Hideo Furukawa - Belka, Why Don't You Bark?

See there? the Boss said. Just like the movies. You want pounded rice? Buy it at the fucking pounded-rice store.

When I’ve grabbed the tiger’s tail, I don’t let go.

He spent 1.9 million yen on a covered military truck. This wasn’t from the black market. It had been sold off by a private company, and he bought it more or less legally. All twenty-eight of the yakuza, including the Boss, piled inside. Four men sat up front; everyone else went in the rear. They wore fur coats and felt boots, and were armed not only with guns but also with items that seemed appropriate for an interorganizational war. They left the city at daybreak, heading west. Grasslands sailed by the windows. Then wetlands. Then grasslands again, and a graveyard for old cars. The heaped-up bodies had been stripped of their parts, left as mere shells. After that came a stretch of houses. A suburban farming town, apparently. They kept pigs. The grasslands changed into plowed fields. It wasn’t clear what they were growing, but whatever it was there was a lot of it. The roads had been sprinkled with sand. Plenty of sand, to keep the pavement from icing over. Clouds of sand billowed in the truck’s wake like smoke from a signal fire. Once again they plunged into an expanse of uncultivated grasslands, and then, four hours after they had set out, they caught sight of the dense dark taiga ahead, outlined against the horizon.

Up ahead, the Boss saw. He gripped a map in his hands. A map on which the location of a town that wasn’t on any map had been drawn in, precisely, by hand. The map had cost him twelve million yen. There it was. A closed city, left over from the Soviet era. There he was. The client. All of a sudden, the Boss felt like he might, at last, be able to laugh again. You want pounded rice? Buy it at the fucking pounded-rice store indeed, he laughed. No one beats us yakuza when it comes to a scrap.

Man-made structures came into view over the taiga, in silhouette, high above the treetops. Observation towers. Not one, not two, but four. Set at intervals. Then a sliver of land belonging to the town, enclosed by a concrete wall. We’re here, at long last, the end of the road, the Boss thought. Beyond it, a world within walls.

“Looks like a prison,” the Boss said. Fucking jaily sort of place, isn’t it? he thought with a chuckle.

“We’ll fucking make this day go down in history,” he said. “Fucking Independence Day.”

The truck stopped a hundred yards short of the wall. A young yakuza sprang out of the covered cargo bay. He carried a mortar, pre-loaded with a 51mm high-explosive grenade. He squatted down close to the ground and hoisted the weapon up. He wasn’t using the angled aiming device, he just fired straight in, level with the ground. Straight into the doors. The gate, the entrance, the way into the town unmarked on any map.

In a flash, the two doors were destroyed. Blown to hell by a force ten times stronger than a hand grenade. The next second, the truck was moving again. Charging in. The young guy who had fired the mortar jumped in as it passed. And on they went, into the world they had forcibly opened—liberated. They raced ahead a few dozen meters. Paved roads divided the town into fairly regular blocks. There were a lot of potholes, though. Big depressions. One of back wheels slammed down into a hole and the truck ground to a halt.

The Boss and his twenty-seven men, giddy with the excitement of war, immediately jumped out of the truck, all at once, even though no one had given any sort of signal. A total of twenty-eight yakuza, armed to the teeth with three million yen worth of firearms. They scattered. A few held back, staying near the truck to manage the mortars, which they aimed out in four directions. They had the whole town in their sights. The Boss wasn’t one of them. He had no intention of staying in the safety zone, giving the others orders while the youngsters protected him with the mortars. He dashed out with a new-model Kalashnikov in his hand. He was in this too! He felt something snap in his head. YESSSSS! he thought. I’m fuckin’ over the game! He had a young yakuza on either side, watching out for him, but he felt like he’d come out punching, ready to kick ass, all on his own.

“In fifteen minutes sharp, I want to know the lay of this place!” he yelled. “Take anyone you can. Don’t hesitate. Kill. Go!” he ordered. The Boss was raging, wild. He barreled past a cluster of white buildings, bellowing something that sounded like Ghuuuoogh! Things weren’t yet heating up, though, in terms of actual military action. Because there was no one there. The town kind of looked abandoned. In fact, it was abandoned. The official residents were gone. As for unofficial residents… well, there were perhaps some… just a few…

Then, suddenly, something was coming.

Dogs.

Here they came. And a little more than ten minutes later it was all over. Things didn’t go quite the way the Boss had imagined. First, he heard three shrieks. Then he heard seven more. For the first few minutes he had no idea what was going on. Because the dogs didn’t bark. Fifty dogs had fanned out around them, and not one so much as whined. Silence, too, was a weapon. The dogs attacked. Killed without a sound. They moved in formation. Two dogs would take aim at each yakuza, tear into his throat—their victims left with gaping holes under their chins—and then run off with his submachine gun, automatic rifle, or pistol. Six highly trained members of the posse attacked the truck, with its four-mortar guard. It fell in no time. The mortars had been aimed out in four directions, yes, but there were six dogs, and none of them was running less than forty miles per hour. Two of the mortars did go off, but randomly; one grenade plowed into the ground and the other ended up hitting an observation tower. Which was half-destroyed. The tower tilted, toppled, creaked, fell. It exploded onto the ground with a mighty whabang . That, it seemed, was taken by some to be a sign. Shots were fired into the air throughout the town, in different areas. Some yakuza shot out of fear, some didn’t shoot but screamed “I’ll fucking blast you! I’ll fucking blast you!” It wasn’t clear how effective shouting at the dogs in Japanese was. They were clearly unfazed by gunfire. They kept calm.

Still, some of the dogs did die. One fell victim to an out-of-control machine-gun burst of fire. Another three died. Gnyaarhf! they uttered as they went down. Hhuunn , they whined as they died. The other forty-six decided, at this point, that the battle had progressed to the second stage, and started barking messages back and forth. Finally the Boss understood. Dogs? he asked himself. Finally he realized that the town wasn’t abandoned, because there were dogs. He began to grasp what was happening. Are the dogs attacking my boys? Is that it? Taking down the young guns? Whatwhatwhatwhatwhatthefuckisgoingon —dogs? Why dogs? I’m looking for the client! What is this? Meanwhile, the dogs had moved into the “mopping up” stage. They had been conscious from the start that THIS IS NOT PRACTICE, but the loss of their comrades—they had communicated the fact of their deaths to one another by warning barks—made the forty-six dogs wildly, fiercely calm. They cornered people. They chased two yakuza into a four-story building, killed one on the stairs, on the landing, drove the other off the roof. THERE’S NOWHERE TO RUN, THIS IS OUR TOWN, OUR TERRITORY! YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT, THIS IS THE DEAD TOWN! TOWN OF THE DEAD! TOWN OF DEATH! Not surprisingly, some unfortunate mistakes were made in this, the first real battle they had fought. These dogs were absolute pros when it came to fighting, but they weren’t invincible. Another two died. Another one. But the yakuza were being weeded out even faster. The twenty-second died. The twenty-third bit the dust. The Boss had a sense of what was happening. He suspected the horrible turn things had taken; he saw the evidence, heard it, felt it in his spine. A kind of sixth sense told him, a quaking in his vertebrae. You fucks! Whatareyouwhatareyouwhatareyoufuckingdoing … what are you… to my boys? Risking their lives for the organization! Whenever a dog came into view, he immediately fired at it. He glared furiously around him, his eyes practically emitting death rays. You fucking assholes! he screamed, and killed more dogs.