INTERSECTION
They sat in the forward carriage, swaying with the motion of the tracks, inhaling chi fumes as the train sped north toward Yama city. It was Isao’s turn to mind the engine driver, and Yoshi was staring out the window, watching the deadlands fly by to the west. The Stain lay sprawled out on their left-hand side, endless miles of cracked earth, wreathed in choking fumes.
“A terrible sight.”
Yoshi turned to stare at the False-Lifer, watching him intently. She’d told him her name was Kei, that she’d joined the rebels some years past, recruiting the big man Jun, and the young one, Goro, who never seemed to stray far from her side. Her face was thin, lips thinner, fierce and calculating and sharp like the chrome razors on her back.
Yoshi shrugged, turned back to the window.
“You can find pretty in anything if you look hard enough.”
“And what beauty is there to be found in the Guild’s desolation?”
Yoshi looked down at his wrist, the pale blue veins etched just below the surface. He made a fist, watching the tendons flex, the muscles at play beneath his skin.
“Maybe the one we make.”
“Always riddles with you…” Kei shook her head.
“Why do the Guild burn folks with the Kenning?” Yoshi looked up from his wrist, eyes narrowed. “Why torch us?”
“The Purifiers teach that you are tainted by the Spirit World. That in order to achieve Purity, we must cleanse all taint of yōkai blood from our land.”
“But why? What is this Purity they talk about all the time? What happens when you ‘achieve’ it? The heavens open up and blowjobs rain from the sky? What?”
“Yoshi-san, the Purifier’s doctrine means little to me,” Kei said. “Always I questioned it, even as a girl. But understand: if you are taught the gaijin are your enemies by everyone you trust, you will believe it. If you are taught children must be put to the pyre for a matter of faith, you will believe that too. Especially if no one else in the crowd raises their voice in dissent.”
“That doesn’t answer the question…”
“If I knew the answers, I—”
Bright light bloomed to the southwest past the deadlands, a blinding sheen cutting through the beach glass windows and Yoshi’s goggles. The boy hissed as the western sky grew summer-bright, pulsing, burning even on the backs of his closed eyelids. Kei cursed, Isao shouting a warning from the driver’s cabin. The flare slowly died, flared again and dimmed, Yoshi standing and staring out the window, hand pressed to the glass as he saw an enormous mushroom-shaped cloud rising on the western horizon above the Tōnan mountains.
“Izanagi’s balls…” he breathed.
The train began to tremble, a crumbling, bass-deep shifting of the tracks beneath them, the entire island shivering in its boots. The train rocked side to side, bucking on the rails as the driver slammed on the brakes, a hail of sparks falling outside the window amidst the agonized shriek of metal, a hundred tons of momentum grabbed by the crotch curls and dragged up short.
Yoshi was pushed forward by the sudden deceleration, losing his grip and bouncing off the bulkhead. Jun, Kei and Goro all went flying, slamming into the foremost wall, Takeshi crying out from the aft carriage, followed by a loud thump. The train bucked and rolled, brakes screaming, tremors intensifying, flinging everyone about like a mob of rag dolls. Yoshi cracked his head on something hard, slammed into something soft, heard a grunted exhalation of pain. And then they were tilting, tilting, the crashing screech of snapping axles, wheels leaving the tracks and hitting gravel, and the world turned upside down and over and over, Yoshi grabbing a pillar as the train flipped onto its side, its roof, metal shrieking, iron and steel shredding like paper, glass splintering, people screaming, sparks and smoke and popping rivets, rolling over and over again as Yoshi roared and flopped about, blood in his mouth, the deafening kaleidoscope of sound, of momentum and inertia and gravity and mass, coming to rest at last in a twisted, smoking, moaning heap.
The engine died amidst the hiss of escaping pressure and creak of spinning wheels.
“Raijin’s fucking drums…” Yoshi groaned.
The boy lifted his head, one eye gummed shut with blood, the wound at his ear bleeding fresh. The ground was still shaking, a colossal roar building in his ears. Yoshi looked around, saw Kei lying dead, her skull smashed open, the boy Goro hanging half out the shattered window, crushed beneath the train. But beyond the boy’s corpse, Yoshi could see a dust cloud rising miles into the sky, like a tsunami across a waterless sea. Moving fast as the wind.
Right toward them.
He dragged himself up, eyes locked on the incoming cloud, blood dripping from his cracked brow and spattering on the broken glass at his feet. The door to the driver’s cabin was torn aside and Isao staggered in, bleeding from a broken nose, a horrid gash in his forearm.
“Gods, is everyone—”