[The End of Osamu Ashikaga]: The Boy Hero

Memories continued to flow relentlessly, taking Osamu and Taeko from the cantina to the quarry. The quarry was shaped like a massive crater in the ground, exposing pallid stone, sunburnt gravel, and andesite to be picked. Osamu watched as a lone, blonde boy struck his pickaxe against the stone deposit while the scorching sun shined down upon him from high in the sky. The boy stopped to catch his breath as a slight breeze chilled his hot, sweaty skin for just a moment. When the breeze passed, he picked up his pickaxe, reeled it back, and struck the stone again.

At the top of the crater, overlooking the quarry, Taeko sat upon a large, smooth rock and watched as Johan watched the blonde boy continue to dig. He stood with his hands behind his back and a female prisoner at his side. The woman’s long, brown hair was tied back into a ponytail that fluttered in the breeze as the sunlight made her green eyes sparkle like emeralds. Her sleeves and pants were rolled up as far they could go, giving her skin some space to breathe and tan in the heat.

Taeko could tell from the woman’s countless bruises speckled down the length of her limbs and her straight posture that she wasn’t like the other women at the Steplag. She remained resilient and unbroken despite the terrible harshness of the Soviet guards. Perhaps even more striking than her apparent resilience was her slightly East Asian features. Looking at her face, Taeko surmised she was of mixed Siberian and Japanese descent.

“Japan has surrendered, Luna.” Johan said. “The Allies unleashed a new weapon on the mainland, the atomic bomb, they’re calling it. Two cities were wiped out in the blink of an eye. The Japanese secret police, the Kenpeitai, has been disbanded as a result. Next year, eleven countries that fought against Japan, including the United States and Soviet Union, are going to hold a tribunal in Tokyo to try your superiors for war crimes and human rights abuses. With both the Kenpeitai and Abwehr gone, we’ve lost the support of both Japan and Germany.”

“So all that’s left is the NKVD?” Luna asked.

“Yes, but of course, you’ve been labeled an enemy of the people. I can’t get them to help you, even with my influence. Our best bet is to appeal to the Allies occupying Japan. We can give them something they know they’ll need. We’ll rewire the project. We can change the boy’s objective entirely.”

“What exactly are you suggesting, Johan?”

“We promise the Allies a future leader capable of dismantling the Soviet Union from the inside out, as well as the blueprints for Project Nirvana. We give them the boy and the tools they’ll need to produce more like him. If we do that, we can get the Allies to facilitate your release and your return back to Japan.”

“The Allies crush my nation and obliterate two cities filled with innocent people, and you want me to give them the designs for the most extensive, covert operation ever undertaken in modern history?”

“It’s either that or you and his brother die out here in these camps. Is that what you want? You can escape to Japan with his brother while he stays here and slowly puts the plan into play. I can’t think of a better outcome than that.”

In the blink of an eye, the memories flashed forward even more. Osamu and Taeko trailed behind the young, blonde boy as he took a stroll within his camp perimeter. He walked with his hands behind his back and a peaceful look upon his face as the moonlight shimmered upon his angelic hair, which now reached down to his shoulder blades.

He stopped when he happened upon an elderly man sitting on a wooden box just outside of the men’s barracks. Shivering beneath his torn and worn out prison jacket, the man was lacing up his boots with thin string. The flickering, orange glow of a lantern hanging above him shined against his bald head, casting a shadow over his eyes.

The blonde boy approached him with a smile and a wave of his hand. “Hello, Mr. Dyatlov. Do you need any help with your laces? I can do them for you, if you’d like.”

“Oh…names!” Dyatlov said.

“It’s okay.” the boy said. “The guards are smoking cigars and playing cards. They won’t hear us if we speak quietly.”

“They put you in the quarry today?” Dyatlov asked, looking at the boy’s hands. “You have white dust in your nails and blisters in your hands.”

The boy looked at his hands and smiled. “Yes, I worked the quarry as punishment. They said I wasn’t fast enough in the copper mine and that stone was probably more my speed.”

“I’m just glad they didn’t do worse to you. It’s not above those animals to hurt and maim children. You watch yourself out there.”

“Oh, I will. That reminds me, Mr. Dyatlov, did you hear about the girl that was shot a few months back. A guard killed her for drying her socks on the perimeter fence.”

“Little Anastasia? Yes, I heard about her. That’s what I mean. What kind of monster shoots a little girl like that, just for drying her socks? These guards aren’t human. They’re like demons. I feel so terrible you had to witness that. Children should never have to come face-to-face with death like that.”

The boy clasped his hands together and took a deep breath. “Yes, I agree. Apparently, that guard is quite popular among his men. I’ve heard some of them say he defended Stalingrad against the Germans and proved to be a great disciplinary figure. It’s no wonder the other guards helped to make the girl’s death look justified.

“Now that I think about it, what was that guard’s name? I’ve spent so long addressing people by numbers that I can hardly remember what a name truly is. Oh…that’s right…he actually has the same last name as you. It’s Dyatlov. Oh! Was it…Alexi Dyatlov?”

The old man’s eyes widened in abject terror he dropped his boots on the ground and turned his body towards the boy. His tone of voice went from relaxed to panicked.

“Alexi? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure that’s his name?”

“Why, yes! Most of the guards refer to him by his last name, but the ones close to him use his first name, and they’ve always called him Alexi. Is there a problem? You seem spooked.”

“No…no I’m fine. It’s nothing. Thank you for telling me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Never mind that. Speaking of names, you’ve never told me yours. What’s your name?”

“I don’t know.” the boy said, leaning his head back. “I’m not like the rest of you. You all have memories of your past lives before this camp, but I don’t. I was born here. It’s all I’ve ever been. I don’t recall ever receiving a name and I don’t know who my parents are. I’ve always just thought of myself as my number, D416.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen children born in the gulag system. But…to not even have a name? I’m sorry to hear that. Well, you can always make a name for yourself. You have a kind of freedom most of us don’t. You get to choose who you’ll be in the future and no one can take that from you. I hope you’ll find a name that suits you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dyatlov. I hope so too.”

The next memory brought Osamu and Taeko to the rear of a massive crowd of prisoners gathered outside the cantina. The guards formed a line at the entrance and stood with their rifles aimed at the prisoners, shouting at them to back away. Osamu and Taeko walked around the crowd and stepped past the guards, peeking inside through the cantina door to see what was happening.

He saw Johan and three of the guards standing the dead body of Alexi Dyatlov. Alexi was lying on his back with his hair fanned out on the floor. He clutched his rifle in his hands, the barrel pointed towards his mouth. Blood leaked from his mouth and nose and the left side of head was completely swollen.

Osamu looked towards the back door of the cantina and caught a glimpse of two more guards beating the old man to death with batons. He curled up like a fetus on the floor, covering his head with hands as the guards struck him again and again.

“What happened here?” Johan said, covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief.

“That old man came in looking for Alexi.” one of the guards said. “Alexi came out to see what he wanted, then the old man said he recognized him. I thought he was just off his rocker, but then Alexi took off his cap and addressed him as ‘father’. Alexi asked him what he was doing here, then the old man went on about the girl that was shot. Alexi broke down in tears and then…he shot himself.”

Taeko immediately turned her head, looking for the blonde boy they had seen in the prior memory. There he was, standing at the very front of the crowd with his hands behind his back, his light, blonde hair swaying in the breeze. Seeing the result of his actions, the boy smiled and turned away, disappearing into the mob of curious prisoners.

“Osamu…” Taeko murmured.

“Yeah. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about all of this.” Osamu said. “So, that kid is Johan’s son, and the mother you saw earlier is most likely Lucrezia’s grandmother, Luna.”

“They mentioned there was a brother, as well. It sounded like he’s in a different camp. Their plan was to arrange for Luna’s escape with the brother while they left this one here in Europe to dismantle the Soviet Union.”

“How is one boy supposed to dismantle an entire union of nations?” Osamu asked.

The next memory brought Osamu and Taeko to the top of the quarry yet again. This time, they watched as Johan met with the blonde boy beneath the pale light of Kazakhstan’s full, golden moon. Johan looked out at the empty and barren land of Kazkhstan, the only sign of civilization being a brutal, Soviet labor camp. He watched as the women mined for copper in the distance, the guards using the headlights on their trucks to help them see in the dark.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Johan asked. “You told Igor Dyatlov about his son, Alexi.”

The blonde boy nodded his head, keeping his hands behind his back.

“If anyone finds out about this, they will have you killed. You’ve put yourself in tremendous danger that even I can’t shield you from.”

“And why would you shield me?” the boy asked.

“You must know by now that you are no ordinary boy” Johan said. “You’re handsome with blonde hair and blue eyes, and you possess remarkable intelligence and social skills. You had better literacy than any of your peers in the orphanage, you were more athletic than them, and you can handle physical labor despite being nine years old. You’re half vampire, after all. You get it from me.”

Johan’s shoulders shook as he bowed his head. He fought back tears as he gazed upon the boy’s face. His hands balled into fists and his eyes swelled with tears, but all the boy could do was stand in awe and confusion. Realizing his father had been watching over him the whole time put a brief smile on the boy’s face, but it wilted into a frown as Johan fell to his knees and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Luna’s your mother. I’m your father, and you are a symbol of my failure.” Johan wept. “For years, I taught the remnants of my race to seek a peaceful end for themselves. I taught them to accept responsibility for all we’ve done to the human race, to never bring children into a world that wants us all dead. And yet…I fell in love and had a child.

“I preach about euthanasia and living out the rest of our lives in solace, and yet I’m here now, helping these monsters brutalize our people! And all I can do is watch! And you! I didn’t even give you a name! Your mother was an agent for the Kenpeitai. She needs to get out of the country, but with America occupying Japan, we had to improvise a different way to get her out of here safely!

“That plan involves you. She’s going to take your brother back to Japan with her, where they can live normal, happy lives. But you…you’ll be stuck here. You’ll only be seen as a weapon, a tool! I’m the one that came up with the plan. I destroyed your future! I weighed your life and your brother’s on a set of scales and chose him instead! My life…has been nothing but failure! All of it! I’m trying so hard to atone…but the sin is just too great.”

The sounds of the boy’s soft whimpers prompted Johan to raise his head. The boy’s face was soaked in tears, his right hand clutching his chest. “I wish…I was never born….”

“I…I’m so sorry…”

“So Johan was crushed beneath the weight of his own guilt.” Osamu said. “Sommerism was built on the idea of a peaceful end to vampiric existence, and yet he aided the Soviet Union in the enslavement and annihilation of vampires in Russia. He extolled anti-natalism, yet he brought two children into the world out of love for a foreign agent who couldn’t have cared less about either of them. Johan realized he was just another hypocrite from the Frankfurt School, a pseudo-intellectual who knew his ideals were just that, ideals. Put to practice, they were almost unattainable.”

Johan and his son would meet again late at night in the vampiric orphanage, when the kids and educators were all sound asleep. To make it look as though they were doing a late night story reading, Johan pulled up a chair and held one of his picture books in his hands while his son sat cross-legged on the floor. Osamu and Taeko sat at a wooden table across from them and watched their conversation unfold.

“You are the result of Project Nirvana.” Johan said. “It’s a collaborative project undertaken and supported by several different intelligence groups and secret police organizations. That included the German Abwehr, the Japanese Kenpeitai, and the Italian Servizio Informazioni Militare. During my tenure at Goethe University, the Sommerists willingly exiled themselves from Germany, choosing quiet and remote places to live and die. Some of them even turned themselves in to the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel.

“The Germans saw this was the direct consequence of my Sommerist teachings, and instead of persecuting me, they wished to see it replicated. Germany, Italy, and Japan came together and formulated a plan that would involve pairing genetically suited couples, so that they would birth a healthy child with high intelligence, handsome features, and remarkable charisma.

“That child was to be brought up on Sommerist ideals and raised to be a leader in the target community. That leader would push for the same ethnic euthanasia that I do and raise a new generation of Sommerists. You were the trial run, to see if teaching Sommerism to children at the most crucial developmental years would yield the kind of leader they were looking for.

“With a project like this, the Axis powers could raise leaders that could destroy entire nations and people from the inside. The vampires, the Jews, the Negroes, all would be targeted with charismatic, Sommerist leaders. Eventually, genocides and military expansion would become unnecessary, and the Axis powers wouldn’t have to expend so much of their resources fighting off resistance groups and nationalist movements.

“However, there was another usage for the project. The emergence of a Sommerist leader and political party could be used to deliberately trigger a reactionary movement and drive the target population toward hardline nationalism. It would embolden that population to drive out self-destructive ideologies from their nations.

“Though it was possible to raise a good Sommerist during their college years, they weren’t always good leaders. They simply adhered to the ideology, but they didn’t possess the personable qualities needed to spread it. That is what Project Nirvana is for. In essence, it’s an effort to replicate people like me.

“Your mother, Luna, is a Kenpeitai agent assigned to produce a Sommerist leader with me. She’s being aided by a group of officers and administrators within the Soviet leadership apparatus. They cannot openly oppose Stalin and the communist regime, but they’re hoping that a Sommerist leader could help dismantle the Soviet Union from within.

“Project Nirvana was predicated on the assumption the Axis regimes would be around for much longer, but Germany, Japan, and Italy have all been defeated by the Allies. Their respective intelligence and secret police organizations have all been disbanded as a result. Unless we could appease the United States, Luna and I had a very good chance of being left out here to die.

“So, in exchange for our safety, we opted to give the United States the blueprints to Project Nirvana, and to use the product we have to begin the long process of dismantling the Soviet Union. You and I would work together to achieve that while the United States produced future leaders of its own, one’s capable of infiltrating Japanese and Negro communities, among others.

“Well, it’s not like we can tear apart this nation from inside the Steplag. When the time is right, our Soviet sympathizers will organize a ‘transfer’ for you. Really, they’ll be letting you go and putting another prisoner in your place. A name, history, money, and property shall be given to you. From there, you’ll begin your work as a Sommerist operative. That is what you’re being raised for.”

Stunned by it all, the blonde boy took a moment to process everything he’d been told. He pulled his gaze away from Johan’s eyes and looked down into his own lap, his mind spinning in circles. Not a single facet of his life belonged to him. He had no control over his existence, his life, or his death. In the end, his life was like the picture books Johan used to read to him; authored and narrated by someone else.

“Johan…” the boy began, “What about the vampires?”

“What about them?” Johan asked, puzzled.

“We’re supposed to be doing so much for the humans and their countries. When do we get to save our own people? When do we get to leave this world?”

“I…I don’t know. It will have to wait, for now.”

“So this will just go on forever?”

“It will go on as long as it needs to.”

“There’s not a single vampire here that wants to keep living!” Johan shouted. “ You of all people should know that. Instead of saving everyone, aren’t we just doing whatever humanity wants us to? It’s like we’re just puppets!”

“It’s as I said before. I failed.” Johan said, clasping his hands atop the book. “I may have been the one to start this story, but I have no right to finish it. I wasn’t able to follow anything I preached. I’m not the one who will save our people, but I truly believe you might be the one to do it. You can carry on my work without being tainted by any of my hypocrisy. That’s because you’re your own person. Your life is yours and only yours.

“I know it might not seem like it, but all the people who orchestrated your birth are either dead or imprisoned. It’s only a group of defectors and reformists within Russia that know about you right now. Dismantling the Soviet Union is paramount to being able to save our race. We can’t ever hope to achieve a peaceful end to our existence while this regime is in place. As long as we have Stalin, the gulags, and the purges, our people will always be made to suffer.”

“You say that as if all the vampires are here in Russia. Aren’t they scattered all over the world?”

Johan shook his head. “Not so much anymore. There’s something else you should know before we carry out our respective missions. This is the most crucial secret. You must not tell anyone else of this.”

“What is it?”

Johan raised his head and glared into the blonde boy’s eyes. “Most of the world’s vampires have been gathered into one place already; the city of Yakutsk. Lord Carmilla, Dracula’s right hand, is the one responsible for it.”

“…What?” the boy gasped, his eyes wide and his mouth agape. “Is there a labor camp there?”

“No, they don’t live in any labor camp like us. They’re free. Vampires have always had an uncanny ability to blend into human society. They live in Yakutsk without the Soviet authorities even being aware of it. I first learned about this in Germany. Lord Anastasia told me about it herself before she fled the country to go live there.

“I know it must sound wonderful to you, to live in a place without watch towers or barbed wire fences. But really, it’s a paradise waiting to burn. I fear that Carmilla will one day make the same mistakes Dracula made. She and the other lords were among the old kingdom’s most ardent nationalists. They might even try to restore the monarchy someday.

“Don’t you see? This is why it has to be you. The true goal of Sommerism will be achieved there, in Yakutsk. You can wrest control away from Carmilla and the nationalists. You can prevent the restoration of the Vampirical Monarchy and make sure our race dies out peacefully, isolated from the rest of the world. They will never follow a leader that has failed as much as I have, but you can be the new face of Sommerism. You can be the new Johan Sommers.

“But before that can happen, we need to protect those people from the clutches of the Soviet Union. You can save Yakutsk from a violent end at the hands of the Russians and prepare them the peaceful salvation of Sommerism.”

Osamu and Taeko knew they were witnessing the moment that the blonde boy, known only by the number on his prison jacket, was finally given purpose. He was no longer just another prisoner doomed to eternal servitude in the gulag system. The blonde boy’s eyes sparkled with tears, for he knew he could be so much more than he ever though possible.

In that moment, the boy knew he could be a hero to his people, a shepherd guiding them to the peaceful oblivion that lied beyond their miserable lives.