Chapter 205 - Next Up is Tarzan-ish Story
I peeked at the interior through a gap in the barricade set up at the shopping mall entrance, but there was no sign of anyone inside. Of course, there was the possibility they were holding their breath and waiting to ambush me, but even so, I couldn't afford to dawdle here.
The boy gripped his axe and swung it down with all his might onto the wooden chairs and chests of drawers that were secured with nails and wire. Along with a loud noise, the furniture that served as the barricade was destroyed, and wooden splinters flew.
After swinging the axe down twice, three times, the barricade's fixings loosened and a gap appeared. He thrust the tip of a crowbar, also taken from his backpack, between the pieces of furniture and forced them apart. With the sound of destruction, the secured furniture rolled onto the floor, and a gap large enough for one person to pass through opened in the barricade.
Immediately switching his weapon back to his gun, the boy stepped into the interior of the barricade. There were windows for natural light in the ceiling of the shopping mall, but it was generally dim. Turning on the flashlight attached to his carbine, the boy moved forward.
"Aki, where are you!?"
He shouted in a loud voice. It would inform the enemy of his presence and location, but since he didn't know Aki's exact whereabouts, he had no choice but to call out from his side. He didn't know the exact distance with the beacon Sato had prepared either, and Sato, who held the receiver, was currently acting separately.
Inside the mall was eerily quiet. The stores had been ransacked, and empty food packages were discarded here and there, showing that someone had lived in this place for a long time.
And the brown stains encrusted in places on the carpet were likely traces of dried blood. Had humans killed each other, or had they been attacked by the infected?
While guarding the surroundings, he brushed the floor. Dust had accumulated on the floor, which likely hadn't been cleaned for a long time, and his fingertips became white with dirt.
When he illuminated the floor with his light, several footprints remained on the accumulated dust. If he followed these footprints, he might reach the place where the people who used the mall as their base were. After calling Aki's name once more and confirming there was no reply, the boy began to advance, following the footprints.
The footprints went through the stairs and continued to the upper floor. However, the stairs of the shopping mall also had a barricade constructed, perhaps in preparation for when the interior was invaded. But this time there was a gap that seemed passable, so the boy tried to squeeze his body into it.
At that moment, he had an indescribably bad feeling. Hearing a noise, he looked above the barricade to find a boy standing there holding a large meat cleaver.
The boy's bloodshot eyes sparkled, and with a beast-like roar, he brandished the cleaver. He jumped down from the barricade toward the boy.
Reflexively, the boy retreated while pulling the trigger of his carbine, set to semi-auto, twice, three times. The gunshots, muffled by the silencer but vibrating in his gut, echoed through the mall, and the boy's face, with madness floating in the muzzle flash, was illuminated.
The bullets shot through the boy's legs, but he was still trying to crawl toward the boy even as he collapsed onto the floor. Releasing a finishing shot to his head, he finally confirmed he had stopped moving. It seemed there was no mistake that this shopping mall was the headquarters of the people who had attacked the boys and kidnapped Aki.
"Aki, where are you!?"
Up the stairs, to the top floor. He ran through the corridors lined with various stores. In each store with its shutters left open, beds and chairs had been brought in even though they weren't furniture stores, leaving traces that many people had lived in this place.
With a scream, a boy brandishing a metal bat charged from behind a pillar. The bat the boy dodged hit the concrete pillar directly, and as the bat bent, the pillar cracked and concrete fragments danced. If he were hit in the head with such Herculean strength, he would likely die instantly even if he were wearing a helmet.
Just as he silenced the boy by hammering all the remaining bullets in the magazine into him, he heard a woman's voice calling "Hey." It was Aki's voice.
"I've come to save you! Where are you!?"
He shouted while slamming the last magazine into the carbine. Because the voice was echoing inside the building, it was difficult to estimate the distance or direction from the voice. He couldn't see Aki's figure either, so for now, the boy ran through the corridor looking for the place where Aki might be. Aki's voice was still audible.
Just as he passed in front of a door leading to the employee back-of-house area, someone jumped out in front of the boy with a shout of "Don't move!" He almost raised his gun reflexively and then realized the opponent was Aki. Although Aki was bleeding from her head, she didn't seem to have any particularly major injuries.
"Are you safe?"
"Somewhat... though I was about to be eaten by those children."
"How did you escape?"
"I was helped by the man who was the leader of those children..."
He heard multiple footsteps running up the stairs. Were they infected, or the children from earlier? If they retraced the route they came, they could go down to the first floor using the stairs and head straight for the entrance.
"What are those children? They won't die unless you shoot them through the head in one shot, they're just like the infected."
"Just like... or rather, half of them might be."
"Do you know something?"
On the way to the stairs, Aki briefly told him the circumstances she knew. That the survivors of this shopping mall had eaten the corpses of infected humans, and as a result, only the children had become existences that could be called half-infected. That they had attacked and eaten many people until now, and this time they were going to eat Aki too. However, the young man who was the leader did not desire such acts and had dared to launch a reckless attack on the boy and Sato in order to let all the children die.
"And that leader?"
"...He became an infected while talking to me, and then..."
Aki had the luggage and weapons she had before being captured. They seemed to have been placed very close to the room where Aki was confined. That young man might not have intended to hurt Aki, but even so, from the perspective of the boys who were attacked, he was no different from a bringer of calamity.
"Anyway, let's get out of here quickly. Sato-san is waiting outside."
"When I was leaving the room where I was captured, I found a room with a large amount of supplies. I didn't have time to take them out, but..."
"Let's think about that after we get out of here. Was there anyone else?"
"I was the only one captured. Ah, but he said there were still other children left here..."
Just as Aki was about to say that, three children jumped out from the darkness of an empty store. Bloodshot red eyes, and the blades and blunt weapons in their hands. They were the children who had become "half-infected" that Aki spoke of.
"You bastards!"
It was sudden, and his response was delayed. The boy pushed Aki aside and raised his gun.
Although he managed to shoot one, the remaining two charged straight toward the boy. The next moment his back was slammed against the corridor railing, along with the metallic sound of something breaking, the boy's vision rotated 90 degrees.
His vision momentarily went dark, and then strong impact and pain ran through his whole body. The ceiling spread across his entire field of vision, and the boy understood that he had been pushed down to the floor below. Apparently, the railing had become brittle, and it seemed to have broken after receiving the weight of three people at once.
From the floor below, the roar of the remains of the fallen railing crashing into the floor could be heard. Fortunately, it seemed he had only fallen one floor, and it seemed the backpack he wore had cushioned the impact, but even so, his head was spinning and he couldn't move his body due to the pain.
If the fall position had shifted even slightly, he would have fallen straight down from the 4th floor to the 1st floor. Thinking about it that way, falling from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor could be called lucky, but the boy didn't have the mental leeway right now to think that was a good thing.
At the edge of his vision, he saw the children who had fallen along with the boy stand up first, brandish their weapons, and charge.
He tried to reach for the handgun at his waist, but his body, which had just fallen from the upper floor and been slammed onto the floor, wouldn't move well.
At that time, consecutive gunshots echoed, and the children bled from their bodies and tumbled. Aki was firing from the upper floor with her gun raised toward the children approaching the boy.
"Go!"
The boy waved his hand toward Aki on the upper floor. Unluckily, where the boy fell was on a pedestrian bridge, and the route from there to the stairs was blocked by a barricade. Was it a coincidence that the children attacked the boy in that place and pushed him down to the floor below, or were they aiming to separate him from Aki? In any case, the boy was no longer able to head for the entrance by the shortest route.
"Sato-san is coming right there! Go ahead and meet up with him!"
"But..."
Aki showed signs of hesitation, but it seemed she decided to advance after seeing the children appear on the same floor. While seeing off Aki's figure as she ran down the corridor, the boy also dragged his aching body and somehow aimed for the shopping mall entrance.
Finally, his rifle ammunition was about to run out. Once he shot those all, he would have to manage somehow with a handgun that wasn't very effective against the infected. In that case, he had to avoid engagement as much as possible. If the children were existences like half-infected as Aki said, they likely wouldn't feel pain even if shot, and he wouldn't be able to stop their movement unless he dealt a fatal wound that caused instant death.
Aki had said there were still children in the shopping mall, and it was true. As if to block the boy's path, children appeared brandishing weapons in their hands.
Even when he looked behind him, there were children there. The boy, who ended up being sandwiched between the front and back of the corridor, looked around to see if there was anywhere to escape.
If he fled into an empty store, he would just be cornered and killed. On the other hand, if he jumped down from the height of the 3rd floor to the 1st floor, he would surely die this time.
Into the boy's panicked vision came a withered tree extending from the first floor. The ornamental tree, which had grown to the height of the second floor ceiling, had completely withered because there was no one to tend to it. However, the branches and leaves at the top remained although they were withering, and if things went well, he might be able to climb down to the bottom along the trunk of that tree.
There was no time to hesitate. The boy slung his gun over his back and stood on the corridor railing using a trash can as a stepping stone. Toward such a boy, children holding axes and blades approached from the front and back.
Immediately after he jumped toward the withered tree, the tip of a knife swung by one of the children grazed the boy. The dry sound of wood breaking echoed throughout the floor, and the boy succeeded in grabbing the tree trunk while falling. He felt the sensation of warm blood trickling down his cheek, perhaps from catching it on a withered branch, but for now, he was able to move to the tree safely.
Looking up, the children were leaning over the railing and reaching out their hands toward the boy. But perhaps they realized they couldn't reach from there, as they split into two groups: those heading toward the stairs and those trying to jump to the tree like the boy. Seeing a child who lost their balance on the railing fall straight down to the 1st floor, the boy hurriedly tried to climb down from the tree he was currently clinging to.
He loosened the strength of his hands gripping the tree he was clinging to like a frog and slowly approached the ground. Unpleasant noises like creaking or cracking were sounding from the base of the tree, but the boy pretended not to hear.
Toward such a boy, children also jumped from above aiming for the tree. Of the three who jumped, one failed to move over and followed the same fate as the child who fell earlier, straight to the ground. But the remaining two succeeded in jumping to the top of the tree like the boy.
But the strength of the withered tree, which received the weight of three people, must have reached its limit. Along with a loud cracking sound, the boy's vision suddenly tilted. The tree had broken at its base.
The boy, who had already climbed down to the height of the 2nd floor, resolutely let go of the tree as it fell. And then he took a landing posture and landed on the first floor.
It was an impact that made him feel like his whole body was going to fall apart, but he somehow endured it. Even so, it was because he jumped from a height he wouldn't normally descend; the soles of his feet throbbed with pain.
Behind him, the roar of the withered tree falling thundered, and the accumulated dust danced thickly. In place of the carbine which was already out of ammo, the boy ran toward the entrance with his handgun in hand.
"Hurry!"
"Quickly!"
Aki, who had descended to the first floor first, and Sato, who seemed to have climbed over the barricade outside somehow, were beckoning the boy at the entrance. He heard multiple footsteps from behind, but each time Sato pulled the trigger of the gun he held, the footsteps decreased one by one.
His body, which had fallen from high places twice in one day, was screaming, but the boy somehow held on and continued to run. The footsteps of the children heard from behind were already gone, but he still advanced his feet forward with all his strength.
"Are you okay?"
"I feel like I'm going to die."
"Then you're fine, let's go."
The boy, who was already exhausted, had Aki lend him a shoulder and went out of the shopping mall. Sato, who held his gun and guarded the interior of the mall, followed after them.
On the road in front of the shopping mall, several corpses were rolling. They were the corpses of the children Sato had shot when he broke through the barricade.
"What are we going to do now?"
"That's something we'll decide from now on. But we can't just leave those children alone."
The boy looked up at the shopping mall building towering behind him. A den of children who had become half-infected, he wondered how many more children were left in there.
I'm waiting for your opinions and impressions.