Virus: The Day of Resurrection (30 page)

The row of cabinet ministers wore depressed, thoroughly exhausted expressions on their faces. At that time, their collective mood was such that if some hanger-on had asked for one of their cabinet seats, any of the ministers would have considered him a gift sent from heaven and hurried off to escape somewhere themselves.

“At present it is June 20. According to reports from the departments of police and sanitation, in Tokyo alone there are between fifty and sixty thousand dead bodies that have been left lying out on the streets. These bodies are unclaimed, and the police have neither the storage capacity nor the mobility to do any more than they’re already doing. All of the police and hospital-affiliated facilities in the greater metropolitan area are having problems with people not showing up to claim bodies. The morgues are full, of course, and the bodies they’ve been forced to stack on their premises are estimated to number over three hundred thousand. The cremation facilities have long since reached the limits of their capacity, and since a large number of those manning the facilities have either died or are now bedridden, their capacity itself is decreasing.”

The cabinet members felt as though they could smell the stench of it all right under their noses. It was the same peculiar odor that sometimes floated in unexpectedly through an open window as they rode in their cars through the city. Bodies were carelessly left at the roadside like bags of garbage, muddy shoes sticking out from under woven mats of bamboo grass. Long, long trains of squirming, soft maggots were wriggling across the wet asphalt roads like tangles of beige thread.

“Nationwide, the number of unclaimed bodies left out in the open comes to an immense figure. It goes without saying that this deals quite a psychological blow to popular morale. And on top of that, the high temperatures and humidity that come with the rainy season will be here soon. The bodies will start rotting faster, and with that going on, we can’t rule out the danger of yet more infectious disease outbreaks. Presently, illnesses that look like genuine dysentery and false cholera are being reported as having broken out in parts of the Kansai and Kyushu regions.”

Bodies with no one to claim them. Families thrown into confusion. The many men and women who were living alone. Here and there among the cities and towns of Japan, the number of corpses lying dead at roadsides was growing greater and greater.

As the minister of health and welfare was speaking, he abruptly recalled tragic images from picture scrolls of the Heian and Kamakura periods—the
Scroll of Pestilence
, depicting all manner of horrible disease in striking detail, and the
Gaki Scroll
, which shows the eternal sufferings of the hungry ghosts of myth.

“In order to secure transportation, uphold the law, and prevent public disorder, we already have a special arrangement for units of the Ground Self-Defense Forces to assist the police. However, the situation is already beyond the police’s ability to handle, so with this in mind, I’d like to request the full cooperation of the Self-Defense Forces, even if it’s only for getting rid of the bodies. All of the bodies, saving only their personal effects—”

“You want to use the SDF as undertakers?” the director general of the Defense Agency said, his expression sour. “Will the means of disposal be left up to us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Deputy Prime Minister?” said the minister of state who chaired the Public Safety Commission, turning toward the tall man who was deputy prime minister. “Before there’s any full mobilization of ground forces, I think it’s finally time you made up your mind—”

“—about declaring a state of emergency?” said the deputy prime minister, closing his eyes for a moment.

“Thus far, the public order has somehow managed to hold together, but in extreme situations the slightest spark can set off an explosion. Three incidents of rioting have broken out already, and now there is sufficient reason for concern that the disorder could spread nationwide. Overseas, martial law has already been declared in more than twenty countries.”

“But doing that might easily be seen as a provocation by the people,” murmured the director general of the Ministry of Self-Governing Bodies. “Instead of declaring a state of emergency first, wouldn’t it be better to assign some public security duties to the JSDF, and then let things slide naturally into a de facto state of—”

“What do you think?” said the chair of the Public Safety Commission, turning back toward the deputy prime minister. “Things have already reached a very difficult stage. At present, things are only getting worse and there’s no way to know when they’ll start getting better. You’re probably thinking it would be going overboard to declare a state of emergency over a
simple case of the sniffles
, but don’t you agree that something needs to be done as soon as possible?”

The deputy prime minister’s eyes were mournful, and he said nothing for a long moment. The cabinet members were all staring at his mouth.

“Actually,” he said at last in a heavy tone, “I called our bedridden prime minister to talk about this subject just a little while ago. To be honest, the prime minister was at that time already in near-critical condition. But he told me directly that I was to make no public announcement of that fact.”

A complex shock ran through the entire room. Leaving aside the more immediate effects of his loss, the prime minister’s death would significantly redraw the map of the political landscape. Even now, everyone still believed that the present situation was a temporary one. This fearsome bucket flu might rage on for six months, or perhaps for a year. But eventually, once the disease ran its course, things would go back to normal, and the highly sophisticated political day-to-day, with all of its scheming, its struggles, and its compromises, would be recovered.

“The prime minister acknowledged that sooner or later a state of emergency will have to be declared. But as to the question of when to do it, it was his opinion that we should exercise sufficient discretion …”

“I believe that time is now,” said the chair of Public Safety Commission Number One. “Naturally, when putting a state of emergency into effect, we must use discretion. Pursuant to its administrative responsibilities, the government is temporarily expanding its power, and the people need to be sufficiently impressed that what is being done is not a threat to democracy. However, if we act too slowly, the effectiveness will be weakened.”

“How far-reaching should the special powers that come with the declaration be?” said the minister of justice.

“We’re at the point where I’d like to ask for unlimited powers.”

“The Diet will never allow that. In fact, most of the representatives would resist.”

“At the very least, however,” the deputy prime minister muttered, “the government absolutely must have the power to secure foodstuffs, to conduct emergency price regulation, to maintain the public order, to control traffic and communications, and to secure the transportation system … we need these things under our direct authority.”

“And the authority to dispose of the dead,” added the minister of health and welfare.

“In any case, what is the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s outlook on the influenza epidemic?” asked the frowning minister of international trade and industry. “We can see clearly that it’s dealing a terrible blow to our country on every front, but this is just a flu bug—isn’t there a little more you people could be doing?”

“You say it’s ‘just a flu bug,’ ” replied the minister of health and welfare rather indignantly, “but this Tibetan flu is like no other flu we’ve seen before. ‘Utterly without precedent’ fits it like a glove. It’s not ‘just’ anything; this is turning out to be a more frightening epidemic disease than plague or cholera.”

“And you can do nothing about it?”

“If this had been a legally designated infectious disease, we could have taken more thorough measures right from the beginning, but it was exactly because this is ‘just a flu bug’ that our hands were tied when it came to rounding up patients and quarantining them. We have the same problem with regard to the disposal of the bodies now.” The minister of health and welfare looked around the room at all of the people assembled. “And now to top it all off—the experts aren’t saying this conclusively, mind you—there’s a possibility that what’s going around might not be influenza alone.”

“What?” the minister of transport exclaimed, eyes open wide. “If the experts aren’t speaking conclusively, then what in blazes are they doing?”

“Researchers are collapsing one after another too
,” the deputy prime minister said in a weak voice. “And so are doctors.”

“Deputy Prime Minister, if we don’t do something, the situation will only deteriorate further. There is no end in sight to this epidemic,” said the chair of the Public Safety Commission. “At any rate, it may be too late already. Also, at times of such a … natural disaster, I guess you could call it … it’s foolish to discount the danger of a humanitarian disaster brought on by societal chaos, in addition to the harm caused by the natural disaster itself. At the very least, the government has an administrative responsibility to take emergency measures. As to the matter of endowing the government with special powers, if the problem is that you need the Diet’s approval, there’s an extraordinary session going on right now. You could ask them tomorrow.”

“Oh, no,” murmured the deputy prime minister, “we can’t rely on the Diet. In the plenary session just yesterday, there were just barely enough members in attendance to meet the quorum requirements. Tomorrow, they might not even be able to hold a plenary session.”

“Then in that case, you are faced with a monumental decision right here and now,” said the chair of the Public Safety Commission. “As a statesman, there are times when emergency steps have to be taken, even if procedure has to be ignored. We’ll all have to bear our share of the criticism that comes later. In some cases, this may even have legal repercussions. But even so, this is what has to be done.”

The deputy prime minister had his eyes closed. Conservative administration or no, there were times when a leader had to take responsibility for making a decision like this. Whether such action was appropriate or not could only be judged in hindsight, by looking at the end results. And in any case, human beings were simply incapable of taking
full
responsibility. You could cast about trying various things at random, but in the end there was nothing you could do except whatever seemed the best choice at the time.

“Very well, then,” said the deputy prime minister. “In that case, I’ve decided.”

“One thing I need to say, however,” said the director general of the Defense Agency. “Out of two hundred twenty thousand of our nation’s finest, only one hundred forty thousand are capable of being deployed. Barracks living means that the rate of infection is high. Don’t they say that even the Spanish flu first broke out among soldiers in combat?”

Some of the representatives had to be carried out with high fevers, and the plenary session of the House of Representatives only barely met its quorum requirement, but the majority and minority parties somehow managed to agree on the passage of a grant of special powers to the government for dealing with “this exceptional state of emergency.” However, over at the House of Councilors, the plenary session had just been called off, and the government began to take emergency measures with the approval of only those members who had been in attendance.

However much they may have been called “emergency measures,” however, the new policies were unable to accomplish much outside of the regulation of foodstuffs and supplies. The fact that the total number of patients was approaching thirty times the number of hospital beds, combined with the fact that the number of doctors available to treat them had dropped to half the usual number, meant that even with these new government powers, there was little that could be done. The food companies’ research labs and factory facilities were already being used for the production of vaccine.

One day in mid-June, a company employee who had come to Tokyo Station intending to return to his hometown and get away from this big, functionally paralyzed city found it overflowing with so many nervous, cornered-looking people that he was pushed backward, unable to board his train. There was something unusual in the air that he found extremely disturbing.

“The train can’t leave!” said a feverish-looking, red-eyed man, sticking out a chin that was covered in unshaven whiskers. “I don’t know where you’re headed, but they’re saying there’s been another accident on the Central Line. The westbound Tokaido line is a mess, so you’d probably better forget about it. I just asked at Ueno, and the Tohoku line is somehow still running. The express and limited express trains have all stopped, but there are still three locals a day.”