Two Journeys: The TWO JOURNEYS series, #1

By Clemens P. Suter

Join Alan as he travels the lone roads of Armageddon. Alan wakes up in Tokyo and discovers he is the single survivor of a pandemic that has wiped away humanity. He has to decide either to wait for rescuers that may never arrive or to travel home through an empty world. Alan sets out on a grueling journey across the Eurasian continent. He has to battle nature, the memories of his past life, and overwhelming loneliness. Did other human beings survive? What has caused the pandemic? These are some of the haunting questions that continue to confront this lone hero.
TWO JOURNEYS has received top ratings from its fans, e.g. on Goodreads. "A message of hope and perseverance, in a world that has been changed irreversibly." "An exciting, haunting book." "This apocalyptic thriller grabs you in the first couple of pages and never lets go."
A visionary, exciting book, that combines post-apocalyptic, SciFi elements with an adventurous road story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clemens P. Suter
• Release date: Jun 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452323633

Clemens P. Suter

Books You Can't Put Down Once You Begin. WARNING: make sure you don't have anything important going on the next day because these gripping books will keep you awake all night long. Clemens P. Suter is the author of top-rated SciFi and adventure stories. His novel TWO JOURNEYS (2011) describes the adventures of the sole survivor of a corona pandemic - how visionary is that then?!. FIELDS OF FIRE (2016) and REBOUND (2022) are further installments in this series. CELETERRA (2013) is one of the few atheist crime novels ever-written. Suter's novels and short stories are suited for all ages, combining straightforward adventure, philosophic elements, and dark humor. Clemens P. Suter has a Ph.D. in biology, his scientific know-how is omnipresent in all of his works. Remember: >>> THE BEST PAGE-TURNERS ARE WORTH THE LOSS OF SLEEP

Book preview

Chapter 1

There are journeys that you choose to make and others that you embark on because you have to. It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.

The company that I worked for always made us fly out to customers on Saturdays. The airplane tickets were cheaper if there was a Sunday between flight out and flight back.

My wife hated that.

We lose the weekends, and nobody is paying you those back.

Naturally, she was right.

Nevertheless, on Saturday, April 24, I took a taxi to the airport from our house in Lichterfelde, Berlin. I was supposed to fly to Frankfurt first and from there on to Tokyo.

My company sold software to large pharmaceutical corporations all over the world. The Japanese liked our products, and because of that, I traveled to Tokyo or Osaka at least once every quarter. This time, I was supposed to meet my colleagues Chris and Frank in Tokyo on Monday morning. Together we would then drive to the first customer of the week to do our sales pitch in front of sleeping Japanese scientists.

It was an uneventful business class flight. I knew the faces of some of the Lufthansa flight attendants, but I am sure they did not recognize me. I liked to travel anonymously, reading a few magazines, sleeping, avoiding contact with other passengers and crew.

Ironically, I still remember that I looked down at the desolate Siberian landscape, amazed by the vastness of the territory. Later I often imagined myself sitting in that airplane, with food at my disposal, the comfortable warmth of the cabin and the humming of the engines… and people around me.

I was expecting a successful week ahead, closing some key deals and a return home the following Friday. My wife and I had planned to go camping with our two sons the week after—I had already packed the tent and the other equipment.

I never thought of Japan in any way other than as a superb destination for a business trip. The food was excellent, and our local distributor took us to the best restaurants. Consequently, business trips to Tokyo were a blend of hard work and high-quality leisure time. I liked to walk through Tokyo, starting from the hotel in Shybuya and looking at the houses, the people, the shops. I liked to look out over the city from my room on the thirteenth, sixteenth, or twenty-second floor of the hotel.

I am a biologist by training. Our small family had been living in Germany for the last four years, and before that we’d lived in America, Switzerland, and Australia. Sometimes I am not sure about my own nationality; my father was a first-generation United States citizen, my mother German. My grandparents on my father’s side came from England and America and on my mother’s side from Germany and the Netherlands.

The plane landed at Narita Airport on Sunday morning. I had slept well during the flight, even though the mannerisms of my French fellow passenger had bothered me considerably. After snoring intensely in his sleep, he put his used earplugs on the tablet between our seats, just when lunch was served. During the hors d’oeuvre I was forced to look at his earwax.

The transit bus carried me into the city, and we arrived at the Shybuya Hotel at noon. I checked in and went to my room. Although I was jetlagged, I did not lie down on the inviting bed. Instead, I took my laptop from the small suitcase and checked my emails. My wife had already written and I sent her a short answer.

Then I set out for a walk to the Meiji Shrine, a serene monument erected for a long gone emperor and his wife. Stepping out of the hotel, I noticed that it was a cold day for April. In retrospect, it could have been that the number of people on Shybuya Square was lower than usual. In the past, the place had always been packed with people at this time of day—even on Sundays. The square was located on top of the second busiest railway and metro station of Japan and in the middle of a busy shopping and hotel district.

The number of people wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths—by itself not an extraordinary sight in Japan—may also have been higher than usual. Still, nothing seemed amiss to me at the time.

Leisurely I walked towards the park where the shrine was located. I paid the small entrance fee to enter the garden of the Meiji empress who had spent her summers here in the early twentieth century.

There were many ravens in the park. At one turn in the road, at least fifty such creatures blocked the path, shouting and cursing at one another. As a biologist, I was intrigued, but it had a slightly frightening aspect as well. They flew off in protest as I approached.

Returning to the hotel at about six in the evening, I was not feeling well. I suspected that I had caught a cold. I picked up some aspirin at one of the loud and brightly lit drugstores located on the square. On the way back to my room, I bought a Sapporo beer from a vending machine.

In my room, I flipped through the TV channels. Strange that all of a sudden I felt so ill. A German passenger on the airplane had been sneezing constantly—that must have been the guy that had infected me.

I started to develop a fever. My temperature was going up quickly, which was very unusual. I hardly ever had fevers.

My two colleagues had made a loose appointment for that same evening. Someone had suggested meeting up at a Kaiten Sushi, one of those restaurants with a conveyor belt that transported small plates of food. With considerable difficulty, I got up from the bed and wrote them an email, telling them that I was sick and that I would meet them the next morning at Takabe Pharma. Then I used the room phone to set the alarm. The recorded voice of a Japanese girl answered.

You have set the alarm for eight a.m.—goodnight.

It was ten in the evening, April 25. I must have fallen asleep shortly after that. With that, my first journey ended.

Chapter 2

No use mentioning all the exact dates. Although I did take note of all the days after that dreadful April 25, from then on, the days just trickled by like blood from a wound. Like ooze from a festering ulcer.

Certainly bad days other than that twenty-fifth have occurred. The Roman extermination of Spartacus’s army. When Hitler came to power. The days when the atomic bombs went down on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The tsunamis of 2004 and 2011. The Shaanxi earthquake, or Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans. But none of those events can stand comparison to that April 25. I loathe, despise, and hate that day and all the shock and horror that consequently fell on top of me.

I woke up in my hotel room. My first thought was that I was feeling pretty good. My mouth may have been a bit dry, and I felt hungry—but the fever was gone.

Bright daylight came in through the slit between the curtains. My second thought was that it was early morning. I had to get up and get a taxi to the customer.

Chris had certainly been up since six a.m. and had already gone jogging. Frank had probably already had his breakfast in the restaurant of the hotel and would be as prim and irritatingly cheerful as always.

It dawned on me that I had probably overslept. I looked at the alarm clock. The display was blinking. Silly me, I must have hit the power plug during the night or an outage had occurred.

I jumped out of bed, immediately falling flat on my face and hitting a chair with my shoulder.

So maybe I was not as fit as I had thought. In spite of the dizziness, I had to smile at myself and decided to stay on the floor for a few seconds. Then I slowly crawled on all fours to my suitcase and got out my mobile phone. The Japanese used incompatible phone frequencies, but the mobile could still be used as a clock.

The display showed that it was two in the afternoon.

Okay, so the customer visit was already over. No problem. I had to try to freshen up and then call Chris. Good that they had received my email the night before, explaining the situation. No doubt they had been able to manage the customer visit without me.

A bit dizzy, I walked into the bathroom and underneath the shower. I let the water run for fifteen minutes. I was thirsty and drank at least a liter of the warm liquid.

Suddenly the lights in the bathroom went out. The laptop beeped, indicating that its power supply was cut off. I got out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and walked into the bedroom.

Everything looked normal. The display of the alarm clock was blank, but the laptop was on and functioning.

Just then, I noticed the silence. Hotels are always filled with sounds. They purr, hum, and vibrate. Not now—silence filled the building like mud. I could hear my own heartbeat and my breathing.

Suddenly the room seemed cooler, too. Dressing quickly, I attempted to reconnect the laptop to the network. The internet was dead. I kept on trying and trying but I could not get a connection. I tried the phone. It was dead as well.

Slowly I sat down on the edge of the bed and put on my socks, thinking and listening. No sound came back at me. The hotel was stiller than a grave.

I got up, walked to the small hallway and opened the door of my room. I looked up and down the corridor. It was dark, deserted and quiet. No voices, no music, no sounds whatsoever. I closed the door again and slowly walked to the window and opened the curtains.

Bright daylight poured in, and I had to shield my eyes with my hand.

Looking at the skyline, Tokyo was still the same. The crows circled over the roofs and shouted screams of glee. All the way to the sham Eiffel Tower, the view of Tokyo was still magnificent and familiar.

Down below was Shybuya Square. Four wide streets met at the quadrangle traversed by four broad pedestrian crossings.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I held on to the curtain so forcefully that the skin on my knuckles went white.

Human bodies lay on the streets and pavement.

I was way up, but there was no mistake: I could see bodies on the zebra crossings, in the gutters, in the cars, and behind the windows of the restaurants in the buildings opposite.

Slowly the horror sank in that some calamity had occurred. For some reason, people had died in Shybuya—and not just a few. The district had come to a standstill. Nothing moved.

I tried the phone, but it was still dead.

I shook myself. Okay, I would go to the lobby. The hotel staff would know what had happened and what I needed to do.

I stuck a newspaper in the doorframe to prevent the door from closing. With the elevator out of order, I took the stairs down.

At university, I had taught anatomy to medical students. However, the scene that confronted me in the lobby was poles apart from anything that I had ever experienced before.

There were eight corpses in the waiting area and three in the reception, lying on the floor or collapsed in their seats. Their dead faces stared at me with white eyes.

There was nobody to help me—nobody was alive.

In shock, I climbed the stairs again and went back to my room. My initial thought was that some poison had been at work, something in the food or perhaps a gas. I was torn between staying in the hotel to wait for the rescue crews to arrive and getting out fast and far away from the danger zone.

After several minutes of erratic thinking, I decided that I had to get out. I hurriedly stuffed my money, passport, mobile phone, and laptop into the small backpack.

I’d always thought of Tokyo as a poem of concrete, traffic, small sexy women, cold evenings, jetlag, Japanese whiskey, the best food on the planet, perfect smells, and noise.

But outside the streets were littered with corpses, bodies of people who had been returning home or had been going to work—people who had been shopping, traveling, and loitering.

Hurrying through the city, I found bodies everywhere—but no survivors.

The first few hours I was incapable of making any sense of it. I had hopes to meet someone that was alive, to suddenly come face to face with soldiers with gas masks on who would escort me out of the city. I expected that at one point I would enter a neighborhood where everybody was still alive and well.

Tokyo had turned into a necropolis of thirty million dead men, women, and children.

Panic came over me. I was confused. I was scared that the same agent that had killed all these people might destroy me too. I became terrified of my own loneliness. I stumbled along, shivering and in tears.

After many, many hours, the fog in my brain started to lift slowly. Somehow I needed to make sense of the situation, to come to grips with it. I had to cope with the horrifying reality and suppress the madness that was bubbling up inside of me.

The analytical part of my mind kicked into action again. Okay, it seemed to say, you have walked ten miles through this town and it appears that everybody is dead. It looks as if they all died quickly. Look at that woman—she was carrying bags of groceries when she dropped down. That old man over there—he was probably peeing against that tree when it hit him. That taxi driver had lost control over his car and ran it into a building, shattering 30,000 DVDs.

However, they had not all died at the same moment. Those ambulance drivers had been trying to get those old people into their ambulance. That husband was holding his wife in his arms as if she’d succumbed much earlier than he did.

Superficially, I inspected some of the corpses and could not find any evidence of damage or wounds. Death had come from within, had rapidly overtaken these poor people by destroying their internal organs. Like a highly aggressive infection or poison, leaving no other visible mark than death itself.

My sanity was returning. I slowly calmed down. From a store I got some food and something to drink. A clock pinned to the wall behind the counter showed that it was Wednesday the twenty-eighth. I checked the watches on some of the corpses. I had to conclude that I had been in a coma for three days.

By the time daylight turned to darkness, I had not seen any living soul or any proof that anybody was alive or that anyone was or would be looking for me. Only a few lights were burning; most of the electricity seemed to be down. I took a flashlight from the dead body of a police officer.

Many hours later, I stopped in front of a department store. Its glass doors were locked. I found a piece of loose pavement and threw it through the glass. An alarm went off; somewhere an emergency power aggregate must have been running. Through the darkness, the beam of the flashlight guiding the way, I climbed the escalator to the furniture department. I dropped down on a bed and fell asleep, exhausted.

Chapter 3

I woke up at nine in the morning and sat on the edge of the bed, scratching myself and thinking about the situation.

I must have been very confused the day before. I concluded that the obvious thing to do was to call home. Surely my family would organize help for me; they would do anything they could to get me out of here. Somebody must have initiated a rescue mission already. Most governments had emergency programs for disasters like this. I couldn’t imagine that the remainder of the Japanese population, let alone the Chinese or American governments, wouldn’t be aware of this tragedy and weren’t already undertaking some kind of action.

I went to the bathroom in the store and had a cat wash at one of the sinks. At least there still was running water and fresh soap. I picked up some clean underwear in the men’s department.

I went down to the ground floor and left the store. The streets were just as deserted as the day before.

I was hungry, yet I decided that I first needed to call my family. As I walked towards the city center, I tried all the phones that I could find: public phones, phones in offices, phones in cars.

All the lines were dead.

Bodies were everywhere, and after some initial hesitation, I pried the mobile phones from their pockets and tried those as well. Some corpses still seemed to have some warmth in them and felt spongy and soft. Others were cold and rigid with hard muscles. The faces were cruel, with aggravated, angry expressions. The eyes, closed to slits, seemed to be following my movements. I shuddered as I quickly explored the pockets of their clothing.

The mobile phones were all just as dead as their owners were. All telecommunications had broken down.

Next I tried to send faxes from offices and hotels that I passed on the way. In most cases the power was dead to begin with. Some fax machines seemed to work but none seemed to transmit my messages. After a few hours of this, frustration and hunger returned. I went into a sushi restaurant. Although there were no dead patrons, I was afraid that the sushi might have gone bad. They certainly didn’t look very fresh anymore. I walked out again and started looking for a supermarket to get some canned food and some crackers.

My feet had taken me back to Shybuya Square. I went down into the railway station and from there into the underground supermarket. I collected cans, bread, vegetables, and some utensils and went upstairs again to the square. On a park bench, surrounded by the dead, I hurriedly ate my meal.

I was glad that, at any rate, I did not need to worry about starvation. Nevertheless, a terrible notion passed by fleetingly, like a ghost. What if nobody would come to rescue me, and what if all the food would be gone one day? Suppressing this horrible thought, I quickly continued my meal. I needed the energy to… yes, to do what? What should be the next step? Apparently, it wasn’t possible to reach my family or anybody else. What to do next?

I had picked up a bottle of Japanese whiskey, thinking that it would help me to relax, would pacify the apprehension. I took a big swig and then another one. It soothed my soul but an hour later, I was stone drunk. I can’t recall what happened in the hours after that.

Chapter 4

Judging by the pink bed, pink blankets, and pink carpet, I had spent the night in a brothel. There were pictures of pop stars on the walls. I had an awful headache and there was an empty bottle of Japanese schnapps next to the bed. Even so, I felt smart and sharp. Lying on the bed, I put my arms behind my head and stared into the tilted mirror that hung from the ceiling.

Okay, I had been a bit drunk the day before. I should now focus on finding out what was going on. I needed to evaluate all options. Should I leave the city and explore the countryside? Perhaps there were still people alive in the surrounding villages. How about starting a big fire to attract attention? Or launching a big balloon with a Help Me! banner attached to it?

None of the ideas that I came up with were very original or even useful. I was still very much stuck in the comfortable world of business class flights, first class hotels, and a family always only a single phone call or email away.

The drawers of the dresser were empty except for some make-up, a few boxes of condoms, and a hairbrush. There was a shower next to the room but no hot water. I stripped and showered quickly using iris-scented shampoo from a dispenser screwed to the wall. My clothing was a mess and smelled of stale alcohol. Instead of going back to the hotel to fetch my last clean underwear, it would be best to visit a store in town and pick up some clothing there.

I opened the door to my room and stepped into a small hallway. A devastating smell of decaying, rotting bodies hit me. I stumbled back into the room. I had noticed this syrupy smell ever since I had woken up, but at a weak, subconscious level. In the hallway, it was overwhelming, suffocating. There must have been many corpses in the other rooms. Covering my nose and mouth with the crook of my elbow, I hurried to the exit of the building and kicked open the door.

It was bright daylight. There was some wind. It carried the same ghastly stench.

In childhood, humans learn through experience and over time what each smell means: pleasant or repulsive, good or bad. With one exception: the smell of decay. Humans and most other animals recognize the smell of decay directly after birth. They have to. It carries danger. The danger of infection, the danger of death.

Tokyo had more than thirty million inhabitants. It was the biggest and most densely populated city on Earth. The air was warm and slightly humid—optimal conditions for quick decomposition of human flesh. Most citizens had probably died indoors, but the gases had started to seep out of the buildings.

Stumbling towards a broader avenue, I noticed that I had ended up in the borough of Ropongi. I recognized the street and some of the bars. Once, my English boss and I had spent a wild night there. He had liked partying, booze, and Japanese girls.

The air quality was a little bit better in the middle of the street. I could look some distance to the north and south. A few corpses lay on the pavement. There was a Lawson’s drugstore about three hundred yards down the road. Inside it was smelly as well, so I quickly picked up some chips, chocolate bars, a bottle of water, and a razor.

I ate breakfast while walking towards Shybuya. I needed to go back to pick up my personal belongings. I had finally come to the decision that I needed to leave town as quickly as possible.

It would have been a nice morning for sightseeing in Tokyo, on any other trip. The air was crisp, and the sun was shining brightly. However, in some spots the stink was so intense that I had to run swiftly to keep me from retching.

I tried the cars. Most were locked, and the few that were not contained dead passengers or they had no key in the ignition. However, after about thirty minutes, I got lucky. A taxi stood parked in front of a small hotel, with both front wheels on the sidewalk. The driver had probably gone inside to pick up the passenger. The key was in the ignition, and the motor started immediately. The tank was about one quarter full. The driver’s permit was stuck to the dashboard. His name had been Kimura Tetheishi.

The photo made him look drunk and cross-eyed. I wondered whether Kimura-san had a family, wife, children, and a small house somewhere in the suburbs. I then started thinking about my own family, what they would be doing now, how my wife would be trying to get in touch with me. I ripped away the permit and threw it out of the window.

It turned out to be quite challenging to drive back to the hotel. First, I had to get used to the steering wheel and the controls on the right side of the car. Second, I had only traveled the city by public transportation or as a passive taxi passenger. Now I had to find my way with the help of the Japanese traffic signs.

On top of that, the streets contained unexpected obstacles. Trucks and cars blocked the road. Here and there, corpses prevented passage. Occasionally I was forced to drive onto the sidewalk; in other cases I had to turn around to find an alternative route. Only the bigger roads were usable; the narrower streets were usually blocked at some point. I circled and twisted my way through the city.

The situation at Shybuya Station and at the hotel had dramatically worsened. Several trains full of passengers must have been stuck in the tunnels and the stink hanging in the square was overwhelming. This was not a healthy place to stay long.

I ran into the lobby of the hotel. It looked as clean and futuristic as always except that the lights were out and some dust had collected on the surfaces. The clothing on the corpses looked very tight-fitting; some of the neckties were now hidden deep in the skin. Decomposition gasses had started to inflate the bodies.

I held my elbow in front of my nose and quickly climbed the stairs to my room. The stench slowed me down. I picked a towel from a trolley and tied it over the lower half of my face.

I stood in front of my locked room. I searched my pockets for the keycard, but soon realized that with the electricity outage it wouldn’t help me.

The emergency station at the end of the floor provided me with a small axe. It took a few minutes to beat out the lock and to kick the door in.

The room looked the same as when I had left it. It was almost like coming home. My suitcase was still on the stand next to the television, the sheets on the bed were still crumpled. The air was stale but not too bad. I tried to switch on the television but there was no power. I wanted to shave, but the water pressure was gone, too.

Looking out of the window, the skyline of Tokyo had changed significantly. Multiple fires were burning. Dark columns of smoke and ash reached up into the sky, both far away and at closer distances. At first I thought they represented manmade emergency signals, but then I realized that most likely spontaneous fires had broken out.

Quickly I threw my belongings into the suitcase.

I went to the emergency stairwell, and, after parking my suitcase, I quickly climbed the stairs to the top floor and the panoramic restaurant. It was empty, no bodies in sight. Crossing between the freshly set tables, I went to the windows that provided a view across the city. The closest fire was perhaps five hundred yards away, its source hidden deep between the high rises. Farther off, an entire skyscraper was in flames. Slowly, black smoke poured out of the broken windows on the east side. Many miles away and in the west, a huge cloud of black smoke was building up. At this distance, its source was invisible. Most likely, an entire factory was burning. It could be that it was a plant of one of our customers; I recalled that Mitsami Chemicals was located in that direction.

Would the fires spread and finally engulf the entire city?

The fires, the decay, and the deadly danger of the agent that had killed all the people—all three combined into a single impetus to leave Tokyo as quickly as possible.

Halfheartedly, I expected to see rescue helicopters flying over the city. However, except for the smoke and a few birds the sky remained empty. In fact, I did not see any human activity at all, neither in the air nor in or on the surrounding buildings. What had protected me and the birds from whatever had decimated every other living thing? Closely scrutinizing the central part of the city for several more minutes, I finally turned and walked over to the windows on the other side.

Here the same picture—pillars of smoke erupting into an empty sky. One fire was alarmingly close at three hundred or so yards, apparently in one of the small restaurants at the foot of the hotel. Other fires were farther off; one was a big white cloud of steam. Perhaps a power plant? The thought made me wince. As far as I knew nuclear reactors were supposed to switch off automatically in any kind of disaster. In addition, I couldn’t imagine that such a reactor would be located in Tokyo or even close by. However, what would happen if a nuclear reactor should start to leak—or even explode? I could have been getting a deadly dose of radiation at that very moment. How far away was the leaking Fukushima power plant? Could it be that the population had died from a nuclear disaster? I discarded the idea, as it couldn't explain why I should be the sole survivor. Still, it would be beneficial if I got myself a Geiger counter to determine the radiation levels.

A strange sight pulled me abruptly out of my thoughts. I had been staring at the skyline, and now I saw an object appearing from behind a big cloud of smoke. It was perhaps ten to twenty miles away. No, it was closer, perhaps five miles, as it seemed to be in front of another column of smoke at the border of town.

The object was high the sky, higher than my own position on the twenty-sixth floor. Initially I thought it was an airplane, but it was moving too slow for that. Was it a helicopter perhaps? As I moved my head forward, my nose hit against the glass.

Some smoke blew away, allowing a slightly better visual. The object had an oblong shape, fatter than an airplane or a helicopter. It looked like a Zeppelin but more rounded at the ends. Essentially its shape resembled a medical capsule, a pill, brown in color. I couldn’t make out any details on its surface.

It was hanging, floating in the sky, almost stationary in one spot. But which spot? I could not judge its exact distance or estimate its size.

I walked along the windows to get a better view and a better idea of what it could be, only to conclude that it was not something that I had seen before. It wasn’t a blimp, but it could have been a balloon…but I soon discarded that idea. My mind suddenly acknowledged that it was far too big for an ordinary balloon. There was something in its form or behavior that seemed to contradict this…was it because it didn’t move, or moved only very slowly? It stayed straight on an east-west orientation. It wasn’t spinning or twisting in the wind as balloons do.

No, this wasn’t a balloon. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and an inexplicable fear came over me.

I suddenly realized that I was quite exposed at this high position, and I stepped back from the window, bumping into a table.

I continued to stare at the object. Moving closer to the window, I concluded that it could actually be a big balloon. I might have overestimated the distance—the object could be much smaller than my brain had somehow inferred.

The color was hard to describe. A homogenous brown, the brown of teak wood, but the lighter variety—caramel brown, perhaps? No letters or other signs were visible on its surface. Its shape was like a pill or like a globe extended by a straight segment in the middle. About three times longer than high. There seemed to be a single small bulge on the top right-hand side. The balloon could have been as big as an airplane, or as small as a car.

Quickly I turned away from the window and ran through the restaurant and down the stairs. I needed a pair of binoculars, fast. I ran out of the hotel, across the square, and into the shopping center. I recalled a camera shop located on the third floor.

It was pitch dark inside the store. I hadn’t thought to bring the flashlight, and it took me five minutes to find one and five more minutes to get to the camera shop. The binoculars were locked away in a glass cabinet. I tried throwing a chair through the glass, but it didn’t break and I had to fetch an axe. I threw it at the cabinet from a distance, which exploded loudly into a thousand pieces. A bit of glass hit my cheek and some blood started to run down my face. I wiped it away hastily. Cameras, lenses, glass—everything lay on the floor. Grabbing the biggest pair of binoculars, I ran back to the hotel. It must have cost me at least twenty minutes to get to the store and back to the restaurant on the top floor. I was panting and sweating.

Returning to the window, I immediately saw that the object was gone. I scanned the entire horizon on both sides of the building but the sky was empty except for the birds, the smoke, and some clouds that had drifted in.

I cursed. What had the flying object been and where had it gone to?

I left a full hour later, picking up my suitcase on the way down. It was getting late in the day already. I drove my taxi to the Meiji Park and sat on the grass. Here at least the air was of acceptable quality.

Chapter 5

I didn’t sleep well that night. I had ended up in the private park of the Meiji empress. I had walked to her pavilion at the top of the hill and had broken into it. It was deserted but fully furnished, and I had decided to spend the night here.

The sound of the wind in the high trees came through the thin walls. It pulled me from sleep at three in the morning. Thoughts raced through my head. I could not get into a quiet state of mind. I got up, went outside, and sat listening to the frogs in the pond below. I tried to make sense of the situation. I tried to develop plans and logical next steps. It didn’t work.

I had switched off the flashlight, and by the light of the stars, I stared at the dark landscape and the silhouettes of the trees as they moved against the night sky. Much later, the moon rose and flooded the landscape with its ice-cold, bluish light.

After a long time, the night, the park, and the silence calmed me down, and for the first time in days some feeling of comfort returned to me. Out of that, I developed a very primitive plan that I took to bed with me half an hour later.

There was no shower or bath in the house, so the next morning I had to wash myself at a simple tap attached to the outside wall.

I had decided to organize my life along three simple guiding principles:

Stay Healthy. Stay Sane. Return Home.

My reasoning went like this: if I broke a leg or got a bit of glass in my eye or caught a virus—that would be it. It could be over very quickly. So staying healthy had to be the first priority.

The rotting corpses were now the biggest risk, and leaving the city was imperative. I also needed to be more careful to prevent injuries. I needed to stay in shape, but that excluded jogging or sports, as even a strained ankle could impede my mobility dramatically. I would need to monitor my nutrition and eat as healthy as possible; which would certainly prove challenging as most of the food came out of cans and boxes. Nevertheless, I could perhaps find some fresh fruit, and in the interim I could eat vitamin tablets.

No alcohol.

Second, I needed to make sure that I stayed sane. Although the circumstances were extreme, I had to build on my mental stability. Damn, I had a PhD in biology; I had more than superficial knowledge of medicine, psychology, physics. I was better suited to get through this than most other people. I had to think positive. An organized daily routine with regularity would help me to stay levelheaded. Sure, some days would appear to be futile, depressing even. However, getting up early at daybreak and turning in at sunset would provide me with the optimal cadence to get through such days successfully. Plan the days ahead. Tackle problems and solve them.

The third goal was that I needed to go home. It was useless to wait in one spot, idling about and hoping for rescue. Obviously nobody was coming anytime soon to whisk me home. Still, my family would be waiting for me. I shuddered at the thought that they might be affected as well, sick or even worse. However, I had no evidence either way—the only option was to go and find out.

Daunting as that final goal might seem, it did give me a purpose, a clearly defined objective that would help me to stay sane. At the same time, it cruelly contradicted my first rule to stay healthy. Traveling back to Berlin dramatically increased the risk that I would break my neck somewhere.

I collected my belongings and returned to the cab. I wanted to get out of the city as quickly as possible.

The car refused to start.

Cursing, I started walking east. Dragging a suitcase was exhausting, and progress remained slow that morning, the true first day of my voyage. I was unable to find a suitable vehicle.

Shops on the way provided some useful items. In a sports shop I picked up a high-quality backpack into which I transferred my belongings. The proprietor had been reduced to a bloated corpse that lay collapsed behind the cash register. I stripped naked in the street and changed into new outdoor clothing and a pair of comfortable hiking shoes. I also picked up a knife, a plate, a fork, an emergency kit, another flashlight and batteries, a telescope (I had always wanted to have one of those), and camping equipment. The backpack was heavy but practical, and the equipment would support me in the days to come.

I had luncheon in a Lawson’s drugstore three streets down: a beef jerky, applesauce, and chips. I made some miso soup on my new gas cooker—the first hot food in several days. Vitamin tablets and orange juice made up the healthy part. Sitting outside on the pavement with my back against the building, I ate my food slowly. I pondered my next steps. I wondered whether help would ever arrive and in what shape and form. Getting up, I packed my belongings into my backpack and brushed away the last crumbs as well as the notion that I would be rescued anytime soon.

I came to the Ginza, the main street of Tokyo. I found a car with the keys in the ignition. The tank wasn’t very full, but it should have been able to get me out of Tokyo. The trunk was crammed with stacks of magazines, mostly porn. I threw them out onto the sidewalk so that the reduced weight would help increase the mileage.

I started the car and drove off. After ten minutes, I came to an area where smoke filled the streets. A fire was burning close by, but I couldn’t see where it was. A sharp, acrid smell accompanied the smoke, which made me worry about effects on my health. There was no easy way around the fire as abandoned cars blocked many of the side streets.

I had to circle a few blocks which took me farther away from my original course. I decided to get onto the elevated beltway that ran through Tokyo on big concrete stilts. After driving underneath this road for some miles, I finally found a ramp that wasn’t blocked and that took me up onto the highway. For the first thirty minutes, I could drive quite fast, quickly progressing to the edge of town. However as I came to a big, swooping curve in the road, a big