A story of silence
One day, two weeks had passed since I had been holed up on the roof of my apartment building. I opened the door with the slight sound of metal scraping. The dazzling rays of the sun immediately streamed into the dark room with the curtains closed and all the lights off. I had closed my eyelids beforehand, but the morning sunlight was still so strong that it left a black stain in my vision for a while.
I waited a little while for my vision to return to normal, and when I was sure that my eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, I looked out through the slightly open door. All I could see were the walls and part of the floor of the apartment hallway. There was nothing else in sight.
I waited again for a moment to make sure there was no noise in the vicinity, and then I turned the door back on. At the same time, I quickly exit the room and look around on both sides of the hallway. No one is there.
I let out a sigh of relief when I realized that I was the only one here. I unconsciously touched the machete on my waist, and slowly removed my hand from it.
Since the world has become like this, it has become very common to carry a weapon. If you don’t, you won’t survive, and even if you have a weapon, if you don’t know how to use it, death awaits you. The wooden grip of this machete has been stained with red rust due to the many times it has sucked blood.
It was a weekday morning, and the town was quiet. I couldn’t hear the sound of cars driving by or the noise of people commuting to and from school. Instead, all I could hear was the cawing of crows.
I leaned forward from the corridor wall, took out my binoculars and held them up to my eyes. Immediately, the devastation of the city came into view.
A truck plunged into a block wall of a house and crashed into the house, crumpling.
A passenger car overturned by a collision.
The charred wreckage of a house that had apparently been burned down in a fire.
Two trains that collided head-on while running and broke into a mess.
…… and countless crows parked all over the power lines.
It’s been about three months since this scene became the norm. Every civilization and organization that mankind has built has been driven to the brink of collapse.
I was looking in the direction of the main street with my binoculars when I saw something moving in the corner of my binoculars. I quickly focused and looked at it.
In my field of vision, I saw several human figures moving. At first glance, they looked like ordinary people, but their mouths were stained red and they were holding something like a string in their hands and dragging it. On closer inspection, the string looked like a human intestine.
Nearby, people were bending down and crowding around something. They looked like a bunch of old ladies at a bargain sale, but what they were gorging themselves on was a dead human body.
The corpse was a woman, and if I had only seen the way some men were covering her, it would have looked like she was being assaulted. But through the crowd of figures, I could see that she had been ripped out of her stomach and her internal organs were being pulled out. Her left arm was missing from the base of her shoulder, as if it had been bitten off, and her right arm, which had lost its strength, was swaying as if it were inviting someone to come along with the movement of the people.
It was a horrible sight, but I didn’t feel anything. I used to turn away not only from splatter movies but also from TV documentaries when I saw doctors performing surgeries, but I guess people get used to everything. I’ve seen countless gruesome corpses, and I’ve seen people being eaten alive right in front of my eyes many times.
As if he had noticed me watching the people crowding around the corpses with binoculars, a man who looked like a businessman turned to me. There was a piece of flesh stuck in his mouth, his shirt was ripped wide at the upper arm, and the skin that could be seen through it was torn to shreds. But the man returned his gaze as if he hadn’t felt a thing, and crouched down to cover the gaping corpse.
I put down my binoculars, leaned against the wall, and crouched down. I’m used to seeing people eating people in the past two months. I’ve given up trying to figure out how it happened or why they would do it. It’s pointless to think about it, and instead of thinking about it, I have to do what I have to do to survive.
Those people, the infected, attacked and ate people just like I had seen. I don’t know all the details, but I’ve heard that they are controlled by appetite and the urge to attack. They starve, they are always angry, and when they see a human, they want to attack and eat them.
It was reported before the TV and radio stopped that the cause was probably some kind of virus. If infected with the virus, within a few hours they would cease to be human and turn into an infected person obsessed with appetite and the urge to attack. The infected see humans as their enemies (or food) and attack them relentlessly, while the infected do not attack them, either because they think of them as friends or because they are simply not interested. The reason and memories that make us human are lost, and we become «ferocious beasts» in human form.
The infected person’s body’s limiter is off, and they always attack people as if they were on fire. In addition, their bodies have become so strong that their sense of pain has been numbed, and they can survive serious injuries that would kill them instantly if they were normal people. They don’t die if one or two of their arms are cut off, and they are also resistant to bleeding, so they can survive even if they are bleeding heavily.
It was like a zombie in a movie, but the infected person did not die and come back to life. It was a living person who had been infected by the virus and had gone berserk. However, there are many people who call them «zombies» because they are always trying to eat people, no matter if their arms are torn off or their legs are ripped off.
But there are few people left who call them that.
The virus, which originated in Africa and spread all over the world, made humans violent and quickly increased their numbers. The saliva of infected people contains a large amount of the virus, and people who are bitten by the virus get it from the wound into their body and become infected within a few hours.
As the number of infected people continued to grow, the nations of the world were left with no choice but to collapse. The police and military fought hard, but in return for their success, they suffered a lot of damage. After all, we were dealing with people who ran as fast as Olympic athletes and kept moving even after being shot in the limbs. In addition, the forces we lost would be turned into the enemy’s forces in their entirety.
Japan, like other countries, has seen a massive outbreak of infected people. I heard on the radio that 90% of the Japanese people are now either dead or infected, but it has been a long time since I could get a signal on that radio. The distribution and movement of people has stopped, and the electricity and communication infrastructure has also stopped because the people who run it are either dead or infected. People fled here and there to escape the infected, but this only increased the damage as the mingled infected were unleashed all over the country.
It seems that the government has already ceased to function. I’ve heard rumors that the remaining units of the police and the Self-Defense Forces have set up bases somewhere and are working to restore their strength, but they are just rumors. I’ve also heard that they’ve been wiped out, but that’s more believable in this current situation.
I was a normal sophomore in high school until a few months ago. After the outbreak shut down logistics and infrastructure, I was living in a shelter near my house, but within a week of my evacuation, I was attacked by a horde of infected people. I was separated from my parents and had to run for my life until today.
I’ve met many survivors since I fled the shelter, but without exception, they either died or were split up and lost during the attack.
Today, I decided to leave the apartment where I had been hiding like a rat. It’s not that I’m leaving, it’s just that I need to get some food and water.
The infected attack humans. But if they don’t find you, they won’t attack you. The limiter of the infected’s body has been removed, giving them superhuman strength, but their senses are still human, except for their sense of pain. They can’t see things in the dark, and unless the smell is very strong, they can’t detect you. If I get into a car or shout, my location will be known and I will be attacked, but if I live in seclusion, the infected will not find me.
So, after a few days of wandering, I retreated to a room on the top floor of my apartment building. I closed all the curtains, hardly turned on any lights to avoid detection at night, and just lived my life breathing. I chose that room simply because it happened to be unlocked, and because it was on the top floor, which ensured my safety. On the top floor of a six-story building, the infected on the ground would not be able to hear the slightest noise, and since the elevators were stopped, I could block the stairs to limit the movement of the infected.
If the infected find a living person, they will chase them with all their might, but if they are well hidden, they can be dispersed. Even if they find you, they will run as fast as they can to gain distance, and if you hide behind a building or something to keep your breath down, they will lose sight of you. At first, the infected will wander around the area where they lost sight of you, trying to catch what they missed, and they will not miss the slightest noise, but eventually they lose interest and move away. I’ve been attacked by the infected many times, but that’s how I’ve survived until now.
I guess I’ve survived simply because I’m lucky and quick on my feet. Ever since I was a child, I loved to play outside, especially tag, and I was always running around. Although I was not involved in any club activities in junior high and high school, I once beat the record of a short-distance runner in the track and field team in a physical fitness test held in the new school term.
However, carrying a large luggage when running away would be a hindrance. There was a convenience store near the apartment, and I still had some food and water left. The area had been destroyed early on, and I hadn’t seen any survivors since I fled from the outside, so the remaining supplies were practically mine.
But it was a bit much to carry into the apartment all at once. It would have been worse if I had tried to take down a stockpile of food and water, only to have them catch up with me because I was too slow to move when they found me carrying the supplies. That’s why I holed up in my apartment with only the amount of supplies I could move quickly, and just before I ran out, I went back out and brought back more. I didn’t want to be without energy in case I was attacked, so I didn’t conserve food or anything like that, and that’s why I went out every five days.
I packed my backpack with what little water and food I had left, as well as other necessary supplies, and checked my weapons. If I was attacked, I would run first, but if I was cornered, I would have to fight. That’s what the weapons were for.
I had a sturdy machete, a Maglite that could be used as a baton, and a crowbar. None of these were my original weapons, but things I had found in the houses I had fled to. If I had a gun, I could effectively eliminate the infected from a distance, but there was no point in asking for what I didn’t have. The only people who have guns are cops, Self-Defense Force personnel, U.S. military personnel in Japan, and hunters. Anti-social groups such as gangsters also have guns, but you won’t conveniently come across their dead bodies and pick up their guns.
Unlike zombies in the movies, the infected do not only have a head as a weak point. They are only violent and hard to kill, so you can kill them by severely damaging their head, heart, lungs, or other vital organs, or by dismembering them all over the body. So it helps that aiming for the chest will kill them.
However, when I encounter an infected person, I first hide. Then I run. Fighting is a last resort.
If there is only one infected person, it will be easy to kill it with a blunt object. But if there are two, I’ll wait and see, and if there are three or more, I won’t hesitate to turn back or look for a detour. I could sneak up behind them and take them out with a blow to the head, but I could only do that if there was only one infected person. If there were more than one, they would notice when the first one was defeated, and they would have to chase me all the way. I have no intention of fighting a fierce beast in the shape of a human running at the speed of a short-distance runner.
If it were a slow-moving zombie from a movie or game, it would be easier. They move so slowly that even a blunt instrument is enough to kill them, and they can easily escape when the time comes. However, once the infected find their prey, they will chase it with all their might until it disappears from sight. No kidding, I really wish they would do something about it.
Traveling by car is suicide. I don’t have a driver’s license to begin with, so I’m confident that I’ll cause an accident, and the sound of the engine will alert the infected. The roads are also blocked here and there by cars that were involved in accidents during the chaos of three months ago, so unless you are very familiar with the geography and terrain, you will find yourself wandering around looking for a detour, and before you know it, they will catch up with you and break your window.
This is why I don’t drive around, even though there is still fuel left at gas stations. Besides, if you hit an infected person blocking the road with a normal car, the tires would slip, the engine would be destroyed, and you would soon be stuck. I’ve even heard of a story where a car was hit by a wild boar while driving in the mountains, but the boar was unhurt and the car was destroyed. I have no choice besides making special modifications, but I don’t have the skills, time, or tools to do so.
I grabbed all of my belongings and went out into the hallway to start clearing out the desks and couches that had been placed in front of the stairs as barricades. The elevators were shut down because of the lack of electricity, and the fire escape was blocked as well, so the infected would not be able to get up to the sixth floor. If I was discovered, the plan was to go out on the balcony of the room I was in and use the evacuation ladder to get down to the ground.
The total weight of my belongings in my backpack was less than ten kilograms. It contained clothing, medicine, and other necessary supplies, as well as water and food, but I had consumed a lot of water and food while I was holed up in my room, so there was not much left. This was the most weight I could carry when running at full speed.
In addition, I didn’t leave anything behind in my room. I didn’t know if I would be able to come back here. If the infected didn’t find me and I was able to replenish my supplies at the supermarket, I could come back and lock myself in. If found, returning to the room would tell the infected person where to stay, so if that happened, I was planning to never return to the room and look for another base.
I was probably the only normal person in this town right now. Since I’ve been holed up in this apartment, I’ve been looking around outside, but the only things I’ve seen moving are infected people and feral cats and dogs. Even if everyone was holed up in their houses like I was, only a few people would have survived. Even if I was being chased by the infected, they would not help me to protect myself. All I could rely on was myself.
So I took out my binoculars again and looked in the direction of the dead bodies where the infected had just swarmed. There was no sign of the infected on the main street, as if they were satisfied and had gone elsewhere, and only the miserable dismembered bodies remained.
If they were so badly damaged, they must surely be dead. If she was dead, she wouldn’t have turned into an infected person and attacked me. I was unconsciously relieved to know that the female survivor was dead.
MtlEnjoyer 