Baccano! - Volume 3 - Chapter 10

EPILOGUE

TERRORIST GROUP

The new assistant to Fred, the doctor in gray, muttered quietly:

“Ahh, Ladd and Lua never did come back. I mean, it’s those two, so they’re probably alive, but…”

He’d been one of the white suits, but when the police had boarded the train, he’d asked Fred to make him his assistant and had escaped the long arm of the law that way. The delinquents beside them had glared at him, but they were criminals, too, so they didn’t turn him over to the cops.

Afterward, he’d contacted the friend who’d been negotiating with the railway company on the outside, only to hear that the company had flatly vetoed their demands. Apparently, the black suits had been threatening the government, and some sort of pressure had been exerted on the railway company from that direction. He hadn’t expected the strategy to succeed in the first place, but the idea that the black suits had been the cause of their failure made it particularly frustrating. Of course, not only was he still alive, he hadn’t even been arrested. One would have had to admit that he’d been the luckiest member of the white suits.

He’d had nowhere to go, and in the end, it had been decided that he’d do odd jobs at Fred’s hospital.

Having heard the former white suit’s mutter, Fred answered, smiling quietly.

“Never mind. If they’re alive, you’ll see them again someday. As long as you all stay alive, someday, without fail… Come to think of it, that man was looking for someone, too.”

“That man?”

“Yes, I ended up having to take a later train because I was treating him… Thanks to that, I wound up paying a lot for tickets. The treatment took quite some time, you see, and then the police put in an appearance as well.”

“The cops?”

“Mm. When I was on my way to Chicago by car, I saw a tremendous explosion in the wasteland, off in the distance—”

Goose was alive.

Even enveloped in that hellfire, he’d miraculously escaped with his life.

I refuse to die in a place like this. I’ll survive, and the secret of Huey’s body will be mine—

Clinging to what little vindictiveness he had left, he crawled along the path by the tracks.

I should have comrades on this side. The ten who negotiated with the government, who weren’t aboard the train. I saw the signal rocket go up when we reached the river. In other words, the government accepted our negotiations. Dammit, I was so close! Still, I’m not finished yet. With ten men, I’ll be more than able to regain my balance—

Just then, over his head, a figure blocked his way.

“We’ve been looking for you, Goose.”

I’m saved. Have my comrades found me?

When, thinking this, Goose raised his head, the spit that the figure had hocked up struck him in the face.

“Wha…?”

Goose was stunned. Standing there was a man with a huge burn on his face. It wasn’t the only one. Large burn scars were visible on his neck and remaining hand as well, and on top of that, one of his hands had been cut off. It was an individual Goose knew all too well.

“…Nader…!”

It was the man who’d attempted to betray Goose before the operation, the man he thought he’d disposed of instead. A man who’d been caught up in the flames of the blast and who should have been burned to cinders by now.

“Yeah, I used the others’ corpses to shield myself and managed to avoid dying instantly, but if a doctor hadn’t been passing by just then, things could have gotten ugly… Although, even now, it’s all I can do to stay on my feet.”

Nader had handcuffs on his one wrist. A closer look revealed the figures of several police officers in the area. The officers didn’t seem to have noticed Goose yet; they were searching the brush at random.

“It’s a field inspection, Goose. I cut a little deal with the cops, see. In exchange for telling them about the plan and the negotiators’ location, I get off with a suspended sentence. They can’t make that public, of course. It sounds like they won’t be making much about this incident public, period.”

“Why…you…”

“Y’know, I hear those ten negotiators you were counting on just got arrested. My sincere condolences.”

The burned man crouched down on the spot, putting his face close to Goose, whose expression was a mask of despair.

“You should’ve just killed me right there. You really weren’t cut out for the military.”

Those words were loaded with all of Nader’s hatred and pity.

“You’re completely pathetic, you failure.”

Nader looked down on him, coldly. In response, Goose silently lowered his head. And then—

“Don’t wander around on your own, Nader! We’ll treat it as an escape attempt! …Hmm? Is that a survivor?!”

Hastily, a police officer came running over. Nader sighed and answered him:

“Looks like he’s dead. It just happened.”

Goose’s body had fallen facedown. A mixture of lots of blood and small fragments of flesh was flowing from his mouth.

Turning his back on the unmoving black suit, Nader walked away as if he’d lost interest.

“Ah, dammit, I’ve had it. I can’t follow a guy who rushes to his own death like that. It looks like I’m really not cut out for this sort of thing. Maybe I’ll go back to the country and help my dad with his cornfields…”

The young terrorist couldn’t even visualize Goose’s face anymore.

In the end, apparently, that was all Goose had been.

Exposed to the freezing winter wind, the pitiful man’s corpse was rapidly growing cold.