I hadn’t really had the time to sit down and think long and hard about... everything. To be fair, I was going through the most hectic chapter of my life. Then again, I did try my hardest not to think about it.
In any case, I was sure of one thing by now. We had called the hardware store home, ventured through sewer tunnels, scavenged grocery stores, and even tussled with zombies on a few occasions.
I’d had a reasonably fun time through it all, believe it or not. I felt like I was a kid again, back when hurricanes and floods and the like inspired a sense of wonder, or when camping trips were the event of a lifetime. The day-to-day thrills of braving the unknown left no room for negative thoughts to seep through. Zombie parents, the end of civilization itself as we knew it... It was all but an afterthought.
I couldn’t say I regretted any of it, though. Had I not been able to adapt as well as I had, I would’ve been out of the race a long time ago. Probably would’ve gotten my head cracked open by Otoha and her trusty shovel.
I had to turn off my brain and free myself from the past to get by in this post-apocalyptic world. I always did what I had to do, and it got me results, but not everyone was as concerned with just getting by. Not everyone could just let go of the past like it was nothing.
Maybe it was the two of us who’d lost sight of what being human really meant. The fear of loss, of forgetting... What could be more human? It was possible that Shino and Tetsuko had been the normal ones all along.
“You up?” I said as I lightly knocked on the door.
It was the dead of night. I had just chatted with Otoha for a little, and now I was back at Shino’s room.
A part of me wished she was out cold so that I could delay the inevitable, but that simply wasn’t the case.
“Is someone there?” she asked from inside.
“It’s me.” I took a second to collect my thoughts. “Got a minute?” I said, softer this time.
“Um, certainly. Just let me get the door for you.” Shino quickly recovered from her momentary shock, rushed over to the door, and flung it wide open.
I stepped into the room as she shut the door behind me.
My eyes were immediately glued to a doorway in the back opposite the canopy bed, which led to the gaming lair of legend.
It’s not fully closed.
I wasn’t too sure if she had snuck out of it just now, but she most certainly frequented it.
“Evenin’.”
“Likewise,” she said with a kind smile.
Typical naïve rich girl through and through.
A guy came knocking this late at night, and she didn’t have a care in the world. Then again, maybe there really wasn’t much to fret over considering she had Tetsuko at her side nearly 24/7.
“Is this a bad time?”
“Between you and me, I’m not much of an early bird. But enough beating around the bush.” She grinned wickedly, her eyes aglitter. “How about we cut straight to the part where you do unspeakable things to me?”
I swallowed the urge to say something mean in return and just played along.
“I thought you’d never ask,” I said with a spine-chilling smile.
“Huh?” A ripple ran through her calm demeanor. I looked her dead in the eyes and took a step closer.
“Um, Hiroaki?” She took a step back.
I took another step closer. She took another step back. One step, two steps, three steps, four. It was as though we were mirroring each other’s movements. Five steps, six steps, seven steps, eight. We made our way around the room, just barely out of arm’s reach.
Unfortunately for Shino, a few dozen steps was all she had left. She hadn’t accounted for the environmental hazards.
“Uh-oh.” Shino’s foot made contact with one of the bed’s legs. She instinctively looked behind her, allowing me to lightly tap her on the shoulder, which sent her careening onto the bed back first. Her knee-length, flaxen hair spread across the pearly white sheets as though she were a flower in full bloom.
“Erm, what’re you—”
I stuck my hands on either side of her and leaned in close.
“Hiroaki, I, um...”
“Uemura was on point. Any self-respecting, virile male will pounce on you the first chance they get. Especially when you make it this easy.”
“I-I see.” Shino’s emerald eyes were frantically darting all over the place. Her coquettish demeanor had left the building.
About what I expected.
I put on the creepiest smile I could make.
“We good?”
“Well, erm, I...”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Yes, but it’s, you know...” Shino’s cheeks were flushed crimson, and beads of sweat were forming on her face. Everything was happening far too fast for her to keep up.
“It’s my first time,” she blurted, averting her gaze.
No duh.
“I’ve, um, discussed a bit of a g-game plan with Tetsuko—”
“Shut your yap and do as I say.”
“Oh, erm, okay then.” Shino squeezed her eyes shut and clasped her hands in front of her chest as though in silent prayer.
The silence was almost palpable.
“Um, hello?” After a few moments, she peeked with one eye and called out to me, worried by the lack of action. “Hey, what’re you—”
“There it is.”
By the time she came around, it was already too late. I was already gazing upon her gaming lair. Smack-dab in the middle of the humbly sized room stood the crown jewel: the VR platform. With its waist-high rail and ringed platform, it was reminiscent of a baby walker. If you slipped on some goggles, grabbed a gun controller, climbed the platform, and hooked it up to a computer, the vast world of VRFPS games would be at your fingertips.
Right beside the VR platform was a rack housing all the essential VR gear, including Shino’s trusty Remington 700.
The Remington 700 was one of the most widely used, centerfire bolt-action rifles from its introduction in 1962 all the way up to, well, the apocalypse. The M24 and the M40—used by the U.S. Marines—were built from the 700.
“Why this one? What’s wrong with the M40?” That was when I caught sight of the other 700 resting next to the windowsill in the corner of my eye.
I had a sneaking suspicion this 700 was the real deal. And by “a sneaking suspicion,” I meant that there was a .308 Winchester box sitting right next to it.
Owning a spare gun controller or two for parts was fairly commonplace, but why bring real bullets into the equation? It wasn’t as though gun controllers could be loaded.
“Force of habit?” I asked, grabbing the gun.
Shino sprang to her feet in a flash and ran over to me.
“It’s complicated.”
“You had this custom-made, didn’t you? It looks and feels just like the real thing. How curious.”
“I, um...”
“An authentic Leupold M1 scope, that’s mighty interesting,” I said as I opened the bolt. A round popped out of the chamber. It wasn’t just any round; it was a soft-point round, judging from the lead tip exposed at the nose.
SP rounds usually stopped inside their target, imparting more kinetic energy than standard full metal jacket rounds, which were known to over-penetrate. They were also designed to expand upon impact, producing a larger hole and causing even more damage.
They were perfect for taking down game but not much else, seeing as they were prohibited under the Geneva Convention for causing unnecessary suffering. Luckily, the Geneva Convention defined wartime rights as afforded exclusively to humans, meaning zombies were more or less fair game.
“I can ex—”
“Why aren’t any of the second-story windows barricaded?” I asked, walking over to one of them.
All the windows on the first floor had been thoroughly barricaded with large pieces of furniture, making it nigh impossible to break into the building.
“The walkers can’t reach, so wh-why would we—”
“Lovely view,” I said as I pulled back the curtains ever so slightly. “That zombie with a rifle pacing around in a circle really sells it.” Shino let out a faint gasp. “You’ve been watching him this whole time, haven’t you?”
“H-How... How did you know?”
“Inductive reasoning coupled with Tetsuko’s testimony,” Otoha said as she appeared right behind us.
I told Otoha to show up at least ten minutes after I had made my move as a sort of contingency, just in case I ended up succumbing to my desires.
“Tetsuko would never—”
“We just barely got her to confirm what we had already pieced together. She wouldn’t budge after that,” I said. Shino looked away in frustration. “He’s keeping you tied down to this place, isn’t he?” I rested the 700 against the wall.
Her silence spoke louder than words.
Otoha’s words flooded back to me: “As for Dad, I’m kind of undecided. I know I’d rather die at the hands of a loved one than be trapped inside my own corpse. I’m sure he would too. This is going to make me sound incredibly petty, but I really can’t bring myself to track him down, and...”
Then, there was this: “Humans are innately irrational; they’ll cling to their precious little memories even if they have to defile them.”
Family members going zombie had become a trope in zombie media for good reason—it was deeply relatable. We, the viewers, could watch the characters’ internal struggle as they realized they would have to inflict bodily harm on a loved one, and we all knew we would struggle just as much, if not more so.
It was only human.
“Dad wasn’t the same after Mom passed,” Shino said after an excruciatingly long silence. “He stopped showing his face around the house almost entirely, tirelessly hopping from country to country, conducting negotiation after negotiation.”
Wasn’t it surprising that Shouji had appointed Tetsuko as Shino’s personal bodyguard? He could’ve hired a bunch of stocky dudes and called it a day, but he hadn’t. Shino had needed both a mother figure and a capable bodyguard, and Tetsuko had been his best bet. His love for his daughter had clearly run deep.
“This here is the only relic I have to remember him by.” Shino’s dainty hands reached out for the gun, grabbed it by the butt, and closed the bolt with an artistic flair, loading the chamber with Winchester .308 bullets. “It’s officially registered under his name, just so you know.”