who'd gathered to sell rice cakes and fruit to commuters.
Careful not to move his head, Itoro strained his eyes until they felt like popping. He glimpsed yellow sky and broken skyline. Fires burned everywhere. Even the edges of the crowd still smoldered—blackened, twisted men who'd been too close to the platform transformed into desolation mimes trapped in their last act of life.
What had happened? It was as if the city had exploded. They'd heard the air raid sirens, but thought nothing of it. The wails of warning had become as common as the call for leaves every morning by Mr. Nagata. No. It couldn't have been an attack. Where were the bombs? Where were the planes? Instead, something horrible must have happened; something bad enough to make the land want to shed itself of humankind and start anew; something perhaps the Americans had done by dealing with the devil.
Itoro felt a movement to his right—a jostle, then a pull as an old man with blacksmith arms peeled himself free of his neighbor with a great yowl. Kicking as he continued to shriek, the man, head burned black, skin flayed from his arms, climbed atop the men next to him, using the shoulders and heads of the dead for leverage. An immense wound covered his back, dripping gouts of blood, a flap of skin hanging free. As the man began to spider-walk across the dead, the skin seemed to reattach itself, the edges fluttering to the man's back as if they had free will and determination.
Did Itoro just see what he thought he saw? He closed his eyes, but by the time he'd reopened them, the man was far along, heading towards a space where the men hadn't melted so that he could run free. The pain was making Itoro see things.
But the man had the right idea. Itoro needed to leave. Being one conjoined mass denied him not only his individuality, but his freedom as well. Cheek melted to the man in front of him, some unknown connection to the men behind and beside him, he was a part of the sum of grand dead beast with a thousand heads. Where did he end and where did it begin? The idea of being someone other than himself offended him. He wasn't part of a machine, nor was he an appendage of a beast. He was a man, an individual, a husband and a father. He was—
Katsumi! What of his wife? And Mynami his son? Was their fate the same as his? Panic slammed adrenaline into the chains of pain that held him in place, shattering them. Placing both hands on the man's shoulders in front of him, Itoro pushed off, the skin of his cheek ripping free, the sound like rice paper tearing on a winter's morning. So great was the pain he couldn't scream; only a high-pitched squeal escaped lips burnt black as breath refused to flow through his lungs for almost a full minute.
He had to get to his family. He'd spent too much time as part of this terrific mass of men, no telling what had happened to Katsumi. The last time he'd seen her was in the door of their home. He'd kissed her. She'd watched him walk down the hill as she always did.
With another wrench, he freed himself from the man's arm on his left and the hip against his back. The pain was incredible, but somehow manageable now that it had become a way of life. Free at last from the jumble of bodies, he turned to look where the explosion had occurred. The radio towers and tall buildings that had once been the Hiroshima skyline were gone. Only fires raged in their absence, flames licking the underbelly of a sickly yellow sky.
Remembering how the old man had removed himself, Itoro sought to lever himself up. Placing his hand on the shoulder of a man next to him, he pushed until the backs of the dead supported his weight. Itoro followed the path of the old man, his hands seeking heads and backs and shoulders, anything to keep him upright and moving. He caught the gazes of many melted men who were alive and attached, either unable or unwilling to separate themselves from the beast, satisfied to die as part of a greater thing. These he felt nothing from. Yet as he touched the dead, he felt strange emotions—surprise, jealousy and anger seeping into him. Stranger still, these weren't his emotions. It was