I came back out of the exhausted thoughts that had plagued me all night to the sound of Kohta and Takashi talking about how good the girls had looked in their swimsuits at the beach.
"What do you think, Tatsuzo?"
I groaned.
"Restless night?" Takashi asked sounding a little concerned.
"Yeah. Didn't even get an hour." I replied, rubbing my heavy and bloodshot eyes. With their grey colour, when my eyes were bloodshot they looked pretty terrifying. I got out of bed and threw a shirt on.
"Let's go check on the girls." I said.
"We don't know if they're up yet." Takashi said.
"I'm fine with that." Kohta said, creepily.
Alice came into the room having only just woken up.
"Good morning." I said
"Morning." She yawned.
"What's up?" I asked.
"The girls are acting weird." She said.
"The kind of weird that we need to stop or the kind of weird that we need to stay away from?"
"I don't know. It's probably different for you."
"Do you want us to check on them?"
"I guess so. I'll wait here." Alice said.
We walked into the room next door. I immediately saw what Alice was talking about. Shizuka and Saya weren't in the room. Saeko was on her bed, naked and laying on her stomach. Rei was sat on top of her, massaging her. Saeko groaned, satisfied and surprisingly sexually.
"You're really tense..." Rei stated. Both girls almost appeared to be in some sort of strange trance. Takashi got very pale and fell over. The sound of him falling alerted them to our presence. Kohta made a similarly strange sound to the one he had made in the clothing store and got a gushing nosebleed again. Zeke was curled up at the foot of Alice's bed; seemingly content at the sight he was seeing. Rei turned around and glared at me. I blushed.
"Uh, sorry. I'm going to go now." I said, sheepishly
"You don't need to go. I could work on you next, with all your back problems" Rei said.
"I don't think that's a good idea..." I said, partially regretting it. I left the room, dragging Kohta and Takashi by their legs while they fantasised about what they had been seeing. I dragged them with difficulty into the other room.
"Where are Marikawa and Takagi?" I asked Alice.
"They're helping in the infirmary."
"I thought all the sick people left on the first flight?"
"There were too many sick people and some were too sick to travel."
"Ok. Come with me, I think those two need a minute." I said, dumping Takashi and Kohta on the floor. We walked to the infirmary and saw Shizuka and Takagi tending to the ill. It seemed like just as many were in the infirmary as there was before the first evacuation. Saya saw us and approached us.
"Can you get everyone ready? We're helping to load whoever we can onto the next plane. It's touching down any minute now. We've also got a supply run to make after." Saya said.
"Sure. There's... Something we might need to deal with first."
"Oh, that? I think they're just going a bit crazy."
"You knew? Have they done this before?"
"A few times, yes. It's happened to me before, when we got to Shizuka's friend's house. Have to let the stress out somehow, right?"
"Ok. Well, I'll mobilise the troops." I said, giving a fake salute as I moved back.
I got to the rest of the group and told them what Saya had told me. They got ready and we walked back to the infirmary. We loaded as many wheelchairs as we could find with those too weak to walk and began to push them out with everyone else who was lining up by the field. I was wheeling an old man with a smoker's cough and pale skin covered in wrinkles in parts of his face I'd never seen wrinkles before. I was told that he had brittle bone disease and had broken one of his legs running here away from Them. He told me he had crawled the rest of the way here. The guards hadn't given him much trouble on his entry. The poor man had been through a lot to get here, and I could tell that he was a strong willed person. It saddened me to see him needing my help, as I could tell it had knocked his pride and confidence.
"You look in a bit of a state yourself, boy." He remarked.
"Yes. No sleep for the past couple of days."
"None at all?"
"Maybe five minutes or so. Hard to tell."
"You need to look after yourself, clear your head and find some peace."
"I thought I had."
"Well, find something that works. Sleep deprivation will kill you even easier in this world."
I heard the loud roar of the engines interrupt me before I could reply and watched the skies, seeing the plane begin its approach. It was an identical plane to the one before it, but it had a different serial number on the side. It touched down and braked fiercely. The field was of course not intended to be used as a runway and was fairly short. The plane stopped safely though and the back opened up. We at the front loaded those from the infirmary who were healthy enough to travel into the back as quickly as we could, bolting back and forth before the rest of those planned to be taken on the flight rushed on. The plane took off, pulling the tight corner for the makeshift taxiway off pretty well. The plane accelerated with what little space it had, fortunately it was enough to get speed for takeoff. I watched it fade into the sky again.
I was the first to re-enter the school and take my new katana, which still hadn't seen blood yet. I drew it from the sheath and inspected the blade. It was extremely well made, possibly similar quality to Saeko's. As long as I looked after it properly, I shouldn't have to worry about it breaking for a long time. Assuming I lived to see that day. I took my pistol and checked our ammo supplies. We had burned through a lot fighting to Rei's house and back out again, but we still had plenty to go around for our supply run. Especially if we managed to find more when we were out. I looked at Tsai's shotgun. I wanted to take it, but I knew it might weigh me down. Especially when we were carrying whatever it is we were after. I made sure I was ready and nodded at Saya, who was waiting in the hallway.
"So, what are we going to get and where from?" I asked.
"We're going to the hospital. We need morphine and whatever else we can get to help those in the infirmary. Our supplies might work for us, but that's because none of us are ill. We don't have antibiotics either. It'll help us get everyone that we can on that last plane. Once our flight leaves, that's it until further notice." Saya explained.
"Why us?"
"Shizuka trained there, she knows the layout. And it's not just us, they're sending lots of Self Defense Force and Police with us."
"I suppose that makes sense."
I was ready to go. The rest of the group wasn't too far behind me. Saya told them where we were going and why and we moved towards the gate. We showed our passes and carried on around the back of the school towards the hospital. The Self Defense Force and Police officers that were to accompany us were waiting on the street, all equipped with automatic rifles and a few even had silencers on their rifles. There was much less security around here, only a handful of guards around this perimeter. This side of the school was a little different. The area we had been wondering around in had felt vast, hollow and empty, as though we were the only people left in Japan. This area had more evidence of the dead rising, there were stray extremities such as hands and feet severed or partially eaten and thrown by the streets, blood trails led towards the front of the school. The corpses had been cleared lazily, but there were still empty bullet casings on the streets along with the missing limbs.
"This must have been the remains of a fight to set this place up." Saya observed.
"Yeah, it was a massacre." One of the Self Defense Force officers confessed.
"It makes me feel less safe." Shizuka admitted.
"Don't worry, you're in good hands." The officer said.
I saw a few of Them wandering back and forth between some filthy alleyways. I clutched my sword, ready to be on my guard. We walked closer to the alleyways as softly and silently as we could. Some of the officers took the next alleyway along, saying they would regroup with us outside of the hospital. They wanted to clear the surrounding area, unhappy that they had gotten so close to the school.
I watched Them and saw as they roamed around looking for food. I saw one of Them feasting on a dead cat behind a dumpster. The smell nearly made me choke audibly, but I caught myself just short of that. You could have heard a pin drop at that moment. There was pure silence aside from the laboured breaths of diseased lungs and the squelching sound as they ate whatever carrion they could find. My hand was getting stiff from gripping the handle of my sword so tightly. I flexed it and it made an audible crack and started bleeding again. This got the attention of those beasts. I drew my sword. We could take them with melee, but it wasn't as easy as normal because of the extremely tight space. They all groaned and looked up from their meals or aimless roaming. Their thousand-yard stare bore into me. I pushed Alice forwards, past the alleyways and stepped in front of her. I drew my sword and cut one of Them down before it worked out exactly where I was. I threw a lazy, exhausted swing at the next one as it swung its arms at me. It dug its fingernails into my upper arm and ripped downwards as I moved away, trying to avoid its bite. Saeko lopped its scalp and part of its brain off in a clean horizontal slice. Its grip loosened and I threw it off, able to see a deep, long and jagged scratch down most of the side of my upper arm.
"Shit." I said, grimacing at the pain and in frustration for letting this happen to me.
I saw the looks everyone was giving each other. They had no idea what was going to happen to me. I saw some of the officers move for their guns.
"Don't. I'll do it. You guys move on. Now." I said, finally taking command.
"But we don't know what happens with a scratch. Don't you think you should at least know for certain?" Shizuka asked. I dropped my hand.
"Ok. But if I start to turn, leave me. Don't hesitate."
"Understood." Saeko said.
I hauled myself onto my feet, using all of my strength. I tried to move as fast as possible, but I was still considerably slowing the group down. I felt awful about that, but I wanted to hold some hope that I might live. For all my self-destruction I hadn't reached suicidal, and didn't intend to while I had the group to live for.
As we carried on, I began to see more evidence of Them having been here. Corpses on the streets picked apart by Them or killed by the living. I tried not to look at it too much. As we got closer to the hospital I saw a discarded fire engine, the windshield splattered in blood and the hose trickling a little water onto the sidewalk by the entrance of a small house that had been reduced to remains of blackened wooden foundations and charred corpses all that was left of the occupants. A similar fate had met a few of the conjoining houses.
"If it's like this here, the hospital's going to be swarming."
"Why? We haven't seen any more of Them that are active since the alleyways."
"Where's the first place everyone goes when a strange and infectious disease kills people at an alarming rate?" Saya asked.
"The hospital." Takashi realised.
"Exactly. And as soon as they start coming back and biting, they get even more people trying to get in and the disease spreading from the inside." I explained, in a weak voice. I had lost a lot of blood now and kept stumbling as I walked. I was such an idiot. I fought lazily and unprepared, now I was paying the price. I was probably going to die soon, and it was my own fault. I passed a crashed estate car with an infected family inside it. What I presumed to be a father and his wife with their two daughters in the back. They were all held back by the seatbelts, but had thrashed so hard against them that they all had similar cuts around where the seatbelt met their torso. I saw an unfamiliar destruction now. Different to the solemn and eerie silence of the streets we had been walking recently. All of the broken and abandoned cars, tatters of bloody clothing and spent bullet casings next to piles of bone with small chunks of flesh and muscle still attached all told a million variations of the same and equally tragic few stories. I didn't really know how to process this. I had seen a few of these kinds of movies and part of my numbness to this trauma was most likely part of me trying to tell myself this wasn't real. Just some macabre nightmare. But the pain in my arm was real and sharp. I could feel the warmth of my blood as it flowed down my arm, and the blood-soaked shreds of my shirtsleeve torn from the creature's grip flapping against my shoulder in the breeze. This was all too real for me to process now. The vacant side of town was almost manageable. Now I had far more to process. We got to the hospital entrance. Greeting us were some furiously flailing body bags dumped outside destroyed or bloodstained ambulances and about five or six of Them. I stayed back with Alice. Now not much use in the combat. I was just a spectator. Saeko drew her katana, and Takashi loaded his new shotgun. Rei shifted stance, ready to use her spear. Kohta took one of Them down with a silent sniper shot. He took down another one before Saeko, Takashi and Rei stormed Them. Kohta knew he couldn't get a shot off and that his ammo would be more useful once we were inside. Rei thrust her spear into one of Them repeatedly until she got its head. She was fighting furiously, as was Saeko. She was hacking limbs off of two of Them like she was possessed, really going for it with all she had, leaving rough cuts with tendons and muscles dangling off the exposed bone. She whipped around and cut the lower jaw off of one that was behind her and ready to bite. She stabbed it in the head and turned back to the armless one and decapitated it. I knew why she was fighting so hard; she thought I wasn't going to make it. I didn't blame her, I wasn't expecting to make it out of that hospital alive either. I was terrified that I would have to die now. I wasn't ready to leave what was left of the world behind. The rest of the accompanying Self Defense Force and police officers appeared out of the other alleyway, evidently having had an encounter of their own. I noticed that a skinny and awkward young man that had been with them was no longer there. They saw that we had cleared the entrance without much trouble. Except for my scratch. I heard clicks and movement as they all trained their rifles on me. I gave a laugh that became a horrible cough.
"Trust me, I'll be the first to do what needs to be done. Don't believe me and I won't stop you, but we haven't seen this before. It could be different." I tried to reason.
"Fine, but if you so much as cough in a way we don't like you're getting filled with bullets." one of the senior police officers growled.
"I should do it."
"Why?"
"Because if it gets out that you shot an eighteen year old boy without being certain of his fate do you think anyone will trust you again? Besides, I almost did it before. I have it in me to do so. They can tell you." I said, indicating towards our group.
The officer looked surprised.
"Very well."
"We're splitting off in the hospital." Shizuka said.
"What do you mean?" The officer asked angrily.
"We're going to try and find research notes, see what fate Tatsuzo has ahead of him. The medical supplies will be easy to find." She explained.
"Fine. But we can't split off. We'll help you get to the labs and wait outside. You may want some privacy. Then you lead us to the supplies. We don't know what we need or where to find it."
"That's fine. We'll be quick."
"You'd better be."
We entered the hospital quietly. Some of the officers attached silencers to their rifles.
"We don't have enough for everyone." One of the officers explained in a whisper. One of the men grabbed a soft drinks can that had been abandoned. Shizuka pointed down the hallway, which led to the research labs, it was just to the left of the staircase to the ICU. There was no sign of any of Them in the lobby, but there were a few shuffling around the hallway that hadn't noticed us. The soldier threw the can at the wall of the hallway, and the soldiers took aim down the corridor. The can made a small metallic sound and we heard what sounded like lots of Them sprinting towards us. They burst through the open doors and overpowered the closed ones, grinding some of the other ones to useless piles of flesh and crushed bone against the door as they swarmed. Those with silenced weapons fired down the corridor as quickly as they could. But the variation in heights of the targets necessitated a small adjustment to snap their aim to the head of the next one. Eventually, they overpowered us in number and fell upon the first few lines of soldiers who began firing unsilenced weapons into the horde. They crashed over the top of our ranks and descended upon anyone they could. Screams of pain filled the air. I could taste the blood in the air now, filling it with a sickeningly strong coppery taste on my tongue. Everything had become a haze of desperate fighting, screams and bullets. They were moving faster than I had ever seen Them move, still an uncoordinated shuffle, but determined and fast. Some sort of feeding frenzy perhaps. My head was reeling; the heat from the guns firing and the loud screams and gunshots filled my head that began to feel feverish. My breathing was becoming wheezy and something I had to focus on. The muzzle flashes kept piercing my vision and giving me a splitting headache. This continued for what felt like a very long time. As the smoke cleared and the chaos finally settled again, I saw that we had cleared the first part of the hallway. There were at least twelve officers that had been killed in the slaughter. That left us with thirteen more. I could hear their ragged breaths, as they trembled on the floor holding their bite wounds. The soldiers passed over and put their comrades out of their misery. They then took the ammo and silencers from the discarded rifles while a few men checked the corridors. We could hear more of Them coming. If we moved quickly and silently we could avoid another conflict until we needed to move again.
Shizuka led us into the research labs. As she expected, there were plenty of notes. The door had been left open, so we were able to close it. The police and Self Defense Force personnel came in with us and stood ready to fight.
"This had better be good. We lost twelve good men for this. Twelve!" The police officer from earlier shouted.
"We had to come down here anyway. There's morphine and adrenaline further down the hall. Don't blame the boy." Shizuka said, surprisingly sternly. She seemed more alert than her usual self, who was often a bit dopey. She scanned through the notes as quickly as we could, but it took a while to get the information. I slumped against the wall and a soldier held his rifle at me. The rest of the group tensed and readied to do something stupid to protect me.
"Leave it. It's ok." I said to them, barely audible. I was feeling so weak and exhausted. They were evidently distressed.
"Found it! He's not going to turn!" Shizuka exclaimed. I sighed in relief and smiled. The tension in the room lifted a little.
"What does it say?" I asked, breathily. She didn't hear me, but started reading aloud anyway.
"Anyone who is scratched will not die and reanimate. However the disease that the infected carry will enter the bloodstream and make them extremely ill. If not treated properly it can cause death." She said.
"Why won't I come back if I have the disease?" I asked. Audibly this time, but only just.
"The reanimation is caused by a parasite which has a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria that's affecting you now."
"So, this is bacteria and a parasite working together?" Saya asked.
"Yes. The bacteria makes you ill and weak enough to die. The parasite finishes you off and reanimates you."
"So I could still die?" I asked, concerned.
"No. Not with me looking after you. I know the symptoms and how to deal with them, we can get the medication you need and start treating you when we get back. It won't be fun though. You're very sick, you'll probably wish for death sometimes." Shizuka said. The soldier dropped the barrel of his rifle away from my head. I tried to calm my mind. Shizuka's confidence was promising, but I couldn't be sure I would make it through the illness alive.
"Sounds like a barrel of laughs." I said, coughing. Shizuka ordered three soldiers to accompany her silently down the corridor to one of the supply rooms. We were told to stay in the room. I tried to avoid coughing to not attract any of Them. After a short while, Shizuka returned with the two soldiers and a lot of equipment. My eyes bulged.
"I didn't think there were that many people to look after still." I said.
"No, this is just some of what I'll need for you. The soldiers are carrying what we need for everyone else in those bags."
"Don't get me so excited." I deadpanned.
Shizuka blushed and acted coy.
"Oh, I didn't mean it like that!" I said, realising she misunderstood. There was an awkward moment of silence. Then she took a syringe and plunged it into my vein.
"What th-"
"Adrenaline. It'll give you enough strength to keep up with us until we can find a safe place to look after you." She explained. After a few minutes, I began to feel a rush of energy return overriding some of my weakness.
"We'll sort you out, but we've got more to get first." Shizuka said, pointing upstairs.
The Self Defense Force took point as we made our way up the stairs. There was an eerie silence over the hospital. We knew there were more all over the place, but we couldn't see or hear any of Them. It felt unsettling, but I knew they weren't exactly hunters. We got to the medical supply room pretty quickly and without trouble. We began taking the supplies. One of the men waiting outside tripped over a corpse in the hallway and his rifle went off. It didn't have a silencer
"Shit!" I exclaimed. We all grabbed what we could even quicker than before. We began to hear Them swarm around us and even more gunshots and screams coming from outside the door. It was a massacre. We heard Them begin to slam against the weak wooden door. Some of the officers in the room with us pressed themselves against the door. Arms began to break through the door and they began to bite and grab the police and Self Defense Force personnel covering it. We dropped what we had, but I began to hear a distant growling, juddering sound that was getting louder and louder. I looked outside the window and saw our evacuation plane. Smoke was coming out of the turbine engine on the left and it was barreling towards the area below it. Right into the school. The loud roar of the failing plane attracted Them away from us. I couldn't stop watching as the plane impacted the far side of the school and exploded. Large parts of debris from the school building scattered across the streets, the rubble crashing into the lines of people that had still been waiting for a place as they sprinted away. The explosion threw me back with a huge force and the window shattered. I heard alarms on working cars start to go off. There was now only our group and three men.
The remaining officers bolted and we tried to follow suit, but I was too weak to keep up. We found one of the cars that was functional, the ones with the car alarms going off must either be shielded or far too old to have been affected by the EMP. We passed the old cars and found a battered Jeep that was still functional, but only just. The corpse of the driver was by the door, clutching his son in one arm and the keys in his hand. We took the keys and hurried in. I saw the black smoke and fire rising from the school, unable to see the destroyed school behind the buildings. The engine spluttered into life and we drove towards the school. The vehicle was badly damaged and the engine was incapable of going over 10 kilometers per hour. It wouldn't get us out of the school, but we could get there. We rushed into the school when we finally arrived. The smell of smoke and burning fuel filled my nose and I choked on the contaminated air. The unmistakable taste of petrol seared my throat.
"Tatsuzo, Saeko, Kohta and Alice, find Zeke and get our supplies. Rei and I will look for our family with Shizuka." Takashi ordered. I nodded and made my way into the hallway as fast as I could in my current condition. The others followed. Fortunately, the hallway we were in was still mostly intact, except for a hole blown out of the centre from the explosion. Our rooms had been on the far end, and I could see they were just about ok. Zeke was right there, bounding back and forth, unsure where to go. Part of the propeller on the plane had impaled the hallway just before our rooms and the end was on fire. I coughed severely from the smoke, and whatever strange illness I had caught. I told Alice to stay back with Kohta in the open part of the corridor on the other side of the gap.
"Don't argue. Kohta can protect you better than I can right now." I explained.
I grabbed Zeke and passed him to Saeko who returned him to Alice. I carried on into the male room and Saeko made her way into the next one, just behind me. I threw whatever I could see in the room into the now mangled shopping cart. Most of our supplies were still ok, with the exception of a few missing articles of clothing and food either taken in the panic or thrown somewhere else by the blast. The fire was spreading quickly and I could hear its crackling roar approaching. I pushed the cart as best as I could, the bent wheels making it cumbersome and awkward to move. Saeko was just ahead of me, doing the same.
"What do we do next?" Kohta asked, loudly over the panicked voices and loud fire.
"Find Takashi and Rei!"
We made our way in the direction that Takashi and Rei had taken. I could see some figures stumbling towards us, obscured by the smoke. I reached for my gun as they emerged. Some of Them had beaten us here. I fired a few shots, the recoil playing havoc with my injured arm and my dizziness hindering my ability to aim. I managed to take one down, screaming from the pain. I tensed and clutched my arm, lowering my pistol.
"Shoot Them!" Kohta said, glaring at me.
"I can't!"
Saeko sighed, drew her katana and took the rest of Them out quickly. Kohta and I shared a look of disbelief.
We wandered around the parts of the school we could access as quickly as we could. Seeing corpses of people we recognised from being around the school. The fire was spreading and we didn't have much time left before the whole place collapsed. We found a way to get into the main assembly room. The engine of the plane had barreled straight through the roof and sat in the centre of the room, blackened and flaming. Jagged scraps of metal from the fuselage were scattered around, some having impaled some of the survivors and others were large enough to crush people, which they had done. I saw Takashi and Rei. Kiriko was with them, helping the search. We got to them and began to help them search while trying to divert Alice's attention away from the destruction and death surrounding us. The place felt extremely warm from the fire that was close to surrounding us completely. The smoke was a thin grey veil in the large room, as opposed to the obscuring blackness it usually provided. I saw someone I recognised.
"Takashi!" I called, pointing towards a large shard of metal that had impaled a female form as I ran to help. Takashi's mother was still alive, but even just from looking at it; the piece of metal was far too large for us to be able to help her. I put my hand on it and tried to see if I could shift it anyway. It was hot to the touch and scorched my palms a little. Kioko was pinned to the floor, hands on the hot piece of dark green metal that had gone through her chest. Takashi bolted over to her. Blood was pooling underneath her.
"Takashi, I don't have much time left." She said weakly.
"Don't talk like that. We're going to get you out of here." Takashi said.
"Don't try to deny it. I can't move. Just listen." She whispered.
"Ok, mom." Takashi said. I'd never heard such a defeated tone in anyone's voice before.
"I love you. Always know that, and look after your group. They're good people and they need you to be strong for them. Promise me you can do that for me." She said.
"I-I promise." Takashi choked. He grabbed his mother's hand and she stopped breathing. She seemed to be at peace, a small smile on her face. Takashi squeezed her hand and let go. I had never seen him this vulnerable. Rei was still searching for her father, hurriedly now, we didn't have much time until the fire closed us in and lots of Them would be upon us shortly. I was beginning to feel sicker as the search continued. On the opposite side of the room, Rei found her father in a pile of bodies flung by the explosion of the impact. It seemed as though he had died instantly. She and her mother took a moment to swallow their sorrow. They would mourn later. Takashi saw this and followed suit. I couldn't hear anything but the roar of the flames and the groans of the incoming infected. We made our way back outside in a rush. It was then that I saw the real carnage from the crash. Most of the school had a large chunk torn out of it, pieces of the plane had been flung across most of the surrounding area, the wing had sliced into two neighbouring houses and the nose was crumpled into the ground by the other side of the school. I was mesmerized by the flames slowly devouring what was left of the school for a moment. I tore my eyes away and refocused. We were trying to avoid Them now, evidently in too much of a desperate state to co-ordinate combat. Even if they could have detected our heat or smell, the sensory overload they were most likely receiving from the catastrophe that surrounded Them. We came fairly close to a few of Them, but they gave us no notice whatsoever. We all walked in a line, side by side down the ruined streets, passing other survivors who didn't even glance at us. They were either rushing towards the school or putting distance between it and them. It was a very surreal sight to see: the living dead stumbling around the destroyed landscape and passing by their food source with no notice. They bumbled around, having some kind of knowledge that they were supposed to be here but unsure as to why. I continued pushing the battered cart, until someone saw my current physical state for what it was and took advantage of it. I was knocked to the ground with a heavy metallic object knocking the back of my head with a great deal of force. When I regained my senses, I saw that it was the perverted old man from outside of the school who had grabbed Saeko and passed the cart to one of his group who dashed off with it. My medication and my guitar were in there with some food and ammo. I whipped round to see other men grabbing the girls, except for Alice. They outnumbered us now, three to five. I only had the magazine I had loaded in my gun with me. I only had maybe three or four bullets left in it. They had taken the rest of our ammo. Zeke growled at them and arched his back. They had pistols trained on us with one hand, while the pervert I recognised fondled Saeko's body, taunting me. The other men started doing the same. I pulled my gun from the holster, growling. They took no action, believing this to be futile. Kohta and Takashi already had their weapons ready, but they didn't have the idea I had. There was only one thing we could do to get out of this alive, and the timing had to be perfect.
"Aim for the feet, go when I do." I whispered as quietly as I could. They couldn't hear me over their disgusting taunts and perverted comments to each other. I could see that Saeko was squirming against the sweaty pig of a man that was fondling her and sniffing her hair. She realised this was futile and stopped, having to trust us completely. I moved my aim on my pistol to the foot of the man grabbing Saeko, while Takashi aimed for the man grabbing Rei and Kohta aimed for the man holding Saya. We made our movements as subtle as we could and managed to get away with it. I gripped my pistol with both hands so tightly it was hurting my knuckles. I couldn't afford to miss, and with the last of my strength fading, it was going to be difficult. I put all of my effort into telegraphing my finger coiling around the trigger twice without pulling it to signal to Kohta and Takashi. They didn't understand. I repeated this motion and they caught on and mimicked the signal back. I fired as they did and Zeke bit the exposed ankle of the man holding Shizuka. Kohta, Takashi and I all snapped our aim to the man holding Rei's mother as quickly as we could, but we were too late.
Kiriko fell to the ground as the gunshot that killed her cracked across the air like thunder. I almost froze completely, but my first instinct was to shoot. I hit the man in the chest and he fell. Two more bullets left. I stood over the pervert that had taken Saeko; he was reaching for his gun. I smacked him with the handle my pistol, breaking his nose. I hesitated for a moment, sure of what to do next, but not wanting to do it. I took a moment to silence my thoughts and fired into his head. I walked to the next man who had violated Shizuka and executed him. The man who killed Kiriko was dying too. The bullet had pierced his lung. He was wheezing his last breaths now. The reality that I had just actively killed three more men had just set in. I trembled with the gun in my hand still. My energy and anger drained all at once. Rei dropped to the floor and bawled in mourning. Takashi and Kohta followed my lead, killing the two other men. I heard another girl crying now. Alice. I hadn't even given it a thought, but she had just seen the whole thing. She had just seen us kill five men as they violated and murdered Kiriko. She'd never trust me again. The adrenaline had worn off completely now. I was in a bad state and one of the dead's group had taken the medicine for my back with them. I was completely drained and far too destroyed to deal with anything, but Takashi was in an even worse state. He had just lost his mother, so I didn't blame him but I knew I didn't have a fun road ahead of me trying to hold everyone together while being inches away from death. I could tell that Takashi didn't want to manage anything for a while, which was fine, but it meant that they'd defer to me since I had just turned my back on compassion in favour of survival. While I had to do it, I had probably created a permanent rift between myself and the rest of the group. I didn't expect their forgiveness; I doubted I would ever forgive myself for this either. I holstered my pistol and pulled myself together; we still had to find a safe place to stay. With the way I was feeling, it would probably have to be a while. I attempted to get my bearings and figure out where we should be headed. I wasn't familiar with this side of town, but I knew there were some isolated areas not too far from here. With luck we might get there by nightfall. I approached Rei and extended my hand towards her. She took it and I helped pull her off of the street.
"We need to move, now. We can take time to rest and mourn once we find somewhere to stay." I said, trying to emphasize compassion in my voice. I did understand what they were going through, but we had to go before it got worse and I couldn't do that with making it clear that I was on their side. Saeko picked Alice up and carried her as she sobbed. We walked past the destruction and scraps of metal and broken buildings in a daze. I say walked, but it was more like I was dragging my body forwards with all of my will. I led us towards a hill on the outskirts of the city, full of lush grass and a dojo sat atop of it. It was a large building with traditional rooms with sliding doors for all of us to stay in and it was pretty isolated. Evidently the owner of this dojo lived far away from it; it hadn't been used in a while. We passed the lush grassy fields and I began to feel some kind of odd peace for a moment. It took me back to the times spent in Sensei Busujima's dojo, which had been extremely therapeutic for me.
"So long as we stay relatively quiet we shouldn't have too many problems." I said. I looked back towards the city. There was smoke rising from the school and I could see where one of the wings of the plane had sheared through part of an office block in the distance. I couldn't bring myself to continue looking. Each of the gunshots I had fired back on the streets had kept breaking the silence in my head. It kept making me flinch and the echo of the memory in my head gave me a headache as though the pistol was being fired from inside my head. Each time my mind repeated this, it shredded at a part of me. If this continued, staying sane, compassionate and strong would be impossible and I knew where this internal journey was leading. But I had pushed my body to the very limits of its capability to get here, and my sanity and integrity weren't far behind. I had taken just about as much as I could but I knew I still had to face up to more. My ankles wobbled and buckled beneath me. I collapsed and fell face first onto the wooden floorboards. The group had seen this and continued on without me. I seethed with anger and tried to pull myself up, but my strength was gone. I could only just lift my legs up slightly. I let myself drop, humiliated and exhausted. My back was killing me and I was feeling very feverish now. I wheezed sickened breaths of air and coughed painfully. I rested there for a while, thinking about how they had left me like this. My anger burned through me, I'd given them all I could. I'd even killed three men to keep them safe and this is what I got in return. I rested and let my anger consume me before I summoned some strength and attempted to get up again. I did so and took a small step forwards. As my foot touched the solid ground I collapsed again. I lay there tense and in all kinds of pain, barely able to move my fingers. After some more time, Shizuka came in to witness my pathetic state. She kicked a syringe towards me. I waited a little longer and regained enough strength to take the syringe. I injected myself with it, but I was sloppy and drew a lot of blood from the area around my vein before I managed it. I was shaking uncontrollably, completely unable of functioning for a few minutes before I was prepared to take small, weak steps to the hallway trailing off from the main room I had been collapsed in. This was where I had a chance to admire the dojo's interior. All made out of a dark brown wood, I would have said mahogany, but I knew nothing about that sort of thing. There were six rectangular wooden beams in the main room, three on either side. There were several scrolls of worn paper that were hung in crevices in the walls. They were outlining the principles of Bushido. There was another couple of racks of decorative and commemorative swords either for practice or signs of status. This was a fairly small dojo that I had heard nothing of before. I only knew that it was here as I had passed it walking around this area with my family a few times. The dojo was very minimalistic and traditional, as Saeko's father's dojo was. Only this one was a larger structure with rooms for living built in to it as opposed to the Busujima dojo, which had the family house right next to it. I passed through the hallway sliding the doors open to see which rooms didn't have occupants. All of them were taken. At the very end of the hallway there was one room that was empty on the right-hand side. The group had gathered in the room opposite. I could see their shadows from what was left of the sun passing through the building. I ignored them and took to my room. "They can go fuck themselves." I thought, bitterly. I had no dignity left, nor the strength to recover it yet. I found there to be a bed with a medical stand Shizuka must have taken from the hospital with an intravenous drip and a bag full of some medication also taken from the hospital. By the small nightstand next to the bed, I found a note.
"A little present. Hope it helps" It read. I took my shirt off and wrapped it around my bloodied arm. I waited for it to start absorbing the blood to make sure I wouldn't bleed on the sheets before dropping onto the bed. I put the drip in my arm after pricking myself with the needle several times and everything faded to black shortly afterwards.