A story of running away
Afterwards, she seemed to have let her guard down and started answering my questions.
Her name is Tachibana Yui, and she is in the third year of junior high school. She had been living with her parents in a shelter tens of kilometers away from here since the mass outbreak of the infected two months ago. The evacuation center was safe, with several gun hunters and plenty of supplies.
But a few days ago, the shelter was attacked by infected people. It was apparently due to carelessness on the part of the survivors, but that didn’t matter. Many of the evacuees were killed, and those who survived were scattered and fled.
Yui was separated from her parents in the chaos, but there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t go back to the evacuation center, which had become a hive of infected people, but she also had no clue how to find her parents. She ran east to get away from the infected and arrived at this town this morning.
She couldn’t take any of her belongings with her, so she went into this supermarket to satisfy her hunger and dryness, and that’s when she ran into me. That’s why she’s here.
«Are you alone, by any chance?»
«Yes, I am.»
I was a little annoyed by Yui’s sudden attitude towards an older person, but I answered her question.
«How did you manage to live alone for so many weeks?……»
I was surprised to hear her say that she had been running all the way to this town.
«Well, in my case, I was hiding from them so they couldn’t find me, so I was pretty much holed up.»
«Do you live near here?»
For a moment, I wondered if I should answer. If I said yes, there was a good chance that she would come to me for protection, as she had nowhere else to go. But even though the apartment I was hiding in was safe, the more people there were, the higher the chance of being discovered. Besides, the amount of supplies consumed by the two of us living together would naturally be doubled. I don’t have that much to spare right now.
But just as I was about to open my mouth, I heard a sound at the entrance. I quickly crouched down and whispered to Yui, «Hide.» She must have heard the noise too, because she kept her posture low and moved to the next register.
I take out a small mirror attached to the end of a retractable conductor used in presentations from my pocket, stick it out a little from behind the register, and point it towards the entrance. I made it myself so that I could see what was going on around the corner and it was quite handy and useful.
In the mirror, I saw an infected person coming into the supermarket from the entrance. I suppressed the urge to click my tongue and continued my observation. I don’t know if they saw Yui go into the supermarket and followed her, but they haven’t found us yet.
But if we make a sound or move here, the infected will surely find us. I want to avoid that at all costs.
The infected person wandered around the supermarket, emitting a low growl. Normally, the infected are like this, but the moment they find their prey (humans), they run as fast as a lion that has found its food. I wonder how many hundreds of millions of people have been caught up and eaten alive by them, even after escaping with the speed of their feet, and joined their ranks.
Get out quickly, there’s nothing here. Hoping for that I waited for the infected to go. It’s not impossible to kill one of them, but you have to be prepared to take a lot of risks.
The infected one hovered around the entrance, and after a few minutes, it turned around and started heading towards the entrance. Just as I was about to pat my chest in relief that I had managed to escape, the sound of metal scraping against metal reached my ears. And the sound came from the cash register next to where Yui was hiding.
I was so preoccupied with the movements of the infected that I completely forgot about Yui’s existence. I must have shifted my body posture, causing the coins scattered on the floor to fall underneath me, but I didn’t care about the cause. The problem was that I had made a noise.
I could hear Yui gasping from the register next to me. I stifled a gasp as well and held out my conductor’s stick a little to see what was going on at the entrance.
Contrary to my wishes, it seemed that the infected had heard the noise. It stopped, looked around, and then turned to look at me. Worst of all, it started to move towards me.
I could see the face of the infected person approaching me step by step in the mirror. He looked like a high school boy in a school uniform. The athletic ability of an infected person depends to some extent on the condition he was in when he was a human, so a high school boy is in the prime of his growth and has high athletic ability. But when he becomes an infected person, his athletic ability and strength are truly monstrous. He was a tricky one to make an enemy of.
Don’t come, don’t come, don’t come…….! That’s all I could hope for. But the infected ignored my wishes and kept coming closer and closer.
And then.
«No!»
Finally, unable to endure the tension, or perhaps in a panic, Yui stood up with a scream and ran towards the other exit. The infected would not miss it, of course, and with a loud bark, they began to chase Yui.
There’s no point in hiding now. I stood up and shouted.
«RUN!»
I shouted as I held up the crowbar I had been holding. The infected person who was trying to chase Yui may have changed his aim to me, and is running towards me as fast as he can. The distance between me and the infected person shrinks as he runs towards me while drooling blood from the corner of his mouth.
I suppress the urge to turn my back and run away right now, and calmly measure the distance. I have less than two seconds before the infected person is within a meter of me.
The moment the infected person is within a meter of me, I swing the crowbar down with all my might from the upper right corner. With a dull thud, the left side of the infected person’s head, which was running at full speed towards me, caved in and blood spurted out. As I avoided the infected’s body, which plunged straight at me out of inertia, the corpse of the infected fell to the floor of the supermarket after a while.
The infected person is just a human who has been infected by the virus and gone berserk, so just like humans, they will die if the tissues and organs necessary to sustain life stop working. They are just as hard to kill as a grizzly.
After defeating the infected, I immediately put my luggage on my back and followed after Yui as fast as I could. When I glanced back, I saw the infected jumping like ants into the supermarket from the entrance where the high school boy had just entered.
It seems that infected people have a habit of barking when they find their prey, which attracts other infected people to them.
The infected who are chasing me go through the entrance of the supermarket and go through the store, so they lose more time than if they were chasing me in a straight line. Since the infected have no intelligence, they cannot make rational decisions such as going ahead of me or taking a shortcut, so they just follow me, giving in to their appetite. It’s nice not to be in danger of being ambushed by infected people everywhere you go, but it’s a thing that’s worthless when you’re being chased at full speed.
The main street has few branches, so we just drive straight and take the nearest turn. If we were being chased, we would change course to get out of the infected’s sight for the time being.
As expected, as soon as I turned the corner, I was reunited with Yui. But she seemed to have fallen, and her knee was bleeding.
«Are you okay!?»
«Tsu……!»
I tried to get Yui to stand, holding her aching kneecap, but she crouched down with a small scream. It seemed she had sprained her ankle when she fell.
«Damn it!»
I could only curse at her so. If she couldn’t run, the infected would soon catch up with her and kill her.
For a moment, the thought of leaving Yui here popped into my head. After all, it was her fault that the infected had found her, and I had no obligation or duty to help her. Clearly, I can’t afford to help a stranger, and if I leave her here while she’s being attacked, I’ll be able to….
This devilish thought was drowned out by Yui’s voice pleading, «Help me….». I couldn’t abandon her as she looked up at me, her eyes moist with pain and fear, holding her legs.
I don’t know why that is. I don’t know if it was because I hadn’t seen a human being in weeks, or if I was just this way of person. At any rate, I couldn’t leave Yui behind.
I could hear the screams of the infected coming from the main street, and they were getting louder and louder. In a few seconds, they would turn the corner of the street and catch us in their sight again. We can’t afford to hide in the nearby houses now.
I held Yui in my arms in a so-called «princess carry» style and started running forward as fast as I could. With my luggage on my back and a girl in my hands, my body suddenly became very heavy, and naturally my running speed began to slow down. No matter how hard I kicked the ground, I felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all.
I thought about throwing away my belongings for a moment, but I didn’t have time for that and I couldn’t afford to lose food and water here. I couldn’t go back to the apartment since the infected had found me in this area, and I couldn’t go back to the supermarket to get supplies in the case I drop my belongings.
«They’re coming!»
Yui, who was being held in my arms, looked behind her and shouted, and at the same time, I felt the groans of the infected getting louder. I don’t have time to look back now that I have her in my arms, I have to go hide somewhere fast. ……!
I’ve been here for a few weeks now, and I’ve only been outside a few times, so I don’t have a good feel for the city, but I’ve been looking at maps and observing the city from rooftops with binoculars, so I know the terrain pretty well.
There must have been a gas station just ahead. There was no need to climb over the wall to escape. I checked the route by comparing the map in my mind with the road in front of me and figured out the shortest distance to it.
I think I was running fast, even with the heavy luggage and the girl on my back. The screams of the infected people chasing behind me, and the girl trembling in my hands when she heard them. Those two things kept me moving frantically.
Eventually, a gas station came into view. Most gas stations these days have a convenience store attached to them, but this one seemed to be privately owned, so it was probably just a restroom and waiting area for the employees. But I might be able to hide.
My body was nearing its limit. My arms were heavy from carrying the girl, the straps of my backpack were digging into my shoulders, my mouth was dry, my heart and lungs were on the verge of collapse, and my body was burning for rest.
As I approached the gas station, less than fifty meters away, I used the last of my strength to drive straight into it. A passenger car was parked at the entrance of a small building that looked like an employee rest room, but there was a gap in the side of the building where a person could pass through. I slid my body through the broken glass door and looked for a place to hide.
There was only a desk, a chair, a sofa, and a shelf of magazines in the break room. But there was a locker in the corner of the room that held cleaning supplies. I had no choice but to stay here.
Once I put Yui down, I threw the luggage on my back on the floor, opened the locker and took out all the brooms and mops inside. Even so, the space inside the locker was barely enough for two people to hide in, but there was no way around it. If you don’t hide, you will die.
«Come in!»
I grabbed her hand and pulled her into the locker. She seemed to be about to say something, but I didn’t care and closed the locker door.
The inside of the locker was indeed small. It was close, or rather, it was as if Yui and I were in full body contact with each other.
I was holding Yui’s body with my left hand and holding her mouth with my right hand. It was as if I was hugging her back. I was holding her mouth because I didn’t want her to panic and scream again.
By the way, I feel something soft hitting my left hand, but I don’t care. From my posture, I can almost guess what my hand is hitting, but it’s an emergency. It’s not very big, by the way.
Yui moaned something, but I said, «Shh,» and held her mouth even tighter. I didn’t hold her nose, of course, because I didn’t want her to choke to death.
I looked at the outside through the long slit in the top of the locker door. Because I was in a small locker, I could hardly hear anything, but I could see what was going on outside.
Immediately, the infected who had followed us through the entrance of the break room, which had been wrecked by a car, came staggering into the room. I could see Yui gasp and her body begin to tremble in fear. Subconsciously, I hugged her tightly to calm her down.
The infected wander around the room, drooling and oohing and aahing. When I saw my belongings and broom scattered in front of my locker, they can’t understand what it means. This is why the infected do not react to the lockers, where humans would first suspect that someone is hiding.
If we make a sound now, the infected will surely notice us. But if we don’t move or make any sound, the locker will be perceived by the infected as just another object.
Several of them passed in front of the locker, and each time they did, Yui’s body trembled as if an electric current was flowing through it. I was almost swallowed up by the fear that I had no way of escaping, but I managed to keep my spirits up with the sense of duty that I now had to protect Yui.
The unintelligent infected could not guess why my belongings and the broom that was supposed to be inside were scattered in front of the locker. Having lost sight of us, the infected began to leave the common room like a receding tide in search of their next prey.
We waited for a while after the last infected person was out of sight, just to be sure, and after ten minutes, we finally left the locker. It was hot and humid inside, as the two of us were tightly packed in a small space, and I felt as if I had finally been released from hell.
After being alert and quickly checking the safety of the room, and making sure there were no infected people around the gas station, I was finally able to catch my breath. My mouth was dry from all the running and being in such a hot place, so I pulled out a bottle of mineral water from my backpack and quickly quenched my thirst.
«Want some?»
I held out the half-empty bottle to Yui, and she snatched it up and drank it down. She wiped her mouth and said.
«You touched my breasts…….!
She glared at me with all her might.
«No, it was unavoidable. I mean, it was a small space.»
«But there were other places you could have put your hands!»
«I mean, I don’t feel like I touched it with such a small……»
The next moment, an empty bottle thrown by Yui hit me in the head. It hurt, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that we both survived and were having this stupid exchange. Yui, who had been upset with me for indirectly telling her that she had small breasts, chuckled as if she had been infected by my laughter.
I had thought of her as a nuisance before, but now that I had gotten her out of her funk, she seemed like an important person.
Oh, it’s wonderful to be alive. I thought so again.
«……So, what are you going to do now?»
As I stood up to gather my belongings, Yui spoke to me in a hesitant manner. I’ve disinfected the scratches from her fall and wrapped a wet towel around her ankle to cool it down, but I don’t think she’ll be able to walk around on her own for a while. Running would be impossible.
«We can’t go back to the hideout, and it’s not safe to stay here for too long. We’ll have to move to another town and find a safe place.»
«Oh, eh, I see»
When she said that, Yui looked up at me with eyes that seemed to be pleading for something. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s embarrassed or her pride won’t allow her to say it, but she immediately drops her gaze to the floor.
……I guess it can’t be helped.
«I’ve been wanting to have a companion for a while. And I’m worried about your leg, too.»
I lied about the companionship, but it’s true that I’m worried about her leg. And I feel like it would be a shame to leave her here.
I grinned and continued.
«Do you want to come with me?»
With those words, Yui looked up. Her eyes seemed to be shining.
«Of course!»
……..Anyway.
«I haven’t told you my name yet right?»
«It doesn’t matter, I’ll call you Pervert.»
«I am not a pervert.»
«You’re the one who squeezed my breasts!»
«They’re too small even to be touched……. Wait a minute, why are you reaching for the crowbar?!»
MtlEnjoyer 