World War Z_ An Oral History of the Zombie War ( PDFDrive )

authorities will tell us what to do.” One truck driver said, “Any day now, you’ll see, if you just wait
patiently and don’t make a public fuss.” That was the last human voice I heard, the day before I
left civilization and trekked into the Hiddaka Mountains.
I was very familiar with this national park. Ota-san had taken me here every year to collect
sansai, the wild vegetables that attract botanists, hikers, and gourmet chefs from all over the
home islands. As a man who often rises in the middle of the night knows the exact location of every
item in his darkened bedroom, I knew every river and every rock, every tree and patch of moss. I
even knew every onsen that bubbled to the surface, and therefore never wanted for a naturally
hot and cleansing mineral bath. Every day I told myself “This is the perfect place to die, soon I will
have an accident, a fall of some kind, or perhaps I will become ill, contract some sickness or eat a
poisoned root, or maybe I will finally do the honorable thing and just stop eating altogether.” And
yet, every day, I foraged and bathed, dressed warmly and minded my steps. As much as I longed
for death, I continued to take whatever measures necessary to prevent it.
I had no way of knowing what was happening to the rest of my country. I could hear distant
sounds, helicopters, fighter planes, the steady, high-altitude whine of civilian jetliners. Perhaps I
was wrong, I thought, perhaps the crisis was over. For all I knew, the “authorities” had been
victorious, and the danger was rapidly fading into memory. Perhaps my alarmist departure had
done nothing more than create a welcome job opening back at the Akakaze and perhaps, one
morning, I would be roused by the barking voices of angry park rangers, or the giggles and
whispers of schoolchildren on a nature hike. Something did arouse me from my sleep one morning,
but not a collection of giggling students, and no, it wasn’t one of them either.
It was a bear, one of the many large, brown higuma roaming the Hokkaido wilderness. The
higuma had originally migrated from the Kamchatka Peninsula and bore the same ferocity and raw
power of their Siberian cousins. This one was enormous, I could tell by the pitch and resonance of
his breathing. I judged him to be no more than four or five meters from me. I rose slowly, and
without fear. Next to me lay my ikupasuy. It was the closest thing I had to a weapon, and, I
suppose, if I had thought to use it as such, it might have made a formidable defense.
You didn’t use it.
Nor did I want it. This animal was much more than just a random, hungry predator. This was fate, I
believed. This encounter could only be the will of the kami.
Who is Kami?
What is kami. The kami are the spirits that inhabit each and every facet of our existence. We pray
to them, honor them, hope to please them and curry their favor. They are the same spirits that
drive Japanese corporations to bless the site of a soon-to-be constructed factory, and the Japanese
of my generation to worship the emperor as a god. The kami are the foundation of Shinto, literally
“The Way of the Gods,” and worship of nature is one of its oldest, and most sacred principles.
That is why I believed their will was at work that day. By exiling myself into the wilderness, I had
polluted nature’s purity. After dishonoring myself, my family, my country, I had at last taken that
final step and dishonored the gods. Now they had sent an assassin to do what I had been unable to
for so long, to erase my stink. I thanked the gods for their mercy. I wept as I prepared myself for
the blow.