Shion sat on the edge of the little cot in the underground room. It had begun to rain, and he could hear the soft whisper of the drops as they pelted the world above, splattering on the cold, empty staircase leading down to the bunker.
Nezumi hadn't brought an umbrella. Shion imagined Nezumi walking alone in the wilderness, his leather coat zipped all the way to his chin, the superfiber wrapped tight and hooded over his head to keep the icy rain at bay. Shion wondered if he regretted leaving so suddenly with nothing but a pack and his weapons to keep him company on the long journey through the heart of the Deadlands.
It's not that long, Shion griped at himself. Only two days. He said he'd be back after that.
Nezumi had to replenish the ammo Inukashi had expended during Shion's training session, and to do that, he had to raid one of the abandoned buildings out in the wilds past West Block's rickety fence.
"But can't you buy or trade for the ammo in West Block? There has to be some here," Shion had protested. "I've seen other people in town with guns."
"Yes, of course," Nezumi replied. He perched on the edge of the book bench and laced up his boots with vicious speed, as if the black laces were snakes that would bite if he didn't wrangle them in ten seconds flat.
After dragging Shion away from dog washing and dumping a gun and bad news on him, Nezumi had trudged back to the underground room in fantastically bad humor.
"But why would I pay for it if I can find it for free?" Nezumi finished, and dropped his feet to the floor with a muted thump.
Shion hadn't had a response to that. 'Because there are zombies' seemed certain to be met with a scoff and a snarky remark. Nezumi feared nothing, so there was nothing Shion could use to dissuade him.
When Nezumi headed for the door, Shion had blurted, "How long will you be gone?"
"There's a spot with a good stash about a day's walk from here. I should be back in two days if things go smoothly."
If things go smoothly. The words had been rebounding in Shion's head for hours now. What if things didn't go smoothly? How would Shion know? He had to spend the next forty-eight hours holed up in the underground room, worrying.
Nezumi had asked him to stay put until he returned. Shion understood why: his looks made it too dangerous to walk around outside except for in emergencies, and he definitely couldn't go with Nezumi into the Deadlands.
Shion wasn't an idiot; if he could hardly handle West Block, he knew he wouldn't stand a chance outside of it. He had learned how to shoot, but that didn't mean he would be able to pull the trigger when a zombie or two or ten were breathing down his neck. Nezumi might even get hurt trying to protect him when Shion inevitably froze up.
But waiting for Nezumi to return was so much worse. What if that tentative conversation they'd shared a few hours ago was the last he'd ever have with Nezumi? If forty-eight hours slipped by and Nezumi didn't come home, Shion would never know what happened to him, or if his company would have made a life or death difference.
Shion would be all alone in West Block. And then what would he do?
Stop thinking like that. Nezumi's probably done this hundreds of times.
It was obvious from his nonchalance that Nezumi had made the trip into the Deadlands before. He probably picked up supplies from there as often as he could risk it. The houses outside the walls had been abandoned a decade ago, their occupants fled to quarantine zones if they were lucky, or to communities like West Block if they weren't. All sorts of valuables and supplies were just sitting out in ghost towns, waiting to be repurposed by those brave enough to venture out and take them.
Shion felt sick. He hated that he worried every time Nezumi went out that it might be the last time he would see him. He hated No. 6 for leaving them out here to be picked off by hunger, and disease, and zombies, and even each other. He hated that despite trying his best to fit into his new life, he was still pretty much useless.
Shion stared out into the silent room, wondering how long it would be until he'd see the door open again. He dropped his head into his hands and tugged at his hair.
Soft chittering broke Shion from his internal tortures. The three mice scaled his pant leg and rested in a warm pile on his knee. Shion smiled down at them. At least he wasn't completely alone.
"Ah, that reminds me," he muttered.
He had told Inukashi that he would see them tomorrow to finish up the dogs. But that was before he knew Nezumi would be gone. Nezumi didn't want him wandering around, and, in truth, Shion wasn't comfortable walking around town alone just yet. He had to send Inukashi a message to cancel the appointment, with apologies.
"Who wants to deliver a message for me?" Shion asked the mice. Cravat's cheep was the loudest, so Shion awarded her the capsule when he was finished scribbling the message.
"Alright," Shion sighed into the still air.
It was still too early to go to bed, and he felt too restless to sit and read, even though the remaining mice were staring at him like they had hoped for a story.
He had to do something.
Shion had always been the type of person who put himself to work when he was anxious. Back in No. 6, he would help his mother at the bakery, or throw himself into his job at the Park Administration. In West Block, distracting himself usually meant cleaning, or organizing, or asking Nezumi questions until they got into a fight. Anything stimulating, really.
Shion resolved to do some chores he had been putting off, starting with cleaning the bathroom. And tomorrow, since he would have the whole lonely day ahead of him, he'd do laundry. The river wasn't too far from the underground room, so the venture should be safe enough.
Shion pushed himself to his feet, rolled up his sleeves, and grabbed his cleaning gloves.
Shion had trouble sleeping.
The bed was cold. It was too big. The sheets smelled like Nezumi, and he wanted to know if Nezumi had arrived safely at his destination and whether Nezumi was also thinking about him and worrying.
Probably not. Shion pursed his lips and buried his face into the pillow. It also smelled torturously like Nezumi: a mixture of leather, earth, and perfume from his nights at the playhouse.
Shion dozed face down in bed until he woke and had a feeling the sun was properly up. It took a few minutes, but he convinced himself to get out of bed.
He tore the sheets and pillowcase from the mattress and bundled them by the door, then went back to collect the bath towel and dirtied clothes. As he heaped the mound of fabric into his arms, he wished again for Nezumi's return—but this time it was mostly because negotiating a staircase when you couldn't see in front of you was terrifying, and his arms started to ache on the trip over to the river.
Washing, he decided, was a job better done in twos.
The sun sat low in the sky, and was half hidden by sullen clouds. Shion hoped it wouldn't rain again, or snow. The ground was already mucky from last night's shower and he had to be very careful to keep his burden high up in his arms, lest it drag in the mud.
Shion managed to clean everything and haul it back to the warehouse where the staircase to the underground room was hidden. He hung or draped them wherever looked the cleanest so they could dry, and went down to the room again to read for a few hours.
Something scratched the door not ten minutes later. Shion shot up and stared, heart pounding and ears straining. The sound did not come again in the next few seconds. Shion breathed, wondering if he had just imagined the noise, or if perhaps it was just a dry leaf scraping against the ground in the corridor. Then, again: a scratch, followed by a low snuffling noise.
Shion's brows drew together. Sounds like... He rose and crossed the room.
"Hello?" he called. A happy bark answered and Shion's body relaxed.
A light brown dog trotted into the room and wagged its tail when he opened the door. Muddy pawprints tracked on the carpet where it went, but Shion was too curious and happy to see the dog to be mad.
"Hey, boy." Shion gave its head a rub. "What have you got there?"
The dog had a collar around its neck, which was unusual for Inukashi's dogs, but Shion suspected the collar was strapped on for a reason. That reason being the piece of paper tucked into the top.
He pulled the paper out and unfolded it:
you said your coming today so your coming. i dont care if Nezumi left or whatever. dogs need washing. if your scared to walk alone then take this dog with you. hell make sure noone messes with you.
Shion smiled down at the note. He could tell Inukashi worked really hard to write it; the penmanship was thick and shuddering, as if they had pressed the pencil to the paper as hard as they could.
"You're going to be my escort?" he asked the dog.
It barked and spun in a circle, then jumped up and licked Shion's face so fast he hardly knew what happened.
Shion laughed, wiping his cheek on the back of his hand. "Alright, then. I guess I'm keeping my promise today after all."
It was good; Shion liked Inukashi and he was happy to have something useful to kill the hours. He grabbed his coat and gloves, and then paused in front of the faded chair. His holster and gun sat heaped on the cushion.
Nezumi gifted him the holster just as he was leaving the underground room. Pretty much a "Oh, yeah, here" and him chucking the contraption at Shion's face.
"That's a holster," Nezumi said, his body halfway out the open door. "Get used to wearing it, and make sure your gun is in it whenever you go outside. If you die because you left your gun at home, I will hunt down your corpse and use it for target practice."
Then he slammed the door, leaving that mental image to reverberate in Shion's skull for the next half hour.
The dog nosed his hand and trotted toward the door with a low warble, impatient to return to its master. Shion sighed, strapped the holster on, and let the dog lead him out into the morning.
The dog washing session went even better than the first. Before, Shion had been affectionate with, but uncertain of how to handle the dogs, and his washing skills reflected that. But coming into the second session, Shion felt more equal to the task, and to working alongside Inukashi.
He felt like they had bonded the day before, and although Inukashi was still snappy and snarky with him, they were quicker to help him with tasks, and they deigned to share their crackers with him for lunch.
He even got to meet Inukashi's family! As it turned out, the dog that escorted Shion to and from the hotel was Inukashi's younger brother. Shion made sure to afford the dog extra attention, which seemed to please Inukashi, despite their mutterings to the contrary.
Shion had a skip in his step as he walked home, his dog escort trotting friskily at his side. Up until now, his walks to the underground room had always been with Nezumi, and those were filled with chatter. Admittedly, the chatter was ninety-five percent Shion talking out loud, but even the five percent of Nezumi's grumbled responses was welcome company. Walking alone now, with just the dog at his side, Shion realized just how quiet the world was. Occasionally, the wind sent the dried leaves skittering across the hard earth, and once in a while, some structure creaked in the distance, but otherwise: silence.
This far from downtown West Block, you couldn't hear a thing, but Shion wondered now why one couldn't hear the going-on in No. 6. The zone was large, and always filled with warm conversation, children's laughter, the tic-tic-tic of bicycle wheels speeding down its lanes. Shion missed that sometimes: The sound of life being lived. But maybe those happy, carefree sounds could only exist in a bubble. That was not reality; reality was the dead, starved earth outside the wall and the hungry corpses that roamed it.
Shion paused.
He could see the warehouse, no more than a few minutes away, but he heard something more than the wind now. A shrill scream wavered in the air, high and childlike. For a moment, he couldn't be sure if he was hearing things, and when he realized he wasn't, he couldn't be sure if the sound was playful or pleading. Children's screams had that eerie quality to them, where you could never be sure of the emotion behind them until you saw the child's face.
The dog pricked up its ears beside him. Its dark eyes roamed the horizon, and a low growl rumbled in its chest. The hair on the back of Shion's neck prickled. He reached down and rested the tips of his fingers on the holster at his hip. He had seen Nezumi do this so often, he felt a little like an imposter doing it himself.
The dog's low growl crescendoed, and Shion finally saw what it sensed: Two children, a boy and girl, stumbled over the crest of the hill. The girl looked a bit older and had her thin arms wrapped tightly around the younger boy's midsection, dragging him alongside her as fast as she could manage.
It was not very fast; the boy was limping badly and sobbing. The girl seemed to be whispering quickly and constantly to him, and it looked like he was trying his best to heed her urgings, but every time he tried to move faster, his leg buckled and he keened in pain.
A third figure shambled into view. The corpse was tall and man-shaped, and even though it couldn't move quickly, at the pace the children were going, they would not both make it out alive. The girl would, if she left the wounded boy behind, but the strained determination on her face told Shion she would do no such thing.
Shion swallowed. His hands shook as he unclipped his gun and slid it free. But then he just stood there, frozen.
The zombie was moving. Shion had never been taught to shoot a moving target. He had to get closer to shoot with any kind of accuracy. The memory of his training session with Nezumi rose up in his mind, and Shion remembered babbling about how he would just shoot the zombies point blank to avoid ever missing.
He almost laughed out loud at his naivety. Sure, just walk up to a slavering zombie and shoot it in the head. No pressure.
Alright, he talked himself up as he slid the safety. I'll just get the kids to come this way, and when the zombie gets close enough, I'll shoot. Just like target practice. Zombies are slow, and it's not like it's smart enough to dodge. I can do this. I can—
The dog snarled and pelted straight at the zombie.
"No!" Shion shouted.
The zombie paused at the noise and then began shambling again. Its breathing came in quick, ragged gasps as it changed its focus from the children to the dog. If the creature had the capacity for thought or emotion, Shion would have said it sounded excited.
A strangled whimper escaped Shion's throat, but he took off at a run. He would never forgive himself if Inukashi's brother was injured.
"Get inside!" Shion gestured to the warehouse as he passed the children. They stared at him with wide, frightened eyes, but he didn't have time to repeat himself.
The dog snapped at the zombie's legs, jumping back just in time to avoid the creature's clawing hands. Shion's heart pounded. He needed to get the dog out of the fray; he wouldn't be able to get a clean shot in the confusion.
"Stop! Come!" he yelled at the dog.
The zombie swung around and Shion's breath stilled in his chest. It had no eyes at all, just dry brown hollows gaping back at him. Its lips pulled back over its rotted teeth and Shion fired.
Too early. The zombie spun as the bullet clipped its shoulder. It let out a feral hiss. Shion did not breathe and fired again.
The bullet made barely a sound as it punched through the zombie's face just beneath its nose. The zombie stood before him, growling, its face contorted in a rictus of fury.
It's not dead! How can it not be dead?
Bile rose in Shion's throat as he scrambled backward, the gun shaking between them. The zombie took a step toward him—then fell forward with a dusty whump.
Shion sucked in a breath and stared down the corpse—now well and truly a corpse. He did it. He killed it.
Shion turned his face and vomited into a cluster of weeds. He hadn't had much to eat, so thankfully there wasn't much to throw up, but his throat and eyes burned.
The dog came to his side and licked his hand as though trying to console him. Or maybe it was to urge him to stay present. He had just fired two gunshots into the quiet of West Block; he needed to hide before anything else came to investigate.
Shion staggered to the warehouse. Something moved in the shadows, just behind the sheets he'd hung out to dry. He snapped the gun back up.
"Wait!"
The little girl jumped out, shielding the boy from the line of fire. Shion gasped and lowered the gun's aim to the ground.
"I'm sorry! I-I didn't…" He had forgotten about the children.
The girl eyed him. "It's okay," she said at last. "I'm sorry we scared you."
"Is your friend alright? He's hurt, isn't he?"
The girl bit her lip and moved aside. The boy sat on a fallen beam, clutching his ankle. There was some blood peeking out from between his fingers.
"Was he—"
"He wasn't bitten," the girl snapped. "He fell and hurt himself."
"Okay… Let me see," Shion said. He crouched down and waited.
The boy glanced up at the older girl. She nodded and he carefully uncurled his fingers from his ankle. The pressure in Shion's chest eased. It was just a scrape, as the girl had said. The bleeding had almost stopped, but the skin was bruising purple. He might have sprained or broken the bone.
The dog wandered over from sniffing in some dark corner and began to sniff at the boy instead. Shion remembered then that Inukashi had trained all the dogs to smell the infection, and that if the boy had been bitten, the dog would have alerted him of the danger by now.
The boy flinched back from the dog's questing muzzle. But once he realized it meant no harm, he reached out and pet its side, a soft sort of wonder in his eyes.
"I have a first aid kit in my room," Shion said. "I can't promise I'll be very good—I'm not a doctor—but I can clean the wound and wrap it up so the smell of blood isn't so obvious."
The boy and girl stared at him. Not suspiciously, exactly, but there was an element of discomfort. They were probably not used to kindnesses, and perhaps their parents had warned them off trusting strangers.
"You don't have to," Shion said. "But you should stay in here for a bit. I'm not sure if the noise will attract more zombies."
The boy paled. The girl gnawed her lip and stared down at the floor. "Okay," she said at length. "If you could wrap it so they can't smell the blood... Thank you."
Shion smiled. "Of course. Do you need help getting him down the stairs?"
"Stairs?"
"Oh. Right. Uh…"
Shion considered whether he should reveal the hidden stairway to the underground room. But then, he had already invited them, so he couldn't help it now. Besides, they didn't seem like any kind of threat.
He pushed the part of the wall to open the secret passage. The kids' lips parted in awe.
"Cool," murmured the boy.
Shion laughed. "It's dark down there. I'll help you carry him."
He and the girl each took one of the boy's arms and shouldered him toward the staircase.
"I'm Shion, by the way."
"My name's Karan. And this is my brother Rico."
"Karan?" Shion's mouth popped open. "That's my mom's name, too!"
Karan's brows drew together and said nothing. Obviously, she didn't find this as exciting as Shion did, but he didn't mind.
It felt like fate now that he should have run into the children and saved them from the zombie. Perhaps it was a gift brought on by his mother's prayers: though they were far apart, she would always be with him.