Free Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page A

five years earlier. Traveling in a caravan of five trailers bearing a hundred
     thousand seedlings, the farmers fell victim to a sandstorm and were attacked by a
     pack of bandits. Regardless of whether they offered any resistance or not, all were
     slain. Lance himself had been hit, but for some reason the bandits pulled out the
     gun they’d shoved in his mouth and brought him back to their hideout. The reason Lance
     went along with all of this was because, in the heat of battle, he’d seen that no
     matter how many times the bullets and blades of his compatriots had found their mark,
     the bandits had been utterly unfazed—and he valued his own life. As soon as they arrived
     back at the bandits’ lair, however, Lance realized he’d been drawn into a world beyond
     imagining.
    “You see, the first thing they did was tell me their age. The leader said he was going
     to turn two hundred that year. And the other bandits did the same, saying they were
     a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, or whatever the hell they felt like. I laughed
     at them—at least I had enough backbone left for that. It’s what they showed me next
     that tore the very soul out of me.”
    “And what was that?” Granny asked eagerly.
    “Their stomachs. One by one they took off their shirts. And then . . .”
    Lance pressed both hands over his face. They were in a cave they’d found in a rocky
     mound. The air was sultry, but it was better than being outside. Luckily, they also
     found Granny’s wagon intact, so for the time being they were set as far as food and
     weapons went.
    “What did you see?” Granny asked, growing pale as she did so.
    “They were mummies, you see.” Under the fresh new shirt of every last one of them,
     the stomach-wrenching remains of desiccated flesh clung to their bones. “Yet they
     were perfectly normal from the neck up—as you saw earlier. They turned their ordinary
     faces at me and grinned. I tell you, I thought I was done for then and there.”
    The mandate Lance got from them was strange and cruel; he was to work alongside these
     living corpses as they carried out their mission of slaughtering any travelers who
     ventured into the desert. How could Lance refuse them?
    “In the past five years, we’ve attacked four parties,” Lance said. “I killed folks,
     too. Men, women—people I didn’t know at all. If I didn’t do it, they would have killed
     me. One of them was a girl about your age, too, Miss. Now, I won’t tell you I was
     out of my mind when I did it. I puked my guts up every time I did someone in. But
     that didn’t mean I was happy with the way things were going, either. When I heard
     you’d been brought here, I decided I’d get away for sure this time no matter what
     happened to me.”
    “You said we were brought here. What do you mean by that?” Clay asked as his eyes
     moved to the cave’s entrance.
    D was leaning against the rock wall. At that distance, it was difficult to tell whether
     or not the Hunter could overhear the group’s conversation. As he’d helped cut down
     Lance’s pursuers, one would think he’d be quite interested in this discussion, but
     he didn’t ask a single question or even move from where he stood. Ordinary expectations
     couldn’t begin to apply to the Hunter.
    “So, who the hell controls the tornado? You’ve been living out here for five years.
     You gotta at least know that much. And those freaking mummies gotta be working for
     the same person, right?”
    “No doubt,” Lance replied, nodding feebly. “But I can’t even begin to guess who—or
     what—might be behind all this. All those years I watched them carefully, hoping to
     get some clue as to who it was, but I don’t even know if it was someone human or not.
     Something tells me they don’t work for any mortal.”
    The reason Lance believed this was because of the way he’d been kept alive. His sustenance
     had consisted of one meal a day of some unknown leaves and