From Sokushinbutsu 5?

Fine. That's it Then

Vic!” He yelled through his teeth into the night. “That you?”

“DId you guys hear that?” Vic looked to his two companions like a scared kid looks at any nearby adult, like they’d have some curative effect on the unveiled fear that seemed to have set into his face to stay.

“It's fucking Brian.” Steve turned to Maureen. “My FBI handler.”

Maureen wasn't sure whether she was supposed to be embarrassed or not.

She waved and pulled at Vic’s elbow toward the fat little man in the bad summer suit standing at the edge of the beam of the headlights, the only whole thing visible.

“You guys all right?” Brian had pulled his cigarette out of his mouth so he could properly shout and then put it right back in his mouth for an outrageous painful looking pull. The cherry crackled like a piece of candy being unwrapped.

Maureen took a step toward Brian and the car and the men who flanked her stood like pillars. She stopped and looked at them both.

“Let’s go?”

No one moved. Brian was still smoking with purpose and there was no way any of them could process what had happened …in seconds… to them all.

The sirens kept wailing. The freeway was back on in the rain barely out of sight shooshing and now visible through the gap in the arborvidea.

**

Fati was slowing down to 55 on the freeway in the sheeting rain and leaning into the windshield as if it would make it an easier thing to see the exit signs. Something hit the roof of her car that sounded like a brick and before she was any further down the road chunks of ice the size of baseballs were landing in the freeway in the spread of her lights and disintegrating violently into slush like snapshots of meteor impacts. She lightly hit the breaks and then put on her flashers and slowed to a crawl. She saw the taillights of a car far ahead careen into the median and the headlights spin toward her. It was far enough to be a safe distance but still a terrifying sight. She pulled off to the right and the giant hail stopped. But she sat and turned on the radio.

There was one of those robot voiced warnings playing as soon as it came on, encouraging her to take shelter and listing off a pile of unfamiliar county names, warning her of a tornado on the ground she now assumed was near where she was.

In what seemed like no time at all the sky above the freeway was clear. Fati could see stars and there was no wind at all. She pulled back onto the road and continued toward Vic’s like everything was fine.

She pulled off onto the exit she knew to dump her into Vic's neighborhood nearly immediately, only then noticing downed trees and large debris she could identify as sections of roof and siding as she passed it. The streetlights were not lit.

Once she was on the street she saw that the houses along the road were gone, razed.

It was two turns from the exit ramp to Bejaysville Lane.

There was a Buick idling at the corner shining its lights down into the feilded particulate of destroyed homes and a few wet people bent to view the ground. She pulled up next to the Buick and left her lights on.

As she got out she could see at the edge of the lighted area a man in a pale suit smoking with a hand on his hip and in an immeasurably short time, though slowed by its shocking nature him turning to look up in the direction of a great fast groaning- of-wood sound in the blackness as the single remaining oak, already stripped of its moveable branches by the demon wind fell crushing the man feet into the ground with his hand out. His cigarette falling half smoked into the wet grass.

He didn't even cry out. It was like Brian was just taking it, as if as a matter of course his unsurprising due had come.

There was nothing to be done for him.

Fati walked down into the headlight spread from the two cars, the rain having stopped and took Vic’s hand.

“I'm his attorney.” She said, drawing him toward her car.

“I’m Steve.” Steve said.

“You should come with us.” Fati said. “I’ve heard about you. I think I need to talk to you.”

Maureen, unphased followed the other three to Fati’s Lincoln and they all made their way to the hotel Fati had thoughtfully booked four hours before, before leaving Chicago.