Miki Fujimoto
South Shore Cliff, Rockfort Island
October 10, 10:45 PM
THINGS FELL TO SHIT PRETTY FAST WHEN SHE
finally reached the island.
Miki stood at the top of the cliff in the early night, drenched, cold-
catching her breath and soundly cursing herself. Everything
had been in that bag—weapons and ammo she'd found floating around her, rappelling
equipment so she could get back down to the
boat, flashlight, a basic first-aid kit, everything.
Not everything.You've still got three grenades on your
belt, her mind told her brightly.
Terrific. Halfway up the
cliff she loses her grip and drops the bag into the deep
blue sea, but it appeared she still had her sense of humor.
Yeah, that'll go a long way toward saving everyone's
life. I was right. Maybe I should have been better off unconscious.Miki couldn't remember much- she attained a shoulder injury
on the plane, but nothing viable- it was when she fell asleep, and had
that bizarre vision that rendered her unconscious. Or at least, that's
all she remembered.
It didn't seem like a dream though, Miki thought.
It seemed real.
Like god wanted me to see it....Well. She could stand around all goddamn day wishing
things were different, or she could get moving; she
picked moving.
Miki hunched over and stepped into the low cave entrance
she'd chosen to start at, an isolated area but definitely
connected to the rest of the compound—there was
a radio antenna on the ledge outside, and when she
straightened up a few steps later, she was inside a large,
open room, the walls and ceiling organic but the floor
carefully leveled.
There was light somewhere ahead, and Miki started
for it, keeping her fingers crossed that she wasn't about to
walk into a Nazi camp. She doubted it.
From what she'd seen of the island, someone- or something left the island charred- almost
like it'd been excessively beat up.
She was less than a dozen steps into the shadowy
chamber when a small tremor shook the cave, spilling
rock dust and pebbles over her head—and closing the
cave entrance she'd just walked through, collapsing rock
having a fairly distinctive sound. It seemed whatever had attacked the island
had made things a bit unstable.
"Oh, wonderful," she muttered, but was suddenly a bit
happier about the grenades.
Not that they would help
much here. Even if she could blow the mouth without
bringing all of it down, it was still too high to jump, and
the rope had been in the bag; unless everyone else'd been taking
lessons, Morning Musume weren't good enough rock climbers to go
down unassisted—
"What?" someone rasped, and Miki dropped into a
defensive crouch, searching the shadows—
—and saw a man on the cave floor, slumped against
the wall. He wore a tattered white T-shirt with blood on
it, his pants and boots military—he was one of Japan's,
and not in very good shape. Nevertheless, Miki
stepped quickly to his side, ready to kick the shit out of
him if he so much as sneezed.
"I didn't know anyone was still around," the man said
weakly, and coughed a little. "Thought I was the last
one ... after the self-destruct."
He coughed again, obviously not far away from
death. His words sank in, creating a lead ball in Miki's
stomach. Self-destruct?
She crouched down, trying to keep her voice level.
"I'm here looking for a group, a group of girls- my age.
Do you know where they are?"
At the sound of "girls", the man smiled, though
not at Miki. "An angel. She's gone, escaped. I helped
her... let her go. She tried to save me, but it was too late."
Hope bloomed anew. "Are you sure she got away?"
The dying man nodded. "Heard the planes leave. Saw
a jet come out of the basement, under the ..." a cough,
"the tank. You should go, too. Nothing left here."
Miki could feel some of his stress and fear ebbing
away, tensions in his neck and back releasing. If 'she' was
gone, most likely the rest of the group are safe too.
"Thank you for helping her," she said sincerely.
"What's your name?"
"Sekai. Hiroshi Sekai."
"I'm her friend, Miki," she said. "Let me help
you, Sekai-san, it's the least I can do and—"
Eeaaaaaaa!
A deafening animal cry filled the cave, and at the same
instant, another tremor struck, a bad one, the ground
shaking so hard that Miki was thrown off her feet—
—and earth erupted, what Miki thought was an explosion
at first, a fountain of dirt and rock spraying upward—
but it kept rising, and Miki could see thick, filth-coated
slime beneath it, could smell sulfur and decay, saw a huge
cylinder made of rubber still climbing—
—and then it shrieked again, the top of the cylinder
twisting around, wormy tentacles peeling back from a
yawning, howling throat, and Miki scrambled to her
feet, grabbing a grenade from her belt—
—and the giant, shrieking snake-worm came crashing
down, mouth open—
—and swallowed Sekai whole before slamming
into the sandy soil where he'd been sitting. It dove into
the ground like a swimmer into water, its impossibly
long body arching over, following through.
Shit!
Miki stumbled away as the ground continued to
quake, the burrowing creature kicking up rock and dirt
and sand all around her, and she realized that she had to
kill it or get away fast, that it could easily come up beneath
hier for another quick snack.
She ran to the outer wall of the cave, making a split
second plan as the snake-worm burst up through the
ground behind her, its insane mouth peeling open as it
hesitated at the top of its arch, ready to plunge down
over her, rocks falling all around—
—and Miki pulled the safety ring off the grenade,
stripping the tape and pin away, and ran, straight for the
creature's lower body where it emerged from the ground.
Crazy, this is crazy—
She ducked just before hitting the filthy, muscular
body and set the grenade on the ground in front of it, on
the run, as careful as she could be not to set it off—and
then dived for coverbehind the snake-worm's twisting
body, tucking into a shoulder roll, covering her head as
the animal started downward, shrieking—
—andBOOM, the explosion shook the ground even
harder than the animal had, the shriek cut off, the
grenade blast muffled by a half ton of worm guts that
shot out in all directions, stinking and warm, painting
the walls of the cave in viscous bucket loads.
Miki rolled on her back, drenched, watched the front
half of the animal convulse and writhe, already dead—and
as its muscles and reflexes clenched and released for the
last time, the snake-worm expelled a gush of stomach acid
and rock from its gaping maw, vomiting out its last meal.
Sekai!
Before the massive corpse had completely settled to
the ground, Miki was at Sekai's side, horrified and
helpless, the man seizing in shock and pain. He was
coated in yellow bile, and Miki could see places where
it had already burned through his skin.
Sekai let out a soft cry, too weak to scream in what
had to be incredible pain, and Miki tore part of her own shirt
off, wiping his face clean of the sticky, acidic fluid.
"You're going to be okay, just relax, don't try to talk,"
Miki said, fully aware that Sekai would be dead in
minutes, perhaps seconds. He kept talking, kept his tone
soothing in spite of his own dismay.
Sekai opened his eyes, and though they were full
of suffering, they also had the wet, glassy, faraway look
of someone leaving it all behind, someone about to be
free of pain and fear.
"Right.. . pocket..." Sekai whispered. "The angel...
gave... for luck."
Sekai took a slow, deep breath, and let it out just as
slowly, an exhalation that seemed to go on forever, and
then he was gone.
Miki automatically closed her half-open eyes, simultaneously
sad and relieved at Sekai's passing, the end
of a life but also an end to dying.
Rest, friend.
Sighing, Miki reached into Sekai's pocket, felt
skin-warmed metal—and pulled out a scuffed, heavy
old lighter.
Miki held it to her chest, suddenly overwhelmed by a
rush of love for her fellow Musume's. Whoever had this, had given it up to ease the
mind of a dying man, possibly one of the men responsible
for the situation.
She slipped it into her pocket and stood, glad that she'd
be able to give it back to whomever it was—and to tell her that she'd
made a difference in Sekai's last hours, that he'd
smiled upon remembering. Even though the others
didn't need to be rescued, Miki's surivial to the island had
already turned out to be worthwhile- and apparently has just begun.
The stink of the splattered cave was getting to her,
and now that she knew the others were safe, all that was
left was to get herself home. Her entrance had been
caved in, and she didn't have a decent weapon, but if
someone had triggered this place's self-destruct system—
it seemed that all their illegal facilities were built
with such failsafes in place, a fine way to destroy evidence
if anything went wrong—then she shouldn't run
into too much trouble looking for the tank that Sekai
had mentioned, see if there was another jet to be had.
"No going back," she said softly, and with a final silent
prayer for Sekai to find peace, she went to see what she
could find.
Topic: Eri Kamei vs. Morning Musume (Read 84910 times)