Chapter 98 - Chapter 0: The Story Before the Story Begins, Part 7
The infected, seemingly satisfied with devouring the boy, left the empty classroom in search of their next prey. The smell of blood seeped even into the narrow, moldy locker, but I had no intention of coming out.
At the very least, the infected seemed to be using sight and hearing to search for humans, just like normal people. If they had any other means of detection, I, who had merely hidden inside a locker, would have been found and dragged out long ago. And they weren't as clever as I'd thought. They didn't search every corner of the room; they just left after eating the boy they'd been chasing.
Hiding in this locker and waiting for the infected to disappear. That was the conclusion my head, on the verge of panic, had reached. The infected aren't actively searching around for humans. If so, as long as I stay hidden and keep quiet, I won't be found.
The screams and sounds of destruction coming from outside didn't stop. Even now, massacres were being carried out all over the school. The shrieks and curses of people about to be killed could be heard even if I covered my ears. Even if I closed my eyes, the figures of people about to be eaten alive flickered in my mind.
I felt pathetic, hiding in a narrow locker like this, holding my breath to be the only one saved. If I could, I'd want to jump out of a place like this and save even one living person, like the heroes in movies. But I didn't have that kind of ability. Even if I tried to save someone, the number of dead would just increase by one. Or I'd join the ranks of the monsters attacking people; it would be one of the two.
Inside the narrow locker, I felt like even the beating of my own heart was echoing. In the locker, which was the only quiet place, I had to face my own mistakes.
If only I hadn't opened the gate back then and had turned away that university student who'd been bitten. That was all that filled my head. Because of me, infected entered this junior high school, and many people died. And even now, people tasting hell are outside.
It couldn't be helped; I'm not responsible—I repeated that excuse over and over. At that point, I didn't know at all what route the infection spread through. Both the TV and radio only said that people become rioters due to virus infection; there was no information that you get infected by being bitten. No one knew anything.
If so, my action of trying to help an injured person shouldn't have been wrong. Even if I had turned that university student away, someone else might have tried to help him and let him into the junior high school. Anyone would want to help an injured person, and no one would blame them for it. I just happened to draw the short straw at the worst possible time.
Even if I hadn't done it, someone else would have invited him into the evacuation center. If he couldn't get in through the back gate, the university student would have gone around to the main gate, which was open, and entered the evacuation center anyway. And he still would have developed the symptoms in the schoolyard and spread the infection.
Besides, the infection was spreading to the town too, and a few minutes after the infected appeared in the junior high school, infected from outside were rushing through the main gate. Even if I hadn't let that university student into the junior high school, the fact that this evacuation center would be overrun by infected wouldn't have changed. The fate of the people in the evacuation center had been decided long ago; it just happened a few minutes earlier.
Even telling myself that, the guilt wouldn't fade. If only I'd done that back then, this wouldn't have happened. Only such hypothetical stories circled my head.
If only I'd turned away the bitten university student. Or if I hadn't tried to go see the administration building with Yoshioka, getting caught up in the nostalgia of the junior high school I hadn't visited in a long time. If I hadn't come to the evacuation center in the first place, wouldn't I have avoided bringing about such a situation?
In just over ten minutes, I witnessed many deaths. The faces of the people who died were burned into my mind and wouldn't disappear. Their screams, their voices of resentment toward the unreasonable death that suddenly visited them, wouldn't leave my ears.
Inside the narrow locker, I continued to tremble with the fear of death and the weight of the sin I'd committed.
And suddenly, the screams stopped. A silence that made my ears ache enveloped me.
Steeling myself, I came out of the locker. The rusted locker door made a raspy metallic sound when it opened, but no infected appeared.
In front of the locker, a single corpse was rolling. It was the corpse of the boy I'd abandoned earlier. The blazer-type school uniform and white shirt of the face-down corpse were torn, and the meat around the flank had completely vanished. In the place where the internal organs should originally be housed, there was nothing.
Eyes from which light had vanished were looking up at me. It's your fault I died. The corpse seemed to be saying that.
I couldn't take it anymore. I knelt on the spot and vomited vigorously. The white vomit fell onto the bloodstain on the floor and turned pink.
If I hadn't closed the door, would he have been saved? If the boy dying in front of me had been saved, I might have been saved a little too. Even in this situation, I did a good thing; I might have been able to take a little pride in my actions. But what I did was the exact opposite act.
When he was left to die by me, what did this boy think? It's probably better not to know that answer. Surely among the things he thought, there must be hatred and a sense of grudge toward me, who didn't try to save him.
If I thought about the dead any more, I felt like I'd go crazy. That's right, I must find Dad and Mom quickly. The two said they were in the gymnasium. What happened to the gymnasium?
Standing up, I opened the curtains that had been closed. Suddenly, orange light filled my vision. The city was burning.
Fires were rising in the residential area near the school. The flames spread to adjacent houses one after another, and there was no sign of the fire department that should have extinguished them, nor could the sound of sirens be heard.
The heavy iron gate that the evacuees should have closed was fallen inward toward the schoolyard. The infected must have broken through it by force. On the road in front of the school gate, two police cars are stopped with their patrol lights rotating. However, the figures of the police officers who should have been shooting guns were nowhere to be seen.
I must find Dad and Mom. Forcing other thoughts out of my head with those words, I went out to the corridor to head for the gymnasium. If I thought about other things, I felt like I'd be swallowed by anxiety and fear.
Even in the administration building, where residents were supposed to be prohibited from entering, corpses were rolling here and there. Trying not to look at those corpses as much as possible, I went out to the parking lot from the first-floor window.
The time had already passed 12 midnight.
Fortunately, the emergency generator seemed not to have been destroyed, and even in this situation, the lights throughout the school were on. However, thanks to it being bright, the gruesome sights spreading everywhere ended up entering my eyes without being hidden by the darkness of the night.
The soil of the schoolyard was stained bright red with the blood that had been shed. The things that looked like garbage bags filled with contents scattered in the ground were all human corpses. Among the many corpses rolling around, there was no one moving besides me. Even the infected were nowhere to be seen.
Surely quite a few people escaped from the school. The infected might have gone after those people. The corpses in the schoolyard and school building are certainly many, but compared to the number of people who evacuated, they are considerably few. Though, the terrifying thought that everyone who didn't die became an infected also crossed my mind.
However, there is a high possibility that infected still remain in the school. There's no chance of winning if I fight them with bare hands. I needed a weapon.
I turned over the sheets covering the construction materials left in the parking lot and looked around to see if any square timber or something was placed there. There were only steel pipes for scaffolding or dust nets that weren't things I could swing around at all, but there were several iron bars about 30 centimeters long that seemed to be for reinforcing bars.
I wanted a more powerful weapon with more reach, but for now, I have to make do with this.
Gripping the iron bar, I head for the gymnasium. Light was leaking from the gymnasium windows, but not a single sound could be heard from inside. Immediately, I understood the reason.
The door of the gymnasium entrance, which was in a blind spot from the administration building side, was greatly broken. The iron sliding door, which takes great strength even to open and close, was crumpled from the middle and off the rail. Bright red blood is flowing out from the gymnasium entrance.
"No way..."
What happened to Dad and Mom? Instinctively stepping into the gymnasium, I was vomiting again seeing the sight spreading there. On the floor of the gymnasium, countless corpses were rolling as if piled up.
They had escaped into the gymnasium and barricaded themselves, but that probably didn't last long. Whether they were trying to get even one step away from the infected who broke the door and intruded, the corpses were all piled up like mountains against the wall.
With the strong smell of iron, my sense of smell was already paralyzed. They are all corpses that are bloody and severely damaged, but I must check if Dad and Mom are among them. If the corpses of Dad and Mom aren't among these, the two are still alive.
I flip over the corpse of a woman wearing a brown sweater, lying face down nearby. Certainly, Mom was also wearing a brown sweater when she came to the school. The hairstyle is also very similar. Thinking "No way...", I steeled myself and peeked at that face. It was red and dirty with blood, but it wasn't Mom's face.
Thank goodness. I thought that, and then I loathed myself for thinking such a thing. People are dying; what part of it is "thank goodness"? Even though I myself am the one who played a part in the cause of their deaths?
Every time I checked the corpses with similar clothes or build to Dad and Mom one by one, I felt as if my heart were being put through a belt grinder and ground down. By the time the number of corpses I'd checked exceeded twenty, I had become able to look at the faces of the corpses while silently performing the task without feeling anything.
I spent several hours, but in the end, Dad and Mom weren't in the gymnasium. That means they might be alive somewhere. In the darkness, I felt like I saw a slight light.
There are still many corpses outside. If I check all of them, it won't be over even when morning comes. Is there any good way? At that moment, I suddenly remembered the existence of the mobile phone.
Isn't it a story that's settled in one shot if I make a phone call? I was angry at myself for forgetting the existence of a convenient tool of civilization. I take out the smartphone to make a call and feel relieved that the screen display isn't "Out of Range". Apparently, the infrastructure is still safe.
I call up Mom's phone number from the address book, and my finger stopped as I was about to press the call button. If there are infected near Mom, she might be found by the ringtone. If that happens, I won't know what I made the call for. I worried about whether I should make the call or stop, but in the end, I pressed the call button. I can only pray that Mom has it on silent mode.
——Immediately after, I heard a faint mobile phone ringtone. The electronic sound, pip-pip-pip-pip, felt like it was heard particularly loudly in the school enveloped in silence.
I recognized that ringtone. The mobile phone ringtone that Mom, who isn't very good at machines, had left as the default setting. Maybe there were other people who had the same setting, but the fact that it rang at this timing meant it was definitely Mom's mobile phone.
The ringtone was coming from the direction of the classroom building. Mom is still alive. Convinced of that, I started running toward the classroom building.
Just as the weather forecast in the news, which seems like many days ago now, said, it had started to snow. The white snow fell onto the countless corpses rolling on the ground, turned bright red, and melted in an instant.
Going up to the classroom building with my shoes on was a taboo, but the teacher who would warn me had died long ago. I run in the direction where the continuously ringing mobile phone ringtone can be heard.
The ringtone I hear becomes louder and louder as I approach the women's restroom on the first floor. Apparently, Mom is inside the women's restroom. A high school boy entering a women's restroom—usually, he'd be reported. But I stepped into the women's restroom without caring about such a thing, and then——.
"Eh?"
On the floor of the women's restroom with the window open, something was squirming. The light in the restroom remained off, so I pressed the switch. What was illuminated by the bright fluorescent light was the figure of an infected crawling on the floor.
Apparently, she had developed the symptoms after being seriously injured. Most of the meat from the waist down was devoured, and only bone and slight muscle remained. The abdomen was also torn, and the long, string-like intestines squirmed like a snake every time the infected moved. Half the skin of the face was gone, and white cheekbones peeked out from between the muscles.
It was the first time I'd seen an infected who could still move in such a state, but that wasn't the reason I let out a stupid voice. The mobile phone ringtone was coming from that infected.
"You've got to be kidding, right?"
The brown sweater, the hairstyle, and even though only half remained, that facial features. Despite the body being severely damaged, I knew the identity of that infected at a glance. However, my brain was refusing to understand it.
With only one eye remaining, the infected crawling on the floor looks up at me. The reason she can't let out a roar is probably because her vocal cords have been bitten off. What leaked from the infected's mouth was only the sound of a wheezing, raspy breath.
The infected reached out her hand toward me. I also recognize the wristwatch worn on that left hand. The infected crawled on the ground with only both hands and was trying to approach me.
With a dry sound, a smartphone rolls out from that sweater pocket. The electronic sound announcing the incoming call became even louder, and the smartphone moved slightly on the floor with the vibration.
And the caller's name displayed on that screen was mine.
The infected grabbed the leg of me, who was standing blankly. Strength left my body as I hurriedly shook it off and jumped out into the corridor.
I didn't want to believe that that infected was Mom. Dad and Mom are still safe now, and are escaping or hiding somewhere. Joining the two, we'll escape to somewhere safe for real this time. Until a minute ago, I didn't doubt that it would be so.
No, I was convinced. Even though there was no basis, I wanted to believe the two were safe. But the reality was different. Mom had turned into an infected.
"Why..."
Sobbing and tears wouldn't stop. Why did it become like this? What did I mistake? Where was it bad? Which was the right choice? I could only regret, even after witnessing the reality that had already been determined and couldn't be helped.
It's my fault. If only I'd turned away that university student. If I'd just waited for Dad and Mom at home without coming to an evacuation center in the first place, this wouldn't have happened. I've put Mom through such a terrible thing.
Mom was still crawling on the ground with both hands, trying to come out of the restroom. The eyes staring at me as I sat down held only the killing intent a hungry beast directs at its prey. Mom was trying to bite into me.
"Please, stop it..."
Mom is still crawling toward me.
I didn't want to believe that Mom had become an infected. But somewhere in my heart, I was accepting that fact. The Mom who was strict but kind is no longer here. What's here is only a hungry beast that leaves Mom's traces.
It would be useless no matter what I said now. To Mom's ears, any of my words would only be recognized as the sound a prey emits. Neither reason, nor humanity, nor memories—nothing remains in Mom anymore.
It's easy to escape this place without accepting that the infected in front of me is Mom. Since her legs are eaten, she can't chase me very quickly. And with these wounds, she won't be able to live that long.
But I had to take responsibility. As the very person who brought about this situation, I must at least settle things. If I leave Mom like this and someone else who comes to the school is attacked, I'll be driving even more people to their deaths.
Mom said once, "A mistake the first time can't be helped sometimes, but repeating the same mistake twice or three times is just being an idiot." To avoid repeating the same mistake, what I should do was decided.
"I'm sorry..."
Various memories raced through my mind. She was strict, and she nagged a lot. When I was scolded, I was usually hit. There were once or twice when we had a big fight and I thought "Die, you damn old hag."
Even so, she was my precious Mom. It was Mom who gave birth to me and raised me this far. That's why I must send her off with respect. I clearly understood what I should do.
Standing up, I stare into the eyes of the infected who continues to crawl toward me.
"Thank you, goodbye."
I swung down the iron bar in my hand.
"Do you... have nothing you regret?"
——When I was asked that by Sakaguchi-sensei, the only teacher left at Sayuri Girls' Academy, what crossed my mind were the events of that day when everything ended, and began.
On that day, I lost everything. I killed even my father, who had also turned into an infected, and Yoshioka, who was my friend, with these hands. Family, friends, home—everything was lost.
The world changed. And even the rules that govern the world changed in the same way. Things like love, friendship, and humanity are now just nonsense. Because I've seen people die many times after that because they were trapped by the rules of the old world.
I also had to change my way of living. I understood that heroes don't exist, and I threw away even my ethics and conscience. If I hadn't done so, I wouldn't have been able to survive. But there are also many people who died because they couldn't do that.
Standing up, I open the window curtains. Outside the window, snow continued to fall.
For an instant, my whole body reflected in the glass looked as if it were stained bright red with blood. That's probably not wrong. Because I've survived until now by sacrificing many people.
I killed women and children, and although I didn't lay a hand on them directly, I even killed babies. It couldn't be helped to live. Since no one taught me the right way, I just did the best I could think of myself.
But I don't think in the bottom of my heart that this way of living is right. But I have no choice but to continue on this path. Because that is the path I chose, even if I'm soaked up to my shoulders in a bottomless puddle of blood, there is no other way to live but to keep moving forward. Even if what's waiting ahead is destruction, continuing to move forward is my way of settling things.
On that day, I was reborn. The boy with a strong sense of justice who enjoyed a peaceful life while feeling it was tedious and somewhat suffocating died. In his place, what was born was the existence that is me, who clings to life and continues to sacrifice others for it.
I didn't become a hero; I became a monster.
With this, the prequel is over, court adjourned!
From next time, the timeline returns to the present, and the perspective will proceed in the third person.