Mako dialed her phone again. "Come on... come on, come on, come on! Shit!" The woman through her phone at the wall in frustration, shattering it. She popped a cigarette in her mouth, glaring around the room as she lit it. She put her lighter back in her pocket and took the cigarette out for a moment. "Where is that kid? Yuma!"
Peering out from her bedroom, a small girl with green hair replied shakily. "M-Mommy?"
The woman growled at her scared daughter, putting the cigarette back in her mouth. "If you're not ready to go, I'm leaving you here. We have to get out of the house."
Yuma stepped out of her room all the way, still dressed in her pajamas. "I'm ready to go."
Mako could see that this very much wasn't true. She also didn't care.
A voice came blaring into their apartment through the open window. "A state of emergency has been declared for the greater Mitakihara metropolitan area. Please go inside your homes and lock your doors until this is resolved. Do not go outside. I repeat, a state of emergency has been declared for the greater Mitakihara metropolitan area. Please stay inside your homes and lock the doors until it is resolved. Do not go outside."
Yuma couldn't quite understand what all the message was saying, but she knew what 'do not go outside' meant. "Why are they telling us to not go outside."
It didn't feel to Mako like she had to answer that question. It's not like Yuma would understand the answer anyway. "Come on, we're going."
The little girl followed her mother all the way down to the entrance of the building. There was someone else wandering around the lobby, but they were ignored. The walked out the door and continued on down the sidewalk. Mako seemed to care very little for all the people they passed, regardless of how strangely they were all acting. All the people wandering around the way they were was frightening to Yuma. Mako knew there was something bad happening, but she had naturally assumed that all the people were out and about to get away from it.
She stopped at the corner, finally getting the feeling that she had been mistaken. Thoughts of heading for the shelter left her mind as another thought invaded. "They should still be giving out that announcement. I should be able to hear it somewhere."
"Mommy..."
Mako put her hands in her pockets. "Shut up, I'm thinking." She looked around. The crowd of people seemed to be getting thicker. "The hell is going on?"
"Mommy, why are they looking at us like that?"
She gave an exasperated sigh. "Damn it, Yuma. I told you to shut up." She couldn't think with that child blabbering all the time. She took the cigarette out of her mouth for a moment and gave another look around her. Then she saw it. Sitting only a few meters away on the sidewalk, a black and white jeep with a loudspeaker system on top sat on its side. The driver, covered in blood, was visibly crushed in half under the vehicle. The cigarette fell from her mouth.
"Mommy!"
Mako turned at the abrupt scream to see Yuma running towards her and hugging her in fright. This simply didn't happen. She looked to see what could possibly have caused such an unusual event, only to see the snarling face of her neighbor in front of her. His nose was missing. Her eyes darted around and she realized that everyone was wounded in some horrendous way. They all shambled mindlessly towards her and her daughter. Yuma clung tighter to her, making it hard for her to run unless...
She grabbed Yuma's hand and pulled her off, then ran for the overturned jeep. With the horde just two seconds behind her, she ran around behind the jeep. It was the only route left even remotely clear. Running full-throttle down the sidewalk was normally easy for her, but it was harder tonight. She was slower than usual. As she ran, she found solace in the fact that at least Yuma had stopped talking.
Yuma was breathless, tired, scared, and also a bit hungry, but that all seemed to disappear. She couldn't stop now, even if she wanted to, with her mother's hand clamped around her wrist.