onto the bench. Fortunately, the front wheel swerved in the opposite direction in the nick of time, and after tottering from side to side for a while as if the driver was drunk, the taxi came to a sudden stop a little ways off. The driver leapt out, his face pale, and looked around at his car and its surroundings, then got back inside, shaking his head in confusion.

  “There was something on top of it…” Kieli muttered, still a little dazed and clinging to the back of the bench she had scrambled onto as she gazed at the black smoke coming from the taxi as it left the station. For just a second, she had seen a fuzzy black shadow riding on the fuel tank on the roof and blocking the windshield.

  “A nasty evil spirit making mischief. Best not to get involved,” the radio replied, not particularly concerned. But in a somewhat stiffer voice, he added, “We’d better get going, just in case. Let’s go back to Herbie.”

  “Yeah…” Kieli nodded tentatively, but still followed the direction the taxi had taken with her eyes as she slowly lowered her feet from the bench to the ground. She hoped there wouldn’t be any big accidents.

  “Kieli. Yo, let’s go. I’m the one who’ll get smashed to pieces if you get hurt while Herbie’s not around.”

  “Yeah…” she responded halfheartedly to the voice that sounded annoyed as it urged her on. Then, “Eh? What do you mean?” she asked, stunned, before the spectacular noise of a fossil-fueled engine jumped to her ears.

  She looked up in surprise; a different taxi, the same model as the one from before, drove up the street in front of her, then made a ninety-degree turn and entered the station’s front area. As expected, the same black shadow possessed the fuel tank and was hanging upside down from the roof, peering through the windshield. The taxi veered right and left, but for some reason, no one hit the brakes as it charged ahead at breakneck speed.

  At the end of its projected path, she saw a traveler walking along absentmindedly and carrying a large bag, as if he had just come out of the station.

  “Look out!” Kieli yelled, at the same time kicking off from the bench in a run. She caught the traveler’s clothes and barely managed to pull him to the curb in time, but he lost his balance and fell into her, and they both tumbled onto the ground. His travel bag flew out of his hands, clattering loudly as it hit the pavement. The taxi spouted exhaust menacingly, as if yelling at them to get out of the way, as it immediately sped off down the road.

  Still on her rear end on the asphalt, Kieli watched, appalled, as the taxi broke the speed limit. It stopped suddenly in front of the station, and a fat, self-important-looking man jumped out, shouting self-importantly, but that wouldn’t help him catch his train. Ugh, that was close. Serves you right.

  She shifted her hateful gaze upward and saw the evil spirit floating in the air above the runaway taxi, looking over the rotary w
ith a faint smile on its shadowy face. It had only the top half of a body, with abnormally long arms dangling at its sides. The lower half of its body trailed off into the air and vanished.

  When Kieli then turned to look at the traveler who had fallen onto the curb beside her, her jaw dropped and she stared at his profile. She got the feeling that the traveler was directing his eyes at the evil spirit floating in the air, too.

  “Um…” she started to address him, but his gaze quickly moved, as if he hadn’t been looking at anything in particular. He stood up, brushed the dust off his clothes with one hand, and offered her the other. Kieli froze, dumbfounded, so he took her arm himself and helped her up.

  “Thank you.”

  “No, I should be thanking you.” The traveler expressed his gratitude in a soft tone and smiled sweetly. Standing next to him, Kieli saw that he was a young man about the same height as Harvey, and her heart skipped a beat when she got the feeling that he resembled Harvey somehow. In an effort to hide her reaction, she brushed the dust off her skirt, turning her eyes upward to look at the traveler. That was when she first realized that he was no ordinary traveler. He wore pitch-black priest’s garb of fine quality — the clothes of a priest on pilgrimage.

  She wondered why she had thought he resembled Harvey for a second: now that she looked at him, other than his apparent age and height, he wasn’t really like Harvey at all. He was an honest-looking young man, whose blue-gray eyes radiated a gentle aura.

  “From your uniform, I’d say you’re a student at the Easterbury boarding school.” Apparently while Kieli inspected the priest, he had been inspecting her. He looked down at Kieli’s black garments and asked in surprise, “Traveling alone in uniform?”

  “Uh, it’s a research trip. And I’m not alone…” Kieli answered automatically (until she said it, she had completely forgotten about the report herself) and glanced over at her companion on the bench. Then she almost cried out.

  She hadn’t seen the half-bodied evil spirit approach, but suddenly it was floating in the air above the radio, a mischievous smile showing faintly on its face. Static particles spewed out of the radio, forming a fuzzy soldier’s face, which looked overhead and opened its mouth menacingly.

  Waah, Corporal! Kieli screamed inside her head. “I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry! Good-bye!” She bid farewell to the priest without giving him a chance to respond, ran back to the bench, snatched up her bag and the radio, and raced away from the station without giving the evil spirit or the priest another look.

  “There — done…” Harvey muttered to himself, lowering the knife in his hand. He rested his chin on his bent knee and gazed at his handiwork for a while, rather pleased with himself.

  The blank tombstone now had letters engraved on it, though not particularly well. “Here lies Tadai, son of Tadius; younger brother, older brother, and first friend of Harvey.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to make do with this,” Harvey told the grave, then smiled wryly at the ridiculousness of his own action. But there was a little more he wanted to make sure to say out loud.

  “Right now, my life’s generally not so bad, so don’t worry about me. I enjoy what I can wherever I am, and I have someone who’s making life good. But…” As he spoke, he crossed his arms over his knee and buried his face.

  “I’m fed up with it already. Just imagine, every single person I meet up with dies, leaving me behind. Even you. You don’t even care how the hell I feel. You’re satisfied, so you just go and die.”

  His brother under the grave marker would no longer respond like he had the night before. Even so, he waited, hoping somewhere in his heart for something, but all he could hear was the dry sound of the wind carrying the dust and yellow sand that piled up on the ground.

  “Hmph, so no one’s coming to take me away after all?” he spat, with a short sigh, then brushed away the dust and stood up. He looked down once more at the newly engraved tombstone, offered a short prayer, then lifted his eyes and turned away. If they didn’t leave soon, they wouldn’t make it to the ruins before sunset. He felt hesitant about making Kieli camp out.

  “…Well, I guess it’s still all right…” he muttered before leaving the grave. It was more to himself than to his brother sleeping there.

  “Kieli! Hey, Kieli, stop! I’m gonna fall apart! I’m rickety enough as it is!” The radio’s protests were close to screams. Kieli finally stopped running. The radio had been flailing at the end of the cord in her hand as she raced at full speed.

  Catching her breath, she took a look at her surroundings. She had escaped the plaza in front of the station, and the next thing she knew, she was already inside the old city.

  It was already pretty late in the morning, but there were very few passersby. Even the trash strewn across the streets looked weathered, as if the town had given up on the idea of cleaning long ago, and a somehow resigned mood hung in the air. Thanks to the nature of transfer stations, the new town around the station flourished regardless of its remote location, but just a little way away, the place became an old, abandoned ghost town, like the neighborhood around Easterbury’s old station.

  “Oh, that scared me. It would have been big trouble if you had gone on a rampage back there,” Kieli whispered in a subdued voice as she returned the radio and her bag to their normal positions and walked resolutely toward the public cemetery.

  “I was just threatening him a little to get him to go away. Besides, he came up to me first.”

  “You’re the one that said it’s best not to get involved with spirits like that, Corporal,” she responded, pursing her lips. The radio groaned and said vaguely, “Never mind that,” forcing the conversation in another direction.

  “It’s good that it got you away from that guy. Of course I feel the same about that evil spirit, but something about that guy just really bugs me. It’s best not to get involved with him either.”

  “Why?” His sudden warning shocked Kieli, and she looked down at the radio as it swung against her stomach in time with her footsteps.

  “Something felt weird about him.”

  “What did?”

  “Just something. I was trying to get a better idea when that annoying spirit came up to me.”

  “So basically there’s no reason. I thought he was nice.”

  She tried to remember the priest’s face, but he hadn’t really left an impression on her except that he had pretty blue-gray eyes that matched the night sky, and that for some reason, he reminded her of Harvey for a second. But she at least didn’t get the impression that he was a bad man.

  The radio seemed to want to say more, but convinced himself, “Oh well, we’ll never see him again. We’re leaving this town,” bringing the conversation to a close.

  “Yeah,” Kieli replied only briefly, and shut her mouth for a while.

  If they walked all day, they would reach the ruins that evening. Before she knew it, their destination was right in front of them. Kieli became aware of that fact and suddenly started to worry about what would happen after they got there. It had seemed so far off, she didn’t have much of a sense that the time would come — no, maybe, unconsciously, she was trying not to think about it.

  There wasn’t much left of the Colonization Days vacation. When they returned from the ruins, Kieli would have to go back to the boarding school, although not even Becca would be there anymore when she got back. What would Harvey do after returning the Corporal to his grave…?

  “Um, hey. When we get to the ruins, we’ll have to say good-bye, won’t we?” she asked hesitantly as she turned down a side street in the direction of the public cemetery. After a short silence, the radio answered, “Yeah.” She couldn’t tell him she didn’t want to. Not if it was what the Corporal wanted and if it was natural for dead people, like it was for Becca.

  She left the narrow, paved byroad and started up the staircase that zigzagged up the inner wall. At the top was the abandoned Church school, and the lot next to that was the old city’s public cemet
ery.

  “Wha?”

  Right as she passed the landing on the highest level, something suddenly yanked her neck from behind, and she automatically let out a cry as the air rushed out of her throat. Surprised that she had stopped breathing for a moment, she turned her head behind her.

  Two long arms appeared impossibly in the air and were trying to take the radio that hung from her neck — to be more accurate, they were trying to drag out the spirit that was possessing the radio.

  “Let go, damn it!” the soldier yelled, the top half of his body having been pulled out of the floating radio. Kieli’s legs swam in the air as she was pulled backward with the radio. Before she could react, her back hit the concrete stairs, and she slid backward down a few steps to the landing below.

  “Kgh…” she cried wincing at the pain in her back, then sat up and looked to her left and right. The radio had come off her neck, and she could see it banging against the pavement as it rolled down the stairs.

  “Corporal!” Despite the pain, Kieli stood up and hurried after the radio. She got impatient and started skipping steps, running with such force that it seemed any wrong step would send her tumbling down the stairs, too; but anyway, she ran.

  The radio bounced high with a dull thud. Kieli reached out with all her might to grab its cord, but there was no stair for her foot to land on.

  “Ahhh — !”

  She curled up instinctively, but this time she fell past the landing and all the way to the bottom, stopping when she crashed onto the pavement in the alley below. “…gh!” A moment later, an intense pain attacked her shoulder joints, and she let out a scream that had no voice.

  “Kieli!” the radio’s call hit the back of her head as she cringed, unable to move from the pain. Its voice immediately changed into a furious roar. She managed to look up to see the half-bodied spirit floating above the radio on the ground in front of her. Its long arms wrapped around the Corporal’s spirit body as it tried to pull him out of the radio.