Crime - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Red Hats Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

RED HATS

Unacknowledged, a golden brown, sunbaked world passed by the windows of Dr. Christopher Osumi’s Volvo S90. Fury blocked all but the physical autopilot: left two concessions and up the fourth dirt path. Blind rage nearly drew him into a laneway crater that would’ve swallowed the luxury automobile whole.

The dry-packed dirt driveway rose several feet from sandy ditches. Crowding the peripheral landscape was a grey forest of primarily dead swamp growth. Osumi stared at the massive hole and considered his options.

He could back out the lane, cool down, call the school, call his lawyer, call the police, or he could get out of his car and stomp the rest of the way up the excessive and winding path to whatever kind of abode housed the family.

Scott’s bloody nose, Scott’s black eye, Scott’s swollen lips, and the backpack strap welts along Scott’s back paraded a gruesome showcase before the eye of his mind. Images mingled with the heavy words he’d known as a boy. They came despite the promise that words could never hurt him. His mother was a liar. Words slash. Words linger and revolve.

Worse, words embolden action and the man at the top had picked his side.

Osumi kicked open his door and slammed it behind him. Anger took him forward. Five-eight, fit, charcoal slacks, white Oxford button-up, rolled sleeve cuffs, Osumi stomped with clenched fists ready to throw the first real punch of his life.

Osumi and his wife Jennifer took all the necessary steps to raise a pleasant, honest, humble, and caring son. They’d promised him good things for being a good boy. One trashy schoolyard bully made their words worthless. Dr. Osumi had called the school. Jennifer Osumi had called the school. The school was at a loss about what to do with Arnold Walton, especially nowadays. The Waltons had no phone, they never answered their mail, and rarely had anyone seen them in town.

Arnold Walton rode a bus.

The same bus Scott rode despite a monstrous social and economic divide separating one county road from another.

The trouble had gone to simmer in recent years. The country had seemed to be moving forward. The election had it jumping ten steps back almost weekly. The old trouble rolled anew, coming in waves, crashing against every visible minority.

Arnold Walton spent a week at home when Scott told the bus driver the boy was a bully and that he gave Scott an Indian burn and a wedgie. There were insults, things a good boy like Scott didn’t dare repeat.

That was strike one and this was strike two, so heavy there couldn’t be a strike three.

Scott was in shock. He was a civilized boy in a civilized world. 2017 and Scott heard the things Christopher heard back in 1993, things Scott’s grandfather heard when he’d first immigrated to the country.

“Unacceptable,” Osumi grunted as he rounded the final turn. Sixty feet ahead was a home on stilts. It looked like a boys’ clubhouse, clapped together with whatever the occupants could fetch. A fresh and bright Confederate flag dangled over the stoop. “Are any of you people home?” he shouted.

A screen door opened and a frumpy, heavy breasted woman stepped forward in shorts and a stained t-shirt, no bra. She had long greasy hair.

“Doug, you ‘spectin’ someone?” she called back over her shoulder.

“What?” a voice shouted from inside the house.

“I asked if you ‘vited over some Chink prick in dancin’ shoes.”

That ignorant confidence slowed Osumi’s pace, but the fury was a residue not so easily rinsed away.

“Is your son the criminal named Arnold Walton?”

The woman frowned at this and a skinny pale man pushed her forward so he could see the figure declaring his son a criminal. The man wore his head shaved to fuzz. The man had tight lips and yellow teeth. Eyes icy blue. He wore cut-off jeans and a yellowed undershirt. Inordinately large hands rode ropey-veined arms. A red ball cap transferred from hand to head. Those four sweat stained words that put a megaphone to the country’s lowest creatures seemed to shout out.

“What you say, Chink?”

The voice was high and grating.

Arnold Walton followed his father out. The boy was big, at least one and a half the weight of Scott. As if part of the uniform, a red hat lifted and sat loose atop his head. It was bulky and ill fitting. An ugly article with uglier sentiments attached under the guise of betterment.

“I asked if you’re the parents of the criminal named Arnold Walton. Your kid has been bullying my—”

The word choice was cause for laughter.

“Bullyin’, listen to this. Rich Chink come out to talk ‘bout bullyin’? What you think you was doin’ comin’ out here?”

Being intelligent and learned did not guarantee forethought. This was a question Osumi should’ve posed before visiting the swamp slum.

Can’t back down now. You came out here because Scott is a good boy and good boys don’t deserve torment from social boot sludge.

“I came out for an apology from your son. I came out for an apology from you as well. I can see your kid has loser parents, so his actions are partly your fault.”

A tremble began in Osumi’s chest as he spoke. As if lightning struck, the awareness that his car was a half-mile away and that he was another ten miles from much of anything rattled the seeds at his core like a maraca.

The smile never faltered. “Loser? Sounds ‘bout right, don’t it? What’s an apology gonna do? Well, I’m so sorry, Mr. Ping-Pong. Sometimes my boy acts like a boy.”

That’s it? That all you need?

“Anythin’ else?” the woman asked.

Although he didn’t buy it, his adrenaline dumped sand on his fury. The wise thing to do was to jog back to his car and let the police deal with these people.

And why should the police care?

“I suppose not,” Osumi said.

He turned and started away, getting only two steps when he heard some of the nastiest words a man of his profession could hear.

“Sic ‘em, Meat! Sic ‘em, Stink!” the man said.

Osumi stopped dead and spun slowly as a snarling dog came closer. It was a mangy mutt, genetic traits of Rottweiler and St. Bernard overshadowing any others. The dog had bare patches up both sides from scratching, but otherwise, it appeared as healthy as it was nasty.

Bending his knees and spreading out his stance, the twelve-year veterinarian and lifetime animal lover had a pretty good idea of what he’d have to do.

Sure, maybe with one. Didn’t he call two dogs?

Too late for worry. Osumi set his feet and braced while the dog leapt toward him. Teeth sank into his forearm and he cried out, turning slightly to use the dog’s momentum against it. The fat, furry head lost its grasp. The veterinarian wedged that head beneath his arm. With his free hand, Osumi grabbed onto the dog’s hind legs, shifting as he moved, and then slammed the dog down into the dust.

He used his knee to pin the dog at the throat. “Call him off or I’ll—!” Osumi started to say when a second set of teeth sank into the flesh of his shoulder.

Man and dog rolled and then out of nowhere, the offending jaw relented. The dog whined. There was blood and a lot of it. The teeth of a rusty and mostly buried rake tore three long holes in the poor dog’s stomach.

That’ll need surgery.

The pointless thought drained away as quickly as it came when the first dog resumed its attack. Teeth entered the back of Osumi’s neck and he stiffened, screaming from pain and fear. The vet reached over his shoulder, grabbed fur and jumped as if trust falling. They thumped and the dog reacted like a winded squeak toy. Osumi fixed his grasp. A body follows the head. Control the head, control the body, survive this mess.

“Stink?” Arnold Walton’s voice joined the wet snap of the dog jerking within Osumi’s bear hug.

Osumi wrestled for hold.

“Stink?” The boy’s voice was closer.

Osumi leaned against the fighting dog and finally took control. He lifted a knee and stuffed his shoe in the dog’s jaw, pressing down while jerking the jagged mandible skyward.

Panting, bleeding and overdosing on adrenaline, Osumi screeched, “Call off the dog or it’s dead!”

“You hurt Stink!” Arnold shouted from right behind Osumi. Stink whined. “Dad, Stink’s dyin’!”

“Call off this dog or I’ll have to do it!”

“Dad! Meat’s gonna die too!”

“Call this damned dog off or—!” Osumi wrenched and drove the weight of his knee into Meat’s throat.

The rifle bang echoed through him, but he hadn’t heard anything. Fresh hot pain in his shoulder worked like earplugs. Dust scattered over Osumi’s face and somewhere deep, where survival instinct dwelled, he recognized that a second shot had come at him. Up to his feet, he broke for the barren forest.

“Dad, don’t let ‘em get away!”

“Jammin’ bugger,” the man grumbled, trying to jerk a bad round from the chamber.

“Shoot ‘em again!” the mother said.

Osumi’s senses returned, and he listened. If it was left up to them, he was a dead man. He’d raised a good boy, he was a good dad and a good husband, and the backwoods criminals were in the mood to kill him. This was not how it was supposed to be.

Osumi ran until he no longer heard the Waltons.

Get to the car and get the hell out of here. Hurry now before Meat gets up and does what those monsters trained him to do.

Keeping to the trees, Osumi sloshed through the muck and soft moss. Comparatively dry, much of the year, the property was under a foot or more of water, minimum. Huffing and tense, Osumi meandered toward where he’d left his car. It was so far, much farther than he recalled.

It was as if heaven shined down on him when he finally spotted it.

Hell’s laughter filled him up on the first step he took from the edge of the dead forest. There was the wife ahead of him, and from the ditch, she’d retrieved two thick, two-foot-wide boards. The crater wasn’t just a worn-out pothole. It was a dry moat.

Osumi patted his pants for keys, already knowing they dangled in the ignition. He hoped that the woman was so far out of touch that she wouldn’t understand the push start. There were grumblings accompanying the ding of the open door and then the gentle purr of the engine sank a dagger into Osumi’s chest. 

Okay, follow the car. Get to your phone, call for help.

As the car drove back up the laneway, Osumi heard a boy talking to his dog. It was close and the doctor dropped down onto his face, to peer at the greys and browns from an inch above the mud.

Arnold Walton approached him and at his side was a limping dog. Osumi slid on his belly until he came to deeper muck. He rolled onto his back and let the swamp cover him in murky water.

Let’s see, there’s garters, the ribbon, the queen, milk snakes, oh and don’t forget rattlesnakes! It’s probably dry enough that they’d wander the marsh for food… Stop that, hold your breath and stop all that.

Stopping was impossible and his imagination slithered fanged and venomous creatures over his vulnerable body, many that weren’t even local. He gasped and sprang forward. The boy and the dog were right there. Arnold fell backwards and the frantic doctor grabbed onto the startled dog. He pushed the dog’s snapping head under the water while Arnold ran.

“Dad! He’s got Meat!”

Bubbles rose.

Legs splashed.

Osumi gazed into space and time, sick about what he was doing. Meat was dead. Meat never had a chance to be a good dog.

And given the chance, he’d tear your throat out.

Meat was just one of the family, head the wrong shape for a hideous red hat.

Arnold had not run back to the house. From the laneway, the boy called to his father. The image of an aiming redneck pegged a splinter home and the doctor started off deeper into the woods, back toward the house, in the direction where his car had gone.

Get the car. Get the phone. Call the police. Get home. Get safe. Hug your family.

Osumi paused against a tree. The wounds announced themselves more fully than previously. The cool mud stung and countless organisms mingled with the open flesh. So much goes on beyond the eye. So much more goes on beneath the skin.

The image of Scott’s damage rose again. The bullies from his own childhood climbed aboard. The better times only a calendar gone, burned in the flamed encouragement of devils who painted themselves as golden gods, sitting atop golden towers.

Osumi fought off a scream.

The house came back into view. The car was a lagoon in the middle of the desert. The Walton woman sat on the porch, donning a red hat now. She husked corncobs. A rifle leaned against the doorframe. It was older and smaller than the weapon the man wielded. It was plenty big enough to put a hole in Osumi.

“You Chinese prick, you killed my dogs!” a voice filled a distant air and surfaced enough for Osumi to understand. “You come on my property and kill my dogs?”

The woman on the porch nodded with the message.

“You’re all insane,” Osumi whispered and pushed onward. It was imperative that he understood the landscape and any options he had for sneaking up on the woman. He needed the vehicle and…

Behind the little home was an old Mercury truck. It was pale blue and rusty rainbow.

“Chink!”

The voice was a good distance and the woman was at the front of the home. Osumi risked it. He crossed the high grass of the backyard to reach the old truck. It was rougher than rough. The keys sat on the dash as if awaiting him. He opened the door and heard the thick buzz. It was not the door ajar buzz. Bees climbed out of the dash-length hive and targeted the intruder.

Osumi slammed the door and sprinted. He tripped and fell into the high grass. Feet swished through the dry straws as the woman approached in a meaty sprint. Osumi held his breath amid the sun-bleached strands reaching for the sky.

“It’s all right, rice eater. You can come on out, I won’t hurt ya,” she whispered.

Osumi cast a sideways glance, saw only the top of her head across the yard and knew she held the weapon in the ready position. A hollow feeling drummed within and the adrenaline that had washed in and out filled him with highly animated gas. Shivers splashed like vacated bathtub surf.

The woman tracked nearer the truck, moving in a mostly straight line toward Osumi. An imagined muzzle flash bloomed and he cringed. Fantasy would meet reality any second. Like steam burst from a kettle. He couldn’t wait. He tackled the woman. They rolled. She screeched.

“No!” Osumi shouted, driving his fist three times before she took a shot. The report announced how ill equipped he was for battle. After kneeing the downed woman’s immense chest, he sprang to his feet and broke for the woods.

Another shot echoed, but no more pain invaded.

Moving beyond his body for a time, right until a crash pervaded his abilities. Crawling, breathing in short, hot sips, everything hurt.

“Rice eater!” the woman screeched.

The husband joined her soon after. “Chink! You don’t touch my woman! You don’t kill my dogs! You hear me? You’ll pay!”

The earth was solid in the woods behind the house. There were more fallen trees and Osumi got an idea. It was no good sneaking in the daylight. The sun was a problem. There were two hours until twilight. If he kept close, but hid, he had a chance to get to his car safely.

Could always chance the woods.

Stupid thought. The woods spanned almost the entire county, butting up against the power station ponds and the river.

A few gnarly trees had palm-like baskets. One of these palms faced away from the house and was about twenty feet high. He looked at the drooping limbs, calculating the steps necessary to reach the cradling surface.

“Ricer! Chink!” the mother shouted. An ATV kicked into gear. “You ain’t gettin’ away!”

Time was nearly up. The first limb reminded Osumi of the dog bites and the shot that seared the flesh of his shoulder. A grunt escaped his lips as he swung up to his stomach. There were three more steps. The ATV approached, though not directly.

Osumi crawled out to where the distance between limbs sank to a manageable four feet. Fingers dug into the bark as he pulled himself upright. The bark slipped from the tree and his body slipped with it, knocking the wind from his chest. He wheezed and moaned, barely holding to the branch only just above eye-level.

“We ain’t no losers, we won!” the woman screeched over the crawling ATV. “Beat that crooked bitch and we gon’ send you home!”

Up. Up!

Osumi tried again and swung his body skyward. He kicked his toes parallel to his hands. A muscle on his hip seized. His foot dropped. Again, he swung, his toes skidded and his hip roared. Down.

“Goddamn chink!”

No.

His foot swung higher than his hands. Twisting and clinging. Osumi got to his knees. He looked through the flora. The woman zoomed crossways past his tree and he hurried to the next limb. Only a couple feet, no problem.

The final stretch was tricky as the limbs that cradled like a palm did so as if built on top of another tree. The ATV was directly below and the vet latched with his arms and then his legs, crawling upside down. Everything screamed for an end. His muscles. His heart. His mind most of all.

“You tresspassin’, get out of my country!” the woman called and killed the engine.

Osumi’s chest banged and his airless lungs raged. Sweat dripped from his scalp and fell on the peak woman’s red hat. A small whine left Osumi’s mouth as he wrenched his tired, aching body upright, into the palm.

The bed was hard, but it felt wonderfully safe. Behind him, in the distance, a truck engine started and the ATV kicked back into life. Rolling away.

Osumi basked in a situational peace.

In purgatory’s waystation, the man drifted between full awareness and near unconsciousness. There were sounds and then silence. Hours passed. The falling of the sun promised as much. Still he waited, shivering from the new chilliness attaching itself to his soaked clothing and from the fear of sacrificing relative safety in the sky.

Thoughts of his worried family finally moved his tired and pained body. Climbing down was easier than climbing up. Moving on the ground, his arms and shoulders had come to an agreement and only throbbed.

Crickets and frogs sang incessantly. The natural soundtrack had a lulling effect as Osumi made for the quiet, shadowy home. The darkness within was a new mystery.

How long was I in that tree?

Osumi stepped to the edge of the opening and crept into the comparative light out of the shade. There was a half-moon casting a white glow on the yellowed world. With slow and careful steps, Osumi moved past the Mercury toward the unfamiliar side of the house. There were two open windows, but no hint of life. A second truck, a Dodge, sat amid the weeds. It was much newer than the Mercury. The rust reigned king as with the other, but where the Mercury’s aura suggested death, this vehicle appeared functional, ready to come to life.

Every step closer to the home put a weight on Osumi’s breath and a painful, shard of glass into his bloodstream. Feeling naked, he crossed the shadows. Through open windows came a heavy snore.

The grass swished underfoot until reaching a mowed and traffic-trampled area. It was spikey and crunched beneath his steps. Thirty feet from his Volvo, the snoring hitched and Osumi stopped. He closed his eyes and waited for the new pain. None came. The snoring resumed after a few audible lip smacks.

Twenty-five, twenty, eighteen, the snoring hitched again and this time Osumi lowered into a crouch. He listened and waited. The snoring resumed and he moved on. Fifteen, ten, seven, so close that he saw his reflection in the window on the moon’s shine. Broken and beaten, in a sense, but in another, Osumi was putting up a fight and winning. It was hard, but the right side would win.

Four, two, the final foot. His hand cupped around his face. The keychain dangled from the ignition. Osumi put his hand on the handle and stopped. The snores had silenced.

How long since—?

“Chink,” a voice whispered, something hard poked into Osumi’s shoulder. “I got you. Dad’s gonna hurt you for what you did.”

The screen door swung open and Osumi ignored the hardness of the voice and the hardness of what he assumed was a rifle barrel. He turned to face the door.

“Chink,” the father seethed.

Papa Walton lowered his red hat in place, standing in muddy boots and off-white underwear. Weapon aimed, Osumi dropped and the shot rang out. There was a fleshy thump. Behind him, the boy stumbled, fell, gurgling.

Bad dad. Very bad dad.

“Arnold?” the father’s voice had heightened further, into a squeak. “Chink, you made me—”

The rifle shots began tearing into the steel body of the car and Osumi rolled backwards. The body of Arnold Walton huffed below him.

Another shot.

Another.

Dust flared and metal creaked.

Backed away, the doctor made it fully behind the Volvo.

“Chink!”

“Whud you do?” the mother shouted.

“He made me!” the father shouted back, approaching Osumi.

Arnold gasped at the air and Osumi dragged his body to assess opportunity. A .22 rifle clenched in the boy’s hands. There was a black hole through the bridge of his nose.

“Fucking China man! I’m a send ya to Chinese hell!”

Osumi hadn’t shot anything since he was a kid and joined a friend in the back fifty to fire at old beer cans. Twenty-five years into the past…this lightweight rifle seemed almost like a toy. There was a bolt and a trigger, a magazine tube running beneath the barrel.

“You made me shoot my boy! That’s three, now I gots to take a third!”

Osumi aimed generally, his shoulder blades against the bumper. Images of his wife and son, the three of them cascaded in a kaleidoscope of painful hope. The shadowy man stepped into view and pointed at Osumi.

“You chink, let ‘em go!”

The boy was on the ground staring to the world beyond the sky, his arm strewn onto Osumi’s thigh. The rifle in the man’s hands clicked four times. He hissed and fumbled in his pocket. Osumi fired.

The man straightened and touched the skin of his left elbow. A graze wound. He laughed. Osumi yanked back on the bolt and leaned forward while Walton filled his weapon. The tiny rifle had a minimal report and no recoil.

The father fell backwards onto his ass and blinked away his final two seconds as the hole in his chest leaked three bubbles of blood. One inch from center.

“No, you…you!” the woman screamed nonsensically.

Osumi felt her before he saw her. The big knife slashed at his hand and he swung his arm, butting away a second strike with the wooden stock of the .22.

“You killed ‘em!” She slashed a third time and Osumi rolled sideways and jerked the bolt. A spent case seemed to float on air and the woman’s voice slowed. “Rice eatin’ sonofabitch!”

The bolt slammed back before the casing fell and Osumi fired. The Walton mother and wife had leaned in. The shot spun her.

The night grew silent but for Osumi’s short breaths. He sipped air, verging toward hyperventilation.

“Why are you like this?” he shouted and fell back into the gravel. 

Next to him was the dead man. The red hat had fallen, Osumi glanced within at the tag: MADE IN CHINA. Eyes inching over the yellowed interior. The stitched lettering of the forehead panels read in reverse: NIAGA TAERG ACIREMA EKAM, the true intention of the words revealed.

The woman coughed and rolled onto her spine. She sat up and looked around dazed. There was a chip from her chin. Blood poured.

“This is America,” she mumbled, her jaw fractured. She reached for the knife.

“No!” Osumi screeched and jerked up, belted her face with the stock of the .22.

She dropped and Osumi popped the casing and readied for a resurgence of Walton, any one of them. Minutes passed and his pulse slowed. Up, the doctor dragged the body of Arnold Walton away from the back of the Volvo. A quick glance affirmed that the father was dead too. The mother was alive, but in bad shape. The shot went through her chin and then her thick neck. She was wet with blood that ran black in the moonlight.

A three-point turn, just as he’d learned in driver’s ed. way back in the days of Nelly and a pre-teen Harry Potter. He started out the lane, for the first time noticing the heavy scent of gasoline. At the crater, Osumi got out and worked the boards into place. Across and up the vast winding lane. The red light on the dash demanded that he feed the gas tank. The road came into view and the engine died.

The center console was empty. His phone was gone.

What’s a few more hours?

The dampness had made him chilly, so he donned his suit jacket as he started toward the highway. It was surreal, more so than many dreams he’d had. A bad family drank bad political Kool-Aid and raised a bad kid.

“Chink, you ain’t getting away,” he said, reliving the fear. “Oh yeah? What do you call this? And guess what, I’m American! My grandparents were Japanese, not Chinese, you inbred hicks!”

On and on, it was six miles to the highway, three hours in his sluggish drag. His blood had clotted, though continued dripping.

“I’d do it again, too,” he said knowing that was a lie.

The sun had begun inching. The darkness had become greyness. Osumi stood at the road. Home or the hospital?

“Home, of course.”

He stumbled along, miles yet to his large house on the double-length lot.

“Chink! Rice eater! That’s three, now I gots to take a third! Get out of my country!” Osumi imitated all the things they’d screamed at him, the things some Americans had always screamed at people like him, revelling in their faults and failures.

A thought struck him to a standstill on the dusty shoulder. What had that scumbag meant when he said he had to take a third? The Osumi household was a threesome and Walton already took two…

“Oh God.”

Osumi took a step, replaying the words, I gots to take a third. Was that where the man was while Osumi hid in the tree cradle? Was he off taking eyes for eyes? Dogs for loved ones.

“Oh no, no,” Osumi moaned and broke into an ambling jog.

His home had never seemed so far and he silently begged the skies to preserve his family. Those damned voices of the dead faces, CHINK!

“Let them be alive!” he wailed.

“Chris?”

Osumi turned to the voice and the car he hadn’t heard approaching. It was a county blue and white, the man behind the wheel was Officer Brian Tallen. This particular officer had two cats, Churchill and Smucky, and a dark brown skin tone.

“Brian! I need a ride home!”

“Sure, what did you get into?”

Osumi cramped in next to the computer, a shotgun, and a lunch pail. He gave the brief version of what occurred, finished just as the police cruiser pulled in Osumi’s laneway.

“Chris, we’ve got to go make a statement. You’re sure they’re all dead? What were you doing, going out there? You should know better.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, the man said he had to take a third! I mean—oh hell, Brian!”

“You got to be careful these days. You know how it’s getting,” the officer said as he helped the tired and filthy man rise.

Together they entered the home through the side door.

That’s three, now I gots to take a third.

“Please, please no…”

It was nonsense shouted by an insane man. Nonsense until Osumi saw the streaked blood that ran much of the length of the kitchen.

“No!”

“Chris, calm down,” the officer said as they peered into the empty kitchen.

Blood dripped from the walls and ceiling. Blood ran in rivers, stealing his family in a scarlet wash. Osumi wailed a non-word.

“Chris!” Jennifer Osumi rushed to her husband. She wore a sweater and jeans, creasing rode her form on every angle. She’d obviously slept in her clothing. “Where have you been?”

Osumi looked up from his palms and the blood ran in reverse. It had looked bad, but the good overcame, as it does.

“Dad?” Scott’s small, sleepy voice carried up the hallway.

Father draped his filthy, infected arms around his wife and son. A scream rose from next door. Brian Tallen burst out and the reunited Osumi family followed him with their eyes.

“Somebody killed my cats!” Jamie Kimble screeched. There were two cats on her porch, oozed blood had stained and dried around them like fiery auras.

Osumi stared out the window at the dead things as he held his family tightly.

XX