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Another day dragged itself up into a gloomy dawn beneath a gunmetal sky. It had rained hard sometime during the night. The fire was ash soup and large puddles stippled the street. Except for mist wraiths that snaked in lazy eddies among the abandoned buildings, nothing moved. Even the crows were still asleep, tucked deep beneath early morning's pall of silence. I would have welcomed just one of their harsh cries, anything to break the unsettling finality in a stillness that wasn't peace.
The TerraCycle had charged overnight, at least. After choking down a breakfast of raw, wilted itadori and water, I gathered up my gear and rechecked the day's travel route. Although some soldier markers were still visible—some midway to Sawagi, some drifting in clumps near its perimeter—there were fewer than there'd been the night before. Grateful to catch even the smallest break, I fired up the bike.
Fog blanketed the road out of town. Its thick swells parted reluctantly, then ghosted back, closing about me in clammy curtains that my headlight could not penetrate. If not for the slosh of weeds beneath the tires and the breeze generated by the bike, I wouldn't have known I was moving at all. Like the way in, the road out of the Otakoga village, gouged with potholes and jagged fissures, had seen its share of disasters, natural and otherwise. Eager to avoid the worst of these, I rode its edge beside a waterlogged ditch.
Gradually, the road curved and the ruined shells of buildings became fewer and more far between, turning into overgrown fields where only the occasional peak of a barn or outbuilding reared through the stubborn mist. The day warmed, but its gloom persisted, punctuated by distant rumblings. A thin drizzle clouded my goggles, when not beading them with fine droplets. I was almost relieved when the road dipped into a canopy thick enough to ward off the rain.
Except that was also where it dead-ended.
I squinted into the gloom. While no discernible path magically presented itself through the leaves, a heady smell here told me that there was something to eat. Though sansai had never been my strong suit—I couldn't tell a mushroom from a toadstool, my knowledge of wild edibles limited to berries, which weren't yet in season—even I recognized the potential feast spread out before me. Purple flowers, some unopened and still resembling spearheads, reared on long slender stems. Covering the forest floor like a living carpet, a profusion of vines with bright green leaves scaled the nearby trees.
I dove into the kudzu, snapping off blooms and cutting the younger shoots with their tender stalks and leaves. Although technically a weed—and a pervasive one, at that—kudzu grew in abundance throughout the country, demonstrating remarkable resilience in the face of fires, floods, and monsoon loads of pesticides. No matter what nature or people threw at them, the plants simply refused to die. What luck, I thought, as I scarfed down a handful of sweet blossoms. Until I started stuffing my face, I hadn't realized just how hungry I'd been.
But realization came with a hefty side order of remorse. Those poor Otakoga! If they'd just stuck to sansai, instead of relying on the holodome, they might still be alive right now! The soldiers called them resistors and traitors, but resisting what—age and pregnancy mandates or just Mazawa's brutishness in general? The few men I'd seen looked half-starved and there'd been no weapons in the house. None! Exactly how were they going to mount a resistance without an arsenal?
The more questions I asked, the more they all dead-ended. Where was the threat so great, so terrible that Mazawa, an old man—old, because none of his fucking rules applied to him—felt he needed to wipe out entire clans? Clearly, he didn't need the Idoron for that, so what more did it do?
As I pushed further into the patch, chewing on a stalk, my foot plunged through the ground cover into dead air. Only a panicked grasp on one of the thicker vines saved me from plunging off the edge of a cliff. Instead of mulling over a bunch of unanswerable questions or trying to discern the motives of an absolute lunatic, I should've watched where I was going. I flung myself back to safety.
Having had my fill of greens and blooms, I gathered more for later, then, using my knife, dug out a few of the bulging roots. Even in Sawagi, fresh food was always in demand. What I didn't eat, I could always trade.
After hacking my way through more kudzu, I navigated steep declines for hours, losing my grip on the TerraCycle more than a few times in my attempts to walk it down slippery, sometimes ankle-deep mulch. Branches lashed across my face, threatening to blind me, and skewered my sides as I swerved around trees. Dirt trickled into my leathers and twigs riddled my hair.
If all that wasn't bad enough, drawn by the sweat, a cloud of mosquitoes decided to join me in the descent. Bloodthirsty little fuckers! When not struggling for balance I was now either swatting like a maniac or trying desperately not to scratch.
Jostled for so long on a debris-choked obstacle course, I actually cheered when my downward slide ended in a series of rocky ledges that jutted over a river. Spilling down from rapids, it formed a natural basin, shaped like a bowl. A deep one, too, I could tell by the greenish cast that tinted the paler rocks along its bottom.
Grateful for a chance to rest, I tugged off my anorak and dirty boots. I couldn't feel my butt anymore, and my arms felt ready to pop out of their sockets. The mosquitoes had done a number on me, too. Any patch of open skin that wasn't swollen or bleeding was a raging itch.
The one beneath my tattoo, especially.
The rain increased to a steady shower, raising frothy bubbles, and as heavy drops peppered the surface, a crackle that sounded like applause. From the still-distant grumbles, however, the storm was still far enough away to chance a swim. The morning's trek had left me a filthy stinking mess. Although my leathers would mount a clinging protest, they needed a good airing, and a long soak in the river was just what I needed.
After wrestling out of them, I left my clothes beneath the heat-conserving tarp and dove in.
Frigid water brought me spluttering to the surface. I kicked over to the nearest ledge and clung to it, gasping.
When a more comfortable numbness suffused my limbs, I submerged, rubbing vigorously until my ministrations took me to the river bed. After a few more scrubbing dunks, I paddled over to the waterfall for a power rinse. When finished, I dove back in and rode an eddy back to the ledge.
Refreshed, although my teeth were chattering and my fingernails blue around their moons, I climbed out and wrapped myself in the tarp. I would've preferred a roaring blaze, but building fires, like cooking food, took too much time. Time, I couldn't afford to waste.
Once dry and warmed up enough with the tarp, I dressed quickly. Knowing I had to cross the river for the next leg of my journey, I scouted for a shallow crossing spot downstream.
It didn't take long to find one. By the time I jogged back to my bike, the rain had dialed itself down from applause to annoying drizzle mode once more.
As I started to wheel the bike downriver, a splash of color on its GPS caught in my periphery. What I saw nearly made me shit my pants.