***
I have no idea how much time passed before I came to, finding Naomi sitting there in the dark room with a fingerless woman, crying.
“I'm so sorry,” Naomi said after wiping her face off. “They obviously did something to Makiko, probably like those you saw in Kabukicho, so...” her face twisted in revulsion at what she had just accidentally said, and she retched, once, without actually throwing up. She looked over to the fingerless girl on the bed, obviously stalling for time, trying to think of something else to say. I didn’t want her apologies or any gestures of comfort. I wanted to stand up and punch her in the face. Push her against the wall and hit her over and over again. If the news about my wife hadn’t already knocked me to the ground, I may actually have done it. I shook, feeling the latent violence in my hands and the readiness with which it came against a perfectly innocent person. I needed to get away from these people. At that moment, I wanted Makiko to stand up and take a bite out of my face so I could sit there, bleeding to death, welcoming the end with open arms.
Naomi pulled herself back from the girl sleeping on the bed and looked at me with obvious effort. “She said she was looking for her husband, a foreigner.”
I said nothing, able to do nothing but sit there and wish the end of the world had taken me with it. I looked back at her, and she must have read the blame in my eyes, because she started sobbing afresh, looking at the ground and choking on her own tears. She wasn’t responsible for my wife’s death, but I wanted someone to hurt as badly as I did. It was unfair, it was petty of me, and I hated myself for it. They should have turned me away at the door. She was really trying to help me, but I couldn’t offer her anything in return. I felt shame like I hadn’t in years. I wanted to help her, to tell her it really wasn’t her fault and that I didn’t hate her, didn’t blame her, even if those were lies. But I sat there for uncountable minutes. I let the moment drag out too long until it was too late to stand and console her. She would never believe that I didn’t blame her, not now. Nothing I said or did could change the space of time that had passed and the look I had given her.
I stood up and leaned against the wall, dizzy and swaying. Making everything even worse, she switched back to nurse mode automatically, and stood up putting that uncomfortably female arm around my waist again. She was a better person than I could ever be. I took a deep breath and tried to force my face into something that didn’t look as awful as I felt.
We walked back into the other room, and by way of greeting Kaz said “I could have gotten thirty years in jail for possession of this assault rifle you know.” I didn't know what to say to that, so I just nodded. I wondered if that was Kaz’s way of trying to make us forget about what Naomi and I had been talking about in the room. I’m sure he saw the barely concealed tension on my face. I asked how he had found the girls, still wondering in the back of my mind what happened to the others left at Naomi's apartment, but unable to summon up the courage to ask since she hadn't volunteered the information. Naomi helped me back to the sleeping bag, laying me down and pretending like nothing at all had happened. Kaz told me about how he had set up the generator here and gone out looking for supplies and generally hoping to shoot something dangerous. He never got the chance, but he did find Yuki wandering around near the bottom of Kudan Hill, and then luckily saw Naomi while trying to coax some words out of the dazed and frightened teenager. Since the two girls were the only ones left, Naomi allowed Kaz to take them both back to the zoo, along with the unconscious, fingerless girl in the zoo maintenance truck.
I couldn't remember if I had mentioned the portals in my ramblings through the door of the reptile house, and they never asked me about it. I guess it was possible that they didn't know how to approach or even process the existence of such gateways. I was still having trouble with it myself. They couldn't possibly remain a secret for long though, so I told them everything I knew about those awful doorways. Even Yuki sat up and listened. I wanted to continue on alone, but I told them they were welcome to come with me, while I searched for the arsonist. He was the only one who seemed to know exactly what to do from the beginning, when the rest of us were just stumbling around trying to stay alive. Kaz seemed willing to go anywhere, but Naomi was reluctant to leave the injured girl in her condition, so he decided to stay with the girls. Yuki looked at me, then faced away and leaned up against the wall. I silently sighed my relief. I couldn’t say why I wanted to search alone, but it just felt right. The others didn't try to stop me.
Naomi came over to me as I looked through my pack getting ready to leave the next morning as soon as it was light. The shame I had felt the night before came flooding back, and it took all my strength to act natural. I really didn’t want to hurt her feelings again. I leaned against the wall, sitting on a sleeping bag trying not to meet her eyes since she was just sitting and staring at me. She was getting really good at making me feel uncomfortable even though I was sure it had nothing to do with the previous night. I pretended to look sleepy, and she smiled, came over with a large waist pack, fished out a tube of ointment and smeared it on my shoulder stitches, then bandaged it tightly and expertly.
She looked me in the eyes, her face only a foot away from mine, long bangs hanging in her face, sharply angled up to a short length that showed off the entirety of her slender neck. “I don't make you nervous, do I?” she said with a huge smile that showed off her dark gums, matching her naturally dark skin. She was perfectly aware that she was making me nervous. The smile faded quickly and she spoke to me quietly. “I wish you weren't going. It'd be good to have you along.”
I honestly didn't know what to say to that. I opened my mouth to apologize, but she shook her head, somehow knowing what I was going to say.
“No. It’s OK.” She squeezed my hand, looking with watery painful eyes that filled with a message; I'm sorry about your wife. She walked away and lay down on her own sleeping bag near the door to the room with the injured woman, and it sounded like she was sniffling. I wondered if I would ever see her again, and I decided it was best not to wonder about it. I lay down on my own sleeping bag, closed my eyes tightly so the tears wouldn't leak out, and fell asleep, trying not to dream of my wife.
I woke a lot less quickly than I would have liked, especially since I could sense that something was definitely wrong as soon as I was awake. It felt like my head was wrapped in cotton and my eyes were gummed shut, but I heard Naomi's voice, harder and more commanding than before. I pushed myself up, blinking an image into focus of Kaz holding his assault rifle ready, but pointed toward the floor. I looked over to see Naomi, her hands out in front of her, palms facing the woman who was no longer unconscious. Her eyes were glowing a pale shade of blue I had never seen before in the others. Yuki stood there, with a black combat knife in her hand, completely at odds with my image of her before, looking still and determined and afraid all at the same time. Even Kaz looked scared, standing there with his rifle. The girl with the glowing eyes just stood there, staring into the room, her mouth slack and open. Then in hit me. The heat. The room was hot, much hotter than before, and all of that heat was radiating off the girl with no fingers. I had already forgotten her name. Naomi kept telling her to go lay back down, but the forcefulness in her voice didn't sound like it was for the girl's benefit. The tableau of potential violence seemed to slow and freeze before me. Naomi, skinnier and shorter than the woman with the glowing eyes stood there, strong and full of purpose. Yuki, taller and fuller than Naomi, her long black hair hanging like a mask, while she stood ready with the knife, and Kaz, sweating while he held the rifle. Then it all broke. My eyes dropped to the hand without the fingers, only now there were fingers, or something like fingers, but they were dark and pointed and hard to see. The slack jaw suddenly snapped shut and the woman with the glowing eyes lunged at Naomi, as reflex carried me away from the wall, launching me at the space in between Naomi and the attacking girl a split second later. I bumped Yuki out of the way and heard her fall with a sharp cry of pai
n, hoping she hadn't landed on her knife. I ducked my head instinctively, my shoulder hit the woman's chest and the top of my head found her throat with a heavy crunch that I felt more than heard. The woman slammed into the wall and Kaz was screaming at me to get out of the way. I backpedaled into Naomi, dropping us both as Kaz fired three shots, all center mass into the girl against the wall. It was impossibly loud in the small room, like thunderclaps in a closet. She took each shot without even jerking, like she absorbed and dissipated the kinetic energy of each bullet effortlessly. Crap. If this was one of the improvements they had made over the past few weeks, we'd never make it another month. The woman lunged at Kaz this time whose grimace would have been funny somewhere else, but I threw a leg out, tripping her over me and onto the floor. I rolled over, pinning her between myself and the door, all the while trying not to get touched by her hand with those black slippery fingers, her body heat radiating through her clothes like she was hiding hot coals in her jeans. And as fast as it had started, she lay still like a toy with its batteries drained. Naomi turned the girl's head around and her eyes were dark. Whatever fuel had been driving her, it had spent itself quickly. I rolled off the woman’s, her searing heat rapidly cooling, and I heard Naomi talking over a whining ring in my ears. Yuki sat on the floor, rubbing her arm, but she looked unharmed.
“I guess I'm going with you to find the arsonist now”, Naomi said as she put her pinkie in her ear, probably testing it out to see if the eardrum had been ruptured. She sat, suspiciously eying the woman who had just attacked us, like she was hoping she wouldn't get up again.
I couldn't argue with that.
Day 16 After
They told me it has been sixteen days since the world ended. So I lost five days after I went to the hospital. Almost an entire week. I helped Kaz and the girls load some emergency rations, bottles of water good for five year storage, vacuum sealed tins of Ritz crackers, and big blocks of chocolate. It was all meant for earthquakes, but Kaz seemed to prefer it to whatever had preserved the rest of the food in the stores. I couldn't blame him, even though I had been eating whatever I found. He had a few more magazines for the rifle, but debated on whether or not it would do him any good to bring them. It didn't seem to work well against the puppets and he hadn't been able to shoot any of the kuromaku since he'd been paralyzed each time. We all climbed into the van and he took it down Shinobazu street and back around the park to my car. It sat there, unharmed except for the broken window and bloody streaks I hadn't cleaned off. We thought it would be better to travel in two cars for now in case something happened to one of them. I got out of the van and just as I opened my mouth to tell Kaz and Naomi where we were going, Yuki jumped out with her bag and threw it in the cop car, opened the passenger side door and got in.
“I guess she wants to go with you,” Naomi said with a smile. Kaz merely arched an eyebrow, a facial expression I never would have pictured on him.
“You lead the way,” he said and sat back in the seat, ready for anything, probably. I wished I had his confidence.
There was no reply waiting for me at the intersection of Nishikata and my old place. I didn't bother telling the others that I used to live near there, because... well I couldn't trust myself to keep it together if we went back into my apartment and saw the things Airi had touched and used. I just wanted to keep moving. Yuki didn't talk in the car, and I didn't offer any conversation. At one point I looked over to say something, but she looked me in the eye and I knew I didn't have to talk. Not even out of high school and she could communicate better nonverbally than anyone I had ever met. But here we all were; three people following me on an errand that had little chance of success. I wasn't stupid, thinking that they looked up to me for guidance, but somehow I didn't want to let them down. Maybe if for no other reason than to apologize to Naomi in some way. So I told them I had one more place to check and we headed off for Chidorigafuchi.