The sea was calm and the sun was mild as our inflatable boat glided swiftly across the water, its engine humming quietly in the rear.
Almost warm enough to swim in.
I pulled my hand out of the water and took a deep breath of the salty sea air. Unlike the polluted, garbage-ridden water around the harbor, the seawater here smelled crisp and clean. It was also crystal clear, judging from the handful I had scooped up.
Nothing but peace and quiet. The sea was the same as always.
Sure, there might be occasional storms at sea, or the water up north might freeze here and there, but that was just the natural order of things. Fundamentally speaking, nothing out here had changed. Unlike on the mainland, there wasn’t much to lose.
“I feel safer out here than I did back there. Fancy that,” I muttered with a half smile.
No mutilated corpses to sully the eyes. No dreary groaning to defile the ears.
Most postapocalyptic settings in movies, anime, novels, manga, games, and virtually any other medium tended to depict a doomsday scenario where all the seas had dried up.
Good thing that isn’t happening anytime soon.
We were well past the point of environmental destruction, let alone nuclear war.
Peace at last... but is it meaningful if there’s no one around to enjoy it? Who knows.
Hiroaki Dewa here. Seventeen, high school dropout, former recluse and hardcore VRFPS gamer currently serving as a guerilla soldier... or something like that. Actually, what’s the point of introductions now that there’s no one to introduce myself to? What with the collapse of human civilization and all.
“Yo, Otoha.” I turned to face my fellow passenger, who was sitting next to the engine. “Can zombies swim?”
“It depends,” she replied flatly.
Otoha had black, shoulder-length hair cut in a... what’s that again? A bob? Sure, that must’ve been it. Her big, round eyes were offset by a set of red-framed glasses.
She was quite pretty, but it was hard to savor this particular quality with her aloof manner, nonexistent makeup, and deadpan expression always getting in the way. Unfortunately, she cared little about how she looked to other people.
Otoha Judou, also seventeen. She’s my partner, my lifesaver, and an expert in all aspects of lumbering corpses—a.k.a. zombies. In short, she’s a weirdo.
In her younger years, she developed a worryingly fervent fondness for zombies, which inspired her to amass a treasure trove of zombie-related knowledge. The other day, I was like, “How many zombie movies have you seen?” Didn’t mean anything by it. Had no idea she was going to list over a hundred in chronological order, from the first feature-length zombie film White Zombie and cult classics such as Night of the Living Dead all the way up to modern stuff like Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress.
I shouldn’t rag on her too hard, though; she saved my life, after all. The fact that I’m still alive and kicking in this zombie-infested world of ours is all thanks to Otoha. I don’t really show it, since that’d probably make it weird, but I have a lot of respect for her and I’m deeply grateful for all that she’s done for me.
“The ones in the House of the Dead can.” Otoha tilted her head ever so slightly, as though perusing through the filing cabinets of zombie data inside her mind. “Swiss Army Man had zombies that could traverse water as fast as a jet ski.”
“How the hell did that work?”
Honestly, if I saw a zombie rushing toward me that fast in the water, I’d definitely make a liquid contribution of my own.
“Zombie Lake had undead Nazis rising from their watery graves.” Zombies couldn’t drown, so the ones that got swept away by the waves usually washed up on remote islands. “Then there’s Rise of the Zombies...”
With that face, you look kind of like a zombie yourself sometimes.
“They’re dead, meaning they can’t drown. Gotcha.”
There was no one around apart from us—no ships in the distance, no swimmers, and no floaters for that matter. Keeping clear of floating bodies was generally a smart move because you never knew when one might spring back to life. Assuming that a corpse was going to stay dead was an easy way to get killed.
“If the infection is indeed viral, it’s possible there might be zombie birds or zombie fish.”
“Sounds great,” I said sarcastically. A shiver ran down my spine as I imagined a bloated, swollen corpse at sea being picked apart by birds. I had seen my fair share of decaying corpses over the past month or so, but there was something about a bloated corpse in particular that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Isn’t it gas buildup in the intestines that causes stomach bloat?
“Zombies come in all shapes and sizes. You just need to know where to look.”
What I really need to know is whether or not they exist in reality.
If the zombies Otoha had just listed really did exist, we’d be in quite the pickle. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, just water as far as the eye could see.
We could try outswimming them, though it’s unlikely we’d succeed. Regular zombies would be easy to breeze past, but those zooming zombies at jet-ski speeds? Fat chance.
At that moment, a buoy, rocking along to the gentle waves, came into view. This was the sole reason we’d spent all that time procuring a boat.
“Kill the engine.”
Otoha nodded and hit the switch. A few seconds later, the boat lost all its kinetic energy and began to drift. I pulled out the oars we’d stashed away and slowly rowed the boat toward the buoy.
A light buoy, as the name would suggest, was used for demarcation at night. Its LED lights were powered by a combination of mini solar batteries and rechargeable, electric batteries. Light buoys could be used to guide ships and mark positions, coral reefs, and much more. Once placed, they served their purpose well.
There was no real reason anyone would want to go out of their way to touch one, occasional maintenance worker aside. I mean, nobody went around touching street signs. At least, that was my thought process until now.
“Let’s see here... Aha!” I leaned over the boat and grasped a nylon cord so thin I’d have missed it if I hadn’t known it was there. To make things even more complicated, the cord and the buoy had matching colors. “Nice and easy.” I slapped on a pair of gardening gloves and began reeling in the cord—or rather, the item it was attached to.
Twenty meters of cord later, a blackish container emerged from the thick veil of darkness down below. The container was shoddily made and a bit bent out of shape from the water pressure. It hadn’t really been waterproofed, but it was at least wrapped in multiple layers of transparent plastic bags.
“Need a hand?” Noticing that I was at the end of my rope, Otoha came shuffling over on her knees to help.
We hauled the container, which was about a meter long on all sides, onto the boat. “There we... go?!” Yep, we’d gotten an added bonus. The head popped up first, then the arms, torso, and legs. Between the pruned skin and horrible swelling, I could barely look at the hideously deformed corpse without retching.
It’s no ordinary corpse, is it?
It latched on to the side of the boat, clumsily trying to haul itself up. Water spurted out of its swollen lips.
“Why you little...!” I couldn’t kick the damn thing off because the container was restricting my movement. And to top it all off, it was tangled up in the same cord as the container, so waiting for it to fall back into the water was not an option.
The zombie leaned into me, foaming at the mouth. All its teeth were missing, but I knew it could easily tear flesh and shatter bone with nothing but the strength of its jaws.
I instinctively reached for my SAKURA. Snub-nosed revolvers weren’t known for their accuracy, but that mattered little at point-blank range.
Suddenly, a blade whistled through the air, and Otoha’s shovel sliced through the zombie’s neck with the ease and precision of a well-tempered sword.
The head rolled down its back, falling into the water with a plop. Its whole body, especially the arms and legs, convulsed uncontrollably for a few seconds. After that, everything went silent.
“Man, I owe ya one, Oto—OOF!”
Otoha had fallen right on top of me. Although she’d managed to get in a beautiful swing, she had lost her footing immediately after. She wasn’t used to fighting aboard an inflatable boat.
So soft... Wait, no, now’s not the time!
Her breasts, soft and elastic unlike those of a corpse, pressed against my cheek.
I knew they were bigger than they looked, but with them right in front of my face, I really appreciated—
Dude. Not! The! Time!