Chapter 218 - A Story of 'Stalemate, Can't Get Out'
What attacked him when he woke up was intense pain felt throughout his body and a ringing in his ears. In his blurred vision, the ground appeared vertical, and there the boy realized he seemed to be lying on the ground.
What happened again? In his mind, which wasn't working, the boy desperately recalled what had happened just before. The dark ship interior, the attacking infected, and the fall—he finally recalled that he had collided with a falling infected while descending from the ship by rope and had fallen together with them.
An intense pain similar to numbness ran through his whole body, and he felt a sharp pain in his chest every time he breathed. It was as if he were being stabbed in the chest with a cold knife. Apparently, his ribs were broken from the impact of the fall.
Are only the ribs broken? Are his limbs properly attached? In his still hazy vision, he tried to somehow bring his own body into view, and there he saw the swarm of infected landing on the quay using the pile of corpses as a cushion.
His eyes met with one of them, and several infected conducted a charge toward the boy, who remained collapsed. The boy couldn't think of anything and tried to move his pained body by force to pull out his handgun from the holster. However, his vision was swaying wildly, and his body, through which intense pain was running, wouldn't move as he wished.
In his tilted vision, something suddenly sprayed from the heads of the infected running toward the boy. And at the same time, Sato's face appeared in a close-up in his vision, and he saw Sato shouting, "Are you okay!?" Apparently, Sato had been able to evacuate from the ship safely.
Sato leveled his handgun and fired toward the swarming infected, but it was a drop in the bucket. Even now, the boy could see the figures of the infected descending from the ship in dots at the edge of his vision, and most of them had already landed on the ground without a single injury. Now that things had come to this, preventing the infected was impossible. He didn't even know how many thousands of infected remained on the ship.
"Help me!"
Sato shouted, and he saw the figures of several people rushing over from the direction of the defense position. Sato pulled the boy by the shoulder of the chest rig he was wearing and dragged him toward the position. The machine gun at the position showered a barrage at the infected rushing at the two.
Leaving the transport of the collapsed boy to one of the security personnel who had come out of the position, Sato fired again toward the approaching infected. His buttocks hurt from being dragged over the concrete quay, but that told the boy that his normal sense of pain was finally returning.
Around the two positions, numerous shot corpses of the infected were lying on top of each other, building a literal mountain of corpses. The security personnel were showering a rain of bullets toward the infected rushing toward them, but even that didn't have the same momentum as at first. The machine guns, which had been cheerfully laying down a barrage toward the swarming infected, were now trying to save ammunition with burst fire of about two to three shots. They didn't have an abundance of weapons to begin with, but those few remaining bullets were also running out.
There was someone peering anxiously at the boy's face after he was dragged into the position. It was Aki. Apparently, she had also witnessed the whole sequence of the boy falling from the ship.
"Are you okay!?"
"I'm okay... I think."
The boy, who replied so, looked over his own body. There were no parts bent in strange directions, and there were no places bleeding heavily. Probably the corpses of the infected who had fallen earlier served as cushions, softening the impact of the fall.
Pain was still running throughout his body, but that didn't mean he could rest. The boy picked up the carbine he had been hanging on his back, but perhaps because it had been under the boy during the fall, the carbine's barrel was broken in half from the base, making it a complete piece of junk. No ammunition had remained anyway, but now it was truly useless.
"Weapon, is there some weapon?"
"This is all there is!"
Saying so, what Aki handed over was an over-under shotgun, a spare weapon that had been brought to the position beforehand. It seemed to be something requisitioned from some gun shop, and it could only be loaded with two shells. However, in the current situation, even having one usable gun was better than nothing.
"Loading!"
The gunner attached to the Minimi machine gun installed in the middle of the position shouted so and opened the loading cover of the receiver. The barrel had been heated red-hot by repeated continuous fire, but the spare barrel had also just been replaced earlier and hadn't cooled down yet. And the remaining ammunition was only one 200-round belt link; if they used this up, this position would lose its meaning.
"Listen! We're abandoning this position and everyone is retreating to the shopping mall! We'll replenish weapons and ammunition there and then abandon this place."
"This place... you mean the coast?"
"This entire Reclaimed Land. It's no good here anymore."
Everyone lost their words at Sato's words. Although they had been training for evacuation while assuming that possibility, once the time actually came, there was still resistance. However, witnessing the sight before their eyes, everyone realized it was impossible to continue living here.
They didn't know how many infected remained on the ship, and they didn't have enough bullets to defeat all those infected. In the first place, before they could defeat all the infected, everyone here would either die or join their ranks.
However, abandoning a place where they had lived safely until now was still difficult. Although they had built several bases outside in anticipation of this happening, they weren't environments where they could live as comfortably as the Reclaimed Land. Furthermore, there was no guarantee they could live safely at other bases. But even if they stood their ground here, they wouldn't be able to eliminate all the infected remaining in the luxury liner.
"Retreat! Retreat!"
When that voice was raised, everyone became restless. If they were going to run, they wanted to run quickly. It's natural to fall into that psychology, but since ancient times, the time a military suffers the most damage in battle is when they are pursued during a retreat. This is because the psychology of wanting to leave the battlefield quickly causes them to lose discipline, and they abandon fighting while retreating in favor of turning their backs to the enemy first.
Therefore, for Sato, who was taking command on the spot, he had to make everyone retreat to the point where the evacuation vehicles were waiting while maintaining everyone's discipline at all costs.
"My team will be Team 1, Han's team will be Team 2, and we'll retreat alternately. Once you've moved back twenty meters, support the retreat of the other team on the spot. Everyone, don't panic."
The only ones among them with military experience were Sato, who was an active-duty JSDF member, and Han, who had military service experience. Those two took command, and while covering each other, they would leave the coast and head for the shopping mall, replenish weapons and ammunition there, and then head for the evacuation point on land.
However, from the coast of the Reclaimed Land where they were now to the land, the straight-line distance was at least one kilometer, and the actual distance was more than that. Furthermore, because the preparation for intrusion by the infected was assumed to be from the land side, there were almost no facilities such as barricades or fences to block the advance of the infected on the way from the coast to the shopping mall. In no time, the infected would reach the edge of the Reclaimed Land. If the infected caught up to the evacuation vehicles, it would mean nothing, so they had to get out of the Reclaimed Land before then.
The boy grabbed as many shotgun shells as he could from the ammunition box placed inside the position and stuffed them into his pockets. Even so, there were only thirty shells or so. It was the same for everyone around him; some were already starting to run out of ammunition because they had been shooting continuously.
Even if they had received marksmanship training, there was almost no one on this spot who could shoot through the weak points such as the head or cervical vertebrae of a running human-sized target with a single shot. In the current situation where they were finally able to stop the movement after firing many shots at a single infected, no matter how many bullets they had, it wasn't enough.
"Everyone, don't waste bullets. Team 2, retreat!"
When Sato shouted, the firing from the adjacent position stopped, and the men with weapons in hand ran toward the shopping mall with Han in the lead. Because the muzzles that had been pointed at the infected until then were suddenly halved, the infected descending from the ship approached even closer to the position.
The boy also leveled his shotgun and pulled the trigger toward an infected who was pressing right before his eyes at the position. A powerful recoil was transmitted to his shoulder, further hurting his pained body. Beyond the muzzle, the top of the infected's forehead was blown away, and he saw brain matter that had become small lumps being scattered.
He fired one more shot, broke the barrel, and ejected the spent shells. A shotgun that had to be loaded with shells every two shots was inconvenient, but there were no other guns here anymore. If they could retreat to the shopping mall where spare weapons were stored, there might be at least one JSDF automatic rifle left, but he wondered if the gun's ammunition would last until then.
The boy looked around to see if there were any other weapons. Inside the position where spent shells were scattered, several spears that someone had brought while assuming close-quarters combat were lying around. Even though they were called spears, they were just handmade items with spike-like blades attached to the tips of iron pipes, but they would be better than nothing since they had more reach than knives or axes.
Now the infected were pressing right before the eyes of the position. The faces of the security personnel shooting their guns were filled with colors of panic and fear. The fact that they had lived in the safe Reclaimed Land for the past few months had made them forget the fear of the infected.
"They're coming in!"
With those words, an infected clung to the barbed wire surrounding the position and was trying to climb over. The first few were shot dead after their clothes got tangled in the barbed wire and they became unable to move. However, other infected climbed over those corpses and intruded into the position surrounded by barricades such as sandbags and desks.
The boy let go of the shotgun, grabbed a spear, and thrust it out all at once while leveling it at the middle level. The tip of the spear pierced deeply into the infected's chest and stopped after hitting the back side of the ribs. Aki pointed her muzzle and pulled the trigger at the infected who was struggling on the spot like an insect specimen. Pulling the spear out of the infected who had stopped moving, the boy picked up the shotgun again. Several infected had already intruded into the position and were presenting a state of almost grappling combat with the security personnel who held handguns or daggers.
"Everyone retreat! Fall back!"
Apparently, Team 2 had been able to move to a position where they could provide cover, and Sato gave the signal to retreat. Perhaps because they had been waiting for the order to retreat, the security personnel remaining in the position all started running at the same time as the order.
The moment the members of Team 1 who had been staying in the position turned their backs, the members of Team 2, who had gained sufficient distance, began providing cover fire. However, because the distance had opened and they were in a state where their remaining ammunition was also uncertain, they couldn't completely block the infected approaching the retreating Team 1, and several people were about to be caught by the infected.
The boy and Sato were serving as the rearguard for the security personnel of Team 1, who were fleeing in a state on the verge of panic. He thrust the spear into infected who approached within reach, and treated those who aimed for them from a distance to the shotgun. Sato also hung his carbine, which had run out of ammunition, on his back and was fighting the infected by skillfully switching between a handgun and a dagger.
This doesn't look like it's going to hold. The boy, seeing the swarm of infected still overflowing from the grounded passenger ship, somehow realized that.
Waiting for your opinions and impressions.