Spiral

After leaving Boston, they’d traveled in total silence. The instructions on the iPhone told Jake exactly which roads to take, a series of state and county highways passing through western Massachusetts, cutting the corner of Vermont, then into New York and through the Adirondacks and on to Watertown. Jake had hit the radio a couple of times, tuned to a news station in case anything happened. But Kitano turned it off, without a word, each time.

Four days. Four days since the psychopath Orchid had started her rampage. Liam was dead, Vlad was dead, Maggie was a prisoner, and Dylan was mortally ill.

Four days.

Jake was sore all over, an aftereffect from his near electrocution a day and a half ago. His right ear still ached, his hearing still bad on that side. Roscoe said it might never come all the way back.

Jake had his game face on, but he was weighed down with worry and guilt about Dylan. It killed Jake how brave Dylan had been, running from Orchid, risking his life to get rid of the Uzumaki. It broke Jake’s heart that Dylan’s bravery had been repaid in such a horrible fashion. Jake felt responsible. He’d filled Dylan with ideas about being brave and conquering fears. And now Dylan was paying for it. A nine-year-old kid. Their last meeting had been tough, right before Jake had left for Boston. Jake had stood outside Dylan’s containment room, looking through the glass, phone to his ear. “I don’t feel right,” Dylan had said, his voice thin. “I can’t think right.”

Jake had promised Dylan the moon. “I’ll get your mom. I’ll bring her back. We’ll get through this.” He tried to believe it as he said it, so that Dylan would believe it, too. “Hang in there, little guy.”

The doctor was ready with a hypodermic. They planned to sedate Dylan as soon as Jake left. It was the only thing they knew to do. It took all Jake had to hold back the darkness. He had never in his life felt so powerless.

Jake was haunted by a truth he’d been circling for months. More than anything he’d wanted since the war, he wanted a life with Maggie and Dylan. He couldn’t picture any other future. But his fantasy was shattered before it came close to coming true, replaced by a reality where Maggie was Orchid’s prisoner, Dylan was gravely ill, and all Jake could do was chauffeur an old war criminal to his death.

He tried to shake it off. He was beat up, adrenaline-burnt, but itching for action. The combination of frustration, anger, and anxiety made him dangerous, possibly prone to mistakes. Every soldier knew that danger the way he knew his rifle. Unreleased pressure ate at you, chewed you up. Jake had seen it, the slow, creeping toll of unreleased pressure. Months in the desert, staring across the sand, waiting to kill or be killed, putting on the damned bioweapons suits, taking them off again. It was a relief when the final orders came down and they were moving. Once that happened, the air changed. Everything was sharp, like a knife, the contrast suddenly turned up. You could do anything.

“THERE IS A CRISIS,” KITANO SAID SUDDENLY, JUST AFTER they left the town of Hammond, a few miles from the Canada border.

Jake jumped so hard he swerved. The back wheels slipped before catching the road again. The road was empty, nothing but forest on either side. He hadn’t seen another car for a couple of miles. “What’re you talking about?”

“In Japan. A crisis with the men. Approximately two-thirds of the young men. They have become soshoku-danshi.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Soshoku-danshi. Herbivorous males. Grass-eating men.” Kitano shook his head. “They are soft. Weak. No longer interested in war. They are not even interested in women. They garden. And buy trinkets for their homes. A marketing report from Matsushita maintains that forty percent of them sit down when they piss.”

Kitano went silent. Jake glanced over. The old man’s face was drawn, eyes narrowed. His hands scratched at his skin. Kitano said, “The Japanese defense ministry is calling it a crisis. The grass-eaters are taking over, and soon there will be no men left to fight. The ministry is forced to spend billions developing robots that will fight to defend Japan.” He glanced at Jake, his jaundiced eyes dark. “I am ashamed to be Japanese.”

Jake turned back to the road. An old police cruiser sat in the driveway of a shuttered bait shop to his right, unoccupied. He felt Kitano’s gaze like a shadow on him. “It’s a phase. A fad. Next year they’ll all be taking up kickboxing.”

“No. You are wrong. It is not a phase. It’s the war.”

“What war?”

Kitano smirked. “What war? The only war. Not these skirmishes you have now. They are children’s games.”

The sky overhead was slate-gray. Everything was old, the houses, the cars they passed. A cellphone tower peeked above the trees on a nearby hillside, the only evidence that they were not in some kind of time warp, taken back two decades.