Man-made structures came into view over the taiga, in silhouette, high above the treetops. Observation towers. Not one, not two, but four. Set at intervals. Then a sliver of land belonging to the town, enclosed by a concrete wall. We’re here, at long last, the end of the road, the Boss thought. Beyond it, a world within walls.
“Looks like a prison,” the Boss said. Fucking jaily sort of place, isn’t it? he thought with a chuckle.
“We’ll fucking make this day go down in history,” he said. “Fucking Independence Day.”
The truck stopped a hundred yards short of the wall. A young yakuza sprang out of the covered cargo bay. He carried a mortar, pre-loaded with a 51mm high-explosive grenade. He squatted down close to the ground and hoisted the weapon up. He wasn’t using the angled aiming device, he just fired straight in, level with the ground. Straight into the doors. The gate, the entrance, the way into the town unmarked on any map.
In a flash, the two doors were destroyed. Blown to hell by a force ten times stronger than a hand grenade. The next second, the truck was moving again. Charging in. The young guy who had fired the mortar jumped in as it passed. And on they went, into the world they had forcibly opened—liberated. They raced ahead a few dozen meters. Paved roads divided the town into fairly regular blocks. There were a lot of potholes, though. Big depressions. One of back wheels slammed down into a hole and the truck ground to a halt.
The Boss and his twenty-seven men, giddy with the excitement of war, immediately jumped out of the truck, all at once, even though no one had given any sort of signal. A total of twenty-eight yakuza, armed to the teeth with three million yen worth of firearms. They scattered. A few held back, staying near the truck to manage the mortars, which they aimed out in four directions. They had the whole town in their sights. The Boss wasn’t one of them. He had no intention of staying in the safety zone, giving the others orders while the youngsters protected him with the mortars. He dashed out with a new-model Kalashnikov in his hand. He was in this too! He felt something snap in his head. YESSSSS! he thought. I’m fuckin’ over the game! He had a young yakuza on either side, watching out for him, but he felt like he’d come out punching, ready to kick ass, all on his own.
“In fifteen minutes sharp, I want to know the lay of this place!” he yelled. “Take anyone you can. Don’t hesitate. Kill. Go!” he ordered. The Boss was raging, wild. He barreled past a cluster of white buildings, bellowing something that sounded like Ghuuuoogh! Things weren’t yet heating up, though, in terms of actual military action. Because there was no one there. The town kind of looked abandoned. In fact, it was abandoned. The official residents were gone. As for unofficial residents… well, there were perhaps some… just a few…
Then, suddenly, something was coming.
Dogs.
Here they came. And a little more than ten minutes later it was all over. Things didn’t go quite the way the Boss had imagined. First, he heard three shrieks. Then he heard seven more. For the first few minutes he had no idea what was going on. Because the dogs didn’t bark. Fifty dogs had fanned out around them, and not one so much as whined. Silence, too, was a weapon. The dogs attacked. Killed without a sound. They moved in formation. Two dogs would take aim at each yakuza, tear into his throat—their victims left with gaping holes under their chins—and then run off with his submachine gun, automatic rifle, or pistol. Six highly trained members of the posse attacked the truck, with its four-mortar guard. It fell in no time. The mortars had been aimed out in four directions, yes, but there were six dogs, and none of them was running less than forty miles per hour. Two of the mortars did go off, but randomly; one grenade plowed into the ground and the other ended up hitting an observation tower. Which was half-destroyed. The tower tilted, toppled, creaked, fell. It exploded onto the ground with a mighty whabang. That, it seemed, was taken by some to be a sign. Shots were fired into the air throughout the town, in different areas. Some yakuza shot out of fear, some didn’t shoot but screamed “I’ll fucking blast you! I’ll fucking blast you!” It wasn’t clear how effective shouting at the dogs in Japanese was. They were clearly unfazed by gunfire. They kept calm.
Still, some of the dogs did die. One fell victim to an out-of-control machine-gun burst of fire. Another three died. Gnyaarhf! they uttered as they went down. Hhuunn, they whined as they died. The other forty-six decided, at this point, that the battle had progressed to the second stage, and started barking messages back and forth. Finally the Boss understood. Dogs? he asked himself. Finally he realized that the town wasn’t abandoned, because there were dogs. He began to grasp what was happening. Are the dogs attacking my boys? Is that it? Taking down the young guns? Whatwhatwhatwhatwhatthefuckisgoingon—dogs? Why dogs? I’m looking for the client! What is this? Meanwhile, the dogs had moved into the “mopping up” stage. They had been conscious from the start that THIS IS NOT PRACTICE, but the loss of their comrades—they had communicated the fact of their deaths to one another by warning barks—made the forty-six dogs wildly, fiercely calm. They cornered people. They chased two yakuza into a four-story building, killed one on the stairs, on the landing, drove the other off the roof. THERE’S NOWHERE TO RUN, THIS IS OUR TOWN, OUR TERRITORY! YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT, THIS IS THE DEAD TOWN! TOWN OF THE DEAD! TOWN OF DEATH! Not surprisingly, some unfortunate mistakes were made in this, the first real battle they had fought. These dogs were absolute pros when it came to fighting, but they weren’t invincible. Another two died. Another one. But the yakuza were being weeded out even faster. The twenty-second died. The twenty-third bit the dust. The Boss had a sense of what was happening. He suspected the horrible turn things had taken; he saw the evidence, heard it, felt it in his spine. A kind of sixth sense told him, a quaking in his vertebrae. You fucks! Whatareyouwhatareyouwhatareyoufuckingdoing… what are you… to my boys? Risking their lives for the organization! Whenever a dog came into view, he immediately fired at it. He glared furiously around him, his eyes practically emitting death rays. You fucking assholes! he screamed, and killed more dogs.
The two young yakuza at his side were still alive.
Protected by the Boss’s intuition, that quaking in his vertebrae.
Someone’s going to die. Now.
A large dog leapt out of his blind spot, tore into the throat of the man on the Boss’s right, then, camouflaged by the spraying blood, wriggled across the ground and took aim at the man on the Boss’s left, his leg. He attacked. Took him down. Rolled, bit, killed him. This dog was not a member of the posse. Not a dog in active service, not a current fighter. But before age took its toll, he had been perfect. Even now he had a dignified aura that told you he was not a dog to be trifled with. Gravitas. He had a terrifying sense of gravitas. You could feel it now that he had reared himself to his full height. The Boss, standing face to face with him, could feel it.
Face to face. That wasn’t a blind spot.
The dog opened his blood-smeared mouth and barked.
Bang.
The Boss watched the dog tumble, dead, to the ground. He lowered the barrel of his new-model Kalashnikov, but he stayed there, motionless. He didn’t take a single step. He hardly even shifted his gaze. He was looking, now, at the first non-dog resident of this town unmarked on any map. The first human. Here, to this field of battle, his darling had come.