“Eeeep!” She let out a girly scream on the way down. I could’ve sworn I saw her blushing too, but now wasn’t the time to read into that.
“Race ya.” I plopped her back down and issued a friendly challenge. The zombies were now at the very top of the escalator; I figured we could make it to the exit by the time they came down. We nodded in unison and broke into a sprint.
“Good thing they’re slow runners.”
“You can say that again.”
Might just be me, but I feel like we’ve really been hitting it off these days. It’s kinda nice, honestly.
A little while later, we came upon a nearby manhole. I pried it open with my crowbar, and we shimmied down as quickly as we could.
✦ ✦ ✦
Once we made it back to our base, we took on the monotonous task of sorting our spoils by expiration date and stashing them away in the appropriate boxes.
A bit off-topic, but apparently our home sweet home once had its own little emergency food supply: instant noodles, chips, the canned cracker goodness, and more. However, most of it had been cleaned out by the time Otoha got here.
Funnily enough, the supermarket we’d just looted fit that same description. If I had to hazard a guess, the hysterical morons around these parts probably grabbed anything and everything they could get their grubby little hands on the moment they heard there was an emergency.
Come to think of it, I wonder if the zombies Otoha disposed of were those very same opportunistic fellas. Maybe poetic justice is real, after all.
“I get that stocking up on food is crucial to our survival and all, but don’t you think this is getting a little out of hand?”
We’d been doing nothing but looting every single store within reasonable walking distance for the past week, and every last one of them had been picked clean. Still, after scraping together what was left over, we now had enough food to last us about six months.
I failed to see why we had to keep putting our lives on the line day in and day out. Canned food wasn’t going to magically expire within the next week, zombies had no use for it, and we were the only two people who still had a grip on our humanity, as far as I was concerned.
“What’s the big rush?”
“Riddle me this.” She turned her chair to face me. “What’s the scariest thing about a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland?”
Professor Otoha strikes again.
Snide remarks aside, I was by no means an expert on zombies. Sometimes I had trouble understanding her actions, but she’d been more than willing to provide insight into her thought process. She was damn good at explaining things and incredibly patient with me, but most importantly, she had fun doing it. Seeing her like that infected me with the same excitement.
“Is that even a question? The zombies, of course.”
“Bzzt. That’s incorrect,” she said, dramatically pointing my way.
“Okay, well, what is it then?”
“Human nature.”
“How? Oh... right.”
I didn’t know all that much about zombie movies, but I’d seen too many FPS teams collapse because of some petty drama that didn’t really matter.
The reason I vastly preferred solo play had little to do with the bullying I experienced in high school, although that definitely played a part. It had more to do with how insanely insufferable people could be sometimes, both online and offline.
Now, picture those same insufferable bastards but in a post-apocalyptic setting without any social mores, or laws for that matter, to keep their stupidity in check. They were already bad enough as it was.
“Extreme circumstances bring out the absolute worst in people. Most zombie movies end on a ‘Humans were the real monsters all along!’ note for this exact reason.”
“You have a point there.”
“Large populations also mean more zombies on average. Add those two together and you can probably see why our goal of retreating to the countryside is a good long-term solution.” She paused for dramatic effect. “But we’ll have to transition into a fully self-sufficient lifestyle, and we’ll need all the emergency reserves we can get to help tide us over as we’re learning the ropes.”
Finding the ideal fishing and hunting spots would be a real drag, not to mention how long it’d take for us to master either one of those activities. Figuring out how to work the land was going to be a real doozy too. I could definitely understand where she was coming from.
“Fair enough. How are we going to move all this stuff, though?” A heavy-duty shopping cart was the best we had, and it couldn’t even fit everything. Plus, I could imagine how “fun” it’d be to push that thing uphill and over difficult terrain for long distances. Made me shudder just thinking about it.
“Astute observation,” she said without a hint of sarcasm. “And what’s the silver bullet that’ll solve all our problems?”
“Only the greatest invention in all of human history: the automobile! Ideally one capable of driving on rough surfaces, with plenty of storage space, and that can take a serious beating.”
“Ding-ding. Correctamundo! That’s precisely why scoring a set of wheels is up next on our to-do list, right after we’ve finished gathering a sufficient amount of supplies.”
“I say we nab one off the side of the ro—”
“Yeah, no.”
“Hear me out. We hot-wire the car and then—”
“Been there, done that.” She shrugged.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Back when we first bumped heads, she was looking to procure herself a piece from the local police station of all places, breaking multiple laws in the process. Otoha’s moral flexibility wasn’t anything new.
“The car alarm went off, and the doors locked up. It was a real spectacle.”
“Shoot.”
Cars nowadays had really elaborate security systems, and they couldn’t easily be bypassed by the average person.
“We could try looking for one with the key in the ignition. No, wait...”
You’d be hard-pressed to come across a car that only used keys in this day and age. Many of them only started up if the key fob was in the vehicle, which complicated matters.
“Vintage models are still on the table, if that counts for something.” Honestly, I was thinking more along the lines of a minibus, a truck, or a van. Anything but some broken-down jalopy.
“Are you gonna be manning the wheel? ’Cause I sure don’t have a license.”
“Neither do I,” she said flatly.
“Then our car’s gonna get seized.”
“By...?”
“What do you mean? The... Uh, didn’t we have this exact conversation before?”
The societal order we once knew and loved was now but a distant memory.
“What matters isn’t the license itself but the driving experience that comes with it, and I personally have none. As we all know, inexperienced drivers have a tendency to crash their cars and get surrounded by zombies. I guess you could call it a staple.”
“Good to know.”
Experience is invaluable, I guess.
“Do you have any driving experience, Hiroaki?”
“We’re about the same age, my dude. Even if I had hypothetically seen people driving or something, there’s a difference between firsthand and secondhand experience. The former means something and the latter does no—”
That was when it hit me.
Wouldn’t that same sentiment run contrary to my own personal experience? I wasn’t the cleanest of shots in any sense of the word, but the first shot I’d ever taken had saved my companion from certain death. It could’ve very well been beginner’s luck, but I felt like there was something more to it than that.
“Actually, I might just be up to the task.”
“Wait, really?” It seemed like she was more surprised than I was.
“I’ve been behind the wheel of a Humvee on more than a few driving missions. I can handle it, no sweat.”
“Hum-what?” She tilted her head.
“It’s this, um, how do I put it? Big-ass military vehicle.”
The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee for short, was a staple FPS vehicle. You’d see it in pretty much any shooter with a modern-day setting, and some of them took the time and effort to simulate how it’d feel to operate the real deal. Your brain just filled in the gaps after that.
“Anyway, if we do come across some ol’ clunker one day, how ’bout we take it for a spin?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
So... Human nature, huh?
I could get behind that idea, but if what she said was true, then why had she decided to take me in? Sure, I’m the one who’d begged to tag along, but if other human beings really were that untrustworthy, then she should’ve left me behind.
Was it because she thought I’d make a good pack mule? Or maybe, just maybe there was something more to it...
Another one of those tropes, I wonder?
I let my body go on autopilot as I sank deep into thought.