10.
A severed head weighed enough to lug around, but loading Kaito and Hana’s corpses on the freight shifter made me feel like a one-armed man rolling two boulders up a hill. Kaito’s body, slick with blood and stubborn as ever, slipped off the conveyance more than once, showing a particular fondness for gravity.
Why did the dead weigh so damned much? I considered burning their bodies, but decided against it. Ritual burning was an honor neither of them deserved.
Operating an unfamiliar piece of equipment in complete darkness also hindered my disposal plan. The freight shifter’s controls were a maze of rusted levers and sticky buttons. Surprisingly, the damned thing still ran after the firefight, coughing out black smoke like a dying beast. Every jolt over the uneven ground threatened to send the bodies tumbling again, and I cursed under my breath each time I had to stop and wrestle Kaito’s corpse back into place.
As I neared the pit, the stench hit me first, a wall of rot and despair rising from the earth. I cut the engine and listened. Nothing stirred in the darkness, not even insects—as if death had silenced everything within reach.
The pit gaped before me, an open wound in the earth. Moonlight caught on pale limbs and vacant faces below, a tangle of bodies dropped there and forgotten.
Kaito and Hana deserved this company. I muscled their bodies to the edge, shoving with my boot until they tumbled down, flopping like discarded dolls. They landed with dull thuds among the others, indistinguishable now from the rest. Just meat.
I’d found several packs of explosives in the soldiers’ gear—enough firepower to collapse the entire pit. Working quickly, I set the charges around the perimeter, my hands steady despite everything. The dead wouldn’t care about what came next, but I’d make sure nothing living crawled out of this hole.
After placing the charges, I retreated to a safe distance and triggered the detonation. The ground buckled beneath me. A flash of light split the night, followed by a thunderous crack that I felt in my bones. Earth fountained upward, then rained down in clumps and dust.
“For the clan,” I whispered to the ruined earth. The blast had sealed the fate of any Otakoga trapped down there, living or dead. No one would rise from that grave now.
By the time I reached the house, sweat had soaked my clothes and my hair clung to my scalp. Mud and blood coated my skin, and the stench of slaughter hung on me, thick and inescapable.
Glass crunched beneath my boots as I entered the kitchenette. The camp stove had petered out, leaving a pungent cloud of charred grease and a blackened pot that looked like it had cooked its last meal.
In one corner, I found a large jug of drinking water, its plastic scratched but intact. That was a small mercy since the kitchen tap did nothing but groan and spit mud as if the earth itself was choking on this cursed place.
I refilled my canteen with potable water, the cool liquid a fleeting relief against my parched throat. Then I hacked the spout off the jug with my knife, stripped to the waist, and sluiced myself down between grateful gulps. The impromptu shower made me feel like a new person, even without soap and at room temperature.
After wiping down my anorak, I remembered the itadori and used the last of the water to give them a good soak, hoping it might help soften their withered stalks.
One trip to the loft equipped me with a new t-shirt, hoodie, and socks. Judging by their sweat and mildew smells, they hadn’t seen a washer in some time, but at least they were dry. Soaked from water and sweat, my leathers had chafed my inner thighs raw. I hoped my body heat would dry them enough overnight. No way was I wrestling out of them now.
I gathered what little else the house offered—a few coins, a dented flashlight. and a half-empty box of matches—and headed to the barn, pushing the TerraCycle.
Silence flooded the street, an invisible tide broken only by the scrape of my boots and the crunch of the TerraCycle’s wheels against the broken asphalt. I slowed my pace to savor the chill. No breeze stirred the treetops, and no stars winked down. Even the cats had retreated for the night, leaving me alone in a ghost town.
Another person, superstitious and fearful of what might rise from all that spilled blood, might have burned it down, salted the ashes, or constrained it with ritual blessings. Fire and salt: I’d never put much stock in any of that stuff. Asking a god for help seemed about as helpful as locking a broken door against a kufugaki horde. The dead didn’t care for incense or chants. They only cared for blood.
The haunting image of the people in the pit lingered despite my efforts to shake it. Nameless faces of countless fathers, sons, friends, and brothers flashed before my eyes—generations discarded like scraps! As the imagined faces of my clan members joined their ranks, the bodies of the dead stirred, commanded by an unseen force.
They twisted and merged into a single, malevolent entity, a grotesque amalgamation of flesh and bone. Blind yet eerily aware, it surged over the edge of their unmarked grave, undulating across the ground as a quivering mass. Rotting folds and monstrous, intestine-like flaps pulsed with unnatural life, the rancid stench from its feral maw engulfing me. Its desiccated tongue and pallid lips struggled to form silent syllables, a word emerging from the collective wrath of all those wronged dead: Vengeance!
I had given them a tiny taste tonight, the barest sip of retribution. But, as Satoshi used to say, the dead were always hungry. Their hunger now gnawed at me. I’d spilled blood for them, but it wasn’t enough. It never would be.
Satoshi. Was he alive? Did Mazawa’s goons hold him in some cell, his body broken but his spirit still spitting defiance? And Juno—what had happened to her? I couldn’t afford these questions. Not when each one spiraled into blame. The illegal hunt and inexperienced crew: all Juno’s ideas. Though Satoshi played a willing role, she had orchestrated this catastrophe.
Why? What had driven her to turn on us? The Juno I knew—or thought I knew—had been fierce and loyal, a credit to the Shinu and her uncle, Tetsuo. But that Juno was gone, replaced by a shadow who’d led us into a trap.
I pushed the TerraCycle harder, my shoulders burning as I forced its dead weight through the rutted street. Memories assailed me from all sides, their familiarity now poisoned by Juno’s betrayal. She, not Satoshi, had steered us into a rigged building, its walls hiding an unseen patrol waiting to spring. Tobi’s blood—and for all I knew, Aya’s—was on her hands.
Her treachery scorched me as much as my physical exhaustion. How could she betray Satoshi? All of us? The question looped in my mind, becoming a noose around my heart.
My chest constricted, and my legs turned to stone, refusing to move. I collapsed against the TerraCycle’s handlebars, fighting for air. Flames danced ahead, crimson smears against the darkness—not real, but distortions born of exhaustion and rage. I blinked to clear them, but they lingered, mocking me. No matter how much I wanted to deny Juno’s guilt, some thoughts, once planted, take root. This one twisted deeper with each beat of my heart: Juno betrayed us. She betrayed us all!
The street warped beneath me. As the air thickened, a rush filled my ears—a roar, a scream, the sound of my blood pounding. Darkness swarmed over me, pulling me into its fold.