Chapter 54 - Chapter 52: A Story of Crashing
Four days had passed since coming to the town, and eventually a week had elapsed, but we were going outside the apartment almost every day to procure food. This was because not a single piece of food remained in the supermarket in that station-front shopping district where the tank was.
Apparently, when the tank crew and others left this town, they took products from the shops in the vicinity root and branch. When we stepped into the supermarket, inside were many corpses with their heads shot through by guns, and empty casings of military small-caliber rifle rounds were scattered on the floor. There were no preserved foods of the kind we were looking for, and what could be found were only a few sweets, nutritional drinks, and the like.
Convenience stores and such in other places also had their products looted across the board. These were probably raided when the residents were evacuating from this town. Unable to procure supplies from shops, we ended up having to go around private houses and gather food steadily.
There was also the thought of leaving this town and going elsewhere, but it's meaningless if food cannot be found at the destination. Since air raids by the JSDF and US military were carried out in various places, and furthermore, fires occurred in various places, if the place we arrived at was a burnt-out field, we would starve to death.
On that point, in this town, a small amount of food still remains. If we rummage through the kitchens of private houses, one or two canned goods can somehow be found, and if we're lucky, fresh vegetables could be harvested from the kitchen gardens in the yards. Although it's by no means sufficient, it's also not so bad that we have to decide to leave this town right now. And so we continued to linger in this town aimlessly.
Food, water, medical supplies, batteries... there are many things necessary to live. If even one of those can be found by going around private houses, it's a gain. Since fresh food was the main thing in every house, the stockpiles of preserved food are small, and even fewer households go out of their way to store water in bottles.
This town seemed to have maintained peace for a while even after the spread of infection, and traces of residents having evacuated remained in many private houses. It seems they took all the luggage they could take with them at that time, and there were many households where preserved food and emergency evacuation bags for disasters did not remain. The residents seem to have evacuated by car, and there are many houses where the parking lots and garages are empty.
But no matter where the residents of this town evacuated to, survival would be hopeless if they used land routes. At that time, roads in various places were starting to be blocked by police and JSDF, and there were also bridges and tunnels destroyed to physically prevent the spread of infection. Above all, because people were moving by car to escape from the infected in various places, the roads were causing traffic jams here and there.
If attacked by infected in the midst of a traffic jam, what awaits is only death. In fact, I have seen a convoy of evacuees attacked by infected. On narrow roads, adjacent cars were in the way and doors couldn't be opened; there were many people who were eaten to death by infected who broke the windows and intruded without being able to escape from the cars. Even if they somehow broke the windows and went outside the cars, as a result of people closing the following distance to move even a millimeter forward, there were many evacuees who were taken out while trying to run and escape on top of the unstable car roofs because it was too narrow to get down onto the road.
"Did you find anything?"
"Five unused dry cell batteries, and also about some headache medicine and stomach medicine."
"No harvest of food..."
In the fifth private house on this day, we couldn't obtain food. Although there are some foods found in other houses, there are often cases where the result doesn't match the labor. But if we do nothing, we will just consume the food stockpiles found in the apartment. In the extreme, it's fine as long as the amount consumed and the amount obtained become a net zero. No one said, "It's useless, so let's stop going around houses one by one."
"Let's go back to the apartment once soon; I'm worried about Mana too."
Because almost no products remained in the target shops, we had to allocate more manpower to the search for supplies. For that reason, since two days ago, we have been performing the search of the town with the three of us—me, Naomi-san, and Yui—leaving Mana-chan alone in the apartment.
The defenses around the apartment have already been solidified. Wires and ropes are stretched across the roads here and there so that the infected cannot intrude, and as for the apartment, all the stairs except for one have been blocked by building barricades. That one can also be easily blocked, and even an infected cannot easily break through. It results in blocking all the stairs of the apartment, but if we use the evacuation equipment on the balcony, we can escape.
Safety is secured for the time being, and as long as we don't make loud voices, we won't be found by the infected. In the first place, the infected around the apartment have been mostly disposed of in the last few days. Even so, Yui was opposing, saying she was worried about leaving Mana-chan alone to house-sit, but I thought it was an unavoidable measure.
It would be a different story if Mana-chan could take up weapons and fight, but she is currently a non-combatant member. During supply procurement where the danger of being attacked by infected follows, she is honestly no different from baggage, and if one person is left behind as Mana-chan's guard, it will take that much more time to search for supplies.
Whether she understands that, Mana-chan was saying she would be fine even by herself. Fortunately, she is an elementary school girl and a well-behaved child. She probably understands through these past few months that it's not the time to say selfish things or cry and wail.
"Even so, having to go around houses one by one... I wish we could go to the supermarket on the south side."
With a backpack that remained light in hand, Yui grumbled. I'd like to do so if possible, but on the night we came to this town, I had witnessed two human shadows that seemed to be survivors on the south side of the town.
Not all living humans will be bad guys, but they aren't necessarily sane either. Even if they are good people, they might bring in trouble. From such a thought, we were avoiding searching the south side of the town. There are several supermarkets and convenience stores on the south side of the town, but we had decided that heading there would only be when supplies were finally about to run out.
Where did those survivors go? Are they still lingering in this town, or did they simply pass through this town? Since witnessing the two human shadows, such a question was always somewhere in my head. Not only me, but Naomi-san, Yui, and even Mana-chan, I feel like there were signs of everyone being frightened by the shadows of survivors somewhere. Everyone was thinking only about where the survivors went.
——————However, such doubts of ours would be resolved by finding two corpses rolling on the roadside.
"...Whoa."
I don't know how many times I've muttered it already, but such words spilled from my mouth unintentionally. Beside Yui, who turned pale and covered her mouth with her hand, Naomi-san was making the sign of the cross in front of her chest.
Those two corpses were rolling right in the middle of a wide main road that crossed the town from east to west. We, who were heading toward the apartment that had begun to be visible beyond the roofs of private houses, found two objects rolling on the road as usual and stopped our feet unintentionally.
"This is terrible..."
Even Naomi-san, who should have been accustomed to seeing corpses until now, has a fed-up face. The two corpses rolling on the road were being roasted by the sun on the asphalt in a state where it was more correct to say "dismantled."
The flesh of the faces was also mostly bitten off, and forget the appearance during life, even the gender is unknown. Those corpses, which looked like nothing but a few bits of red meat caked onto skeletons, had been thoroughly devoured by the infected.
The soft bellies were naturally ripped open, and the internal organs that should originally be housed there had cleanly vanished. The four limbs seemed to have been forcibly torn off; a single femur was rolling in a place away from the torso that had become a stump. Whether the eyeballs were also gouged out, the empty eye sockets were looking up at us in silence.
"Those guys, they seem to have been quite hungry."
"They do..."
Since the humans who become prey are killed and eaten one after another or infected and become their own kind, it was inevitable for the infected to begin to starve. The infected do not commit cannibalism and only attack and eat humans. That's exactly why Yamato was gathering evacuees and giving them to his daughter who had turned into an infected.
Whether the infected are extremely efficient at converting food into energy, they can apparently remain active for a long time if they eat a little human. However, as expected, their physical strength probably doesn't last for several months; the reason the corpses are so severely damaged is because the infected thoroughly ate the parts that could be eaten.
The corpses we have seen until now were at most eaten in parts of the body. The fact that the corpses are so thoroughly eaten might be evidence that the infected are quite hungry. Since there are few infected wandering around this area, a small number of infected devoured the two unfortunate survivors until they became bones.
The fact that the infected are starving to this extent might mean the time when they starve to death is also near. While calmly thinking such a thing, I was feeling relieved somewhere that the two corpses were found.
The infected do not eat corpses, nor do they commit cannibalism. What they eat are only living humans.
The human shadows I found the other day were two, and the corpses rolling here are also two. These two corpses might be the ends of those survivors.
Of course, there is no confirmation that it is so. In the first place, the place where those two human shadows were witnessed was the south side of the town. However, no matter how much I was monitoring from the roof of the tallest apartment in this area, blind spots inevitably come out in places where buildings are clustered. The survivors might have moved to the north side of the town without us noticing and were killed here.
Since corpses do not speak, there is no way to confirm the identity of these two corpses. But even just the fact that the opportunities for contact with other survivors have decreased was something to be grateful for right now. Even though supplies are insufficient and infected are wandering the town, I don't have the leeway to think even about survivors on top of that. If they had contacted us, unnecessary confusion might have been triggered.
"When did they come to such a place..."
"Who knows? Even we don't monitor the town 24 hours a day without gaps. They were probably trying to run and escape straight along this road toward the east."
As Naomi-san said, two large backpacks were dropped on the road 100 meters to the west. Yui, who seemed to have taken a dislike to continuing to look at the gruesome corpses, ran to go get the backpacks. The backpacks seemed quite heavy, and Yui carried them here as if half-dragging them.
"As I thought, these people seem to be that pair you saw."
As soon as she opened the backpacks, a large amount of food came out from inside. Canned goods, rice, freeze-dried foods... Since they are all the same brands, they probably procured them collectively from a supermarket or the like. However, since the supermarkets and convenience stores on the north side of the town were looted across the board, this pair might have gone around the shops on the south side of the town that we haven't checked yet and obtained these products.
But these foods are no different from a blessing from heaven for us right now. After all, we were able to obtain a large amount of food without going out of our way to check the south side of the town.
Since corpses do not eat, these supplies are no longer necessary for them. If not, we, who have to eat to live, should utilize them effectively.
Probably the reason these two died was because they were carrying these heavy backpacks. The two were running and escaping to the east, but they finally threw away their luggage after they were about to be caught up to by the infected. However, because they were too late in throwing away the luggage, they were caught and eaten.
Since there is no guarantee that food can be stably procured in the future, they probably didn't want to throw away the luggage. However, if one ends up throwing away their life by being too particular about supplies, it's putting the cart before the horse. If I can avoid dying now, I will throw away the luggage without hesitation. From the experience of almost being caught up to by infected at the bridge before meeting Naomi-san, I had decided to prioritize my own life over luggage.
"Well, with this, we'll be able to get by without being troubled for food for the time being."
"Let's decide to explore the south side from tomorrow as well. The fact that this pair was able to procure this much food means a large amount of supplies might still remain."
In the two backpacks, food and water were packed without even a gap. It wasn't that there were only this many supplies, but that they couldn't fit any more into the backpacks.
At the moment I was about to take a step toward the apartment while holding the heavy backpacks under my arms. I noticed that some sound was coming from far away. If I listen intently, something like a car engine sound is coming from the west side of the town.
I had a bad feeling. For these past few months, my bad feelings have mostly not missed the mark. When I have a bad feeling, many things that are no good happened.
It seems that hunch hit the mark this time too. While we were unintentionally looking at each other's faces, a single passenger car appeared from the corner on the west side of the main road. The sedan running at high speed was running while swaying and zigzagging left and right, but there is no sign of decelerating. Naomi-san, who quickly readied her rifle and peered through the scope, shouted, "Infected are on it!"
Immediately, the reason the sedan was rushing at high speed became clear to me too. Several infected are clinging to the roof and engine part of the running car. Whether the driver has fallen into a panic upon seeing the faces of the infected in a large view on the windshield, or whether they are trying to shake off the infected by swaying the car body. The infected seemed about to slip off from the roof or front part every time the car swayed, but there is no sign of letting go. I can see the infected clinging to the front part pounding their fists against the window glass.
The car with the infected stuck to the car body approached us in the blink of an eye. If we stay on the road like this, we'll be run over. Naomi-san and Yui, holding the backpacks, hurriedly crossed the road toward the south, and conversely, I ran toward the north side. Since I was in the position furthest from the apartment among the three, I might have been run over while crossing the road.
Immediately after I jumped onto the sidewalk beyond the curb at the roadside, the car rushed past right behind me. But it seems it accidentally ran over the two corpses rolling on the road, and the tires slipped on the meat fragments and fat. Suddenly the car changed direction and headed toward the sturdy stone wall at the roadside.
A brake sound like a scream echoed, but it was too late. The car with momentum mowed down the guardrail, tore through it, and intruded onto the sidewalk, then crashed into the stone wall from the front. The destruction sound of metal being crushed, bent, and collapsed shook the air. Whether the wiring became strange somewhere, the silly sound of the horn continued to ring in the surroundings.