Chapter 118 - Episode 105: A Story of Survival Strategy
Unfortunately, I was not able to remain in the final selection for the Net Novel Awards. However, in the second selection where many popular isekai fantasies and reincarnation stories were chosen, I think there was sufficient value just in being able to pass with a zombie story that could even be called out of place.
Everyone, thank you for your support.
On the way heading east, he saw several convenience stores and supermarkets, but all of them had already had their food items taken away after being looted. There might be other survivors, but it's questionable whether they are still alive now. As long as they stay in the suburbs with few infected, the places where they can obtain food are limited and they inevitably end up snatching from each other. It wouldn't be strange if killings between humans over food were occurring, and in fact, the boy had also been attacked by groups after supplies.
In the cardboard boxes on the back seat of the van, there are preserved foods, but even if he eats while economizing alone, one month will be the limit. In a state where he doesn't know when or where he can obtain food next, he wanted to procure as much food as possible.
Water is especially important. He doesn't know what kind of harmful substances or bacteria are in the water pumped from rivers around there. It can easily be thought that human corpses are rotting in the river. It would be safe if boiled, but in the event he falls into a situation where he doesn't have such leeway, the only thing he can drink is bottled water.
"All that's left is ammunition..."
This alone couldn't be obtained at some supermarket. This is Japan, not America where guns and ammunition are sold at shopping malls. Unless he goes to a gun shop, weapons cannot be obtained. That gun shop would also have been looted by groups trying to protect themselves from the infected, and there wouldn't be a shop where the products inside are still untouched.
"First is food..."
Muttering so, the boy turned the steering wheel to the route heading from the suburbs to the urban area. Recently, it feels like his talking to himself has increased again.
The place the boy visited was a regional city with a population exceeding 100,000. No, should he say it had exceeded? In this city, just like elsewhere, the roads were overflowing with cars that had caused accidents, buildings blackened by fire were lined up, and bleached corpses were rolling here and there. It seems everywhere has become a city of death now, and the figures of living humans cannot be found.
There are no fresh human corpses indicating the presence of infected. No figures of infected can be seen either, but he cannot be careless. For some reason, those fellows continue to live even now, despite likely not having been able to have almost any meals. It is fully conceivable that they are enduring the cold inside some building.
The boy decided to stop by a supermarket. In the parking lot of that supermarket, which is part of a national chain, several passenger cars were left parked as they were, and because they had been exposed to wind and rain for nine months, many streaks of mud were drawn on the surfaces of those metallic-colored car bodies. No damage could be seen on the building itself, and there were no traces of looting.
The boy, who stopped the car a little away from the parking lot, picked up the M1A rifle that was propped up between the driver's seat and the passenger seat. He decided to leave the submachine gun, which can fire rapidly and is easy to handle. The 9mm ammunition that can be shared between the submachine gun and the handgun cannot be replenished because gun shops do not handle it, and the remaining ammunition is becoming worrisome.
He fits a magazine about the size of a smartphone into the rifle and pulls the bolt handle protruding from the action. After confirming that the first round was sent into the chamber along with a metallic sound, he applied the safety.
He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder with a sling and, as usual, threw a stone in front of the supermarket to confirm that there were no infected. After confirming that nothing came out from inside, the boy brandished the rifle and set foot into the shop.
The dim shop was filled with a rancid odor, but he was already used to smelling the odor of something rotting. He turned on the flashlight and laser sight attached to the mount rail of the M1A rifle and pointed the muzzle into the shop enveloped in darkness. A powerful ring of light integrated with the direction of the muzzle and a red light point made a circuit of the inside of the shop. Since the light has a remote switch taped to the handguard of the rifle connected by a cord, he can turn it off immediately in case of emergency.
There were no figures of people, and shopping baskets were rolling on the floor. Was there a customer who was shopping and hurriedly fled when the infected came? Seeing that the potted plants in the fresh flower corner provided near the entrance were knocked over and the flower pots were broken, the infection must have spread rapidly in this city as well. Did the residents have time to flee?
Perhaps because the infection spread early, there were no traces of looting in the supermarket. Everyone fled or was killed by the infected before they could try to take away food. Surely there are no humans living in this city other than me. In the dust accumulated on the floor, there isn't even a single footprint.
He passes by the fresh food corner, which he knows is completely rotten, and heads straight for the preserved food corner. On the way, a single dried corpse was rolling in front of a register. The flesh of the neck had vanished as if it had been torn away, and a lump of blood that had dried and turned brown was stuck to the floor. It seemed he was killed by an infected that manifested in the shop, and a wallet and a shopping basket were rolling beside the corpse. The people who were in the shop must have been terrified by the gruesome sight suddenly unfolded before their eyes and fled.
The boy looked down at the corpse for a while, but he raised his gaze and headed toward the objective preserved food corner. Perhaps because the infection spread early, there were no traces of the items in the shop being taken out. Rice in packs and canned goods are lined up just as they were when it was peaceful, to the point of overflowing from the shelves.
With this, food will likely last for the time being. The boy tossed the canned goods lined up on the shelves into the duffel bag he brought one after another. In no time, the bag became heavily weighted with a large amount of canned goods.
He also looked at the packs of rice for preservation, but the expiration dates were all for half a year or so and were long since expired. Since they are vacuum-packed, they might be okay, so he takes them. As expected, he didn't feel like taking the rice in bags that had already been polished.
The fact that this much food remains on the shelves means the products in the backyard will also be untouched. It's a quantity too large for one person to consume, and he can't load all of it into the car either. That said, he felt it was somewhat wasteful to leave the rest. This is because it's not guaranteed that food can be obtained in the same way again after leaving this city.
Should he establish a base nearby and stay in this city until the food in the supermarket is gone? Such a thought floats into his head. If he does that, he can obtain food stably and won't have to worry about hunger, but the possibility of being found by infected increases. He doesn't yet know how many infected remain in this city. Furthermore, there is also the problem of whether he can secure a safe place.
Whether to be eaten alive by infected or to starve to death. He decided to leave that problem for after he had loaded as much food as possible into the car, and in the next moment, the sound of dogs barking reached his ears, carried by the wind. And it wasn't just one or two; countless barking sounds could be heard, as if a large-scale pack were there. Immediately, the boy turned off the rifle's flashlight and began to move while the bag hung at his side. He rushed past the unmanned register and crouched in the shadow of a table for bagging products lined up by the window behind it. He knows the threat of dogs from experience at the academy.
He slightly regretted leaving the shotgun in the car. Compared to humans, it is difficult to hit dogs, which are much smaller and have nimble movements, with bullets. If he fires many rounds, at least one will likely hit, but if they attack in a pack, there's no way to handle them.
In any case, right now he had no choice but to hide so as not to be found. Though, it was questionable how much effect escaping from their field of vision would have in the face of a dog's sharp sense of smell.
The barking of the dogs was gradually approaching the supermarket where the boy was. It can't be that they've caught the scent of my presence, right...? He put his hand on the rifle and peeked his face slightly from the table to observe the state outside from the window. But the boy realized something was strange when he heard a shriek of "Kyan!"
If the pack of wild dogs had noticed his presence, they might howl, but would they raise a shriek? Or was it premature to judge he had been noticed, and they might be fighting among the pack of wild dogs? Many more dog shrieks reached the boy's ears on the wind after that.
From across the intersection near the supermarket, several wild dogs running desperately appeared. On the bodies of the dogs of various breeds and sizes wrapped in winter fur, red blood was stuck here and there. The dogs didn't even look at the supermarket where the boy was hiding and continued to run as if fleeing from something.
And what showed its figure chasing such a pack of wild dogs were several infected with the area around their mouths stained bright red. The infected seemed to be running while thrusting both hands forward, as if trying to catch the dogs.
Why are the infected chasing dogs? the boy wondered. He had only heard and seen that infected attack and eat only humans, and he had never heard that they attacked other animals. Infected react to sound, so they might have been drawn by the barking dogs, but no matter how much their reason and intelligence have been blown away, even an infected would know that what is before its eyes is a dog.
Then, why on earth...? Before the eyes of the boy observing the outside from the window, one dog stepped on a newspaper or something that had fallen on the ground and slipped its feet. The boy, who saw the action the infected took in the next moment after they caught up to the dog that had lost its posture and fallen, had stood up without thinking.
When the infected swarmed the fallen dog, they reached out their hands to its body and bit into it with force. The dog raised a shriek and struggled to somehow escape from the hands of the infected. It bit and scratched with its claws, but the infected bit into its flesh and tore it away without even caring about the wild dog's resistance.
No matter how you look at it, they are eating the dog alive. While it was struggling at first, the dog gradually stopped moving. The infected were tearing the dog's body into pieces and devouring it. The dog's fur, which had been pulled out, flew away blown by the wind.
Infected only attack humans. That was the behavior of infected that the boy had recognized until now. The opponent they attack is human, and what they eat is also only human. That was one of the few pieces of knowledge the boy had regarding the infected. But the scene unfolding before his eyes shows that knowledge is a mistake. Those fellows also attack and eat animals to fill their hunger.
Had they prioritized attacking and eating humans until now because there were many humans, or had they been attacking animals just like humans in places the boy hadn't seen until now? He doesn't know which one it is, but in any case, it seems infected attack and eat not only humans but also animals. If there were a scholar researching the habits of the infected, it might have been something understood immediately, but how many scholars are continuing their research while surviving in the current world?
At the same time, the boy understood why the infected continue to live even now when humans have drastically decreased. After most of the humans died out or turned into infected, they must have been ingesting nutrition by attacking animals like that. If those fellows only ate humans, they would have starved to death long ago, but they have survived until now by attacking other animals as well.
The boy remembered seeing the corpse of a dog that had been eaten away that he saw in the village when he was at the academy. Surely those dogs were also eaten alive by infected.
"Damn it..."
If those fellows survive by eating things other than humans, they won't starve to death for the time being. In other words, he cannot use the tactic of holding out and waiting for all the infected to starve to death. As long as humans or other animals that serve as prey do not vanish from this world, those fellows will live forever.
He understood that those fellows also eat animals, but it would still be difficult to coexist. Ultimately, the staple food of the infected is human, and animals might be nothing more than an emergency food they only put in their mouths when they can't eat humans. No matter how much one lets those fellows eat cows or pigs, it's not hard to imagine that they would attack humans if they saw them. That the infected attack humans was already at a level that could be called instinct.
Perhaps their hunger hasn't been filled yet, as the infected tossed aside the dog's mangled remains and began to wander around the surroundings while letting out groans. Seeing the figures of those fellows, the boy was reminded that a long battle would continue from now on and felt an even more desperate feeling.
He cannot hide somewhere and wait for the infected to starve to death and disappear. To survive, he has to either purely run away from the infected and hide while holding his breath, or he has to defeat all the infected that attack. It was a battle with no end in sight from the start, but from now on, a battle for human survival will truly begin.