Vengeance Is Mine (10 page)

The fear of being eaten pierced Rentaro’s spine, and in desperation, he flung his right arm up and stuck it into the wolf’s mouth. “Haaaaaaaaaaahhh!” He ignited his explosive-style arm. In a moment, the wolf’s face distended at terrifying speed and the next instant, it exploded. A huge amount of spinal fluid and blood splattered on Rentaro’s face.

Avoiding the giant body as it fell with violence, he jumped up and checked around him. He was surrounded.

Then, how about this?!
He stuck his right fist into the ground and activated his arm again. He used a striker to set off the bottoms of the cartridges inside and fired. There was a metallic clang, and the ejector kicked out empty golden shell casings that repelled the night as they rotated. A small explosion started from Rentaro’s feet, and sand and gravel was kicked up with intense speed as it covered his vision.

The wolves were flustered and moved back somewhat. Seeing the break in the enclosure around him, Rentaro fled with all his might. He ran all-out, without pacing, and soon all the strength left his body
and he hurt all over. His vision grew hazy. He was covered in mud, panting heavily, pulse racing, and he felt so sick that the contents of his stomach threatened to come back up.

Inside his head, the part that was still thinking calmly rang an alarm bell. He couldn’t continue like this. Wolves followed their prey by smell. If he didn’t remove his own scent, then they wouldn’t stop chasing him. What should he do?

He put his arm on a grove of prehistoric cedars and turned around, and suddenly his vision widened. Rentaro went dizzy with despair. The path ended abruptly and turned into a steep cliff.

Shining his light on it, he saw that it was a long way down, maybe twenty meters to where the river at the base of the cliff flowed. It was flooded from the black rain that had been falling since morning and surged with thunderous roars. If he jumped in, there was no guarantee he would survive.

He was surprised by a growl immediately behind him and turned around. His hand slipped with the momentum, and he dropped his flashlight. He hurriedly tried to pick it up but accidentally kicked the back of the light instead. It spun quickly, like a top, and with the light still on, as it strobed the landscape from light to dark, it brought out shadows of countless wolves from the darkness, only to have them disappear again.

Rentaro took a step backward, dumbfounded.
What in the world…?

There weren’t just ten or twenty wolves. From the glowing red eyes he saw between the cracks just now, no matter how he counted, he estimated that there were almost fifty of them.

He took another step backward in despair and tripped, almost losing his balance. The fragile part of the cliff crumbled away, and he could hear the sound of the pieces rolling down the steep slope.

Rentaro swallowed hard. Predatory beasts approaching from the front, a cliff at his back. He closed his eyes, exhaled, and slowly opened his eyes again. Using his right leg as an axis, he spun his body halfway around and turned his back to the wolves, looking at his feet.

Without the MagLite, he couldn’t see the bottom at all and could just barely hear the violent flow of the muddy river. He wasn’t in his right mind. He berated himself for almost losing his breath at the sight of the wide-open mouth of hell below him.

Behind him came the growls of the wolves and the sound of their footsteps sidling up beside him. The soles of his shoes seemed to have grown roots, for he had to forcefully peel his feet away as he forced himself to jump. He felt an uncanny floating sensation when the wind hit his face; he was getting sucked into the darkness at amazing speed. He flapped his arms to maneuver himself to fall feetfirst, but it didn’t work.

Abruptly, his whole body was hit with something hard, and he almost lost consciousness. But he was forced aware again by the frigid water that streamed over him. The flooded river started to carry Rentaro’s body away with the force of a roller coaster. Even if he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see even a meter in front of him in the muddy river. He was stunned witless for a second, until he started struggling desperately to find a handhold. However, he’d lost his sense of equilibrium and couldn’t tell if he was heading up or down, and his screams turned into muddy bubbles.

Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a pitch-black mass, and it was approaching him. By the time he realized that it was a large, sharp boulder standing in the bottom of the river, it was too late. With the impact much stronger than he imagined it would be, his backbone creaked and most of the air in his lungs turned to bubbles and was forced out of him.

He crashed over and over into driftwood and boulders, and still unable to tell up from down, he spun like diseased leaves being scattered by the wind, turning over and over on the river bottom. Rocks the size of fists pelted his body all over like slugs from a shotgun. He was about to lose consciousness again. If he let go of the reins of consciousness right now, he knew instinctively that he wouldn’t wake up again. He waved his arms around desperately.

Suddenly, Rentaro’s right hand grabbed onto something. When he realized that the rough protrusion was a handhold on a rock, he made a split-second decision to stretch out his left hand as well and go against the rapids. Blood was streaming from the top of his shoulders. He gritted his teeth and clung on with his whole body, yelling as he heaved himself upward.

Before he knew it, Rentaro was lying faceup on a rugged bank, his chest heaving up and down. As he vomited the water that he had
swallowed, he fought against chills that made his stomach feel like it was going through the wringer. Finally, Rentaro lifted his pallid face and looked around.

Before the Great War, it had probably been a mooring place for boats. There was a small concrete pier with an abandoned mooring rope, and next to it he could see a dark brown shack. Gazing at the black rapids that looked like ink had been poured into them, he told himself that he was not completely out of danger yet.

Rentaro wrung out the dirty water from his uniform and stood up unsteadily, holding his aching body as he changed out his equipment. He hadn’t noticed that the backpack he was carrying had been washed away, and the silencer had also come off, but at least his gun was still stored in its holster. It was a painful realization that his food rations, water, and the explosive he had gotten to defeat the Pleiades had all been washed away.

Relying on the dim glow of the beta light, he went into the shack and found a match and portable fuel. There was alcohol and food, too, but it had been abandoned for more than ten years, so he decided that it would be better not to touch it. His uniform was heavy with the water it had absorbed, and his consciousness was about to give out, but in order to run away from those fearsome predators, he just had to move.

However, he reached his limit faster than he thought he would. Unexpectedly, his vision wavered and his knees weakened. Rentaro fell to his knees. A wheezing sound escaped from his throat and his body trembled like he had the ague.

When he looked up again, he saw an enormous tree trunk that pointed straight into the sky. This was probably thanks to the Gastrea virus. Giant sequoias that were easily more than five hundred tons were growing here and there, and just the outer circumference of their trunks was probably about ten meters.

When Rentaro found a good clearing, he gathered firewood and laid out the solid fuel. The matches were damp and his hands shook, so he lost some matches before he finally lit a warm fire on the tenth try and managed to carefully move the subsequent fire. As the red flames grew bigger, he let out a sigh of relief from the bottom of his heart.

After much effort, he peeled off the clothes twisted around his body, gave them a good wringing out, and put them back on. His body was
covered with scratches and bruises, but seeing that he was able to move, he figured he did not have any broken bones. He was still worried about tetanus and other bacterial infections, but when he remembered that the portable dose of antibiotics was also in his backpack, his face twisted wryly.

After his body had warmed up somewhat, the tense knots of nervousness also started to come loose. As if waiting for just that second, there was suddenly a sharp pain in his side.

“Ow… Gah!”

A large shadow the size of a lion had bitten Rentaro’s side, and fresh blood was spraying out. More than the pain, he felt dumbfounded.

Rentaro retreated to lean against one of the sequoias, holding his side. “Those guys…sure are persistent,” he managed to squeeze out between pants.

At Rentaro’s words, the pack of wolves appeared smoothly out of the shadows of the trees. They showed no sign of being afraid of the bonfire.

Why are they still here?
he thought over and over in his head. Hadn’t he taken a gamble and jumped into the river to wash away his scent to avoid letting them use their highly developed sense of smell? He thought that much and then shook his head. It wasn’t worth thinking about. They had followed Rentaro down from the cliff and through rapids; they weren’t going to stop now.

Just then, the hedge of wolves suddenly split, and a gigantic Gastrea walked out from the depths of the darkness. It had round pupils and a pointed snout like a canine, and its silhouette was slightly short and stout rather than sharp. Its white fur gathered more red as it reached its back, and on all fours, it was already over two meters tall, making all the other wolves look like pups.

It was a Japanese wolf, said to have been extinct since 1905. Its canines were overgrown and looked like a saber-toothed cat, its tail was split into three, and one of its eyes was cloudy. Its fur was shedding all over the place. It looked as evil as the watchdog of hell.

It was probably a Stage Three, and no doubt the leader of the pack.

Rentaro’s legs became unable to support his body, and he slid down to the ground with his back still on the tree trunk, leaving a diagonal trail of blood along the way. Checking the wound in his side, he
saw that the hand and shirt he had been using to press down on the wound was bright red. It was a serious wound that needed immediate treatment.

Rentaro gritted his teeth and looked up at the sky. Was today the last day of his life? If so, what had been the point of his sixteen years of life? Was the hominid called Rentaro Satomi put on this earth for sixteen years just to be eaten by Gastrea in the depths of this dark forest today? Irreplaceable memories flashed in his mind, and before he knew it, tears welled up and flowed down his cheeks.

The leader of the pack walked in front of him with sneering eyes, filling Rentaro’s vision with its open mouth.

But right before Rentaro was devoured, the wolves suddenly perked their ears. They changed the direction of their stances, tilting their bodies forward. As they growled, they focused on the darkness beyond the bonfire before Rentaro.

He looked in the direction of their gazes hazily, but Rentaro couldn’t make anything out. However, the wolves could see something. Just as he thought it, the pack of almost fifty wolves howled and rushed into the darkness. Immediately after, there was the sound of combat and yaps of pain.

Rentaro didn’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly, all the sound stopped, and the place was filled with silence. He heard the bonfire popping and the sound of an owl hooting from somewhere.
What just happened…?

Rentaro leaned the top half of his body forward and looked hard at the depths of the darkness in front of him. Suddenly, something was thrown at superhigh speed into the trunk of the sequoia next to him, and the sound of pounded flesh echoed.

Rentaro gazed in wonder. That something that had been thrown into the tree was one of the wolves that had attacked him. Its neck was twisted with an abnormal strength, its tongue was sticking out, and a straight line was carved into its stomach. With the crash, a flower of blood bloomed on its face, and it became clear that it was dead.

Seeing the slash on its stomach, something stirred in Rentaro’s memory. Where had he seen this nightmarish swordsmanship before…?

He raised his voice in surprise. This was the same thing as what he had seen with Enju three days ago at the civil officer frontline
headquarters. They had found civil officers dead on the street while they were recruiting members for their adjuvant. It had looked like a quarrel between civil officers, but it had ended in him not knowing who had actually done the killing. The two civil officers lying piled on top of each other had been carved with the same swordsmanship. Why was this
here
?

“Is there anyone who saw what happened?”

“C-could you be Rentaro Satomi?”

At the scene of the crime, this was the first thing the witness had said.

“What if I am?”

“Uh… Y-you… Never mind, it was my mistake. Forget about it.”

“Huh? What do you want?”

“I said, forget about it!”

When Rentaro had spoken, sounding irritated, the witness had turned and left the scene before Rentaro had a chance to call him back. Thinking back on it now, that was a strange dialogue. Why did the witness go out of his way to check Rentaro’s name and then insist that he had made a mistake afterward?

Could it have been something like this? What if a civil officer pair that was definitely not supposed to be there
was
there? A pair that had been defeated by Rentaro and Enju and were treated as if they were dead and removed from the civil officers’ list? That’s why the witness doubted his own senses.
Because there was no way dead people could walk around…

There was one. Just one pair that could maneuver such a sharp slash and that was supposed to have died in their clash with Rentaro and Enju during the summoning of the Zodiac Scorpion. Why hadn’t he noticed until now?

Three more wolves were blown out and crucified on the tree trunk in succession from out of the darkness. There was a cross cut into their stomachs, a death cross—the universal symbol of God’s authority over those who were going to die.