Felled by Ark

  ***

  I lay on my sleeping bag again, unable to sleep. I wasn't alone. Taka, Koji and Jun were sleeping a few feet away from me. I still found it hard to believe that they weren't like the corpses I've seen so far, and maybe that’s the reason I couldn't seem to take my eyes off them. They seemed to be sleeping soundly enough for normal people, but I kept expecting them to stand up with glowing eyes and sprout knives from their hands and lunge for me. They were completely exhausted, telling me they had been awake for nearly two days with no sleep at all. They’d kept moving and burning buildings whenever they could. They said it was a feeling they got when passing someplace that the Uncle Deadlies had been. As they explained it, it hadn't seemed like something they discussed among the three of them, it was more like a consensus. Or at least that's what I think the word must mean, I didn't bother looking it up in my dictionary. Nearly ten days have gone by without thinking having to think in Japanese and I’ve already started to forget.

  After waking up, I drove to Tsukishima, doubling back through Ginza and getting lost for a few hours. I slowly cruised the streets one by one, keeping to streets I could be sure of not getting the car stuck in. Because it was dark I could just barely see the smoke still rising from the building by the time I made it there. I drove the car slowly, ending up near the Riverside Apartments when I saw one of the high-rises still on fire.

  It was strange, but I felt sad seeing the Riverside Apartment building burn. Airi and I had only been to this area a few times together, but while walking around here one day I had seen a clear picture of what our future would have been like if we had moved there. I saw us walking by the canals with the daughter we had always wanted but never had. Watching her throw rocks into the water, trying to make them skip like I was doing, and getting frustrated like only a three-year-old could. I never told Airi about those images, and now I wished I had. I supposed it was better that we never had a daughter, because that was just one more person I'd have to worry about in this new world. So I sat there, watching the Riverside Apartment tower burn and thinking about those things. I was dazed by the memory, and only just barely noticed three dark figures watching the building burn from across the street. One of them turned and looked at the car without fear, then leaned close to the two others, saying something, and they all started walking toward the car. They didn't look like the Uncle Deadlies, and the corpses I had seen walking around didn't talk to each other, but I didn't want to take any chances.

  I got out of the car holding the chisel tip knife down by my leg, out of view. The one in the middle must have seen it though, because he stopped and held his hands up in the universal “I'm unarmed” gesture. The other two immediately followed suit and stayed where they were. The one in the middle was tall and skinny, the one on the left, stocky and wearing baggy construction pants. The one on the right wore a suit with a filthy white business shirt, covered in blood spatter, dirt, and ash. All three wore bandannas tied across their mouths and noses to block the smoke.

  They looked nervous, but I couldn't blame them. I stood there, a large, dirty foreigner with a week and a half's growth of beard, holding a knife and standing next to a scratched and dented police car covered in bloody streaks with a broken passenger window. I sympathized with them, but I wasn't feeling particularly friendly. I've never been one for initiating conversations, and I didn't start this one either.

  The tall one kept telling me over and over again in Japanese that everything was OK and I should relax. Usually that would have just pissed me off, but oddly enough it made me feel better. I hadn't heard a single voice in nine days and just the sound of normal human speech put me at ease. I stowed the knife in the horizontal sheath on my belt, and they visibly relaxed, but stood ready, waiting for something. In my five years in Japan, the only people I had seen with that tense, ready-to-spring posture were on parliamentary members' bodyguards, some police, and a few hardcore martial artists. Any inclination towards this kind of attitude usually faded away because of the low rates of violent crime, or beaten out by the daily grind, crappy bosses and overwork. From what I could tell at first glance though, these were regular guys. The tall one probably worked in a department store selling men’s clothes from the way he was dressed, the suit obviously worked in some office, and the stocky guy was a construction worker. So there shouldn't have been anything special to make them so aware. But whatever had happened to them in the last nine days had changed them forever. I offered them a ride and they accepted right away, getting their bags and supplies from the hiding place where they watched their work of arson. I still wanted to sit there, even though it felt like my memories were going up in smoke. The reassurance I felt when hearing their voices was short-lived. I was sad rather than relieved to find more survivors. I wanted the first person to be Airi.

  We drove back toward Toyosu and to the small Nippon Rent a Car kiosk where they had been staying for a few days. It was on the same street as the cloud-obscured power plant and bridge a half mile away. We checked around the parking lot, the street nearby and the small red building. The rough, gray curtain of fog was barely visible as an occlusion of the sky a few blocks away, light just barely illuminating it, cast from a tall building that still had power in Ginza.

  I still didn't want to sleep inside the kiosk, but it was hard to argue since it was such a small building with no place for the Uncle Deadlies to hide. Jun and his friends had moved most of the cars into a rough barricade, ostensibly preventing any easy, direct path to the kiosk without climbing over everything. Unless you had a key to the front gate, anyway, which they did. The way the Uncles had moved, with that quick, easy insect-like speed flashed through my mind, and I knew that the car barricade wasn't enough. Maybe it prevented some of the reanimated citizens of Tokyo from getting through, or at least maybe they'd make enough noise so you could wake up before they started pulling you apart. It just seemed like a waste of time to me, but I kept my mouth shut. I wondered, but didn't ask why they hadn't taken one of the rental cars. It seemed dumb to go around on foot when there was an ample supply of vehicles. There was something about them I didn't trust though, and I wanted to keep my mouth shut. They had asked me almost nothing on the way back and I didn't volunteer anything in return.

  They had been moving, trying to stay quiet for days, looking for buildings that the Uncles had come out of. They had seen similar spray painted messages about burning the bridge gates. They used the same word since they had seen the same message written on the streets in different parts of Tokyo, although Jun admitted they didn't understand it much either. I told them I couldn't stay with them for long, that I had to keep moving. They accepted that without comment and went to sleep while I stayed up to keep watch. I wanted to know if they experienced that same paralyzing dread when it in the presence of the Uncles. But for some reason I couldn't ask them. I don't know if it was embarrassment or just fear, but it wouldn't come out. It didn't matter anyway. I planned on leaving in the morning, and I'd never see them again. I thought I'd want company to help me search the building of Airi's friend the next day, but I didn't like them. I couldn't put a finger on it, or even rule out that it was just my own nerves getting the better of me.