“—So that’s why I’m planning to expand my search area today. Also, I’ve been thinking—Ichinose, will you come with us? I wouldn’t know what types of water purifiers or generators to look for.”
“All right.”
“Then the people going out today will be me, Ichinose, and Tsukishiro since there’s no guarantee we’ll be back in six hours.”
“I understand. Um, Kousaka…? I have a favor to ask you…,” Tsukishiro said hesitantly. “Would it be at all possible to stop by my house? …I know it’s probably hopeless, but I want to see if my family might be safe… I’m sorry to make a personal request at a time like this, but please…”
“Of course we can. I’m sorry I never suggested it… That said, I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to get there since a lot of the main roads are blocked with crashed cars…”
“Can I come, too?” Lisa asked. “I’m scared to find out what’s happened to my family, but I can’t stop worrying about them…”
“I understand. Then here’s what we’ll do: We’ll see which roads we can still drive on, and if we can get to them, we’ll check on our homes. Ichinose, I’m sure you want to see if your family’s safe, too, right?”
“Uh-huh… I’d like to check my house and also my grandmother’s if I can…”
“Of course you can. Okay, let’s get a map, and each of us can mark the places we want to check. Can I ask you to take care of that, Haruka?”
“Sure.”
“And who knows? Maybe we’ll find lots of survivors and come back here as a group of fifty people,” I said optimistically, and Haruka and the others smiled.
But for some reason, Ichinose looked grim.
“Ichinose? What’s the matter?”
“…I think we need to consider what to do if we find survivors in the future… Are you going to tell them you can turn into a zombie at will?”
“…Oh, uh, what should I do…?” I hadn’t expected a question like that and struggled to come up with an answer. “Are you thinking other survivors might be afraid to live with us if they knew that about me?”
“There is that…but I also think it might put you in danger.”
“—Huh?! You do?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure if I should say this, since it’s just based on my own speculation, but…,” Ichinose mumbled as she got to her feet.
She started spreading out something on an unused table, and once it was unfurled, I saw it was a map of the area.
“You said you were in math class when the zombie panic first began. That was around nine thirty, right?” Ichinose asked.
“Yeah. I’m not sure exactly what time it was, but it was around then.”
“Thank you. Tsukishiro, I have a question for you now. You said it was around ten AM when that horde of zombies attacked our high school, didn’t you?”
Tsukishiro nodded. She didn’t seem to understand what Ichinose was getting at, either.
Ichinose pointed to my school on the map and began her explanation.
“Our two high schools were attacked at around the same time. Don’t you think there’s something strange about that, though? They’re ten kilometers apart. If a horde of zombies appeared somewhere and started moving around and attacking people, it’s too fast for them to attack our high school only half an hour after Kousaka’s.”
“Oh…!!!”
She was right. People normally walk at around four kilometers an hour, so if zombies moved at the same rate, it would take them more than two hours to get from my high school to where we are now.
“But the zombies attacked your school half an hour after they took over my school.”
“Right. Which means it was probably two different groups of zombies that attacked our schools. The most logical explanation is that the zombies emerged at different locations simultaneously.”
“Huh…? Is that even possible? When you think of a zombie virus, you tend to imagine it leaking from a research facility of some sort and spreading from there.”
“I also think it’s hard to believe the outbreak of the zombie virus was a natural occurrence,” Ichinose continued. “For zombies to appear at almost the exact same time in different places, it’s highly likely that this was the work of humans. That is to say, I think that some sort of large-scale organization intentionally spread the zombie virus.”
“Are you saying it was a terror attack…?”
“I don’t know, but maybe someone wanted to ensure that the entire country would be filled with zombies. I mean, if it happened in just one location, the Self-Defense Forces would probably be able to neutralize them. Also, it’s been five days since the zombies showed up, yet help still hasn’t arrived. I think that must mean their plan was a success.”
“I see…”
“So then…I thought about why the culprits might have done this. I think they either wanted to destroy humanity or conduct a large-scale human experiment.”
“…Uh, I sort of get what you mean when you say they might want to destroy humanity, but I’m not sure about the other one…”
“The first explanation is fairly straightforward. Someone craving destruction got ahold of the zombie virus and caused a major pandemic. Those zombies go and create more of their kind, so there’s no need for the culprits to do anything else. They might be watching everything from someplace safe or maybe they’ve become zombies themselves.”
“—But what do you think they’ll do if they’re watching from somewhere and find out about you, Kousaka?”
“…Humanity won’t be destroyed as long as I’m alive, and they’d see me as a threat because I might rebuild the world someday…?”
“Precisely. They’d probably try to eliminate you from their zombie world so they can achieve the results they want.”
“……”
What Ichinose said gave me goose bumps. The enemies she was talking about might very well be among the survivors we were about to encounter.
“I won’t go down easily if my enemy’s a zombie. But if they approach me pretending to be an innocent survivor and catch me off guard…”
So that was what Ichinose was talking about when she said I might be in danger…!!