Chương 105: Epicenter

They drove as far as they could to the city. Walked for miles amongst smoking ruins and ashen ground. The stench of decaying meat overpowered he air. The river was being soaked red with the dead.

Even Tama was reluctant to walk near the waters. Cautiously avoiding mangled metal, parts and what was once foundation of buildings or settlement.

"Kakeru!" A man weakly called out a name from a distance behind a haze. He was dragging his feet through a wasteland that was moments ago a city block.

"Kakeru!" He cried again with tones of hope. He saw Eiji.

His battered body collapsed before Eiji. An expression of crestfallen hope when he realised he wasn't the person he was calling.

Eiji gasped at the ragged sight of the man about his age. Half his body was blistering with skin dropping off his arms and neck. Some glass and pieces of wood were protruding from his sides. He slumped to the ground and became lifeless.

Tyne rushed to the man's side to check his vitals.

"Dead." He noted the man's condition.

"Mama!" A tiny voice called out across the ashen wasteland.

The men ambled over the debris for the voice.

They saw a little girl in a dirty green kimono. She was kneeing over a dead young woman, whose body was mangled due to half of her limbs being burnt beyond shape and shrapnel protruding from her chest. The girl's round face was covered in soot. Her short black hair was messy with tufts sticking up in the air due to soot and ash clumping around her roots. It made her hair color darker.

Tyne's lips quivered with tears. The scale of devastation was beyond anything he had seen before.

"Your mother is gone." Eiji soberly told the little girl.

He guessed she her age was of six or seven from her small body clinging to her mother's hem as she stared. In shock.

The girl's round eyes turned his way. Her shock and confusion evident. "Papa?"

Eiji blinked with surprise.

"Papa!" She rushed to him and hugged his leg. She looked up to him. "Papa!"

Sean knelt down to observe the girl's condition. "She's in shock, but miraculously not harmed. Her mind will cling to any hope."

The girl cried when she saw Sean's arm in the makeshift sling. "Mama!"

Eiji sighed, deciding he would be her papa if it helped her mind recover from the shock. She seemed to have recovered some of her calmness when she saw Tama.

The three men, their cat and stray little girl went further into the city to check for survivors.

There was more ruin and devastation. A sight similar to the battle they had fought at Iwo Jima. Only much worse. The city was utterly destroyed.

Eventually they picked their way over the offal and debris towards the nearest unharmed town. It was two square miles from the epicenter of the destruction. People were gathered at the town's local shrine. Many were injured.

Some loitered the streets with their shocked expressions, and eyes glazed over with a fact their minds were struggling to process.

Eiji's heart sunk at the sight of a woman's kimono pattern imprinted into her skin. He had never seen a burn like it. And he had seen a lot during his time of war.

"Tyne. This is no factory accident." In his heart, he was convinced of this fact.

Tyne sighed. Lost for words. All his facts and reasoning couldn't deny a truth that persisted in his mind. Only one country was fighting Japan. The one country that had means to cause a catastrophic loss of life.

"I…" He gulped down the jumble of words that wouldn't sound right no matter how he spoke them.

"We don't have any doctors. I'm sorry!" A priest cried out to the mob of frantic people calling for medical aid.

Eiji looked to Sean and Tyne who were staring at the mob from the other side of the dirt road they stood on. Their eyes held the same shock.

"We're doctors!" He called out to the priest.

He nudged at Sean's good arm. And thumped Tyne's head to bring him around.

"Ouch!" Tyne winced, but he gave Eiji a thankful smile.

"Are you?" The elderly priest called out to them with hope.

The people didn't wait for an answer. They flocked to the three men with their hopes for medical aid. Ignoring the little girl and Tama who watched the pandemonium safely from the side.

"STOP!" A curt voice bellowed across the mob. It was followed by an ear piercing whistle.

The group gave way for a man to approach. Eiji stared at the man about his age with common Japanese features and wearing the khaki-gray uniform and rank of an officer.

"You can help these people?" The officer rephrased the priest's question.

"Yes." Tyne answered. He calmly introduced their false identities.

The officer heaved a deep sigh of relief and nodded.

"Follow me."

He calmly called order around the doctors, as he led them further into the shrine's back rooms and detachable buildings that were being used as an emergency ward.