Virus by Sakyo Komatsu

Author:Sakyo Komatsu
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4215-5090-9
Publisher: VIZMedia
Published: 2012-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

No sooner had June arrived than the rains began. It was from that point that the bodies began to appear on Ginza Avenue.

Small bodies had already begun to appear in the alleyways of the Ginza district starting around the beginning of May—these were the corpses of plump gray rats. Rats lay dead in roadside gutter openings and on the concrete plates that covered the gutters, swollen and rounded at one end and pointed at the other—tear-shaped balls of short gray fur.

Among the back streets of Ginza, where hundreds if not thousands of bars and restaurants jostled against one another, rats were not an especially unusual sight. Considering the leftover fish and scraps that were constantly being thrown out, the suitable temperatures, and the complex network of gutters, these nasty-looking, sweet little gourmands had discovered for themselves a veritable Garden of Eden, and there they gave birth, multiplied, and filled the shadowed places. They swam through the lamplight of that district praised as Japan’s most historic and stylish, darting across the paths of proud ladies who wore their lipstick and powder too thick, occasionally being so rude as to wind themselves around ankles, eliciting screams, coquettish squeals, and opportunities for would-be Casanovas to make their moves. Someone would gravely intone that the rats were preparing to rise up in conquest of humanity, and there the matter would rest.

But now the corpses of these felonious little imps had at last begun to appear on the streets. This began in the dim spaces between buildings and in the corners of alleyways—the cleaning workers who came round to clear away the detritus of late-night and early-morning entertainments would say to one another, “Look at all of these things!” as they left them where they lay with little concern, and the hostesses and bar madams would wonder aloud to one another who it might be that was using rat poison in this manner.

At last, however, on a clear day before noon, a single rat was seen running out into a tree-lined thoroughfare along which there were yet only a few people out walking. Just as it was attempting to cross the street in great haste, it fell over and died. By evening of that day, dozens of newly dead rats lay along the route of the train tracks. At that time, however, the traffic was still heavy, and under the hard, cruel tires of countless wheels, the bodies of the rats were immediately crushed, flattened, dried, and made one with the asphalt.

The next day, however, the number of dead rats was in the hundreds, if not the thousands. Before the eyes of people waiting at crosswalks, numerous rats came crawling drunkenly out of the shadows, only to keel right over, twitch their slender whiskers, and then lie still.

Is this the Black Plague or something? people wondered reflexively.

But because investigations by the health and welfare authorities turned up nothing, no announcements were made.

These rats have been done in by Tibetan flu too, haven’t they?

As people were trading such jests with one another, the dead bodies of cats and dogs began to appear.

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