“Hiroaki, I...”
“Easy now.” I embraced Otoha in order to stop her from flailing about with the shovel in her hand. She got the message and simmered down. “You’ll fall if you try standing up. Roll over, like so.”
Once Otoha got off of me, I got up myself. Thankfully, we were careful enough not to send the container flying.
Otoha leaned over the edge of the boat and looked away, as though avoiding eye contact.
That must’ve been embarrassing, even for her.
She looked devastated, as though she had been violated a few moments ago. I felt a sharp pang of guilt even though I knew I technically hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Sorry ’bout that,” I said, scratching my cheek.
She didn’t reply.
Considering that she’d gotten half-naked in front of me before without batting an eyelid, I didn’t expect her to take it so hard.
Guess there’s something uniquely hurtful about getting your breasts touched.
As I said earlier, Otoha was my partner and lifesaver. I couldn’t stand seeing her like this, so I panicked and rattled off whatever nonsense came to mind in order to make her feel better.
“It wasn’t that bad, was it? Well, I’d ask that if I happened to be an asshole. Erm, how do I put this? It was quite the treat! They, uh, they’re a lot bigger than they look! Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. What I meant to say was—err, Otoha, are you even listening?”
Otoha said nothing.
I crawled over to her. “Hey, you okay?”
“I didn’t get to examine it,” Otoha lamented, staring longingly at the decapitated head as it sank deeper and deeper below.
“My condolences.” I sighed and took out my knife, turning my attention to the container. I cut my way through the deceptively thick plastic bags and opened up the cube-shaped container. “Cha-ching!” The container was brimming with weapons and ammo—specifically, a few revolvers and semi-automatic pistols alongside a boatload of their respective ammo boxes. “Wolf and Blazer... Better than nothing, I guess.”
Both were ammunition manufacturers of less-than-stellar quality.
Wolf was a Russian manufacturer, if memory served. There were over ten ammo boxes, none of which were Winchester or other similarly esteemed brands. In any case, my top priority was finding ammo we could use for the guns we had on hand.
Managed to score three .38 boxes, fifty rounds each.
My SAKURA’s gonna freak out when she sees this.
As far as revolvers went, the ones inside were similar in make to the SAKURA, the Chief’s Special, the Detective Special, and comparable mainstays. That was where the similarities ended, though; they lacked serial numbers, and their makes and models didn’t ring any bells. Nothing but Saturday night specials, or “junk guns” for short.
The semi-automatic pistols, on the other hand, were all Russian Makarovs.
“That reminds me, didn’t a bunch of these come from the Russian mafia when Russia adopted a different standard sidearm?”
The Russian military had officially adopted the MP-443 Grach as their standard-issue sidearm a good while back. The Makarov’s legacy hadn’t ended, however. It was still very much alive and well all over the world, including Japan. This was because of Makarovs that were stolen from military warehouses and sold on the black market as well as the fact that it’d been mass-produced ever since the Soviet days.
A few years ago, the Makarov had taken the title of the most confiscated illegal firearm, edging out the TT-33, and it’d been going strong ever since.
“Even the yakuza’s arsenal isn’t free from global trends,” I said with a wry smile.
You guessed it: this container had been smuggled in by the yakuza.
This was how the yakuza smuggled their guns, according to a gun shop employee I’d known back in the day and a VRFPS buddy who’d claimed to be affiliated with the Japan Coast Guard.
Another person I’d gotten cozy with just recently had confirmed that the local yakuza had used this particular buoy to smuggle in weapons. After I’d heard that, I just had to check.
As for how they’d managed it, well, there wasn’t much to it, actually. A foreign ship on its way to the harbor would stop just before entering, someone on board would “accidentally” drop a container into the water, and then they’d hook up a cord to the buoy. The yakuza members who were supposed to have retrieved the package had likely turned zombie by now, meaning it was ours for the taking.
Actually, come to think of it, the tangled-up corpse from earlier might’ve been its “rightful” owner.
“Are those grenades?!” Five round objects rested at the very bottom of the container. They closely resembled Russian RGD-5s but were likely replicas, judging from the complete lack of markings.
The idea of holding onto replica grenades was admittedly a little scary, but on the other hand, they packed enough of a punch to single-handedly turn a losing battle in our favor.
I decided to humbly take them as well.
Testing one out would probably be a good idea, just to see if they’re safe.
“We’re heading back,” I told Otoha, who was still mourning her loss. I then fired up the engine and got ready to go.
✦ ✦ ✦
Walkers, the living dead, the risen, zees, zombies... reanimated human cadavers had many names.
According to our self-proclaimed zombie expert, Otoha Judou, their creation was associated with Haitian folklore and specifically attributed to people called bokors. Bokors would revive corpses using necromancy and use them as personal slaves on their farms and the like.
Naturally, this was all superstition. None of it was real.
A corpse couldn’t move even if it wanted to. The very notion of a multicellular organism as advanced as a human moving—let alone walking on two feet—while deceased was utterly absurd.
Bipedal movement was an incredibly intricate process that necessitated a functioning balance system regulated by the inner ear. For the inner ear to do anything, a working brain had to process the signals. In addition, there was simply no way an organism without a functioning circulatory system could be in control of its nervous system.
A monster created for one of those “transported to another world” novels? Sure. A real-life human being that had been studied as thoroughly as possible? Not so much.
The virus or parasite theory was also moot. Even something as basic as voluntary muscle movement required a functioning circulatory system. Applying an electric current to a dissected frog would make its tiny legs twitch for a little while, but eventually its cells would run out of nutrients and stop.
None of it made a lick of sense, and most people had rightfully treated zombies as a myth, a fantasy.
With time, zombies had become known as the go-to monster for low-budget horror movies and were loved by many. Just a dash of makeup and you were good to go. When George A. Romero’s timeless masterpiece—according to Otoha—Night of the Living Dead came out, it ushered in a new age of vampire-esque zombies. In other words, it popularized the idea that if you were bitten by a zombie, you’d turn into a zombie.
Night of the Living Dead had been recognized as artful enough to be placed in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It was also selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Toward the end of the 20th century came Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, and World War Z, which had all attempted to imbue the zombie genre with a heaping dose of science.
Scientific terms like “virus” and “radiation” were used to explain the walking, flesh-eating corpse phenomenon.
To me, it just sounds like they gave the occult a fresh coat of paint. I mean, really, is there a meaningful difference between evil spirits and a virus, or demons and a parasite? In my opinion, they’re all equally insufficient when it comes to actually explaining the whole damn thing.
Regardless of how zombies had come to be, our real world had fallen apart, and now these creatures roamed the crumbled ruins. Whether or not it made sense, they were a genuine threat. Unless you really, really wanted to join their ranks for some reason, you had to fight back, and for that you needed a plan.
In other words, finding out what made them tick—if such a concept even applied—was essential to our survival.
A good starting point was asking questions. Were they nocturnal or diurnal? What did they use to navigate their environment? Their ears, their eyes, maybe something else entirely? How could they tell a corpse and a living being apart? That kind of stuff.
This was precisely why we made sure to examine their behaviors whenever possible. Although they had individual differences, establishing a pattern of behavior would make dealing with them a heck of a lot easier.