Since I was already a zombie, it also didn’t matter if one bit me. I checked the bite mark and saw a teeth-shaped tear in my shirt, but no sign of a wound on my arm. It appeared to have already healed.
I really hadn’t expected to be able to regenerate. A zombie body was way too overpowered in this world.
Pushing the zombies out of the way, I went around the store gathering items and soon had everything I needed. All the clerks had already been turned into zombies, so I didn’t bother paying and just headed back to Hyuuga.
Not wanting the zombies to follow me, I lured them into the back of the store, then grabbed my shopping basket and ran out the front.
After checking to make sure I wasn’t being followed, I returned to the riverbank.
Hyuuga was exactly where I’d left her. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like she’d been attacked by zombies.
“Yuuma!! You’re back!!” she shouted with joy, beaming as she ran toward me. “Are you okay?! I’m sure you must have run into some zombies!!”
“Yeah. The convenience store was full of them, but it was no biggie. Here’s the stuff you wanted.”
Hyuuga’s eyes lit up when I handed her the shopping basket.
“Yuuma, you’re amazing! You really are invincible!”
“It was a piece of cake. Let me know if there’s ever anything else you want. Anyway, this is everything you asked for, right? I figured it’d be a hassle washing our hands, so I also grabbed some wet wipes.”
“That’s so thoughtful of you…!! You’re incredible!!” Hyuuga looked so impressed as she stared at me with adoration in her eyes.
But the next second, she began turning over the pack of sushi and cream puffs in the basket, searching for something.
“Uh, what about chopsticks? And a spoon to eat the pudding with?”
“—Oops. I forgot.”
“That’s okay. We can eat sushi with our hands and save the pudding for later.”
Hyuuga put the shopping basket on the ground, cleaned her hands with a wet wipe, and opened the sushi pack. Then she looked around.
“Is there someplace to put this…? Yuuma, could you hold out your hands for a minute, palms up?”
“Like this?”
“Try to keep them as flat as you can… Okay, now don’t move until I finish eating.”
Hyuuga placed the sushi pack in my right hand and its lid in my left, then squeezed the little packet of soy sauce into the lid.
She hadn’t told me she’d been planning to use my hands as a makeshift table…
“…Mmm, it’s delicious!”
Hyuuga popped a piece of tuna sushi in her mouth, and a brilliant smile filled her face. I didn’t mind putting up with some things to see her smile like that.
“Do you want some?”
“Nah, I’m okay. Maybe it’s because I’m a zombie, but I don’t feel hungry.”
“What? Then you aren’t going to eat anymore?”
“I guess not… I don’t know if my organs are working, either, so who knows what’d happen to any food I did eat…”
“I see…”
“So don’t worry about me. Just eat as much as you want.”
“Thank you.”
Hyuuga must have been starved; she filled her mouth with one piece of sushi after another.
“By the way, aren’t you losing your appetite using me, a zombie, as your table?”
“Huh? Why would I?”
“What d’you mean ‘why’? Because zombies are gross.”
“Hmmm… I don’t like zombies who are strangers, but I don’t have a problem with you because you’re creepy-cute.”
“C-creepy-cute?”
“Yeah. I like horror movies, so I have a tolerance for monsters.”
Hyuuga looked me up and down as she ate her sushi. It seemed she’d really meant that and hadn’t just said it because she was trying to be nice.
Once Hyuuga finished her sushi, she gorged herself on a cream puff and some apple juice.
“Thank you for the food. I never thought I’d be eating sushi in this sort of situation. I’ll enjoy the pudding later, when I find a spoon.” Sounding content, she put the pudding in a pocket of her school uniform. It must have been because her stomach was full, but she was all smiles.
—Suddenly her expression clouded over.
“What are we going to do now…?”
“Hmmm… Well, we can’t stay here forever. It’d be good if there was safe building somewhere…”
“Do you think anyone else is still alive besides us?”
“This area is full of zombies, so if there are any survivors, they have to be laying low. In which case, we have no way of finding them.”
“And my phone still has no reception… I wonder what’s going on with the police and the Self-Defense Forces.”
“I passed a police box by the train station on my way back from the convenience store, and the police officers there had all turned into zombies… I wonder what the situation’s like with the Self-Defense Forces. Their garrison is pretty far from here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. If this were a zombie movie, you could imagine the Self-Defense Forces flying in to the rescue in a helicopter.”
“And we’d signal them with a bonfire or a flare. Maybe we should have something ready to go in case a helicopter does fly by.”
“Smoke flares are easy enough to find; they’re equipped in every car.”
“Oh, okay. Then I can go back home and—”
All of a sudden, a memory of my zombified mom and grandparents flashed through my mind. If I went home, I’d run into the zombies of the people who’d once been my family. It wouldn’t matter if they bit me now, but I didn’t want to see them like that again if I could help it.