Chapter Nine—Aftermath II

Ichiro glanced about the lawn.

The houses continued to smoke and burn amidst the dead bodies in the yard. People were screaming, but no emergency responders came. They were probably told by the army to stay away.

Ichiro ground his teeth as he looked upon the bodies of Mamaia, her children and her grandchildren.

“It’s not your fault,” John said from behind.

“I know it’s not my fault,” Ichiro said. He turned and met John’s wide eyed stare. “It was the Empress. She did this—drove us to this. If it hadn’t been for lack of food—“

He stopped, his voice close to breaking, his tears intermingling with the rain falling down his face.

“I WANT THEM ALL DEAD!”

John looked on soberly and nodded. “I know.”

Then his eyes flicked over to his right. Ichiro followed that gaze and found none other than Goda watching them with deep-set eyes and a look if disapproval.

Moving quickly, he went back into his house. The screen door slammed down after him.

Narrowing his eyes, Ichiro realized that the military couldn’t have just showed up on their own. There was no way they knew what Ichiro and John had done.

Someone had told them.

“Ichiro?”

He strode past John toward Goda’s house.

“Don’t,” John said.

Without turning, Ichiro said through his teeth, “He’s a collaborator.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know it.”

He stepped up Goda’s porch, yanked the screen open and kicked the door in. Once he was inside, Goda started screaming from the other room.

Ichiro went in and found him on the phone. He took it from the old man who kicked and gnashes his teeth at Ichiro as his wife nattered about in a flustered henpecking sort of way.

Putting the phone to his ear, Ichiro asked, “Who is this?”

The phone went dead.

He looked at Goda. “Who was that? Was that the military?!”

“Get out of my house!”

When he didn’t listen, Goda turned and ran to a chest, opened it and pulled out his katana.

“So,” Ichiro said. “An ex-Imperial Samurai…”

John was in the room too, but he said nothing, knowing as well as Ichiro that Goda was indeed the culprit behind calling the military.

Goda screamed and charged.

As he swung his blade, Ichiro jumped out of its path or surely he would be cut in two as Goda swung his sword, the blade streaking through the air.

Despite his age, Goda was nimble and well-intentioned with his blade.

But Ichiro was much faster.

He ducked under the second blade strike, turned and punched Goda in the face. Crying out as his eyes bulged, he went into the wall and fell unconscious.

“NO!!!” Goda’s wife screamed.

Ichiro barely glanced back at her as she ran across the room to her husband. He bent and took up the sword while Mrs. Goda cradled her lying collaborator of a husband in her arms.

He was fine.

Ichiro would have killed him there had his weeping wife not been in the room. Instead, he turned and left the house and stood on the porch.

How could this happen?

Goda… a man we’ve known for years, who ate at our table—turning on us and looking at the bodies of his neighbors with disapproval of their actions against the Madison Army.

“Tch!”

The door opened behind Ichiro and John stepped out onto the porch. For a long time he said nothing.

The rain continued pattering over the grass and veranda as thunder rumbled over the sky, a distant warning of the horrors that would continue.

“Wait,” Ichiro suddenly said. “Do you hear that?”

“It was the roar of jets getting closer.

Ichiro nodded.

The jets came over the house as the mech landed in the yard.

“Look out!” John said.

Narrowing his eyes, Ichiro looked at the mech, at the movement of the pilot behind the cockpit glass. He was mostly obscured behind the shiny tinted glass.

“Now you die!” Ichiro said, pointing an aggressive finger.

The mech’s speakers activated and the pilot laughed. “Show me what you got, Samurai.”

“I’m no samurai."