Chapter 227 - Epilogue-1: A Fallout Story
All she could hear was the chirping of birds, the sound of trees swaying in the occasional wind, and her own ragged breaths. Aki aimed for the bridge visible ahead and pedaled her bicycle.
How many hours had passed since she started pedaling the mountain bike with its rusted frame? Her legs were heavy from pedaling the whole time, and because she was sitting on a hard saddle instead of a comfortable sofa, her waist and buttocks were sore.
Looking at her wristwatch, eight hours had already passed since she started pedaling. Comparing the bridge ahead with the surrounding roads and buildings, she could tell she had advanced about 20 kilometers in those eight hours.
Twenty kilometers in eight hours might be short, but she had taken breaks occasionally, and above all, it was natural since the roads were blocked and she had to detour many times. There were places she could have passed if she got off the bike and walked, but that was pointless. Aki's role was to find roads that cars could pass and confirm their safety.
Three months had already passed since Aki and the others left the Reclaimed Land. The survivors who escaped the Reclaimed Land without a single death except for the boy, but their hardships didn't end there.
Sato and the others had constructed a safehouse on the mainland side in anticipation of an emergency, but the safehouse was too small for more than 50 people to live in, and supplies were insufficient. Though there were some stockpiles of food and fuel, there wasn't enough to live in the safehouse forever.
Furthermore, due to the stranding of the passenger ship and the subsequent combat, the number of infected who had gathered in the urban area including the safehouse had surged. Every time they went outside to procure supplies, they engaged with the infected, and although they managed to avoid casualties, stress and fatigue were certainly accumulating in all the survivors.
There, Aki and the others were forced to make a decision. Whether to continue living in the narrow and poorly supplied safehouse while keeping a low profile, or to set out in search of a safe place. After a heated discussion, what everyone chose was to leave the safehouse and head north.
The number of infected in the entire urban area was already increasing to an ignorable level, and at this rate, there was a possibility they wouldn't be able to step outside the safehouse at all. Besides, they didn't have enough weapons or ammunition to defeat all the infected. In that case, it was better to go outside while they could still act freely and aim for a place with even slightly fewer infected. The journey would certainly be dangerous, but it was also true that everyone was exhausted from life in the safehouse.
So the survivors who escaped the Reclaimed Land set out this time aiming for the north. They procured not only passenger cars and motorcycles but also trucks for transporting supplies from the urban area, and modification work such as welding steel plates and wire mesh to the windows as a countermeasure against the infected was carried out day and night.
They were only able to stay in the safehouse for a month or so before the survivors left the metropolitan area. However, since the journey to Tohoku was expected to be difficult, careful reconnaissance was required for the movement. Previously, it should have taken about 12 hours to reach Aomori using the Tohoku Expressway, but everyone understood that the expressway was closed to prevent the spread of infection. Interchanges were blocked, and even before that, they had seen many times that the expressway had become unusable due to cars that had caused accidents.
In that case, they had no choice but to advance on local roads, but major national highways were similarly blocked by the police and JSDF. The degree of closure varied from barricades placed in the middle of the road to blowing up bridges over rivers to make them impassable.
It was impossible to block all local roads, but it was easily expected that the majority of roads would be blocked by accident vehicles. Even if there were unblocked roads, they didn't know if they were safe. Since dozens of people would be moving with a large amount of supplies, the convoy would be quite long, and if it were attacked, many casualties would easily occur.
To move safely, prior reconnaissance activities were important. Therefore, a reconnaissance team on bicycles was to precede the main body to confirm the safety of the planned route. If it was confirmed that there was no hindrance to vehicle movement and no threats in the vicinity, the reconnaissance team would contact the main body via amateur radio, and the main body would advance on the route where safety was confirmed.
The reason for choosing bicycles as the means of transport for the reconnaissance team was that they didn't make engine noise and didn't need refueling, and since they couldn't move long distances in a day anyway, it was judged sufficient to confirm the range they could reach by bicycle. As expected, there were many roads that were blocked, or even if not, there were many infected loitering and it was thought difficult to pass through safely, so the convoy could move at most 10 kilometers or so in a day. In bad times, they couldn't easily find a safe route and had to stay in that place for many days.
Aki took a map out of her waist pouch and tried to grasp her current location by comparing it with the bridge in front of her. A convenient thing like GPS had long since become unusable.
Across the bridge, there was a roadside station, and the parking lot would be wide, so there should be enough space to stop the convoy. It was perfect for a resting place, but there was something to confirm before that.
Aki took out a machine about one size thicker than a mobile phone from another pouch and started it. The machine, which had a large LCD and several buttons lined up, was a dosimeter for measuring radiation levels.
When Aki started the dosimeter, several numerical values were displayed on the LCD screen, and seeing that, Aki breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently, this area was safe.
Dosimeters were distributed not only to Aki but to all members of the reconnaissance team.
On the way north, Aki and the others witnessed several cities that were strangely destroyed. They had seen several towns that had been bombed by the JSDF or US military to prevent the spread of infection, but there were cities where even more destruction had been brought. High-rise buildings were knocked down from the roots, and large craters that could fit several buses were formed in the ground.
"Some country probably launched ballistic missiles,"
Sato had said indifferently while distributing dosimeters upon seeing that.
They had heard that there was a country that started a war in the confusion of the infection spread, but they didn't expect Japan to be among the targets. Since there was a possibility that missiles loaded with nuclear warheads had landed, the reconnaissance team had to confirm the course while paying attention to the numerical values on the dosimeter.
"But, for what purpose were missiles..."
"Who knows. There's no way to understand the thinking of people who try to attack others while the world is about to perish."
Sato had said that, and Aki thought so too. Every country should have had its hands full with the infected and shouldn't have had the leeway to attack other countries, so why was there a need to specifically fire missiles? Since the JSDF and US military were busy with infected countermeasures and had no leeway to intercept missiles, did they fire them thinking it was a chance?
Besides, with the spread of the infected, governments and militaries in every country were stopping their functions, and there were fewer living people. Even if missiles were fired, they would only hit cities where no living people were left.
Or perhaps because it was such a critical situation, there were people who thought to take other countries down with them at the end. In any case, as the world reached its end, Aki and the others had no way of knowing how many missiles were flying around the world. However, since nuclear attacks or accidents at nuclear power plants where there was no one to manage them were considered, it became a northward advance while being careful about radiation levels anyway.
Fortunately, the bridge over the river remained intact. A JSDF truck and a police car were stopped in front of the bridge, and several dull gold-shining spent casings were fallen on the ground. Several skeletal remains with crushed skulls were scattered in the vicinity, telling that combat had taken place near the bridge.
But not a single barricade was installed on the bridge. A large wooden box was placed on the truck bed, and inside were green square sticks about the size of a 500ml can. Something was printed in yellow on the surface of the sticks, and the letters were quite faded, but she could only read the word "TNT." When she heard TNT, the only thing Aki thought of was explosives.
Apparently, the JSDF soldiers who were here were trying to blow up the bridge. But since the bridge was healthy, it seemed they couldn't fulfill that purpose. Since corpses dressed in JSDF uniforms were not found, did they turn into infected themselves?
Aki was horrified that explosives enough to blow up the bridge were in front of her, but she remembered hearing from Sato that explosives usually don't explode without a detonator. She looked around the truck bed and the vicinity, but she couldn't see anything like a detonator or a fuse. Did the soldier who became an infected go somewhere while holding it?
Unlike movies and games, Sato had said that explosives like TNT and C-4 won't explode even if you set fire to them or shoot them if there is no detonator. In that case, the TNT in front of her was just a square stick.
There was enough TNT to fit in a full backpack. For a moment, she thought about taking it, but even though there was no fear of explosion, she didn't want to carry an amount of gunpowder that could easily make a person disappear. Besides, she didn't have the leeway to carry something that would only be a weight without a detonator and no use.
Aki left the TNT on the truck and crossed the bridge on her bicycle as it was. There was a roadside station on the riverbank across the bridge, but this place was also in a state of being left to ruin, similar to the places she had seen so far. Several cars were abandoned in the wide parking lot, but no sign of anyone living there was felt. Several tents that had probably sold local vegetables were lined up, but perhaps because they had been left for a long time, the pillars had collapsed or they were torn and like flags.
The building seemed quite rough, perhaps because the glass was broken and wind and rain had entered inside, but the interior situation was not clear as it was dim. Aki took out a ping-pong ball-sized stone she had picked up in advance from her pocket and threw it with all her might aiming at the building window. Immediately, she entered a state where she could shoot at any time with the submachine gun in her hand.
The thrown stone hit a window that was safe, and the loud sound of glass breaking was heard as far as the parking lot. If the interior became noisy with this, she would turn around and pull back, but even after waiting for about 30 seconds, not a single sound was heard. Just in case, she tried breaking the window with a stone one more time, but it remained quiet as expected.
She waited for more than a minute, but she still couldn't feel any sign from inside the building. Aki invaded the roadside station building while holding a police submachine gun.
She turned on the light embedded in the submachine gun's handguard and looked around the interior. Since it was a roadside station, several posters and flyers for tourist spots and events were pasted on the walls, but they had turned bluish-white from the sunlight coming through the windows and she didn't know what was written now. From the entrance, there were registers and a service counter, and beyond that was a local products space, but the products that should have been lined up on the shelves were cleanly gone. What remained were only things that wouldn't even be a meal, such as accessories of dragon keychains wrapped around swords that would be sold anywhere or local people's handicrafts.
She looked around the break space where tables and chairs were lined up and the staff's office, but no one was there. However, since empty plastic bottles and retort food bags remained in the break space, it was certain that someone had been here. Still, judging from the state of the trash, Aki judged that it had been many months since people were at this roadside station.
For now, there are no infected in this roadside station. The bridge is safe, and she was able to confirm that the convoy could advance this far.
Aki returned to the bicycle in the parking lot. An amateur radio was attached to the bicycle's luggage rack along with a portable power supply, and the reconnaissance team used this to contact the main body. Aki, who extended and attached an antenna of about 60 centimeters and turned on the power, took the radio's microphone in her hand. She adjusted the frequency and called the main body.
When she contacted the person in the main body who responded that the destination roadside station was safe, the places that were passable and those that were not on the pre-set route, and that there were no threats during the movement, she was told to wait for a while as they would discuss the response, and the communication ended. From now on, based on the information collected by the reconnaissance members, Sato and the others would decide the route the convoy would advance.
If this roadside station was the destination, Aki just had to wait here for the main body to come, but if another place became the destination, she had to go there. While thinking it would be nice if they came here, Aki pushed the bicycle with the radio on it and entered the roadside station building.
She noticed while talking earlier, but as they advanced north, noise was beginning to mix in the radio. While they were in the safehouse, the sound quality was clear and there was no hindrance to conversation, but as they advanced north and north, white noise like static began to mix in. It wasn't just Aki's radio that was malfunctioning; all the radios were like that.
Sato had said that jamming waves might be coming out, but he didn't seem to know who was doing it for what purpose. Since the infected don't use radios, they might want to jam communication between survivors. But what meaning does that have? If they can communicate by radio, they can ask for rescue, or even if they can't, they can exchange information.
At this rate, the radios will eventually become unusable. But if that happens, she can think about what to do then. Aki sat on a chair placed in the break space of the roadside station and looked outside through the window she had broken earlier. Perhaps because it was an area with a small population originally, no traces of destruction or slaughter were particularly seen in this vicinity. Still, she had a conviction that there were probably no living people.
Suddenly, Aki felt as if she were the only one in the world and suddenly felt lonely. She involuntarily hugged the submachine gun, but only the hard magazine hit her arm. Since the reconnaissance team basically acts alone, there is no one to talk to. By now, other reconnaissance members would also be pedaling their bicycles to fulfill the roles assigned to each.
At a time like this, what would that guy do? Aki suddenly thought of the boy. If it were him who had spent his time in solitude for a long time, would he have known how to spend his time when he was alone?
While cradling the submachine gun, Aki continued to wait for contact from the main body.
I look forward to your opinions and impressions.