Chapter 74 - Chapter 72: A Story About Me Having Few Friends
Neither school nor newspapers taught me anything important. The boy thinks so.
What you learn at school is only the knowledge to pass entrance exams. What use are mathematical equations or classical Japanese grammar in this situation? If they were going to teach me anyway, I think an efficient way to kill humans would have been better. That knowledge is now needed not only by the boy but by all living humanity.
If no one teaches me, I have to learn by myself. Thanks to that, the boy was now quite a reader. That said, what he reads are military-related books and medical books with instructions on first aid. And guidebooks and tourist magazines showing what kind of facilities are where. From the vast amount of information described in those books, he selects only what is necessary and verifies whether it's true. By doing so, the boy is able to live alone for now.
After killing all the children who survived at the elementary school, the boy returned to the park where he had parked the wagon. By the time he somehow finished changing the tire, the sun had already set, and the darkness of night was enveloping the boy.
Despite loudly sounding gunshots and burning down one building, the figure of the infected is still not visible. This town originally had a small population and seemed to have little traffic with other places. Thanks to that, the infected probably didn't come out of this town.
With tire changing and combat, the boy had consumed quite a bit of physical strength. On top of that, full-scale winter has arrived, and the temperature is low. He didn't feel like driving the car while wearing night vision, and the boy decided to spend one night in this town as it was. The enemy is no longer there.
Compared to the children who were at the elementary school, the boy's eating habits could be said to be quite decent. Even so, since it's becoming difficult to obtain preserved food recently, he has started to reduce the amount. In the neatly organized back seat of the wagon, several cardboard boxes filled with canned food and dried food are loaded, but that too is only a three-week supply at most.
The boy found a nearby house with a garage and parked his car there. If he were establishing a permanent base, he would bring all his luggage inside the house, but the boy has no intention of staying long in this town. It's desirable for most of the supplies to remain loaded in the car so he can flee immediately in case of emergency, but if he were attacked by an external enemy and the car was stolen, the guns he worked hard to collect would be pointed at him.
For that reason, the boy had decided on a rule to only stay in houses with a garage. To be able to get into the car immediately when attacked, the car must be parked within the premises. In the house the boy found, a building and a garage are lined up across a narrow yard.
After deciding on the base, he brings several guns and a cardboard box of food into the house. Of course, he doesn't neglect to check the safety inside the house. The inside of the house was ransacked, but no one was inside. It was a bit of a pity that the kitchen was ransacked and all the food had been taken away.
He closed all the shutters on the first-floor windows except for the part facing the yard and built a barricade by stacking tables and chairs in front of the entrance door that was destroyed during looting. If he receives an attack, he plans to immediately go out to the yard and jump into the car in the garage.
Inside the house, almost nothing useful remained. The bunch who were in that shelter must have taken everything, the boy thought, remembering the children who attacked him.
In that elementary school too, almost no supplies remained. The children were all thin and looked starving. The story the girl who jumped out from the burning gym said, that the parents disappeared and everyone was hungry, was probably true. That said, the boy didn't have even a shred of feeling of sympathy for the bunch who attacked him.
Probably, it will be difficult to secure food in this town. Since no sign of infected can be seen in this town, it was perfect as a base, but if food cannot be secured, it's meaningless. No matter how much weapons and ammunition are abundant, bullets cannot be eaten.
On the other hand, in places where enough food remains, there are also infected. That's because the presence of infected prevents looters from acting boldly. He also considered a plan to secure food from far away and return to this town, but considering the time and effort, that too is not realistic.
The plan to plow a field is also out. The boy has started reading through agriculture-related books recently, but the conclusion was that it's impossible for him alone to perform enough cultivation to obtain sufficient food. Modern agriculture can obtain large harvests even in small areas precisely because it uses pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and modern agricultural machinery like tractors; there's nothing an amateur can do by working hard alone. He might be able to harvest a few potatoes or radish sprouts, but in a situation where full-scale winter has arrived and more calories are required, it's a drop in the bucket.
"After all, I have no choice but to go to some big city..."
In big cities, infected are usually wandering around, but the amount of supplies left is also abundant. Fresh foods have completely rotted, and dried foods like cup noodles are reaching their expiration dates, but even so, many food items like canned goods last for years.
Before the pandemic occurred, the boy thought that food items were things that could be obtained if you paid money. Probably that was the common perception of many people living in Japan, and if the world hadn't completely changed, the boy would never have realized the greatness of agriculture. Now, people who cannot do agriculture have no choice but to wander around dangerous cities where infected roam and loot food from dim shops to avoid starving. What they pay as a price might not be money, but their own lives.
He spread out a map and pondered, but no good idea came to mind. For now, the boy decided to stay in this town for only three days, and the boy started preparing for a late dinner. That said, it's just boiling water with a cassette cylinder stove and pouring hot water into a cup of instant noodles.
3 minutes passed, but the boy waited a while longer. That way, the noodles absorb more hot water and stretch. That's how the boy somehow eked out his small amount of food and filled his belly.
7 minutes passed, and since it would be bad if the soup started to get cold, he started eating. They were cup noodles sold for about a hundred yen each before the pandemic, but now they would be more valuable than gold bars.
He drank every last drop of the soy-based soup, and the boy's modest dinner ended. He felt like eating more, but he couldn't consume supplies unplanned. Set the calories to be ingested in a day and eat only the amount that reaches that. That was the rule the boy decided. He must not eat more than the decided amount.
He popped a half-melted candy into his mouth as a substitute for dessert and took a notebook out of his backpack. Taking the notebook with bent edges in hand, he flipped to the page with a sticky note. And the boy started to fill in the number of bullets and supplies consumed in a day.
He removed the magazines of the rifle, handgun, and submachine gun and ejected the remaining bullets. If he counts the bullets remaining in the magazines and the number of empty magazines, he can immediately tell how many bullets were consumed.
"14 rounds of 7.62mm, 19 rounds of 9mm..."
And he also writes the type and number of food consumed today in the notebook, and this time he starts filling in the items obtained today. That said, what was obtained in a day was only one police revolver obtained by defeating the children who came to attack, and three bullets.
Obtaining weapons and ammunition was a serious problem. Without food, you starve to death, but without a gun, you'll be killed by infected or by being attacked by a mob like today. However, in Japan where gun regulations are strict, guns are not so easily obtained. Although most are hunting guns, the boy had obtained over a dozen guns, but until now he had just been lucky.
"Isn't there a gun shop somewhere...?"
He muttered so and looked at the map, but at least there didn't seem to be a gun shop in this town. Even if there were, it would have been broken into and looted of guns and ammunition by survivors seeking weapons. Humans think the same thing. In fact, the boy also tried to find and visit gun shops, but in most shops, the shutters were smashed and guns and ammunition were all taken away.
Weapons, ammunition, food, medicine, and fuel. If even one of these is missing, it immediately becomes difficult to live. Even if you go to a hospital, there are no doctors, so if you get sick, you have to manage by yourself. There is no one to nurse you either.
Although it was by trial and error, the boy was starting to acquire the skills to live alone. He puts the knowledge in books into practice one after another and distinguishes between what can and cannot be done. It's better to have many skills. Practical ones, that is.
He loads 7.62mm bullets taken from a paper box into the empty M1A rifle magazine. Because of its power and the ease of obtaining bullets, the boy continued to use the rifle despite the disadvantage of it being long and heavy. 9mm rounds for handguns are sufficiently effective against humans, but he has to say they are underpowered against the infected. Besides, even if you go to a gun shop, bullets for handguns and submachine guns are not available.
In the past, I would never have thought I would handle a real gun. The boy, who finished loading 20 rounds and thrust the magazine into a pouch on his tactical vest, mocked himself for the fact that the gun was naturally familiar to his body. If you're a boy, you'll have an interest in weapons at least once, and guns appeared as a matter of course in the Hollywood movies the boy often watched. Even so, he hadn't thought even a little bit about holding a gun himself before the pandemic.
Now, he never lets go of the gun for a moment, and his shooting skills are steadily improving. Is this something to be happy about, or is it sad? The boy, who thought Mother would lament that I've become a delinquent, remembers that his mother is also no longer in this world.
Father, Mother, friends, all died. And the wonderful comrades he met after this world turned into hell.
That's why the boy had to acquire the skills to survive alone. So as not to make any more precious people. If he's going to lose them and have sad thoughts again, it's better to stay alone from the start.
If they were alive and saw the current me, what would they say? Surely they would criticize me as being wrong. But the boy didn't know any other way of living. No one taught him how to live in this world where all the rules have been flipped. Neither teachers, newspapers, parents, nor friends. He wasn't taught by anyone how to live in a crazy world.
That's why the boy established his own rules and acts according to them. Even if those rules might be wrong to an outsider, the boy knows no other way of living. For the boy, whose precious people all died and who has no one to rely on, the only thing he can cling to is the rules he decided himself.
If he acts according to the rules, he doesn't become anxious. Because they are what he established himself to survive in this world. If the rules were gone, he would surely become anxious again about what to do.
He pulls out a futon from the closet of what seems to be a second-floor bedroom and spreads it on the floor of the living room facing the yard. It was an opportunity for the boy, who had been living in the car for a while, to stretch his limbs and lie down after a long time, but the boy's face didn't clear up.
He takes off his tactical vest and places the rifle and a set of equipment in a place within reach so he can put them on immediately. Unlike in the past, now no one watches the outside while he's sleeping. In case he receives an attack, he must be in a state where he can jump up immediately, take a weapon, and fight.
He crawls into the futon with his boots on and places a handgun by his pillow. it was a bit musty, but unlike a thermal sheet, it's soft and makes no noise. The boy, who turned off the lantern and looked up at the ceiling, was depressed in his heart.
For this past month, the boy had not been able to sleep properly. Even if he closes his eyes and falls into sleep, he wakes up in tens of minutes. And after repeating that several times, he eventually greets the morning without having slept much.
Because he's acting all alone, there's also the fact that stress is accumulating from the fear of attack. But the biggest problem was that every time he slept, he was tormented by nightmares.
And in the end, on this day too, the boy repeated shallow sleep and awakening, and finally greeted the morning while still tormented by nightmares.
I'm waiting for your opinions and impressions.