Chapter 135 - Chapter 119: A Tale of Dancing in a Circle
For the time being, he wasn't going to be killed immediately, and knowing that Sato wasn't a hostile person made the boy feel relieved. However, as long as he couldn't be certain that his story was true, he couldn't trust him so easily.
His answer to Sato's request to fight together was also on hold. Though, Sato himself seemed to harbor wariness toward the boy as well. There wasn't a single thing that could serve as a weapon, like scissors, left within the boy's reach, and Sato kept the rifle and handguns on his person at all times. He had dodged the boy's question about where they were, and he never did tell him the location of the comrades Sato had originally been acting with.
"If you're from the JSDF, weren't you told about a safe shelter somewhere?"
The boy asked this on the second day since arriving at Sato's safehouse. Sato called this house one of his safehouses, but the boy didn't think any "safe" place remained in this world.
"There are some. But I don't think all of them are still functional now."
"The Prime Minister and the important people escaped by ship, didn't they? If those people remained, couldn't they continue the government or something somewhere?"
"A contingency plan... an evacuation plan assuming the infection spread on a national scale had been formulated. But things apparently went far beyond those predictions. The infection speed was faster than expected, and identifying the infection route didn't go very well. There was a plan to secure safe shelters led by the JSDF and police, but I don't think it went well."
If it had gone well, they wouldn't be in a place like this now, and things like the JSDF indiscriminately shooting and bombing citizens wouldn't have happened.
"Even if they had escaped the infected and secured a safe quarantine zone, they wouldn't report it publicly."
"Why not?"
"Because people would swarm there all at once. This country's production capacity is zero now; supplies only consist of what's left. If they opened a place where people could live safely, a large number of survivors would come swarming in. What happens then? The remaining supplies would just be consumed in an instant."
In the first place, it was possible that the opened quarantine zones weren't sufficiently stocked with supplies. In Japan, they hadn't traditionally worked enthusiastically on preparing for things that might happen in the future. Disaster prevention budgets were cut, and construction or equipment to prepare for a once-in-a-century major disaster was sometimes dismissed as wasteful. That tendency wasn't just in Japanese people; it was something seen commonly in humans.
The present rather than the future. Rather than spending money on a major disaster that you don't know when will occur—or whose probability of occurring is low to begin with—you should pour all your effort into solving the problems right in front of your eyes. One could say that result caused the current situation. If quarantine plans corresponding to a global biohazard or virus research institutions had been substantial, the damage might not have been this great. If they had increased police and JSDF personnel or advanced appropriate legal frameworks for emergencies, they might have been able to contain the infected.
"That's why even if they managed to create a safe quarantine area, they wouldn't go out of their way to announce it via radio or flyers. The people who can live in the quarantine area are politicians, government bigwigs, and researchers working on the virus; if ordinary people want to be protected, they have no choice but to find the quarantine area on their own and head there."
If they started to have leeway in terms of personnel and materials, a rescue team might come from the quarantine area. Sato said so.
"Well, I don't know if they have the leeway to dispatch a rescue team, though."
"What do you mean?"
"It means the enemy isn't just the infected."
Despite facing the crisis of extinction due to the threat of the infected, humans still continued to fight. On a small scale, it was the battle between survivors and the rioters who attacked them; on a large scale, it was wars between nations trying to seize hegemony by taking advantage of the confusion.
"I realized that humans are quite stupid creatures. Because even in this situation, they've started wars."
Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the Eurasian continent, South America... it seemed battles between humans and between nations were occurring everywhere. Every country was conducting wars to seize regional hegemony by taking advantage of this chaos, even while suffering a large number of deaths due to the infected. There were also unsettling movements in the nations around Japan, and while striving to eliminate the infection spreading across the country, the JSDF and US military also had to conduct operations for national defense.
While it was the JSDF's original mission, it was also a fact that because of it, the manpower to be allocated for citizen rescue, evacuation guidance, and protection became insufficient. He said more naval vessels were dispatched for territorial water security rather than for evacuating people.
"In the Middle East, nuclear weapons were apparently used too. Though I don't know if they were used to annihilate the infected in their own country or launched to destroy a hostile nation."
"If they have the leeway to fight among humans, they should cooperate to eliminate the infected..."
"Everyone probably understands that in their heads—that they shouldn't really be doing this. But humans prioritize the things right in front of them and the things that have happened until now over the future. They choose the one profit right in front of them that can be certainly obtained over the ten profits of the future that they don't know if they can get."
If the people you were hostile with until yesterday are weakened, rather than joining hands to face the threat together, you see it as an opportunity and crush them. If the people who were tormenting you are cornered, even if you are in trouble too, you fulfill your revenge. That was the kind of creature a human was.
Even if the infected appeared, the nations or organizations that were hostile until yesterday remain enemies today, and if they are exhausted from the battle with the infected, there's no way they'd miss this chance. The appearance of the infected was a perfect opportunity for the people who had been fighting each other. To defeat those who were enemies until now, and those who look like they'll be enemies from now on, the fighting continues even now.
Even if a common threat like the infected appeared, the hatred that had been accumulated until then doesn't disappear easily. When the people who have killed your family or friends say "Help me," how many people can suppress their grudge and hatred to lend a hand? It was because he thought such a thing was impossible that the boy killed every single person in the hostile group out of fear of retaliation, and the chain of civil wars and massacres continuing in various parts of the world showed that fact.
Even if they achieved a reconciliation, that relationship would only last as long as the threat of the infected continued to exist. Even if they succeeded in wiping out the infected (though he didn't think they could), after that, humans would just return to being enemies. Prepare for after the infected are gone by taking advantage of the confusion to reduce enemies now. It's natural to think and act that way.
"The people of The Brotherhood are probably the same. They only think about the present. They think that if they don't survive today, tomorrow won't come."
"Isn't that... natural? If you die, you can't see tomorrow's sunrise."
"Certainly, trying to survive by any means is natural as a human, as a living thing. But tomorrow only exists at the end of the extension of today. Unless today is better, tomorrow won't be better either."
Perhaps the wind was blowing, as the storm shutters rattled with a clattering sound.
"Thinking only about today is the same as not thinking about tomorrow. They are cutting off and leaving even babies to die because they are dead weight, because they are inefficient. Certainly, if you only think about today, that's a correct judgment, ethics aside. Because babies who waste manpower and supplies and might draw the attention of the infected with their crying are a hindrance. But what about ten or twenty years from now? Whether the infected are still alive or have been wiped out, everyone gets older. If everyone is abandoning babies and young children now because they are a hindrance or inefficient, who will bear the burden of society in the future?"
If all the infected die out in the future, a peaceful world will likely return. It will undoubtedly take a considerable amount of time for humanity to regain its former prosperity. But if children and babies are abandoned by adults and die now, who will bear the burden of society's reconstruction at that time?
The same applies if the infected survive from now on and a long battle continues. He said the members of The Brotherhood are mostly young people in their twenties, but everyone gets older. As you get older, no matter how much you train, your body will decline. When the current members of The Brotherhood get older and find it difficult to fight, there will be no one to fight in their place.
"No one is coming to help anymore, so everyone living now must cooperate. But as long as the people of The Brotherhood are here, that won't happen. Even if we don't lay a hand on them, they'll kill as many people as they want if they think they're necessary, and they'll attack and steal supplies. Even if your life isn't taken, you're threatened and forced to choose the path of continuing to follow their orders until you die. Unless we eliminate them, we have no future."
"Even though you said killing each other at a time like this is stupid?"
When the boy asked that, Sato gave a wry smile and said.
"It seems contradictory, but that's reality. It's something I don't want to admit and don't want to do... But if we don't eliminate the threats that attack us, we can't survive. Whether it's the infected or humans."
Surely, Sato is a much better person than himself. The boy thought so.
He told the boy that realistically thinking, what The Brotherhood is doing is unavoidable. But Sato denies that reality and is looking for a way for everyone to cooperate and survive. However, that path is blocked by The Brotherhood, and to solve that, Sato is choosing the realistic means of "fighting," which he spat out as being beneath him.
The boy felt that he too was suffering from contradiction. Sato has a conviction that all humans currently surviving should cooperate and choose a path to live together without fighting. But The Brotherhood, which looks at reality and only thinks about the present, takes actions like murder, threats, and looting, which are the exact opposite of Sato's ideals. If talking worked, the situation wouldn't have worsened this much. To save Sato's comrades who are being threatened and facing a crisis of their lives, the only path left is to eliminate The Brotherhood through violent means. However, eliminating and killing someone was a method 180 degrees different from Sato's ideals.
To save everyone living now, kill someone. To create a world without killing, kill someone. It seems contradictory, but that's the only path. Sato is always thinking and acting to make the world better while worrying about that contradiction. He is different from the boy, who continues to harbor the same worries forever and cannot move from that spot.
"Five days from now, The Brotherhood will come to my comrades' place to receive supplies. I want you to come with me then. After seeing what kind of things they're doing, please decide on our future policy."
Sato said so and left the room. As if his wariness toward the boy still hadn't faded, the sound of the door being locked from the outside echoed.
He thinks what Sato is saying is wonderful. But if asked if it's actually possible, the boy would answer that it's probably impossible. No matter how noble an ideal, if it can't be realized, it's nothing more than a delusion.
That said, if asked if The Brotherhood is right, the boy would be at a loss for an answer. If they only think about themselves and act while looking only at the present, The Brotherhood is right. But is that really the correct choice as a human being?
I look forward to your opinions and impressions.