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In my line of work, I rarely had to worry about body disposal: head in hand and I was good to go. Why did the dead have to weigh so damned much? Loading these bodies was like trying to roll a pair of boulders uphill! Kaito's, which slipped off the cargo mover more than once during its trip through the deserted town, seemed especially fond of gravity. At first, I considered burning the corpses, but then decided against it. Burning, like burial, was an honor neither of them deserved. Driving a piece of unfamiliar equipment with no freaking headlights didn't help, either. The way I'd pommeled the freight-shifter with beam lobs, I should've been grateful it ran at all.
By the time we reached the house at the end of the lane, I was drenched in sweat, mud and blood, and smelled like a slaughterhouse. After relieving the soldiers of their wristlets, I left the bodies out in the open, a feast for cats and crows.
Glass crunching beneath my boots, I entered the kitchenette. The camp stove had petered out, leaving a pungent cloud and blackened pot, but I found a large jug of drinking water in one corner. The kitchen tap, unfortunately, did nothing but groan and spit mud. After refilling my canteen with the potable water, I hacked the spout off the jug, stripped to the waist, and sluiced myself down. Even at room temperature and without soap, a quick shower made me feel like a new person. After giving my aramid and anorak a much-needed splashdown, I remembered the itadori and used the last of the jug to give its withered bloodied stalks a good soak.
One trip to the loft later found me good to go, outfitted with new t-shirts and socks. From their funky smells, neither were freshly-laundered, but at least they were dry. Still wet, my leathers were beginning to chafe my inner thighs. I hoped my body heat would dry them out enough overnight. No way was I wrestling out of them now.
I gathered up my food and gear. Pausing only long enough to spit on the corpses in the yard, I headed back to the barn with the TerraCycle.
Without the drone of machinery, silence flooded the street in an invisible tide. I slowed my pace and let it wash over me, savoring the chill air in great gulps. No breeze stirred the treetops, no stars winked down; even the cats had retreated, leaving me alone, absolutely alone, the sole survivor in a murdered town.
A ghost town...
It was, now. A superstitious person might've burned it down and salted its ashes—or worse, tried to constrain its traumatized spirits with a blessing. I'd never put much stock in any of that stuff. Prayer, like fire and salt, seemed akin to locking a broken window. Still, I couldn't stop myself from picturing the men in the pit. So many fathers and sons and friends and brothers— generations discarded like scraps on a heap—nameless, faceless. As the imagined faces of my clansmen and Satoshi joined them, the bodies of the dead began to move, as some untold force awoke within their pallid stiffened limbs. Compelled by this power, beyond death, beyond comprehension, they began to twist and shift until their bodies fused into a single entity. Faceless and sightless, yet sentient, this quivering mound, this blob of flesh, seethed over the sides of its untimely grave. I could see it coming for me, the rotting folds and flaps of its feral maw contorting in its attempts to form a single word, the collective intention of the wrongfully dead: Vengeance!
I'd given them only a taste and, as Satoshi used to say, the dead were always hungry.
No, I didn't want to think about him right now, not when every thought circled back to fault: I hadn't warned him in time, hadn't done enough—
Nothing.
The thought sent gooseflesh crawling over my arms. I pushed the bike harder, quickening my pace, as if the scuff of my boots and crunch of tires against wet pavement were a defense against the inevitable.
I'd dismissed his concerns, laughed at him. Even my last words to him were a sarcastic slap in the face—What else do you want, Satoshi? A hug? A goodbye kiss? After that, I'd sprinted down the dock without a wave, without a backwards glance.
I never said good-bye...
Invisible hands clamped around my chest, their tightness so sudden and painful, I had to stop. My breath came in hitches and my legs felt like lead. Up ahead, flames beckoned, then blurred so badly the fire was little more than an orange smear against a deeper darkness.
I never said good-bye.
That one lapse would dog me like a second shadow until the day I died, a haunting worse than any ghost.
I never said, never said—
The air thickened. Night swarmed over me.