Chapter 224 - Chapter 207: A Story About This Kind of World Where You Can't Even Say What You Want to Say
Bitten. The boy's voice coming from the radio was full of noise, but Aki could clearly hear those words.
At those words, Sato's face seemed to twist for a moment. Everyone present here clearly understood what happened if you were bitten by an infected. It meant joining the ranks of the infected they were currently shooting dead.
"Wait, what did you just..."
Aki found herself shouting into the radio, but the moment she pressed the transmit button, a beep sounded. Communication via radio is one-way; as long as the other party is speaking and hasn't released the transmit button, you can't transmit from this side.
"I guess I'm getting what I deserve. I killed too many people. So, well, I suppose this is karma or something."
"What kind of nonsense are you saying! That doesn't matter, so just get over here quickly! Maybe something can be done!"
Finally, the boy finished speaking, and Aki immediately pressed the transmit button and spoke almost as if screaming. But there was no reply from the boy. And as for saying something could be done, Aki herself knew in the back of her mind that "such a thing is impossible." She understood all too well from her experiences so far that once bitten, it was too late and there was nothing to be done.
"...Let's go."
Sato said that and told everyone to get in the cars. Immediately, everyone left their posts and rushed toward the convoy of escape vehicles. Behind them, the swarming infected were beginning to climb over the fences and barbed wire surrounding the mainland base, taking advantage of the fact that the gunfire had stopped.
"Wait! Still..."
"There's nothing we can do."
Sato said firmly. And Aki had no words to argue back. She had been told many times that it was over once you were bitten by an infected, and she had actually witnessed it. Whether it was sooner or later, the fact that the bitten boy would eventually become an infected remained unchanged.
Even so, Aki felt she couldn't leave the boy behind. After being helped so many times, for this to be the end. She hated that.
And Aki still didn't know the boy deeply. Since that day the boy had come to the academy where Aki and the others were hiding, he had always built a wall somewhere and wouldn't let anyone in. She felt they had begun to open up little by little after the fight with The Brotherhood and the incident with the teacher's death, but there were still too many things she didn't know. To never be able to meet again without knowing anything—there was nothing as sad as that.
But Sato was calm and realistic. When he shouted "Withdraw!", the security guards who had been struggling to prevent the intrusion of the infected began retreating toward the escape convoy. Returning to help the boy, or staying here until the boy came, was equivalent to exposing them to danger. And no matter how long they waited for the boy, the fact that he had been bitten wouldn't change.
Was it okay to keep several companions in this dangerous place to wait for a person who was as good as dead? Truthfully, even Aki understood that waiting for the boy was already a futile act. And that the best move was to escape this place as quickly as possible and head for the safehouse where everyone else was taking refuge.
Above all, looking at the faces of the security guards remaining here, Aki couldn't say anything more. Everyone was dominated by fear and anxiety, wanting to leave this place at any moment. Thanks to the boy risking his life to buy time, everyone had been able to escape from the Reclaimed Land. After escaping with their lives while injured, they didn't want to die in a place like this. Everyone's faces were saying that.
"I'll... settle things myself. I refuse to join their ranks."
As if to deliver the final blow to Aki's feelings, the boy's voice was heard from the radio. He also already understood what would happen to him. And it seemed he had no intention of coming out of the Reclaimed Land.
"...I, understand."
Truthfully, she didn't want to understand anything, but she had no choice but to say so. As Sato said, it was certain that there was nothing more they could do.
Sato gave a signal, and a security guard operated the control panel for the bridge spanning the Reclaimed Land behind them. The winch from the crane at the construction site began winding the cable, and the steel plate serving as the bridge girder gradually rose. The steel plate laid in place of the original bridge girder, which had been blown up to prevent intrusion into the Reclaimed Land, was split in two at the center; if the bridge was raised from either the Reclaimed Land or the mainland side, it would be impossible to cross to the opposite shore.
The girder of the temporary bridge extending from the mainland side became vertical, becoming a wall separating the Reclaimed Land and the mainland. Since the original bridge girder had collapsed over several meters, there was no fear of the horde of infected in the Reclaimed Land crossing over to the mainland side. It was unknown if the infected could swim, but since there was nothing to serve as a handhold on the quay, they likely wouldn't be able to grab on and crawl up. And that meant the boy was also trapped within the Reclaimed Land.
"Get in! Hurry!"
"Hurry up!"
The route to the Reclaimed Land was completely cut off, and the remaining security guards rushed into the cars. The fence where the infected were swarming was half-collapsed, and the barricades didn't look like they would hold for much longer.
"It's a shame I can't hear your voices, maybe the radio is busted. I wanted to talk one last time. Goodbye. Thank you for everything. And please don't forget that a person like me existed..."
Sato gave the instruction to start the cars, and the convoy carrying the battered security guards all started moving at once. She wanted to talk to the boy at the end, but apparently, the radio was broken. His words could be heard, but no matter what they said from this side, it wouldn't reach. They could never talk again.
"And Aki, that notebook I entrusted to you... everything that happened so far that I can remember is written in there. Please, don't forget what kind of person I was."
At those words, Aki clutched her chest. Inside her jacket was the notebook the boy had thrust upon her before they parted at the Reclaimed Land. When she took it out and flipped through the first few pages, his name, date of birth, and address were written there, along with the names of the schools he graduated from and information about his family.
It was the boy's record, the proof that he had lived. It was written what the boy had done where and what he had thought to survive from the time the world ended until now. And the people he had killed were also clearly written without hiding anything.
"How could I forget, a guy like you..."
Closing the notebook, Aki muttered. But if he was going to leave it in a notebook like this, he should have talked about various things more.
Was the boy, perhaps, a very shy person? Suddenly, she found herself thinking such an out-of-place thought. This time the radio truly fell silent, and the boy's voice was never heard again.
The boy watched the departing convoy from the opposite shore. On the mainland across the raised temporary bridge, he could see the cars carrying the security guards leaving the base right now.
A little while after the convoy left, the infected who had destroyed the fences and barricades flooded into the base. The infected ran after the convoy, but thanks to the convoy's quick departure, they likely wouldn't be overtaken. They would surely arrive safely at the safehouse where the people who escaped the Reclaimed Land earlier were waiting.
Suddenly, the boy understood the meaning of why he had lived until now. Perhaps everything had been for this. To let the people escape safely from the Reclaimed Land where the horde of infected had boarded; that was the meaning of why he had survived without dying until now.
If he hadn't been here, there would have been one less person to explore the interior of the drifted passenger ship and intercept the infected coming outside. Because of that, the defense line might have been broken sooner, and the infected might have swarmed the non-combatants whose evacuation was delayed, resulting in many casualties. Or there might have been deaths among the security guards.
And while escaping the Reclaimed Land, all the other security guards, including Sato, had been injured, and only the boy was almost uninjured. If the boy hadn't been in this place, Sato and the others, who were injured in the vehicle accident during the escape, would have been overtaken by the infected and surely died. The reason they were able to cross the bridge safely and escape the Reclaimed Land was because the uninjured boy remained alone in the Reclaimed Land and continued to act as a decoy to draw the horde of infected.
To save the lives of the many people living in the Reclaimed Land. He thought that might be the meaning of why he had lived until now.
At the same time, it was also ironic. To understand the meaning of his life, which he had been seeking since that night when the infected appeared in Japan and the world turned into hell—the meaning of why he had survived even after killing so many people—only after being bitten by an infected. Even if he could understand the meaning of living now, there was no more life ahead.
But the boy also felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He finally understood the meaning of why he had lived even after killing others. It was far better than dying without knowing that.
It didn't mean that all the negative events so far were canceled out and became positive, but it had surely moved closer to zero.
He understood the meaning of why he had lived. In that case, the only thing left to do was to die while maintaining his pride as a human. The boy looked back.
The infected who had jumped out of the passenger ship were now running energetically all over the Reclaimed Land, chasing the boy. Even within range, there were more infected than he could count on the fingers of both hands, and they were running toward him.
The boy was currently at the place where the bridge connecting the mainland and the Reclaimed Land was, but since that bridge had been raised from the mainland side, he could no longer cross it.
But the boy hadn't come here to escape. In the first place, once bitten by an infected, escaping had no meaning. The last thing he had to do. He had specifically come to the foot of the impassable bridge because he needed the means to do that.
At the foot of the bridge, cars and several trucks abandoned by the security guards who had been conducting defense combat in the Reclaimed Land were left behind. The trucks were originally from the construction site within the Reclaimed Land and had been used to transport supplies, which had been carried by hand over the temporary bridge from the mainland, to warehouses and living bases.
However, moving the trucks consumed fuel, and because of the fear of being noticed by the infected on the mainland side due to the noisy diesel engine sounds, they had been left abandoned since electric vehicles became the means of transport. Still, they should still work since they had fuel and had been periodically inspected, and he thought the keys were still in them.
He looked at one of them, a dump truck used for transporting gravel at the construction site. Passenger cars and light trucks lacked power and their bodies were flimsy. A dump truck was sturdy enough not to flinch even if it ran over a few infected, and it had power because it was meant to carry heavy soil, so there was no fear of it stopping midway. The only problem was that it was a manual vehicle, but he would just have to do his best to move it.
The boy rushed to the driver's seat of the dump truck, which had blue paint peeling off in places, rust surfacing, and was covered in mud. The station wagons abandoned by the security guards because they couldn't cross the temporary bridge had their engines left running.
Hearing footsteps from behind, he looked back to see an infected pressing in very close. He raised the handgun in his hand and pulled the trigger. After taking down about three, the handgun's slide remained locked back, informing the boy he was out of ammo.
There were no rounds left. He threw the handgun in his hand toward the face of the infected in front of him. At the infected who recoiled while spurting a nosebleed from being hit by the lump of metal, he delivered a strike with his drawn short sword.
Several more infected were pressing in. The driver's seat of the dump truck was in a high position, and he had to pull his body up to get in. Naturally, during that time, he would be exposing his back and be defenseless. Since he couldn't afford to be dragged out while getting in, the boy needed to take down the infected currently nearby.
Three infected were lunging from different directions. First, the boy dodged the charge of one by jumping away, then swung the short sword down from behind toward the neck of the infected as it passed by. Along with the unpleasant sensation of the blade crushing the spine, the limp body of the infected collapsed to the ground. If the spinal cord is damaged, even an infected cannot move.
In the meantime, a second infected was pressing in behind the boy. He thrust the short sword, its tip slightly chipped from hitting bone, into the infected's face as he turned around. When the short sword pierced the eye socket, gouged the eyeball, and penetrated the skull to reach the brain, the infected's body convulsed violently.
The boy tried to pull out the short sword stuck in the infected's face to deal with the last one, but it seemed the short sword had reached its limit after repeated battles; it broke from the hilt with a sharp metallic sound.
The boy tried to immediately switch to another weapon, but before he could, he was hit by the infected's tackle and slammed into the dump truck's door. The impact was so great that the sensation of the driver's seat door panel warping was transmitted through his back.
Pressing down the face of the infected, which was trying to bite him in a so-called "wall-slam" position, with his left hand, the boy took an axe from the case hanging at his waist. During that time, the infected swung its hands wildly and beat the boy's body, and an intense pain as if the bones in the places he was struck had broken assaulted the boy.
Enduring the intense pain, he slammed the axe into the side of the infected's head in front of him. The axe blade, which could even penetrate a helmet, easily pierced the infected's head, and the movements of the infected who had been beating the boy stopped instantly.
Glancing for a moment at the collapsed body of the infected, the boy surveyed the surrounding situation. As before, infected were pressing in on the boy from all over, but he had enough leeway to get into the truck. The door was unlocked.
Just as he was about to pull his body up to get into the driver's seat and tried to grab the assist grip with his left hand, the boy noticed. The tips of the fingers on his left hand were gone.
Specifically, the tips of his ring finger and pinky from the first joint were missing. Apparently, they had been bitten off while he was pressing down the infected's face earlier, and blood was pouring out from the severed surfaces of the fingers where frayed muscle and broken bone were exposed. Due to the excitement of combat and the intense pain from the infected's beating, he hadn't even noticed being bitten.
Even now that he noticed being bitten off, he didn't feel much pain, and he didn't fall into a panic like when he lost his left eye. Well, I've only got less than an hour of life left anyway, he thought with out-of-place nonchalance as he sat in the driver's seat of the dump truck.
Locking the door firmly, the boy checked the steering wheel, levers, and such. The key was still in. If it were an automatic, the car would move easily by turning the key or pressing the ignition switch, but a manual vehicle wasn't so simple. He had been taught how to drive by an adult, but he had remained bad at driving manual vehicles.
The infected gathered around the dump truck beat the body violently. Fortunately, because the driver's seat was in a high position, it seemed it would take some time before they broke the window and climbed in.
The boy put the infected beating the dump truck like a drum out of his mind and recalled the method of driving a manual vehicle one by one. First, he stepped down hard on the clutch pedal and foot brake, grabbed the shift lever with his left hand—which now had a shorter ring finger and pinky—and confirmed the gear was in neutral. Then he turned the key and started the engine.
Immediately, the sound and vibration of a well-tuned engine were transmitted from beneath the seat. At this rate, the dump truck seemed like it would move.
But this was the part the boy was bad at. In a manual vehicle, you have to use the clutch pedal to shift gears properly, but if you fail, it stalls immediately. He had never once succeeded in this gear shifting on the first try.
He operated the shift lever to put it into first gear and released the handbrake. He moved his right foot from the foot brake to the accelerator pedal, but at this time, he still had to keep the clutch pedal pressed. If he forgot this, it would stall immediately. And the boy had always caused stalls during manual driving practice.
And just as he lightly stepped on the accelerator pedal and gradually released the clutch pedal, he felt a sensation as if something was catching and the truck was about to move forward. When he released the clutch pedal in a so-called half-clutch state, the dump truck suddenly began to move powerfully and slowly.
"Oh."
He found himself speaking. He hadn't expected to be able to start a manual vehicle on the first try without stalling. It had been a day of nothing but the worst events, but he thought good things do happen.
The infected in front of the truck were caught in the starting dump truck and disappeared beneath the body. The sounds of bones breaking and flesh being crushed were heard from beneath his feet, but it didn't cause any hindrance to the driving. If he ran over dozens of infected, the truck might eventually break, but he should be able to reach his destination before then.
If I've understood how to drive a manual, I might even be able to drive a cool sports car. Due to the fatigue from repeated combat, such a thought came to mind. The shame was that the opportunity to drive a sports car would likely never come to the boy.
Almost no blood was coming out of the bitten-off fingers of his left hand anymore. Using that left hand to skillfully operate the shift lever, the boy began driving the dump truck toward his destination—the fuel warehouse established along the coast.
I look forward to your opinions and impressions.