First thing the next morning, I decided to look for the one thing I most wanted to give Kamiji: a gun. Even the women could kill zombies if they were armed.
That said, it was still going to take a lot more time to clear the roads leading to the police station. As an alternative, I thought I’d go to the police box by the train station. I’d seen a zombie wearing a police uniform in that area when the outbreak first began.
I got into the pickup truck by myself and left the dorm before seven AM. There was a horrendous number of zombies lurking around the train station, and they all reacted to the sound of the engine and approached the truck. I backed up the way I’d come and got out of the truck a short distance away.
While fending off the zombies that came to attack me, I looked for the one in the police uniform, but he was nowhere to be found. Where on earth had he gone?
Dealing with the relentless attacks of the zombies was draining my stamina, so I decided it would be tough to continue my search for an extended period of time and returned to the truck. I gave up on trying to get guns today and headed to the home improvement center, where I picked up the forked pole, wireless speakers, and steel plates, as well as a drum bath. As we’d been infected with the zombie virus, I figured it was better for Mai and me to use a different tub from the others.
After returning to the dorm and kissing Mai, I loaded up the back of the truck with plastic containers and decided to go to the river to fetch water. It was easier to get drinking water now, thanks to the water purifier, but we still had to go to the river once a day. It hammered into me what a wonderful water system we’d had in our civilized world.
We decided to bathe while we were at it, so we split up into the pickup truck and the minivan and headed out. We asked Kamiji to join us, but she said she didn’t need to take a bath every day, so it was just the six of us.
…I was a little worried she might be trying to keep her distance from me.
Once we got to the river, we heated the water in the drum bath, then set up the second one. To conserve gas canisters, we decided to start a fire to heat up the water as much as possible, and it was almost one PM by the time everyone was finished. I really wished there was some way we could shorten the time it took us to bathe…
Still mulling over the issue, I climbed into the pickup truck with Mai, while Haruka and the others got in the minivan, and we all headed back to the dorm.
On the way, we passed the house where Kamiji was living—and noticed something strange. The sedan I’d parked out front to impede zombies was now in a hideous state.
Having noticed the sight while driving, I immediately stopped the truck and jumped out. I had Mai move to the minivan with everyone else, then went to see what was going on. The sedan’s windows were broken, and the body of the car was covered with scratches. It looked almost like someone had slashed at it with a knife, and the damage was particularly bad around the driver’s seat.
Don’t tell me a zombie attacked it?
But I didn’t think the car would look this bad if your average zombie had gone at it…
It was then that I noticed the living room window had a big hole in it. A zombie must have entered the house, after all…
I dashed to the broken window to look inside, when—
—I locked eyes with the clawed zombie, standing inside the room.
I couldn’t believe it, but sure enough, there it was. This was, without question, the same zombie I’d tossed into the river.
Even before my brain could catch up, I started running back the way I came. I opened the door to the minivan and jumped in.
“Get out of here!”
Haruka didn’t ask any questions; she just stepped on the gas.
Not a moment later, the clawed zombie came out onto the road, chasing after me. But thanks to Haruka’s quick reaction, we were already speeding away from it.
“…Yuuma… Was that…?” Mai asked in a trembling voice, and I nodded slowly.
“Yeah… The clawed zombie we ran into yesterday.”
“A clawed zombie? The immortal one you said you pushed into the river…?” Haruka said.
“Yeah. It looks like it followed us.”
It was so persistent. Had it run all the way here after climbing out of the river?
“But even if it came after us, how did it get here…? We’re at least ten kilometers away from that bridge, and it’s hard to imagine it just randomly ended up here…,” I muttered.
“…This is just me thinking out loud,” Ichinose said, sitting behind me, “but that car that clawed zombie wrecked was the one you ran over it with, right? Maybe its bodily fluids got stuck to the car somewhere, and it used that to find you…”
“Huh?! Is that even possible…?”
But that was the only explanation that made any sense. It also explained why the car had been attacked. It knew we’d been in there.
“If my hypothesis is correct…then that clawed zombie has a certain level of intelligence.”
“An intelligent zombie…”
Hearing Ichinose’s speculation, I remembered that the zombie’s fighting methods had gradually become more and more sophisticated.
“Special-type zombies are capable of thinking.”
The clawed zombie had vindictively tracked us down and destroyed the car, then broken into the house where Kamiji was staying so it could find us…?
Then it was my fault Kamiji had been attacked…!!
“…Uh, Kousaka, was Saya in the house?” Amano asked anxiously, sitting in the third row of seats in the minivan.
“I don’t know. I could barely make out what was going on inside.”