Kamiji and I spent the night in the courtyard and watched the headless, clawed zombie until six AM the next morning, but there was no change.
About seventeen hours had passed since our battle, so I figured it probably wouldn’t revive. To make sure nothing happened, I wrapped a rope around and around its body, dug a hole in the ground, and buried it. I also put a steel plate over the grave to reduce the risk of it crawling out as best I could.
After putting away the tools I’d used to bury it, I decided to go to the cafeteria and have breakfast. I was feeling dizzy because I hadn’t slept a wink, but I couldn’t afford to collapse now…
I sat at a table and watched in a daze as Haruka and the others prepared breakfast.
But suddenly, I noticed Kamiji seemed to be acting a little strange.
“…Kamiji, are you feeling okay?”
“Actually, I’ve been having chills for a while now,” Kamiji resignedly told me.
“What?!”
“I guess it’s probably not because I caught a cold staying outside all night… Am I turning into a zombie?”
At that moment, all my drowsiness left me. I immediately got up and touched her hand. Her temperature had dropped below what was normal for a human.
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?!”
“I thought I might have been imagining it…”
“Of course you weren’t imagining it. Listen, I’m going to kiss you, okay?”
“Okay…”
Kamiji nodded shyly, and I pressed my lips against hers, giving her my saliva. After I’d finished, I continued to hold her hand and felt her body temperature gradually rise. She seemed to have avoided turning into a zombie.
“From now on, you have to tell me right away if you feel any changes to your body. Otherwise, it might be too late.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. It’s my first time almost becoming a zombie, so I didn’t know what to expect,” she mumbled as she averted her gaze. Was she really so embarrassed about kissing me?
…Come to think of it, I guess it was pretty uncomfortable French-kissing in front of everyone. I’d done it with Mai too many times to count that I’d become numb to it.
But one wrong move and Kamiji could’ve turned into a zombie. This certainly wasn’t the time for her to be shy.
“It’s been about seventeen hours since I last kissed you. Even though I’m the one who made you a zombie with my saliva, it seems that needs to be replenished periodically.”
I’d thought that I could even save people who were fatally wounded with my kiss, but it wasn’t all good, after all.
Then Ichinose, who was sitting at the next table, came up to me.
“This is only a hypothesis, but I’m wondering if you might have two types of viruses in you: the zombie virus and an anti-zombie virus. The two viruses continue to multiply in your body, and by kissing Kamiji, you’ve given her both. Like that, she can become invincible, healing any injury she may sustain, while also maintaining her usual state of mind.
“However, the zombie virus alone may be continuing to multiply inside her. Kousaka, if the antivirus can only replicate in your body…then maybe once the amount of zombie virus in her body exceeds the antivirus, Kamiji starts to zombify.”
“So you’re saying that if I don’t kiss Kousaka regularly and take the antivirus into my body, I’ll end up just like the rest of them?” Kamiji asked.
“Uh-huh. I assume the same logic is behind Tsukishiro’s need for replenishment every six hours, although the zombie virus may multiply at different speeds depending on the individual.”
Hearing Ichinose’s hypothesis, Kamiji silently stared at me.
In short, I was going to have to kiss her regularly, too.
Which meant Haruka would get more and more annoyed…
“Hnnngh… Can’t you kill the zombie virus in Tsukishiro and Kamiji’s bodies…?” Haruka asked Ichinose through clenched teeth.
“…This is also just a hypothesis, but if we could somehow extract just the antivirus from Kousaka’s body, culture it, and administer it to Tsukishiro and Kamiji, it may be possible to eradicate the zombie virus.”
“Exactly how would we do that?!”
“We’d need, at the very least, a research facility to study the virus and people who have the know-how to do something like that. But I don’t know if either of those still exist in this world…”
“But, Ichinose, you said before that you thought a large-scale human experiment may have created the zombies. If that’s the case, then wouldn’t the organization that spread the virus have a lab and researchers working on it?”
“Of course, that is a possibility. However, if such researchers exist, they thought nothing of sacrificing a huge number of people to achieve their goals. I think it’s unlikely they would be friendly, and I can’t imagine they’d listen to our request…”
“True…,” Haruka said dejectedly.
But Kamiji, who’d been listening quietly, tilted her head quizzically.
“What’s this about a large-scale human experiment?”
Ichinose spread a map on the table and started explaining it from the beginning.
“Amano and Kamiji, can you tell me what time and where you first encountered the zombies?”
“Well, it was around ten in the morning. I was in a class at college,” Kamiji said, pointing to the location of her school on the map.
Ichinose put a ruler on the map and began measuring the distance.
Having finished her calculations, she said excitedly, “Your university is quite a long way away from both our high school and Kousaka’s. Yet zombies appeared there at around the same time. That doesn’t make sense. I left this out the last time I explained it, but it would make sense that our two high schools were attacked at about the same time if a mass outbreak of zombies occurred somewhere in between them. But now looking at the location of these three schools on the map, the only assumption we can make is that the zombie attacks occurred simultaneously, which increases the likelihood that some nefarious organization intentionally caused the zombie panic.”
After quickly explaining what she believed must have happened, Ichinose continued her theory: that this was a large-scale human experiment to turn everyone in Japan into zombies and find individuals among them who reacted differently from the rest—namely, me.
“…I see. I find your hypothesis quite plausible,” Kamiji said, nodding repeatedly. “So our ultimate goal is to find those bastards and beat them up, huh?”
“—Come again?”
Kamiji’s conclusion wasn’t what we’d expected.
“Uh, I don’t think that’s exactly what we have in mind at the moment…”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you hate them if they really did turn the world upside down like this?”
“Yeah, but our priority is to get supplies and secure the safety of our base…”
“But if some organization went and spread this zombie virus, then they would’ve set up a secure base of operations for themselves in advance, don’t you think? They’d have a huge supply of food and fuel. If we went there and took it all, then we wouldn’t have to live hand to mouth like we are now.”
“…That’s true.”
I hadn’t even considered that until Kamiji pointed it out.
“But which would be easier, trying to do something like that or building a secure base ourselves…? The enemy’s base would probably have defenses installed, so I don’t know if we’d be able to take it over…”
“We won’t know until we find out for ourselves. Besides, they may come after you, Kousaka. Even if we go to the trouble of building a base, they might destroy it, so we have to go on the offensive, too.”