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They reached the edge of what used to be Tokyo in the early afternoon.
Kei scrambled up the dark bank, hanging off a scrap of scaffolding that was anchored deep in the rubble. Everything for as long as he could see was covered in a fine, grey dust that covered him up to his knees.
The crater stretched forward as far as he could see, sloping sharply downwards until the depths were swallowed with shadows. It looked like the pitted surface of the moon. It was so unreal, Kei couldn’t drag his eyes away, marvelling at the pure destruction.
“Whoa...” Kou reached the bank next to Kei, staring out into the dark earth. “Whoa...” He said, again.
Kei started to slip and pulled himself up, steadying himself between two metal bars. Chuncks of sharp metal pockmarked the dark earth, rising up like the blackened bones of a charred fish. Smoke mixed with ash curled upwards in the brilliant summer day.
“I didn’t think it’d actually happened,” Kou admitted, quietly. He looked down at the ground under his feet.
Silently, Kei agreed. They’d been in the bunker when it had happened, trying to unwire Sato’s network. They’d felt the explosion hundreds of miles away, seen the destruction on the broadcasts—but there was something different about seeing it in front of them. Kei had calmly accepted it a hundred miles away and several dozen metres underground. With it in front of him it felt suddenly ludicrous, totally implausible.
“I mean, I know Satou was totally crazy,” Kou said, running a hand through his hair, “but still, this is—”
A gunshot muffled him.
Kei lowered his pistol, watching the undead flop back to the ground, half their skull splattered over their school uniform. “Sorry, you were saying?” He asked, slipping the gun back into his holster.
Kou watched the dead girl’s hair curl as it floated in her dark, sticky blood. “It doesn’t matter,” Kou said, skidding down the bank.
“Good,” Kei jumped onto solid ground, “Because we ought to get moving.”
*
“Ah, Kei, look!” Kou shoved a busted automatic door open, and ducked inside a dusty shop. The roof was made mostly of green plastic and creaked in the wind. Kei stood outside, peering through the windows warily.
“It’s medical supplies!” Kou said, stuffing some bandages and plasters in his backpack. He snatched a rotary saw and brandished it at Kei, “Look at this! Imagine the damage I could do with this bad boy!”
Kei jerked back like he’d been burnt, eyes fixed on the medical saw. His face was impassive but his body betrayed him. Every one of his muscles was tensed.
Kou hesitated, confused, and pulled the saw back, dropping it on a shelf, “You know what? I think I’m better without it. I’m a crack shot anyway.”
Kei rolled his eyes, chest still tense and glanced up and down the deserted street. “Whatever you take, let’s not waste time here.”
It was Kou’s turn to roll his eyes. He snagged some water bottles and some mouthwash, but left any sharp objects and stepped out into the sunlight.
*
They ended up in a convenience store that was missing a wall but had somehow survived up with intact shelves and—to Kei’s relief—a healthy supply of clean socks. The explosion had broken what seemed like every window in the country and with the over abundance of broken glass Kei couldn’t risk taking his shoes off. But it did mean his feet started to stink, not that Kou seemed to notice.
When Kei was finished changing, he found Kou with a book, sitting up on the counter and eating sweets off the shelves. When he heard the glass crunching under Kei’s shoes, he looked up. “Hey, Kei,” He said, “Why didn’t Satou just drop a nerve gas bomb or something?”
Kei pulled a soda bottle through the broken fridge door and frowned, “A nerve gas would’ve killed Ajin too.”
“Since when did Satou care about Ajin?” Kou scoffed.
“He doesn’t care,” Kei took a long drink of the lukewarm soda and grimaced, “But if he tries to overthrow the government like he did here with a different country, the Ajin won’t believe him if he killed us too. That’s why he let the zombie disease out too. It was created from experimenting on Ajin so it’s something he can spin to whichever country he wants to wreck.”
“He’s going to do this to some-place else?” Kou dropped the book.
Kei frowned, “Of course.”
“But—We have to stop him!” Kou snapped, jumping off the counter.
“Right, ’cause it worked so well the last time,” Kei snarled, tossing the half-empty soda bottle into the trash and kicking the door open.
Kou trailed after him, “But we know what to do now! We have the most experience! This time—”
“This time what?!” Kei shouted. His voice echoed around the empty buildings, rattling the broken glass still stuck in the window panes. “It was always ‘this time’ this and ‘this time’ that! It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now!”
Kou watched him.
Kei shook his head, glaring sullenly at the shredded pavement. “Do you know what happens when you get irradiated, Nakano?”
“No?” Kou said.
“When you get irradiated as much as we have, your cells start to give out radiation too,” Kei said, stalking up the high street. “Radiation that could kill a human. If we’re lucky, when we die, the irradiation will be wiped away, but it won’t be wiped from our clothes, our sweat or any dirt we have on us.”
“If we’re lucky?” Kou jogged to keep up. He swallowed thickly. “Why wouldn’t the radiation ne wiped away?”
“Radiation mutates DNA. If what makes us Ajin is genetic, it could change that,” Kei waved a hand.
“What?!” Kou yelped. “So—so we might—next time a Zombie catches me I might—I might die? For real?”
Kei frowned heavily, turning sharply down an alley, snagging one of the surviving sunglasses from pile of dirt and wiping them with his fingers before sliding them on. The cool shade of the tall buildings either side were a balm on his mind.
“Kei?” Kou said, worry tinging his voice, “Kei, could that really happen?!”
Something strange like sympathy twinged in Kei’s chest and he sighed. “I don’t think being an Ajin is genetic,” he said, carefully.
If he felt better at the look of utter, pathetic relief on Kou’s face, he didn’t let it show.
*
The further they got from Tokyo and the centre of the blast, the more Zombies they saw. They were ugly things—malformed and half-braindead—but they moved in clumps that made them a pain to deal with.
They were passing through an upper-class neighbourhood, modern-styled, smoothly curved apartment buildings bordered the broad road. Bright grass swayed in the breeze and a mangy cat with two blind eyes nosed at the first in a string of broken cars.
A dead girl without a right arm walked into a broken sliding door over and over, bare bloody feet stumbling over the chipped pavement. Her hair stuck to her open mouth.
Kei aimed carefully.
“Wait!” Kou whispered.
Kei lowered his arm, scanning the rooftops and dark windows. “What? What do you see?”
“It’s not that,” Kou squirmed a little. His eyes were fixed on the girl. “It’s just… Why don’t we just leave her?”
Kei looked at him flatly, and started aiming again, “We need to go into that convenience store. The minute it seems us, it’s going to go berserk.”
“We’ll go to a different one then,” Kou said, pushing Kei’s arm down. “There’s plenty around.”
The girl let out a whispery gurgle, flailing arm hitting the plastic. Finally, out of pure luck, she went at it at the right angle and walked straight into the store, foot hitting the crumpled mat. She disappeared into the dark store, but the rhythmic thump of her hitting the staffroom door could be heard across the road.
“It might be a problem later,” Kei protested weakly, dropping his arm.
“She’s not bothering anyone,” Kou said.
Kei said nothing, slipping his gun back in the holster.
*
They walked, day in, day out. They slept in the beds of dead people, often after dispatching their walking corpses first, although Kei avoided those rooms after he saw how grey Kou looked afterwards, and how little he slept when he spent the night surrounded by discard clothing, dead phones and jewellery left on the bedside table. Kei lead them to hotels instead.
Kou grew quieter. Apparently even he could only take so many stony silences from Kei before he started to follow suit. He started to stay up at night to ‘keep watch’ although he tended to fall asleep anyway.
Kei couldn’t decide if he liked the changes or not, but he could feel himself changing too. In what way, he couldn’t tell, but it felt like something inside him was crumbling, quietly, away, like a scab falling off, leaving fresh, delicate skin. It made him uneasy.
*
The second missed shot had Kei annoyed.
“You need to lock your arm properly,” Kei said, shortly, “We don’t have infinite bullets, you know.”
“I’m trying!” Kou lifted his gun again, but while his stance was strong, his arms were weak. He held the gun like he was afraid of it.
Kei wrapped a hand around Kou’s wrist and wrapped the other around Kou’s elbow, easing them straighter. He put a hand on the front of Kou’s shoulder, pushing it back. “You need to take the recoil properly,” Kei said, “It’s not going to kill you.”
Kou stared at him, glancing between Kei and Kei’s hand on his chest.
Kei glared, “What is it now?”
“Nothing,” Kou said, looking back at the wall he was shooting at, “It’s nothing.”
Kei raised an eyebrow, but stepped back, “Take the shot.”
Kou took the shot. And missed, again.
*
It was night, the air was cool; they lay on a rooftop, inspecting the stars.
Kei’s right thigh squashed a dandelion sprouting from a crack in the cement, bearing two yellow bulbous heads. His left thigh was a hair’s breath away from Kou’s, close enough he could feel his body-heat through the chill in the air.
“Don’t you hate it?” Kou asked, suddenly.
Kei blinked the sleepiness out of his eyes. “Hate what?”
“Well...” Kou said, stretching his arms above his head, “Wasn’t your ambition to live a upstanding, regular life? That’s pretty fucked now, isn’t it?”
Kei watched the stars. ‘Pretty fucked’ was not how he would’ve phrased it, but it was accurate. “I suppose.”
A pigeon with unnaturally undersized wings struggled above them, finally dropping onto their rooftop from a higher building. Its pebble-eyes seemed to be bursting out of its skull, and it waddled in front of them, pecking savagely at the grass-lined cracks.
“What about you?” Kei said, shifting up to get a better look at the boy. The moonlight pooled over Kou’s freckled cheeks and traced a line along his smooth nose. “What was your ambition?”
“I don’t know...” Kou said, folding his arms under his head. “I wanted to live a normal life too, I guess. Fall in love, maybe. I didn’t really think about it.”
Kei’s eyes half-closed.
Kou shook his foot at the ugly pigeon and laughed when it squawked at him, flapping its tiny wings. It waddled off indignantly, feathers twitching. Kou kicked his legs up in the air and settled back down with a sigh. “You know, Nagai...” Kou said, “I know you hate me, but I’m glad I’m at the end of the world with you.”
Kei snorted, shifting to lie on his back, “I don’t hate you.”
Kou rolled onto his side, leaning on his elbow. He stared, “You don’t?”
“I think I just got used to your stupidity,” Kei said.
Kou scoffed, but laughed. “What do you really feel?” He asked, gaze intense.
Kei closed his eyes, but he could still feel Kei’s eyes on him. The cold was starting to numb his feet.
Kei opened his eyes, looking at Kou carefully. He sighed heavily, frowning, and relented, “I guess… I could’ve been couped up with Tosaki...”
Kou looked down at him. His expression was alien and unreadable, a sort of strange calmless that looked so unlike the boy it almost felt like looking at someone else. It looked vulnerable, like new skin under a scab.
The night sky looked blacker behind Kou’s pale, earnest face. He was halfway to smiling. His eyes—always big and expressive—looked wet and brimming.
Kou leant forward, gently like a bamboo bending, and kissed him.
And he kissed back.