Crash Land on Kurai – Chapter 11

The hike down the mountainside is hot, sticky, and exceedingly quiet. I keep looking over my shoulder expecting to be tracked down by military men brandishing swords, guns, or possibly even worse. Past the haze of full daytime, I can’t help the subliminal suggestion that something is missing, and my skin crawls, but I try to attribute it to the heat.

At the bottom of the mountainside, the path we hike veers towards the city, but if we go off the trail to the right, we can miss the city altogether and head to the life pod.

“What should we do?” I wave ahead of us. Kazuo stops and squats down to retrieve something from his bag.

“We should document our trip, no? Take out your tablet.” I raise my eyebrows at him. He laughs. “I’m serious. We’re going to have one hell of a story to tell when we get home, and no one will believe us if you don’t do your job.”

I pull the tablet from my makeshift bag and turn it on. Eighty-four percent battery life. Not bad. Must be because we’re not hooked up to a network. But that means I need to be extra careful. There’ll be no back-ups.

I glance at my hands, noting how my usually pale skin has turned pink. I wish I could take my temperature without calling attention to myself, but it’s a good sign that Kazuo is also flushed from the heat. We’re probably just tired.

“What’s the plan? Will we go forward into the city? Or will we walk along the riverbank to the life pod?” Time to get into reporter mode. I focus the camera on Kazuo as he peers through a pair of binoculars trained on the city.

“Well…” He draws out the one syllable into many. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to hike this side of the river to the life pod. This side is wooded, and we could get caught in a landslide.”

I pan the camera to my right, in the direction we’d have to go, and the images speak for themselves. No way are we hiking that.

“Our best bet is to travel through the city and along the opposite side of the river where we might even be closer to the life pod when we arrive.”

I wait while he tilts the binoculars to examine each part of the city. The buildings and streets remind me a little of my hometown, Yamato, except for the newer high rises built after the Terrans came to settle with us. Most of the buildings here appear to be of the Japanese storehouse variety, white, thick cement walls, and thatched roofs. Signs of modern conveniences, street lamps and traffic lights, line the streets, but none of them are on or lit up.

“Do you see anyone?” On the camera, I zoom out to Kazuo.

“Not a soul.” He lowers his binoculars to his knees and rubs his chin. “Nothing.”

I swallow, wishing I could take out the water and drink it down by the gallon. “Do you find this place at all creepy?”

Please say no.

“Creepy is a relative adjective right about now. This place is not right. It reminds me of something…” He twists his mouth to the side, narrowing his eyes at the city in the distance.

“What do you think happened here?” I secure my elbows down against my sides to stop my hands from shaking.

“Let’s get into the city and look around. I need more evidence before I come to any solid conclusions.”

When I think of all Kazuo has seen in his lifetime, I have to give him this leeway. He was born and raised on Earth, hibernated for the long trip to Orihimé, been through three career changes, and explored more of my home world than any other person I know. My instincts tell me this place is not what we expected, but I’m not sure how.

I hike behind Kazuo, keeping the camera trained on everything I can find. The planet this moon circles hangs in the sky, half full and half in shadow. The glowing orb takes up over seventy percent of the sky, making me duck my head like it’s about to end up on my shoulders at any moment. I lick my lips and blink my eyes against the rough, sandpaper-like consistency they’ve taken on in the last hour.

We creep up on the buildings, staying in the shadows cast along the sidewalks. Nothing moves; the breeze abated once the sun started shining. My face and hands sweat, but I hold the tablet steady. If I’m going to capture anything, I should try to do it smoothly or else those watching will get motion sickness.

Kazuo peeks around the corner of one large, white storehouse and then steps into the street. My heart beats so hard I can hear it in my ears.

“I think we’re safe here. For now,” he says, sweeping his gaze up and down the street.

The town is deserted. Where I would expect the sound of people talking, monitors blaring, storefronts open for business, there’s nothing. Even the streets are dirty with a layer of dust and not a footprint on them. If the Japanese here were anything like we are, and we were on Earth, they’d never let their town deteriorate this bad. When I walk through my hometown on Orihimé, I pass people washing their sidewalks, kids watering plants outside their home before school, and homes being repaired or maintained.

I step away from Kazuo and sweep the lens of my camera over the nearest building. Inside, the storefront is empty, as if it was left one day and no one ever returned. I reach out and put my hand on the wall. The plaster cracks, popping so loud that I jump and Kazuo throws me behind him. A snaking line moves up the side of the building, and a chunk of plaster falls away and crashes to the ground.

“Wow. I thought those storehouses could survive an apocalypse,” I whisper, taken by the enormity of the noise that one little gesture of mine created.

“They can. Mostly. Even in Old Japan, many survived earthquakes and tsunamis. Shall we see what’s inside?”

“I’m a little afraid to open the door.”

Kazuo pulls open the door before I can jump out of the way. Nothing happens.

“That’s a good sign.” I sweep the tablet’s camera lens over the doorway. “It looks like the structure itself is still holding strong.”

“I think the inside will be fine. It’s just the outside that’s crumbling.”

Kazuo leads the way in. I leave the door open and follow, not wanting to cut off our escape route. A click from Kazuo’s flashlight and the inside is illuminated. I gasp and trip backwards.

On the other side of the room, a man sits slumped over a cash register, his hair fallen forward and hands dangling at the side of the counter. Kazuo bends his knees and creeps along the outskirts of the room, checking behind the counter. He points down at the floor, but I’m frozen in place, not sure if I could move my legs even if I wanted to.

The door to the back room of the shop is open, so Kazuo moves towards it, keeping his steps quiet. He stays in the doorway, his eyes taking in whatever is on the other side.

Talking myself into moving, I push my legs to check out what’s behind the counter. Lying on the floor is a woman, stiffened into a straight line, her arms by her side. Her eyes and mouth are opened, and her hair has spilled across the floor behind her. I sniff the air, trying to assess the decay in the room. The air smells musty, not like someone has died in here.

I approach the woman with caution, being sure to document what’s going on. It’s not like me to work in front of the camera. Usually, I ask questions until I have answers, shake a hand or bow, then return to headquarters with my video. The most meddling I’ve ever done was to sit over the shoulders of our editors and make sure they didn’t sound-byte my interviews to death. I’m a total pain about this, and I don’t care. Plenty of editors I’ve worked with were willing to sell me up the river to get a better story.

Ask me where those editors are now.

I set my tablet on the floor, propped against the wall so that everything I do will be in frame.

Sitting on my heels next to this woman, I look her over from head to toe before I even think about touching her. I take a deep breath and then recoil at the fact I’m breathing the same air this person inhabits. What if some virus killed her and the other man, and I’m putting myself at risk being here?

Too late, right? I wish I had a mask and gloves.

I count to five to steel myself, then I reach out and push the hair away from this woman’s face. She seems plain and ordinary, her cheeks rounded and even toned. If she had spent time outside in this environment, it wasn’t apparent. I press the pads of my fingers to her cheek.

“Oh shit.” I jump up and away from her, slamming into the empty case. Kazuo spins around to face me, his fingers moving along the hairline of the dead man, his mouth open in awe.

“They’re…. They’re not real.” I point my finger down at her, and it shakes like a branch in high winds.

What have these people done?

Despite my heart telling me to run for the highlands, my brain says this is the story of a lifetime. Kazuo’s fingers probing the dead ‘man’ at the counter gives me an idea. I drop back to my knees and begin a postmortem, or what should be if the thing had ever lived the first time.

I press my fingers in along her scalp, looking for something, anything, irregular. But I’m surprised by how real she is. Her hair is silky and luxurious, and her skin would be supple and perfect if it was warm. I dip my head to the floor and look into her eyes, their roundness alien on a world settled by my ancestors. How many times have I seen these eyes gazing out of pages of my favorite manga? Mom used to pass her manga down to me, Galactic Space Pirates Redux. They looked nothing like us, just like this… thing.

I stand up and step away from it, my feelings warring between giving the thing the peace it deserves and stripping it naked to learn its secrets. But as with all things in my Shinto and Buddhist life, even objects and nature deserve kindness and respect. I may be a tough-as-nails journalist with absolutely no quandaries over trespassing on private property or digging an old lover out of the proverbial closet, but respect for the spirits of my world are important to me.

Turning away from the ersatz woman, I rummage through the case she’d stood behind. Boxes and displays for jewelry clutter the shelves, in disarray before I ever touched them. Several handheld technology devices are amongst the boxes as well. I pick up each of them and press buttons until I’m satisfied they no longer work anymore.

“What did you find?” Kazuo asks, peeking over the edge of the case. I sit down, pressing my back against the wall when I hear a crack.

“Oh shit,” Kazuo says, leaning forward and grabbing my hand as I pocket my tablet. The wall crumbles down, cracking in several places. We watch the cracks climb the walls, plaster shifting and breaking away.

The whole building moans like it’s a thousand years old and hasn’t seen a doctor in nine-hundred ninety-nine years. An image of a graying grandma bent over her walker flashes before my eyes as the plaster comes free and crashes down on my top news story.

“Out!” Kazuo jerks my arm and drags me from the building as more of the walls crumble, and the place turns to a cloud of dust. I cover my ears and close my eyes until the chaos ceases.

“Eh! What the…?” is pretty much all I can say as I wave my hand at the pile of plaster where there once was a building. “Were those… robots?”

Kazuo crosses his arms and looks down at his shoes for a moment. “I believe the correct term is androids. And yeah. I think so.”

Bending over and letting my body come back to normal, I try to reorient myself and my expectations of this place. We weren’t sure what to expect on this trip, but this wasn’t my idea of evolution. “What if there are more of them?”

“I… I don’t know.” He shrugs his shoulders, not something I’m used to seeing. Kazuo usually has all the answers, and if not, he has a pretty good idea where he can get them. “Androids? There were androids and robots on Earth before the wars. We left them behind when technology crumbled, and we needed to give everyone a job. There could be more of them, but we should move on. Something tells me every building is like this, and we don’t have time to look at them.”

I take my tablet from my flight suit pocket and rewind back to what I saw. Her face… Its face was as real as Kazuo’s or my own until I touched it.

What can I learn from this? Their technology is advanced and maybe had not stopped marching forward since their ship colonized this system. This leaves us at a huge disadvantage since my own world is hopelessly backwards. Orihimé was purposely primitive until the Terrans came along. What little technology we had was used to communicate with animals in a desperate attempt to overthrow our tyrant of a leader before the empress came to us. Our spaceships? They’re from Earth too, the colonization ships Terrans used to come to us.

We’re outnumbered here and outgunned. Outclassed.

We’re in serious trouble.

Kazuo squints up at the sun beating down on us and then at me. He takes my tablet and points it at me. I lunge to grab it, but he holds up his hand. “You have no idea what you look like right now, do you?”

Handing the tablet back, he takes my arm and pulls me into the shade of a nearby building.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. He drags his fingers along my hairline, pushing the hair that’s fallen in my face for most of the hike to the side.

“Huh.” He turns the tablet around to me. “You have a sunburn. And I think you’re feverish too. How do you feel?”

I blink my eyes and try to wet my lips. I’m a desiccated piece of sun-dried fruit. “I feel fine.”

Kazuo doesn’t skip a beat. “So you feel like crap. Okay.” He sighs. “You know, if you want to lie to me, you should tell me the truth. I’d never see that coming. Remember the time you broke your arm?”

“I was just thinking about that when we crash landed.”

He reaches into the bag and produces the medkit and water bottles. I press my fingers into my exposed arm, watch the skin turn white, and back to pink. A sunburn? Already? I could get a sunburn at home from spending the entire day at the beach, but not from an hour or two of outdoors time. The atmosphere here must be thinner than Orihimé.

“You tried to shake it off like nothing had happened. But your arm was crooked, and you were as white as a sheet.” I drink from the water bottle, being careful not to chug it down and choke on it. “I can read you better than anyone. You may have been able to lie to your mother and father, but never to Shintaro or me.”

I roll my eyes as he digs out another shot of antibiotics. All these people think they know me. They know I lie, but not why. They know I’m reckless, but not why. It’s ridiculous to think we know people better than they know themselves.

But that’s why I have the camera. I show them a side of themselves they’ve never seen before.

“Let me see your leg.”

I look down at him crouched next to me, his face flushed and red. “You have a sunburn too.”

“Yeah, I figured. We’re going to need to cover up. No one thought to pack sunscreen.” He waves at me. “Open up and let me see it.”

“It’s fine,” I say, reaching for my zipper.

I freeze as the whine of an approaching ship echoes down the street. Dust kicks up, and the trees sway in the artificial wind of engines at full blast.

“This is no time for first aid,” I say, throwing the medkits and water back in my bag.

Kazuo peeks around the corner, and his eyes are wide when he turns and ushers me away.

“We’ve gotta move.”