Chapter 119 - Episode 106: A Story Where You Can't Fight on an Empty Stomach
Infected eat more than just humans. That fact once again gave the boy a great shock.
In the depths of his heart, the boy had been wishing for the infected to eventually starve to death. If the humans who serve as prey disappear, the infected will have nothing to eat. Even an infected's body is sturdy, but it is a living thing after all. If shot, blood comes out, and if struck with all one's might, bones will break. If the head or heart is pierced, it dies. So if food runs out, it should die. He had thought so.
But he had found out that even if the infected were to starve to death, that would be far in the future. Those fellows have come to eat not only humans but also animals. Now that it has come to this, it can be said that there is almost no prospect of them starving to death. Most of the humans have either died or turned into infected, but the animals are breeding in large numbers thanks to the humans being gone. The infected are not troubled for food.
In contrast, humans need food to survive, but humans cannot just catch animals and eat them as they are, unlike the infected. In the first place, if they don't even have tools, they can't even hunt properly. They probably won't be able to hunt or farm satisfactorily while infected wander around. What humans can do is only consume the food that was left behind.
Preserved food is not infinite either. Right now, because the number of dead is greater than the survivors, they are managing somehow with food. But food products have expiration dates, and once consumed, that's the end of it. And after all the modern preserved food has been consumed, it's clear without thinking which of the humans or the infected has a higher probability of survival.
Since the infected are also biological organisms, they should have a lifespan. But by the time the infected reach the end of their lifespan and die out, how many humans will be able to stay alive? The boy had been prepared that this battle would continue for a long time, but now it even seemed like it would continue forever.
There are two choices. To fight and continue killing until death. Or to quickly get off this battle with no end in sight and die to become at ease.
Naturally, he does not take the latter choice. The choice to die did not exist for the boy in the first place. If he dies here, all the lives he has abandoned and the lives he has killed in order to survive until now will become in vain. From that thought, the boy had sworn that he would absolutely not choose death for himself.
The sunlight shining through the gap in the curtains was dazzling, and the boy woke up. A single ray of light shining into the dim room illuminates the dancing dust. Today, too, the boy was haunted by nightmares as usual and had been unable to sleep properly.
After securing food at the supermarket, the boy moved so as not to be found by the infected and established a base in a room of a nearby apartment building. Several infected were wandering in the apartment building, but he defeated all of them and secured safety. About ten days had passed since he started living in the apartment building, and the New Year had long since passed, but the boy didn't notice that until he looked at his watch.
Since coming to this apartment building, the things the boy had been doing were either eating, sleeping, or doing his daily training. After waking up in the morning and having a meal, he does training and then takes a nap. And once he wakes up again, he does training, has dinner, and sleeps. He hasn't done things like reading or listening to music. He had lost even the will to do so. Simply being alive—that was the boy's current state.
While thinking he shouldn't be like that, it wasn't as if there was anything else to do. Infected are wandering outside, and he cannot go out poorly. However, the boy understood best that that wasn't the only cause.
Faced with the battle that would likely continue for a long time from now on, the boy's heart was starting to break. While telling other humans not to harbor hope, in the depths of his heart, he had been expecting that this battle would eventually end. If he endured, wouldn't all the infected eventually starve to death and the peaceful era return? However, with the sight he saw the other day, all such illusions were also smashed.
If it has come to this, the only thing the boy can do is to stay still while at least not consuming physical strength, though he does minimum exercise. He must also economize on food as much as possible. To survive the survival competition with no end in sight, he must anyway conserve supplies and physical strength, and prepare a means to flee at any time if attacked. Fighting is the final resort and must be avoided as much as possible. He doesn't know how many infected he will have to face in the future, so he can't afford to consume weapons and physical strength by fighting infected one by one.
That day, too, just like the day before, the boy finished his breakfast of canned food and performed training such as push-ups and sit-ups. It was convenient that equipment such as dumbbells were available, perhaps because the homeowner's hobby was muscle training.
After working up a sweat and sitting down on the musty sofa to look up at the ceiling, the students of the academy suddenly floated into his mind. More than two weeks have already passed since he left the academy. Are they safe? Do they know that the infected eat things other than humans? Such thoughts floated into his head.
Even though he should have left the academy of his own will, in the depths of his heart, there was a part of him that regretted it. No matter how many reasons he lined up for leaving the academy to justify his actions, in the end, it would return to the point of "was my judgment correct?"
"Right, I should replenish food soon."
Muttering such a thing to himself, the boy raised his heavy waist. The food that remained in the supermarket is loaded into the car as much as he could pack, but there are still many things remaining inside the shop. While leaving most of the supplies in the car so that he can flee at any time if attacked, he only brings the amount to be consumed into the room of the apartment building. In the car, cardboard boxes filled with food still remained to the point of filling the back seat.
However, if he lives for ten days, the food consumed will also be a certain amount. There is still leeway, but he wanted to obtain supplies while they could be obtained. He doesn't know when he will be attacked by infected and fall into a situation where he has to leave this city. The boy had decided to frequently bring the consumed amount from the supermarket so that he could escape while holding even a little more supplies at that time.
From the apartment building to the supermarket, it is a distance that doesn't even take five minutes on foot. Going and coming back is nothing.
When establishing the base in the apartment building, he had finished off the infected that were inside and outside as a bonus, but he can never be careless when going outside. It is fully conceivable that infected come drifting from another place. Furthermore, considering the population of this city, there should still be many infected in the city. The boy headed toward the supermarket while killing his footsteps and maintaining a posture where he could fire his gun at any time.
He had scattered broken glass in front of the entrance as a substitute for an alarm device and stretched thin threads at the door, but there were no traces of anyone getting caught in them. The glass in front of the entrance was not broken, and the threads were not cut. If it were an infected, it wouldn't even notice the existence of the alarm device, so there are no infected inside the supermarket. After confirming that, the boy set foot into the supermarket for the first time in several days.
The inside of the shop was exactly as it was several days ago when he left here with as much food as he could hold. As usual, the dried corpse of the woman rolling on the floor welcomes the boy. The boy said "Yo" to the corpse for no particular reason and headed toward the preserved food corner where products still remained.
Recently, his talking to himself has increased. Before, it was good because there was someone to talk to. But now there is no one else but himself. Even though it's a path he chose himself, he has recently come to think many times whether it was truly correct.
It's true that if he were with other humans, they would become a burden and he might be betrayed. There are many merits to acting alone, and there are also many demerits to forming a group. But is it okay to cut off involvement with others based only on merits and demerits?
The nightmares he sees almost every day since jumping out of the academy. Isn't that a manifestation of the psychology that in the depths of his heart, he thinks his judgments until now were mistakes and regrets them? Every time such a thought crosses his head, the boy desperately brushes away that thought by lining up logic to justify himself. But recently, no matter how much he lines up logic to justify himself, he has become unable to ignore the large hole opened within his heart.
It couldn't be helped. If I hadn't done that, I would have died too. Every time such words float into his head, emptiness spreads in his heart. Have I truly been doing the right things? Am I not wrong now? If there were an omnipotent god, would I be able to say before him that everything I have done is not a mistake and that I don't regret it—?
In the boy's mind, the figures of the group of survivors who attacked them before he left the academy floated. They, too, were desperately trying to live in their own way. But the boy killed all of them, regardless of age or gender, for the reason that they were comrades of those who attacked. In the rules the boy established, that was the correct answer.
But what if those rules themselves were wrong...?
There, the boy stopped thinking. "Do not doubt the rules"—that was also included in the rules for survival that the boy established.
The boy had established those rules after witnessing many deaths and tasting the experience of many important people dying. To doubt them would be the same as denying the path he has walked, his life itself. Wouldn't denying the deaths of many people and the experience gained from them also deny even their deaths? That was why the boy tried not to doubt the rules.
To think about such things, it must surely be because he is tired. Although he secured a room in an apartment building and established a base for the time being, the boy has been unable to sleep soundly, just as when he was sleeping in the car. Because he sees nightmares every time he lies down to sleep, he can only repeat shallow sleep.
The boy suddenly remembered the existence of the drugs he had obtained in another city before. He had completely forgotten about their existence until now, but wouldn't he be able to sleep well if he used those? He thought such a thing and immediately dismissed that thought. Drugs are addictive, and the demerits are greater than the merits. If he were to suffer from addiction and hallucinations for a long time afterward in exchange for a moment of peaceful sleep, it would be better not to use them.
The boy stuffed as many canned goods as he could into the rucksack and, shouldering it as it became heavily weighted, began to turn back the way he came. To lower the risk of being found by infected, it is better to keep the time spent acting outside as short as possible. The boy, who turned the corner of a shelf taller than his height with his rifle in hand, stopped his feet there without thinking.
A dozen or so meters ahead of the boy, at the entrance of the supermarket he had just passed through, several men were standing. Whether they had just set foot into the shop, they were each pointing their gazes in different directions and brandishing the guns in their hands in those directions. The large rucksacks they carried on their backs showed that they had come to the supermarket for the same purpose as the boy.
Among them, he met eyes with a young man standing in the middle. The young man's eyes widened, and his mouth hung open as his gaze was nailed to the boy who suddenly appeared before his eyes. The moment he met eyes with the man, the boy was brandishing his rifle.