Furyo awakens in the rain. He had been sleeping in a graveyard. Looking around he sees a family of raccoons curiously staring at him, their eyes reflecting the light from the setting sun. Furyo has been sleeping during the day and awakening when the sun is low in the dusk. He found a long disused graveyard where majority of the tombs have been taken over by stray cats. An old woman tends to the graves, she wears a funeral shroud and seems both deaf and blind. Furyo gives her a wide berth to attend to her daily chores, only stopping to help when she stumbles with removing heavy stones or carrying buckets of water to scrub the head stones. Furyo feels a strange peace here, although he could be considered one of the dead. He is present, he feels rain on his skin, pain in his cold toes and sadness in his heart. The peaceful aura of graveyards is due to the vanishing of consciousness, he is still real as far as he can tell.
Despite fantastic powers of heaven and spirit, he still feels fear when he sees the Akuryō-kai Ghost Clan skulking around the graves in esoteric rituals. Its hard to understand how an organized crime group, of evil Shinto priests can monetize death. Are they extorting the families of the dead or the spirits them selves? Are they harvesting some raw energy like parasites from the spirit realm? Furyo only wants to know one thing, how to kill them and wipe out the power structure that took every thing from him. The building blocks of the unseen universe are maddening when you instinctively feel something is drastically wrong, you can see the after effects, the people suffering but not the cause. Some hidden hand that guides the corruption and systemic evil of the world with ghostly hands and unspoken loyalties. Her among the large trees, singing bells and soft wind there is only more questions.
Beyond the placid walls of the empire of the dead, disquieting sounds come from the street. In the heart of the city screams and tell tale signs of violence surround him. Hearing women shrieking, sounds of running, car crashes and growls make him leave his island of peace. The sidewalk is stained with blood and birds seem jarred by some unseen force, taking flight and fleeing. First he found only pieces of bodies, feet, pieces of faces, eyeballs discarded to feed wild animals. A woman in a red dress dashes into the street in front of him. Fleeing three men in chefs outfits, a speeding ambulance just misses the girl and strikes the men pursuing her. The woman tries to get the attention of any one in the houses and stores, not one will open the door. Seeing Furyo, she comes sprinting towards him. She is covered in blood, eyes bloodshot and crying. Running into his arms, she smells strange like some sweet fruit that has started to turn sour.
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Pleading in Japanese, he cant make out more than a few words. “Killed self” “Children dead” “Corpse powder” Looking at Furyo like he is insane, she recoils and dashes off into the night, as she turns to got Furyo noticed bleeding bite marks all over her arms and legs. Furyo apprehensively moves farther away from the cematery, every step he takes make him feel more and more uneasy. He is never one to panic but the sirens, smells of fire and explosions in the distance remind him of the cold war training drills schools did in the states. Training kids to hide from nuclear missile strikes under desks, like super heated glass and fallout wouldn’t kill them all before the looting, gas attacks by their own Govt on sick and starving people, water shortages and cannibalism set in.
Coming to an inner-section full of ripped apart bodies, Furyo stops to look at the faces of the dead. Sheer terror like animals who are being eaten alive on safari. Some corpses have their bowels torn out and strewn down the street, others with their eyes, soft parts of the face and legs chewed up. Furyo thinks of stories about Vietnam, the aftermath of bombings and plane crashes. Blackened corpses laying in the sun like chicken on a bbq grill, bodies showing their interiors to the elements. There is something foul on the wind, a putrid chemical stink. Something caustic to the nose and lungs. Furyo notices dust collecting and feels like he is breathing black mold. As he comes to the source of more screams, men with reflective eyes like deer spot him. With inhuman growls, they chase them down. Furyo goes into autopilot, his hands and feet breaking faces into splinters of bone, kicking chests open, knocking legs out of their sockets.
Furyo is in shock as the broken bodies writhe and snarl, unblinking eyes leer at him with malicious intent, gnashing teeth and reaching for him like orange chicken in a buffet. Furyo almost laughs. Is this fucking zombies or some kind of rabies?