To Darren, it almost seemed like the piles of debris were placed there for a reason. Like it was to keep people in. Like a prison wall.
“This is stupid.” Darren said, “We’re blocked in.”
Sakiko walked over to a door to a nearby building. “Maybe we can go through this building,” Sakiko said.
Darren took a look at the building. The building was a large office building that stretched up six stories. It was built of bricks and concrete.
“That doesn’t look like it goes past the roadblocks,” Darren said.
“But the upper floors of it will allow us to see over the building in front of it.” Yuki said, “Great idea. Sakiko.”
Chapter 21
Darren pulled out his handgun from his jacket pocket, opened the door, and walked in. Behind the door was a concrete stairwell that stretched up into the building.
“It goes up,” Darren said.
They carried the bikes up the stairs. It was painful to do it quietly. Darren had no idea if there was anyone in the building or if it was abandoned. They took the child carriers off the two bikes, then they carried each part up to the next landing. It was a slow and painful process. They reached the top floor and Darren’s legs burned from walking up and down the stairs a half-dozen times. After a moment of rest, Yuki re-attached the child carriers.
Darren tried the door handle. It was unlocked. He pulled the door open slowly. The door was unlocked not because it had been left unlocked, but because the locking mechanism had been smashed apart from the other side. Someone had left in a hurry.
The hallway was pitch black. Darren pulled out his small flashlight. He needed to risk it to see what was in the hall. Debris was clustered in corners and edges. The hallway was empty otherwise. A distinct shape of a body lay at the other end of the hall.
Darren walked down the hallway and jiggled the door handles as he walked. A door handle fell off the first door, and the door creaked open.
“Someone smashed their way through here,” Darren said.
A sign was attached to the door. Japanese letters scrawled across the sign.
“The sign is for a lawyer’s office,” Yuki said.
Darren nodded as he opened the door. The room was messed up. Most pictures were knocked off the walls and lay on the ground where they fell. The rest of the office looked the same. Chairs were knocked over and piled haphazardly. There was no sign of any life in the office. An extensive set of windows stretched across the far wall. The glass panes had been smashed out. A brisk wind blew through them into the office.
“This one will work for now,” Darren said as he turned off his flashlight.
“It looks like all the doors are broken into,” Yuki said.
Sakiko pulled the bikes into the small office as Yuki cleared some space for them to sit.
Darren looked out the window. The sun was creeping its ways up the horizon. The reddish glow of the sun seemed dimmer to Darren. A light sprinkling of ash fell from the sky. It made it look like it was snowing, but Darren knew that it wasn’t snow.
Darren could see for miles, and he saw the extent of the damage. He saw smoke rising from the storage unit, as well as smoke from a dozen fires that burned across the city of Tokyo. No building that he looked at was spared damage. They were all damaged in some way. Some had been partially collapsed, while others had lost parts and pieces. To Darren, it seemed like even four days since the earthquake and tsunami, that the extent of the damage was even worse than it was before.
The next street over, Darren saw it. A pile of broken cars had been stacked like Lego bricks on top of each other. The roadblock covered most of the road. A single cargo van blocked a gap in the barricade. Soldiers manned the roadblock. A couple trailer generators with lights illuminated the area.
Sitting on the side of the road, was a line of people. Darren couldn’t make out any more details.
He turned back to Yuki.
“Did we have any binoculars?” Darren asked.
“Yes, why?” Yuki asked.
Darren described the roadblock and the row of people.
Yuki pulled out a pair of binoculars from a child carrier and handed them to him.
Darren looked at the row of people. The people were from a wide range of ages. Darren saw kids sitting next to adults and high school kids. They all looked downtrodden, battered, and bruised. Darren saw that none of them had their hands in front of them.
“Those are kids, like us,” Darren said.
Yuki crawled over and sat next to him.
“It looks like they’re gathering up anyone they see as looters,” Yuki said.
A large truck pulled up to the kids. Out of the back, a couple soldiers got out. One by one they started to load them up into the truck. Darren saw that their hands were restrained behind their backs.
Then a couple minutes into the process, the two armored vehicles, and passenger vehicle caravan pulled up to the impromptu gate. Darren watched the van drive to the side, clearing the way for the vehicles. The caravan rolled past the large truck and the prisoners.
At that moment with the distraction of the passing caravan and the open gate, a teenage girl made her move. With her hands somehow free, she jumped up to her feet. The girl looked to be in her late teens and was dressed in a school uniform. The girl ran towards the gate as fast as she could. The soldiers yelled and raised their weapons.
Gunshots echoed through the silent city. The young girl collapsed to the ground and blood pooled underneath her. Darren watched in horror as a soldier walked over to her and dragged her outside the wall and to the side of the road. Another gunshot rang out in the night, Darren had seen enough.
“We need to get some distance from these guys,” Darren said.
Yuki grabbed the binoculars from Darren, and she left the small office and went across the hall. A few moments later she came back.
“That was stupid.” Sakiko said, “We didn’t clear that office.”
“Calm down. The building is empty.” Yuki said, “But I saw those roadblocks stretching out as far as I could see.”
“So we’re trapped here,” Darren said.
“No.” Yuki said, “There’s a path open to us.”
“We have to venture back into the Tsunami zone,” Yuki said.
Darren, Yuki, and Sakiko pulled their bikes from the small office. Darren didn’t like the thought of having to drag them back down the stairs. But he knew that he had to do it.
Only a block away was a Japanese Defense Force roadblock, and they had just watched them shoot a girl for running. Darren didn’t know the exact details of why they chose to use lethal force, he had no wish to stick around to find out.
They got the three bikes to the bottom landing, and the girls waited while Darren went back for a child carrier. He heard heavy footsteps on the concrete stairs. Darren looked up.
Three lights waved in the air. Soldiers were coming down the stairs.
Darren had time to grab one child carrier. He lifted one and if felt light. He tried the other. It had some weight to it. Darren grabbed the heavy one and picked it up.
As quickly and as quietly as he could, Darren ran down the stairs to the bottom.
“Soldiers are coming.” Darren said, “Let’s go.”
Sakiko ran up the stairs.
“The other carrier.” She said.
“Sakiko.” Yuki said, her voice a high whisper, “Leave it.”
Darren attached the child carrier to the bike.
“Hey, you!” A gruff voice echoed down the stairwell, “Stop!”
Darren looked up and saw Sakiko pulling the other child carrier down the steps. It looked like it was a slow process, the carriers were awkward to maneuver down something it wasn’t designed to go down. Sakiko was at the top of the final stretch of steps. Fourteen steps to go and then they could leave.