Yes, I'm still alive and still writing. Going back to Numbered Days this week.
But for now, something completely different.
========================================
Yamaku of the dead
Today, the world ended.
It happened around lunchtime. We were about to leave for the Shanghai, to have lunch there, again. I only agreed to join Shizune and Misha because it was a saturday, and because I somehow managed to trick Shizune into promising to take the bill. I'm still not sure how I pulled that off, and I doubt I ever will find out, now.
We were halfway across the grounds when
it appeared, in the middle of the gate. It was wearing half a suit, glasses, and had the handle of a suitcase in one hand. None of that was what froze me in my tracks.
No, what scared the shit out of me, was the fact that its shirt was drenched in blood.
And it was still walking.
"Hicchan? What-"
In one fluid motion, I turned towards Misha, put a finger on her lips and one on my own, making it crystal clear that she was to not make a sound. Shizune looked at me curiously, and I simply pointed at the gates. The slow widening of her eyes made it clear she'd come to the same conclusion as I had. And without missing a beat, she grabbed Misha by the arm and hurried back towards the school building, only letting go to start signing.
"Hicchan, return to class, and inform Mutou, then go to the Nurse's office and inform him of what we saw. Saw what, Shicchan? No time, Misha - wait, I'm Misha - we'll go directly to the school's Principal."
Nodding, I took off towards our classroom, only to find it empty. Muttering, I decided to go to the Nurse first, and find Mutou later. Maybe Shizune would run into him first. I kept at a light jog, trying to keep my heart in check. My morning runs with Emi had considerably improved my condition, but running too much was still dangerous. Especially if there was a chance of going into a panic. Like today. Which was why my heart was racing anyway by the time I reached the Nurse.
"Nakai, I thought you knew how to knock!"
"No time *pant* dead man walking *pant* school gates *pant*"
"Wait, wait, slow down, Hisao. Get your breathing under control first."
I took several deep breaths, finally calming down a little. "There's a dead man walking at our school gates, Nurse."
He just blinked at me, several times, before saying, "What?"
Sighing, I told him what we'd seen. To my surprise, he jumped up and shouted, "And you left it unwatched!?" then rushed past me, running towards the gates. Naturally, I started to feel stupid for forgetting the most obvious thing we overlooked - the gates had been open. I set off after the Nurse, hoping against hope that
it was still around the gate area. If it had wandered onto the school grounds...
I got there half a minute after the Nurse did. And I only found the Nurse there. I started to swear. How could we have been so stupid?
"Save your breath, Nakai. You're coming with me, and we're going to find that thing."
I started to nod, then stared at him. "What did you just say?"
"You and me are going to find that thing, and get rid of it."
"Why are you calling it a thing?"
He just turned around to look at me, without saying another word.
When I saw his eyes, I involuntarily took a step back. I've never seen eyes filled with such overbearing guilt, shame, and anguish. He knew. He knew what that thing was, and maybe even where it had come from. Most of all, he knew what we had to do.
Turning away again, he said, "Come on, the longer we stay here, the riskier it gets." I gulped, and nodded, then started following him to the gate, where Nurse carefully looked around, for anything that might tell us where it went. It didn't take long for him to spot something, and it made him swear. "It went in," he simply said, then set off again.
Towards the school's track field.
Oh god, no. Emi... She said she'd wanted to go running after classes had ended. Work up an appetite, or something. Or maybe the entire team was going to be there. I forgot what reason she gave. It doesn't matter anyway. We had to hurry. But I couldn't help hoping Emi hadn't gone running. Wishful thinking, I know, but can you really blame me?
We arrived at the track field to find it abandoned. At first, I gave a sigh of relief. But then Nurse said, "Don't be so sure about that." I opened my eyes again, and saw the signs.
There were dark patches covering the ground everywhere. In some places, there were even bits of flesh and clothing on the field. The ground was scuffed and turned up, and the track itself was ruined. I didn't need to ask myself what had happened here.
It had happened. I kept searching around for some proof that someone, anyone, had gotten away unscathed.
And then I saw her legs. They were lying almost ten feet away from the storage shed, their owner gone to wherever. A sharp pain in my knees told me I'd fallen onto them, but it barely registered. This is what my stupidity had led to. The thing had arrived at the track field, and it had gotten a hold of at least one of the track team members. It must've happened fast if this is the result.
I suddenly felt a hand clamp on my shoulder. Panicking, I jumped up and made to run, right until Nurse shouted out to me. "It's just me, Hisao. They've left the field minutes ago." I could hear the agony in his voice. "This has gone beyond what two people can handle. We're going back inside, and we'll join up with the rest of staff. The student council should've found the Principal by now, and he'll have gathered up all the teachers and members of the nursing staff."
I just nodded. Then I looked over to Emi's running legs again. I shivered as an idea struck me. "We'll need weapons, won't we?"
Nurse sighed. "I guess so. But those legs won't do. There's some metal baseball bats in the shed, we'll get those, for now."
I nodded again.
Armed, we entered the school building again, and made our way to the Principal's office. There, we found Shizune, Misha, and Mutou and Nomiya, waiting for us. And as soon as I closed the door, the Principal said, "How did it get loose, Nurse?" much to everyone's surprise, to the point that Misha was frozen mid-step in her walking towards me.
"I'm sorry, I have no idea how-"
"Did it attack any of the students?" One could practically taste the fear underlying that sentence. Fear for the students.
The Nurse sagged, and softly whimpered, "Yes. It got the track team."
At those words, the principal let out a pained sigh. Everyone else was looking between the Nurse and the Principal confusedly, until Nomiya slammed his hand flat on the desk and yelled, "Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on here??"
It was obvious that the Nurse would be unable to explain much of anything, leaving it to the Principal. Who sighed again, and started to explain. "About two months ago, someone claiming to represent a medical company approached us. He said they'd discovered a possible cure for a rare disease, and would like to offer it to our students for free. He'd already approached one former student of Yamaku who had this disease, who apparently told the representative that he knew one other who had the same illness.
"We agreed to have him send us this cure, on the grounds that it would be our staff that administered it to both students. We received the medicine two weeks later, along with every research paper that had been done on it. Or so the man claimed." The Principal tiredly rubbed at his face before continuing. "We should have been more suspicious about this man, from an unknown company. A company, we later found out, that never existed. The package we received wasn't a cure at all. What we received may well announce the end of our world."
"I'm the one who administered this 'medicine' to our former student," the Nurse softly picked up. "I'm the one who should have been he most suspicious of those research papers. They were too clean, the test results too good. But if it was real, and I took the time to do some proper tests, that young man would've been past the point of no return. So I gave him the medicine."
Nurse's voice slowly gained in volume as he went on. "And it killed him. It killed him messily. Blood started pouring out of every orifice, but that wasn't enough. No, ten minutes after his heart stopped, he got up and attacked a member of my staff, biting off a chunk of her arm. We were too stunned to even lift a finger. He..
it killed her by tearing out her throat moments later. And it didn't stop there. It attacked another member of my staff, and killed him as well before any of us regained our senses. And when we finally did, we ran, and locked every door behind us."
He stopped there, looking horrified. The silence that followed was very uncomfortable, even for Shizune. But after a few moments, it was her who broke the silence. "Ahh- Shicchan wants -to know... What happened to the two nurses?"
Nurse grimaced, and said, "They became like our former student. We locked all three of them in our research facility, thinking they'd never get out from there. We were wrong, it seems."
Mutou, who had been quiet up until now, said, "So, you're telling me we're dealing with zombies here?"
Nurse simply nodded. "That's probably the best description for them now."
"And you say one of them made it out of its prison?" Mutou continued.
"It's safe to assume the other two are also roaming around somewhere," Nurse admitted with a sigh. "We thought we'd try finding a way to treat them. To save them, or perhaps prevent their curse from spreading. We should've killed all three of them the moment we realized what they were." The look on the Nurse's face became increasingly horrified and angry, twisting his features.
Mutou redirected his gaze to the Principal. "We'll need weapons."
Everyone except the Principal stared at Mutou, stunned. The Principal simply nodded, and said, "You know the password, Akio. I suggest you take Nomiya and this boy here to gather up as much as you can. I'll summon the rest of staff. We'll reconvene here."
Looking at me and Nomiya, Mutou said, "You heard the Principal. Let's go." I just nodded limply, and fell in behind him. The Nurse silently passed his bat to Mutou, who nodded his thanks, and then we were off. But not before Shizune and Misha forced their way on to our little team. Mutou only raised his eyebrows at them, then motioned for them to follow. "Don't fall behind."
We managed to reach the first floor before we ran into a member of the track team. Or rather, it ran into us. Me, to be more precise. Mutou yelled at me, "Don't hesitate, Nakai! Swing!" And I swung.
I hit it square in the face. The proceeding sounds of crunching bone and squelching softer tissues made me sick to my core. The walking dead track team member crumpled at my feet, and I vomited all over it. A sharp pain in my chest told me that my heart didn't appreciate the effort, either. After a while, I felt two small hands on my back, and I looked up to see Shizune and Misha look at me worriedly. I wiped my mouth, still shivering, and gave them what was supposed to pass for a reassuring smile.
"Nice swing, Nakai," Mutou complimented me. I grimaced. I'd rather not be complimented on something like this. "Did it get you anywhere?"
"No, sir, I'm ok."
"Good. Let's go. Nakai, take rear guard."
We had to kill three more zombies before we reached our goal. Nomiya frowned when Mutou bashed in the skull of a small one, and said, "That was a middle schooler." Mutou simply nodded, motioning for us to hurry up. Nomiya's words worried me, though. Middle schoolers would have a lot of trouble defending themselves.
"..."
"Shicchan says it's strange we've run into so few of these 'zombies', and we should consider the possibility of a trap."
"They're walking corpses, miss Hakamichi," Mutou replied. "They have as much intelligence between them as a cardboard box."
"...!"
"Well, I'm still worried!"
"You should be scared. We're here."
Mutou had led us to a strange storage facility under the school. Metal cabinets were lining the walls, and every door we came across was made of solid steel, with what looked like bulletproof glass windows. Even Misha was stunned into silence, so much so that it took Shizune a few minutes to regain her attention.
"...!"
"Hm? Oh, sorry Shicchan, wahahaha~!" Misha's laugh had started to sound strained. "Mister Mutou, as the student council pres-"
"Drop the charades, miss Hakamichi. We're beyond all that right now. We're now a small military-like force, and the Principal is the general. The unlocking of these bunkers has made that a reality."
"But sir, what are these here for anyway?" I couldn't help but ask.
"Yamaku Academy has always suspected that one day, the world would be turned upside down, and we'd need to defend ourselves. This weapons cache has since been the responsibility of the Principal, and two appointed teachers. Nomiya and I are the currently appointed teachers. Ready?"
"Let's just get this over with," Nomiya gruffly replied, then took out a key-card, just as Mutou drew an identical one from his pocket. Without noticing, we'd arrived at a vault of some sort, with two key slots. Mutou and Nomiya drew their cards through the slots, and punched in a password, opening the vault doors... revealing a massive weapons stash. There were handguns, shotguns, machine guns, even rocket launchers and grenades. The three of us simply stood there, stunned, as Nomiya stepped inside and started picking out weapons. Mutou glanced at us, then motioned us in. The two teachers gave all three of us weapons, but the given descriptions were lost on me. All I needed to remember was how to use these, anyway, right?
I wasn't very comfortable holding all these heavy weapons, but there was little choice to be had at this point. Shizune, for one, was almost captivated by the things, if not for what we had to do with them. Misha was quick to appoint herself as ammunition carrier, and picked a couple small handguns for her weapons. Each of us was given some of the grenades, two handguns like the ones Misha held, and at least two of what the teachers called 'sub-machine guns'. I decided to keep the baseball bat with me. They themselves took up extras of everything they gave us, to be given to other capable hands.
I sure as hell hoped Kenji's wouldn't be amongst those. The thought made me snicker. Mutou raised an eyebrow at me, but I looked away, and that was that.
When the five of us were armed and 'ready', we went back up, only to find that chaos had begun. There were at least fifty of the abominations in the first floor hall, some of which were going up stairs. The front doors had been smashed clean away, and pieces of it were all over the floor. The worst part was, they all looked like middle schoolers. Upon seeing this, Nomiya and the girls could have cried, if Mutou had given them half a chance to.
He didn't, by saying, "These are no longer our students. These are no longer humans as we once knew them. These are now abominations, and none of them would have wanted to be like this. Trust me when I say we'll be doing them a favour by destroying them. And if one of us gets bitten by them, we'll be doing ourselves a favour by killing that person on the spot." That last remark made the three of us stare at Mutou wide-eyed. And after a quick translation, so did Shizune. However, she was the first to nod in acceptance of this fate. I was just hoping it would never come to that...
Mutou's little speech seemed to have drawn the attention of some of the walking corpses, as they started to walk towards us. "Um, sir?," I hesitated a moment, "I think they're reacting to sound." Mutou just nodded before he took aim and started shooting. After three shots, he motioned for us to do the same.
And so the blood-shedding began. We were through to the stairs in minutes, only shooting those that came closest to preserve ammunition. But the noise we made had drawn the attention of dozens more, and the hall was becoming crowded. That's when Nomiya suddenly put his gun away, and pulled two grenades off his belt. Saying "All of you keep moving," he stopped, turned, and threw the grenades far and high. I didn't see where they came down, but Nomiya joined us again a second before a double explosion went off behind us. Mutou grunted, and Nomiya said, "Ought to keep them distracted for long enough."
We reached the third floor without running into any more of the creatures. I took a moment to feel appalled at how quickly I'd stopped referring to these things as humans, but there really wasn't any time to waste on that sort of thing. Everything went fine on the third floor hallway, until-
"Kyaaaa!"
A hand had suddenly reached out from our classroom, and taken a firm hold of Misha's hair. I froze. I couldn't move a muscle even if I'd wanted to that moment. Fortunately, before anything could really happen to Misha, Shizune had drawn her knife, and cut off Misha's hair, right above that hand. Mutou then moved up close to the girls, and shot into the room twice. "Mikado, Nakai, get a hold of yourselves. We've a long day ahead of us." He fixed his gaze on us until we both nodded. Shizune gave both of us an encouraging smile.
Her smile turned into an expression of shock the very next second.
There had been more than two of the creatures in the classroom.
And one of them had just bitten Shizune in the shoulder.
It took me two seconds to register this, but then something cold took over. I took aim, and fired a single bullet into the thing's skull. It dropped to the ground, allowing us to see how Shizune's shirt slowly turned red at the shoulder. She started signing, wincing with every shoulder movement, but Misha only cried, unable to say a word except for "Shicchan! No! Shicchan!" over and over. Shizune looked frustrated for a moment, then simply hugged her friend.
Letting go, she faced the rest of us, and used some very basic sign language. Basic enough that even Mutou and Nomiya understood what she wanted. First, she pointed at Nomiya's grenades, and held up four fingers. Next, she pointed at Misha, and gently pushed her towards me. We understood. She wanted to go out with a bang, and she didn't want us near it. Swallowing noisily, Nomiya handed her the four grenades. I took hold of Misha's arm, and gently tried to pull her along. Mutou was quick to take her other arm, and the four of us set off. I heard Shizune give her weapons to Nomiya before running the other way, back downstairs.
In front of us, the door to class 3-2 was suddenly thrown open. And standing in it was Kenji, shouting, "You'll never take me alive!!" before he threw crayons at us. We stood there, blinking, Mutou about to say something gravely annoyed, but I interrupted him. By laughing.
I couldn't help it. This moment was just too ridiculous. We'd just lost Shizune, and here came Kenji, last sane man in an insane world, throwing crayons at a perceived threat. I just had to laugh.
Squinting his eyes, Kenji asked, "That you, Hisao?"
Taking a moment to catch my breath, I replied, "Yeah, it's me."
"Great. What's going on, man? Miyagi only told us to stay in here and to not open the door for anyone."
"So why is that door open now, Setou?" Mutou rumbled.
Kenji seemed taken aback by this question, then snorted. "Someone had to stand up and defend this class."
"With crayons, Kenji?" I snickered again.
"I don't see
you doing any better!"
"You'll have to take a closer look, I think."
Enough," Mutou cut in. "Who's in there with you, Setou?"
"Everyone in my class, sir. Oh, and Ikezawa from yours."
I blinked at Kenji. "Hanako?"
"That's what I said, didn't I?" He made a motion with his head that suggested he just rolled his eyes at me.
I just gave a sigh of relief, and Mutou took over again. "Get back indoors, Setou. I'll have a word with Miyagi. You three wait here," he said to us as he walked into the room. He was almost inside when we heard a big explosion go off downstairs, and Misha collapsed as she wailed.
"Wh-what was that?", Kenji nearly shrieked.
Mutou seemed to be looking through the floor when he replied, "The last act of a brave soul." Then he went inside, pushing Kenji back inside in front of him.
Less than five minutes later, Mutou came back out, and told Nomiya, "You should stay here and guard them, while we keep moving. Mikado, I think you better stay here, too." Misha had been sobbing quietly ever since the last explosion. She didn't say anything, just walked inside. I wanted to look in to see Hanako and Lilly, but Mutou walked on, carrying Misha's pack of ammunitions, and said, "Don't stay behind, Nakai."
We didn't run into any more zombies on our way back to the Principal's office. Once inside, I saw the Nurse still sitting with his head in his hands. There were also now several members of the nursing staff present, and two middle school teachers, who looked as if they'd been through hell and back. Mutou started recounting what we'd seen on our way, which I simply tuned out as I sat down next to the Nurse.
"How's your heart holding up, Hisao?" he asked me. I stopped relaxing instantly. I hadn't even once paid attention to my heart, but now that he mentioned it, my chest had been hurting ever since we'd started going up the stairs in the hall. No, there'd been a brief spike before that, when I smashed that one creature's head. And now that I had a chance to calm down, the pain suddenly sky-rocketed.
When I didn't respond, the Nurse looked up at me, and in a split second, began removing all the weaponry attached to me. He seemed to be shouting something, but I couldn't hear anything anymore. Just the frantic pounding of my heart. Everything was becoming blurry, too.
I think I started falling down, too. Or maybe I was being moved, I don't know.
I think my heart just stopped.
So. This is how the world will end, huh? A zombie invasion, brought on by a malicious organization. That sounds like the plot of a badly written horror story. Or maybe a goodly written one. Is goodly a word? I don't know.
I think I'll pass out now.
-------------------------------------
EPILOGUE
Two days later
Over half of the Yamaku student body had been decimated that day. The middle school had suffered the most casualties, with only twenty students and two teachers remaining. It seems when the track team had become infected, they, and the one who first entered the school grounds as witnessed by Hakamichi, Mikado and Nakai, wandered into the middle school building through a set of opened fire escape doors. How these doors had been opened remains unknown.
After I had successfully returned to the Principal with an ample supply of weapons, I was sent to destroy what remained of the undead, with a new team. All were adults this time. The head nurse remained behind. I believe him to be broken in spirit, since the first incident.
Getting rid of every single walking corpse took up the rest of the day. We were lucky none had left the school grounds. If even one of them had gone into town, this could have turned into a global disaster. When I later told Nomiya that his favorite art student, miss Tezuka, had been among the victims, he, too, broke down.
Miss Mikado has accepted to undergo a series of therapy sessions with the school psychiatrist. She's been uncharacteristically quiet since the loss of miss Hakamichi. As things stand now, however, I think she will recover. Eventually.
That day, a lot of students fell victim to this strange zombification affliction. Only one student passed away because of his disability.
Hisao Nakai. His heart gave out only minutes after we re-entered the Principal's office.
May he, and miss Hakamichi, rest in peace.
