Chapter 136 - Chapter 120: Scum of Good and Evil
I have passed the first round of the Net Novel Awards. Thank you everyone.
After five days, the pain in his body had subsided considerably. He could walk normally and move his arms. As long as he didn't do things like run or swing a gun around, he could lead a normal—though he no longer knew what was normal—life.
Along with that, the boy was to head to the place where Sato's comrades lived. The purpose was to see the figure of The Brotherhood, who were said to be going around extorting supplies from survivors and further threatening them to make them gather more.
Sato had said he wanted the boy to decide whether to fight together after that, but the boy still hasn't been able to decide what to do.
The boy didn't know what was right and what was wrong. What The Brotherhood was doing was, plainly speaking, extortion, and in a previous era, it was an act that should have been condemned and faced the judgment of the law.
In such a world, how many people are there who keep the commandments not to steal, kill, or rape? What The Brotherhood is doing is, plainly speaking, extortion, and in a previous era, it was an act that should have been condemned and faced the judgment of the law. However, the world changed completely with the appearance of the infected, and it became a world where you had to do anything to live. Just as the JSDF was permitted to shoot even people who weren't infected, the acts that are permitted increase if the situation changes.
Even in normal times, taking another's life was permitted in the form of "self-defense." The Brotherhood is also killing others and extorting supplies to protect themselves and survive. If you look at it with the common sense or sensibilities of normal times, those are acts that should be condemned, but couldn't it be said that they are unavoidable acts now that the world has changed?
Murder was treated as an act to be condemned and loathed in the normal world. The exceptions were "self-defense" and "emergency evacuation." If there was a reason like "to protect one's own life" or "to protect someone's life," murder was permitted.
And the current world is no longer normal. The boy has killed many people and stolen things, lining up reasons like "to protect myself" or "to help someone else." The JSDF received orders like "to protect many others" or "to preserve the nation" and killed many citizens. Then, isn't what The Brotherhood is doing the same thing?
They too are said to be killing many people and threatening them to steal supplies to survive. In these times, it's difficult to help someone. If you were helping someone, you might conversely end up dying yourself. Everyone is at their limit just protecting themselves, so they don't have the leeway to act while thinking about someone else.
That's why they only think about themselves. Only they will survive. For that purpose, they don't care how many people other than themselves suffer or die. Isn't acting while thinking that way also a kind of self-defense or emergency evacuation?
The reason the boy took Sato's proposal was because he wanted to see the figure of such a Brotherhood and know what kind of existence he himself was. While saying it was to protect himself, the boy thoroughly killed everyone who was an enemy to him, even their comrades. Even if they hadn't directly pointed a weapon at the boy, if they were comrades of the attacker, he killed everyone, whether they were elderly or children, and cut off the risk of being retaliated against.
How did the people who were killed see the boy? As a merciless avenger, or a crazed mass murderer? Or a machine that kills people indifferently? But the dead say nothing. He can grasp his own figure if he looks in a mirror, but when it comes to his deeds, he can only measure good and evil through the eyes of a third party.
The boy had no comrades to act with. Therefore, he couldn't know how he looked to others. By seeing the figure of The Brotherhood, who are doing various things while claiming it's "to survive" just like his former self, how would he feel? Was his past conduct right, or was it wrong? He might be able to find an answer there.
He was guided to the place where Sato's comrades were while blindfolded. Although he wasn't directed with hostility, it seems the boy is not yet a trustworthy existence for Sato. Making him blindfolded to hide the movement route and destination is probably based on the thought of preventing the boy from joining The Brotherhood and harming Sato's comrades.
The car Sato was using was, coincidentally, the exact same model as the SUV the boy had moved his luggage into just before getting caught in the trap. The boy, placed in a different colored SUV, was blindfolded, and for good measure, handcuffed and sat in the passenger seat, and was shaken by the car for about an hour. Since it wouldn't be a distance that takes an hour, in reality, he might have intentionally taken a detour to mess with the boy's sense of distance.
Along the way, whether he switched the driving mode to electric, the engine sound disappeared and instead the quiet driving sound of the motor could be heard. The boy's prediction that the destination was close was correct, and a few minutes later, the SUV stopped.
"Get out."
With Sato's voice, the blindfold was removed, and then the handcuffs were undone. Sato was already out of the car, carbine in hand. The boy followed Sato and got out of the car.
Come to think of it, he didn't bring any kind of weapon when he came, he thought, but just then, Sato offered an automatic pistol to the boy, grip first. Looking closely, it was the boy's possession that Sato had confiscated, and Sato said, "It's for self-defense."
"Don't shoot as much as possible; I don't want the gunshots heard. I'll give the signal when it's okay to shoot; don't shoot otherwise. Also, you know this, but if you point the muzzle at me..."
"You'll kill me, right?"
He knew it without being told. Whether he was injured or not, the boy had a strange confidence that he could absolutely not win against Sato. If the boy tried to point the muzzle to kill Sato, he would probably be hammered with bullets and sent to the other world before that. If he tried it, he might know Sato's true ability, but if it was as the boy predicted, he would face death immediately after.
A pistol only works at close range and has low accuracy. On top of that, with its weak power, it literally only serves for self-defense against the infected. If there was a possibility of combat, a rifle would have been better, but in a state where his arm hasn't completely healed, he probably wouldn't be able to use a rifle that occupies both hands satisfactorily. He was anxious about moving through the city with only one pistol and no spare magazines, but he had no choice but to trust Sato.
He pulled the slide to chamber the first round and started walking after Sato. The town the two came to was apparently a seaside town, and the scent of the tide had become quite strong. Across the road, several tall buildings that looked like tower mansions could be seen.
"We're turning here."
The end of the road was a river, and the tower mansions were built on the opposite bank—or so he thought, but looking closely, there was no flow for a river, and it was wavy. It was then that the boy finally realized that the land on the opposite bank was not natural, but was the Reclaimed Land created on the sea. The Reclaimed Land seemed quite wide, and looking around, there were not only tower mansions but also buildings that looked like large shopping malls.
"This is?"
"It's one of the reclaimed areas in Tokyo Bay. Since several years ago, it was said that the land shortage in Tokyo would become serious, so reclamation along the coast of Tokyo Bay was being actively carried out, right? This is one of them, a redevelopment area."
The Reclaimed Land apparently covers a quite wide range, but every part seems to remain unfinished. In the reclaimed area in front of him, there are buildings under construction here and there, and bulldozers and trucks were left out in the open on vacant lots. However, whether people lived there or commercial facilities were operating, passenger cars and such could be seen here and there.
"Sato-san's comrades are here?"
"Yeah, though we have to walk a bit more."
Sato said so and started walking north along the reclaimed area on the opposite bank. Do people really live in a place like this? the boy thought. However, as he walked, he saw bridges connecting the land and the opposite bank destroyed along with their piers, or large holes opened in the middle of bridges, and he changed his mind, thinking that there might indeed be people.
Thinking about it, the Reclaimed Land seems like a quite good evacuation place. The infected can't swim, so they can't cross the sea or rivers. If you destroy the bridges connecting to the land, or block them, the Reclaimed Land turns into a solitary island on land. It's an excellent place where the infected can't enter from the outside. Though, the fact that the infected can't enter from the outside means they themselves can't go out, so if they don't leave a movement route, they'll be in trouble if the food inside runs out.
"It's almost time... It seems the people of The Brotherhood have come too."
Saying so, Sato beckoned the boy and climbed the emergency stairs of a nearby old multi-tenant building. Climbing the stairs of the multi-tenant building, which was battered with red rust and peeling paint from being exposed to the sea breeze, he could see several human figures moving on the shore of the Reclaimed Land about 300 meters away. Peering through the binoculars handed over by Sato, those human figures looked like normal humans. Are those the survivor comrades of Sato?
He couldn't discern their expressions, but he could clearly see that they were waiting for something. Looking, several carts with many cardboard boxes piled up were placed beside the survivors. If Sato's story was correct, those would be the supplies the survivors gathered while risking danger.
On the opposite side, that is, from the direction where the boy and the others were, two passenger cars came and stopped in front of the bridge where the survivors were waiting. The bridge spanning the sea about 20 meters wide that separated them had its girders vanished over about 10 meters from the middle. Only the handrails at the ends remained in a dangling state, but the sidewalk and roadway were completely gone.
"I blew up that bridge; I had some explosives left. Though it wasn't enough to blow up all the bridges connecting the Reclaimed Land and the land, so I moved some abandoned construction machinery and forced holes in the rest to make them impassable."
The destroyed bridges he saw on the way here were apparently all done by Sato. Beside the boy peering through the binoculars, Sato, holding his carbine, said so. Sato himself was holding his gun, peering through the attached scope, and pointing the human figures toward the two passenger cars that had just arrived.
"But if the bridge is destroyed, how do they hand over the supplies?"
"You'll see if you watch."
Within the binoculars, he saw a human figure on the Reclaimed Land side proceed to the middle of the destroyed bridge. Looking closely, long iron plates connected by wires were standing in a flipped-up state at both ends of the remaining girders. When the human figure operated some machine installed on the railing, the wires extended and the iron plates gradually tilted horizontally.
"I made a drawbridge with wires and winches removed from a crane truck. Though since it's a makeshift one, its strength is weak, and at most people can pass. I really wanted to make the same thing on all the bridges, but manpower and materials were insufficient."
Eventually, the iron plates became completely horizontal, and the large hole that had been in the bridge was half filled. As if waiting for that, several men got out of the cars. Although he couldn't tell the types, he could see that everyone had guns in their hands.
The men also operated the winch machine installed on the land side and tilted the iron plates that would become the bridge horizontally. When the iron plates on the land side also came down horizontally, the large hole in the bridge became crossable with the two iron plates.
It's well thought out, the boy thought. If you install winches on both the land and the Reclaimed Land side and make it a double-leaf type that can finally be crossed by operating both, even if some trouble occurs on one side and the iron plate stays down, you can prevent intrusion from the outside by operating the other side. At the same time, if the infected or enemies invade the Reclaimed Land, when escaping, if you keep the iron plate on the Reclaimed Land side down and flip up the iron plate on the land side, the enemy won't be able to follow.
"From what I see, it seems possible to prevent intrusion from the outside, but why are Sato-san's comrades following The Brotherhood? Couldn't they have just kept the bridge up and held the fort?"
"If they had enough supplies and everyone had the same way of thinking as me, they would have done that. But they scavenged all the stores in the Reclaimed Land, and almost no food was left. Besides, the enemy is human; if they want to, if they think about it, there are any number of intrusion routes. Yachts or large ships were all destroyed by the JSDF, but any number of boats with outboard motors or rowboats remain. They can invade even from the sea using those. Above all, not everyone was a strong enough person to think about resisting. Because the strong people all went to The Brotherhood's side, they just got scared and chose the path of cowering and submitting just by having a gun pointed at them by The Brotherhood."
Within the binoculars, the men with guns had crossed the bridge and entered the land side. From 300 meters away, even using binoculars, you can't see the faces of distant people. Even so, the fact that Sato's comrades, whose territory was being invaded, were terrified was clearly conveyed.
I look forward to your opinions and impressions.