Otoha wasn’t kidding when she said she’d barred off all entry points except one. The front entrance had its shutters down, and the windows were barricaded, save for a few tiny ones by the ceiling that were just for ventilation.
“Nothing’s getting through here.”
Her anti-zombie measures didn’t end there. The entire area had been remade into a hedge maze of sorts by arranging pieces of furniture, household appliances, and various other knickknacks into a chain of barricades.
“Did you do this all by yourself?” I asked in awe.
“I took heavy inspiration from the movies.”
“That’s insane.”
The genius behind the labyrinthine approach was that it was perfect for artificially extending the walking distance between point A and point B, not to mention the fact that it severely limited mobility. Some real-life castles employed similar structures. I too had once had the displeasure of playing through an FPS stage built with this design in mind. The lack of effective cover had been super frustrating.
I took a moment to look Otoha up and down. The girl was scrawny with a lingering air of fatigue. Everything about her being screamed indifference to life, as though she’d stared into the abyss and it had stared right back. Anyway, she wasn’t the type you’d expect to be this proactive in her survival efforts, but looks can be deceiving.
“Want to see my weapon stash?”
“You have one?”
“Naturally,” she said with a nod. Her deadpan expression and sluggish motions made it hard to tell how she was feeling, but a subtle glint in her eyes betrayed her underlying giddiness.
I was then dragged over to a long table resting in the corner.
“Voilà!”
I whistled.
What a collection.
It had all the staples: crowbars, hammers, nail guns, steel bats, metal pipes, all that jazz. More importantly, there were multiple “combo” weapons she’d made by attaching two or more items together.
“Behold, my pièce de résistance.” She busted out a mop handle with two kitchen knives sticking out at the top. It seemed almost like a makeshift spear, or her own household spin on one.
“It’s modeled after the sasumata, hence the two-pronged design. The knives got all wobbly after only a few uses, though. I’ll have to look into that.”
“I see.” The thing in her hands was inspired by a pronged polearm originally wielded by samurai. I couldn’t help but notice her roundabout way of saying she’d field-tested the weapon, but I tried to ignore it.
Her tone was flat, yet the flair with which she spoke was rather unsettling.
What a wacko.
Not that I could complain, seeing as this odd fixation of hers ended up working in our favor.
“Routine check-up time,” she said just as I was getting a feel for one of the steel pipes.
“Routine wha—” I whipped my head around and came face-to-face with two criminally soft mounds of supple flesh.
“Uh, err, well, let’s not do anything we’d regret sober!” I squeaked. She was, for whatever reason, taking off her clothes.
Is this her way of saying we should make like Adam and Eve?! Or maybe she’s suggesting we huddle together to keep warm, or—
“What’re you talking about?” The way she said it made me realize that I was the one getting worked up over nothing. Maybe I should’ve read the mood a little more carefully.
“Whatever. Anyway, I’m looking for bite marks.”
“How come?”
“To see if I’ve been infected.” She pulled off her jacket, shirt, and pants in a flash.
The soft, porcelain skin buried beneath layers of bloodstained, mud-smeared clothing had little Johnny’s interest piqued in more ways than one.
Jokes aside, I wanted to kick myself for ever having thought of her as “scrawny”—after taking a good, hard look at every one of her silky smooth assets, I realized that this box didn’t do a mote of justice to her impeccable proportions, and in the following essay, I will explain why...
“Wh-Why go through all that?” I asked, averting my gaze.
One might fall under the impression that I was just your average overly self-conscious teen getting horny because “teens will be teens,” but they’d be flat-out wrong. According to this one book I read, captives under extreme duress tend to develop a strong emotional bond with their captors to boost their chances of... leaving behind genetic material. Actually, forget I ever brought that up.
“Our nervous system produces adrenaline in response to perceived threats, which decreases the body’s ability to feel pain,” she said matter-of-factly while feeling around her body. “Wouldn’t want to end up like that one character who goes zombie overnight and chows down on everyone’s brains just because they were afraid of causing a rift in the group. That’d be way too clichéd.”
“Fair enough, I guess.”
“You know, zombie bites didn’t always work this way. Originally, zombies were thought of as the wicked creations of Haitian necromancers who raised people from the dead through the application of ‘zombie powder.’ These zombies didn’t possess the ability to infect people.” Halfway into the quasi infodump, she began fumbling around in her sports bra.
Ooh, lemme adjust my viewing angle, aaand... Crap, she’s already finished.
“That all changed due in large part to Romero’s film Night of the Living Dead, which instilled the concept of zombies possessing vampire-esque features into our collective imagination, greatly reshaping our understanding of the creature. Another major development came from the beloved horror game franchise Resident Evil, which spread the now-widely accepted idea that pathogens cause zombification.”
“Yoo-hoo, earth to Otoha...”
“Judging by the news, this particular outbreak follows all the preestablished patterns to a tee. The victim gets bitten or scratched, develops an intense fever after a set amount of time, dies, and then turns zombie anywhere between one and twelve hours later.
“Through deductive reasoning, we can conclude that this is a highly infectious disease caused by some unknown pathogen. Determining and isolating anyone infected in the early stages of the disease is absolutely vital.”
Otoha rambled on and on, oblivious to her surroundings. She seemed to get awfully talkative whenever the conversation shifted to a topic even tangentially related to zombies. It was as if the mere mention of them brought out a spark hidden deep inside her.
“Anyway, that’s why I need you to undress for me,” she concluded, turning to face me.
“How about no?”
“It’s for our collective safety.”
It was a reasonable demand, sure. From her perspective, I was just some rando who she’d oh-so-benevolently chosen to take off the streets. By all means, she had the right to confirm whether or not I posed a potential threat.
That’s all well and good, but would it kill her to handle this whole thing with just a liiittle more tact?
“Do we really have to do this? There’s gotta be a better way.”
“There isn’t, so strip.”
“You’re killing me here.”
“Chop-chop. What’s the big deal, anyway?”
“Oh, you know...”
What am I supposed to say? That little Johnny wants to play?
“I’m asking you a question.” She took a step closer and looked me dead in the eyes.
Shoo! Stay back, foul wench!
“You’ve been bitten, haven’t you?”
“You presumptuous little—wait, when did that get there?!” A shovel had mysteriously materialized in her hands.
I’ve gotta act fast, or my head’s gonna get cracked like a melon over some false accusations!
“Okay, you asked for it!”
I might want to die immediately after, but at least I’ll live to fight another day.
I whipped off all my clothes in one swift motion, leaving me in only my tighty-whities—if you don’t count the dog tag, that is. I had “Hound Nine” engraved on it as a half-joking way of bringing the virtual world along with me, as well as various tidbits of personal information, such as my birthday, sex, and blood type. Maybe having all that personal info below the code name seemed contradictory, but that’s a story for another day.
“Feast your eyes on this!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, brandishing the monstrous bulge in my underwear.
“So, lady, how d’you like them apples?”
She ran her eyes over my upper body in silence. Really took her sweet time, too... But her poker face cracked as soon as she looked down, and she let out a little gasp.
What is that supposed to... Oh God, I’ve been bit, haven’t I? I’m now doomed to wander this earth grumbling and groaning with the rest of my zombie kin. Why, why, why?!
Otoha remained frozen in place. Her cheeks took on a tinge of red, which grew more and more pronounced as the seconds ticked by.
“You feeling alright?”