Flesh Walkers

1951. The forests surrounding Hiroshima were still silent, cursed. Locals called it Kuro Ame no Mori—the Forest of Black Rain. Few dared enter. Fewer returned sane.

Lieutenant Kenji Morita of the reformed Japanese Defense Force lit a cigarette with shaking fingers as he surveyed the dense woods. His unit, Ghost Company, had been sent to investigate missing villagers along the forest's edge.

"No birds," whispered Sergeant Hideo. "No wind. Like the trees are listening."

The deeper they ventured, the worse it got. Melted stone statues, twisted trees, and a constant hum—like bones rattling beneath the earth. Then they found the first body.

It wasn't decomposed. It was melted.

"Radiation?" Kenji muttered, crouching beside it.

"No," said Private Aki, his Geiger counter eerily silent. "This isn't natural."

Night fell quickly. Fog rolled in like fingers. That's when they heard it—a dragging sound. Wet. Rhythmic. And then the whispers.

"Watashi wa mo ikiteiru… I'm still alive…"

Figures emerged from the mist—human shapes, but wrong. Skin bubbled and translucent, faces split down the middle, their bones visible under pulsing veins. Their eyes burned like fireflies in the dark.

"Flesh Walkers," Hideo gasped. "The survivors… the ones caught in the blast. They didn't die… they changed."

Kenji raised his rifle. "Open fire!"

Bullets tore through the abominations—but they kept walking, oozing, re-forming. One leapt on Aki, its mouth stretching unnaturally wide, screaming a thousand voices.

"HELP ME—I WAS A MOTHER—I WAS A BOY—I WAS A MAN—"

One by one, his men fell, consumed or transformed. Kenji fled, wounded, bleeding black.

He stumbled into a Shinto shrine, ancient and forgotten. As the Flesh Walkers approached, the shrine glowed faintly. Their advance stopped. They hissed and howled but did not cross the sacred threshold.

Kenji collapsed at the altar.

"What did we do…? What did we create…?"

In his final moments, as his skin began to melt, he carved a warning into the floor:

THE BOMBS DIDN'T END THE WAR.

Now, Ghost Company is listed as KIA. But locals still speak of the Black Rain Forest—and the figures that whisper at the edge, begging for skin to wear.