You know, I (and I'm fairly sure a robust percentage of the fandom) have kind of joked in the past about how the Hinamizawa Club would totally knock a zombie apocalypse out of the park, but upon writing this prompt, I've come to the conclusion that actually…the ENTIRE community of Hinamizawa would kill it in a zombie apocalypse, metaphorically speaking. I mean, they're in the rural ass-end of nowhere, so practically everyone already knows how to grow their own food/be self-sufficient already, and they have an intensely strong community spirit of solidarity that would let them band together to solve problems, and they have a fully-staffed clinic that is literally already run by scientists with experience in detangling a complex and unknown virus THAT ALSO have access to high-tech (eh, 1983 high-tech) equipment, AND there probably wouldn't be too many zombies in the area at all, since their region is sparsely populated and Japan cremates their dead. Like literally, name me a population that would be more incidentally prepared to handle a zombie apocalypse than these guys. I'll wait.
June 27th, 2022
"Go around!" Mion cried from her place high above the mud-spattered, much-dented Jeep that they had commandeered, leveling her gun –a real gun, replacing the airsoft model that had been holstered at her shoulder for so long– at the approaching mob. "Go around!"
A gunshot blasted through the air, and one of the zombies staggering after Keiichi and Rena collapsed into the dirt, a bullet perfectly buried in its brain. They paid it no mind, even as its rotting hands clutched at their heels –they were too busy pounding through the dirt of the road, dragging a semiconscious man between them as his head lolled on his shoulders.
"Jus' leave me…" he groaned in despair. It was likely that the only thing keeping him upright was his arms looped around her and Keiichi's neck respectively, and Rena could feel the sweat soaking through his sleeves as the man panted in an agony of fear. "Just go…"
"No!" she cried, surging forward with her partner. "No one gets left behind!"
"Damn straight!" Mion shouted, and slapped her hand twice against the bar she was straddling. "C'mon, Shion! Let's get this baby in gear and get outta here!"
Mion's twin in the driver's seat savagely cranked the stick shift as Rena and Keiichi bolted towards the Jeep with a hoard of zombies on their trail. The engine rumbled and roared to life as the Jeep began to vibrate frantically, the other survivors shouting and gesturing or watching with sweaty hands clenched on their perch as Keiichi and Rena ran towards them with the man. This was going to be close: they needed to reach the vehicle before the zombies reached them, and Shion needed to floor the gas and get them out of here before the zombies could swarm the Jeep.
Rena was first, and her booted foot hit the edge of the Jeep as she used the bumper as a stepping stone to bodily launch herself up into the car, dragging the man with a broken leg and Keiichi behind her like the man had briefly become a living rope between them.
They tumbled in a heap into the backseat of the Jeep, and Shion punched it as soon as she heard the thumps, the great metal beast beneath them roaring and leaping forward as its tires spun in the dirt. Aiming carefully as she wrapped her legs around the thick bars that served as a roof, Mion squinted and shot out the brains of several zombies that had managed to hitch a ride on the back, intentionally or otherwise, and Keiichi grabbed a dangling strap and hauled himself to his knees, reaching for the metal bat slung over his back as he prepared to do the same in the front. If he focused on defending them, knocking aside any zombies that threatened them from the front, Shion could focus on the extremely important task of driving.
Luckily, this time, there was no need for that, and Rena sighed as she, too, unwound herself from their wide-eyed burden, who was drawn into an equally-disbelieving and euphoric embrace by his friends as they clustered together in the Jeep's disorganized seating. After the world had –not to put too fine a point on it– gone to hell in a handbasket, commercial vehicles like this had been plundered, and the Jeep Mion had found on one of their lengthier excursions had been no exception. Most of its equipment had been taken, right down to the cushions on the seats, but that didn't matter to Mion and her club. It had solid suspension and a boxy shape that was difficult for uncoordinated zombies to climb, and that made it invaluable for scouting and rescue missions.
Rena well remembered the chaos and the panic as the world slowly fell apart. Oceania had been one of the last to crumble –not the least because most of the populations here were on islands– but doom had come upon them, soon enough. Having a culture that broadly cremated the dead did nothing to save you when there were exceptions, or when an infected soul managed to cross the ocean before they changed.
Japan had been late to fall to the zombie plague that swept the world like an apocalypse, but it had fallen all the same. Hinamizawa, too.
Or, well, perhaps not. They had known, of course, what was coming –how could they not, when they saw the vast metropolises of other nations overrun by the walking dead on live TV as one nation after the other went dark? Hinamizawa had damn well known what was coming to them. Rena shuddered even now, as she thought of how fear had tightened the stomach of everyone she knew when the news hit that there had been a zombie case on the mainland island of Japan. Panic didn't even begin to describe the ensuing chaos.
But then, roaring out like a dragon amongst the crowd that had gathered at the shrine, Mion's grandmother. Kimiyoshi and Rika were with her, all of the Three Families, and concerned Sonozakis had swirled around Oryou like fish when she staggered back after that one titan's shout, grey-faced. Concerned for her safety –but also their own, and Rena saw plenty of hands tucked into suit jackets, wondering –fearing– the grey pallor that would overtake Oryou Sonozaki completely before she lunged at them with snaggling teeth.
But she wasn't dying, just exhausted. With a thin, croaking voice, half-collapsed in the arms of her bodyguards, Oryou Sonozaki had lectured them as Rena's grip eased on the rock she had found and she felt her friends relax beside her.
Hinamizawa was a place of solidarity, Oryou had said. If one hit them, two would hit back, and now, when the entire world seemed poised to crash down on them like an avalanche, they needed that solidarity more than ever. They could survive this, she said. They could weather the storm.
Kimiyoshi had stepped forward next, spreading his arms and talking. They knew how to grow enough food to feed the whole village, he said, and there was a clean river running through Hinamizawa. They had houses for shelter, the knowledge and the resources to repair them in the nearby forest. As long as they kept any infected from coming to the village, they could survive indefinitely. More than that, they could even perhaps thrive.
Rika, tiny and delicate as a sylph, had stepped forward last. They had a clinic, she said as Doctor Irie's shoulders straightened and a fire came into his hazel eyes. They had doctors who could help them, people who could defend Hinamizawa with the skills they had learned. She didn't say the Sonozakis, didn't say how Mion's father was a yakuza man who had a number of weapons stockpiled and a swath of men who knew how to use them, but she didn't have to. Everyone was thinking of it. Maybe, with enough time, not only would they be able to survive and thrive, but they would be able to fix this.
Rena hadn't been the only one to leave that meeting with her chin held high and determination replacing the panic that had curled tight in her belly.
So Hinamizawa's preparations had begun, and when the walking dead had finally staggered their way to the mountains of Gifu, they had been ready. Trees were already felled, barricades were already built, because rather than waiting for the apocalypse to come to them, the communities of Hinamizawa and Okinomiya had preemptively cut their ties with the outside world and settled back to wait the apocalypse out.
In a way, Rena had to giggle a little bit, because Satoko had gone from village pariah to a venerated community leader in a matter of weeks, never far from their outer defenses and never without at least two or three followers trailing behind her, eager and in some cases desperate to hear her wisdom.
Traps with warning signs, so that the illiterate zombies would tumble right into them but living survivors would be able to walk past. Noisemaker traps, that let them know what was coming from which direction, and an absolute minefield of pitfalls and rope-traps around the rice fields, currently the most precious places in all the village. Everyone had a kind word to say about Satoko these days, a grateful blessing for the clever little girl who almost singlehandedly revolutionized their defenses. Not a single zombie had even reached their barricades yet, and everyone that Rena knew laid that unique, unprecedented, and as far as anyone knew unequaled success directly at Satoko's feet.
But having food and shelter and water and safety wasn't enough. Not by their lights.
No, Rena and her friends weren't simply the ones to give up and wait for things to be better. As Mion had said, the world hadn't ended, it had just changed in a catastrophic way. And if they couldn't help other people, what good would their survival be? If the world was splintered into countless groups of two or three or four humans, it was only a matter of time before the walking dead overwhelmed them all and caused the extinction of the human race. Even if Hinamizawa was safe in perpetuity, even if they maintained their new haven for a thousand years, they'd have to worry about inbreeding a few generations down the line.
Quite simply, they needed to gather more people, to coalesce all those last flecks of surviving humanity and take them into the strong fortress that they had made.
So, the exterior corps were born. Gasoline was at premium –they needed it to run farming equipment as well as cars–and so most of their early work was fairly simple, taking place on bikes or feet. Carrying crackling two-way radios, Mion and her club, as well as some of the yakuza from Mion's family –and, oddly enough, men from a landscaping company in Okinomiya– would walk beyond the confines of the barricades, slowly and carefully mapping out the region as far as it could be mapped on foot or by bike. They found where the zombies tended to congregate, how they traveled, what the lay of the land was like in the areas around Hinamizawa, and how all of the above changed from season to season.
Once they had the terrain firmly mapped, their rescue work started to amp up a bit. Signs were made and posted, scattered to every direction around the buffer zone and barricades around the village. Acting on Satoko's advice, Rena and the others had planted those signs in every conceivable path that a human or vehicle might take, bearing a simple message in every language that the members of the community knew.
SAFE HAVEN AHEAD
SIGN POSTED: XX/19XX
Directions followed, and it was the work of the exterior corps to update the signs about once every month, washing away the dirt and mud, adding a new line in a different language, or just updating the date on the sign itself. People needed to know that they were recent, that this was a shelter that had still held out even after all this time.
Another thing that they did in the beginning –and up to a certain point, even now– was zombie retrieval and processing. That was a dangerous, dangerous job, but it had to be done, nonetheless: the mountains were mostly clear of the walking dead, but the leaders of Hinamizawa intended to keep it that way. Rena had gone on several such missions in the past, usually with a man named Okonogi, to clear out a nest. Taking every advantage of their ability to climb trees and other obstacles, their group had twirled and thrown bolas at the zombies they had found, bringing them down by the legs and then closing in to carefully bind and restrain their arms –and then, last of all, muzzle them.
Despite the way that Mion had shot the zombies off of their Jeep, it was not common practice. Not in Hinamizawa, at least: Rena had heard stories of plenty of people that shot first and asked questions never, when it came to the walking dead. They were too preoccupied with survival to think of anything else, and Rena couldn't fault them for it. Indeed, that was what they did, on rescue missions like this one. The survival of the group was more important than treating the zombies with respect.
But generally, they treated the walking dead with respect, and not just because Irie and his crew needed test subjects. These things had once been people, and there was every chance that someday, a cure might be found, and they might be returned to normal. After binding and muzzling the zombies that they found roaming the mountains, the exterior corps dragged them to one of the empty office buildings in the abandoned areas of Okinomiya –now painted with an alarming host of warning signs about what was inside– and left them there. The zombies would writhe and groan through their muzzles, nominally confined, for however long it took before they began to rot, or before someone found a cure. Either way, they could do no harm, not to themselves and not to anyone else.
But when painting the signs and confining the zombies had been done, the exterior corps still had a job to do. They still had to find survivors.
And that was what Rena and her friends were doing right now. They'd been given a Jeep, a month's worth of supplies, and as many cans of gas as would fit in the Jeep with room for them and any survivors they found, and headed out on the roads. Day by day, week by week, month by month, they mapped out the prefecture, finding and rescuing anyone and everyone they could, and writing messages everywhere they stopped, pointing the way back to safety.
They always picked up everyone they found on the way. Some places shot strangers on sight, or killed anyone who was infected, but such was not the way in Hinamizawa. Instead, every person they found was ushered under guard to the Irie Clinic, then asked if they had been infected, and then strip-searched to make sure. If you were bitten and admitted it when asked, you would be confined, treated comfortably until you underwent the change, and then studied with all due and proper caution. If you weren't infected, you'd continue on through processing.
Only if you were infected, and you lied about it when asked, were you killed –and you were killed on the spot. No exceptions.
It was simple, but effective. In Hinamizawa, the dead were respected –even if the dead weren't keen on reciprocating that– and those who were bitten but still living when they entered the community retained their human dignity to the last. Doctor Irie and his people needed samples from which to try and find a cure, and patients to actually test cures on, and Rena had seen the small flock of zombies, safely confined deep beneath the clinic. They were muzzled and chained to the ground like dogs, their clawing hands safely encased in mitten-like rubber wrappings, but other than that, they were treated kindly enough. Irie and his scientists even washed their clothes and brushed their hair for them, and allowed visitations from their occasional surviving friends or family, as long as an armed guard accompanied the visitor.
Yes, Hinamizawa treated their refugees well, all things considered. But the one thing they couldn't afford was liars, was people who would put their own safety over everyone else's, despite knowing what a bitten and infected person could do to a community if they changed suddenly and without warning. Someone like that could not be allowed within a sanctuary, and the people of Hinamizawa certainly wouldn't allow such bad apples into theirs.
But for now, with the Jeep chugging its way noisily down the road, Rena tightened her slightly-grubby white hat (everyone was making do, and that meant less soap) on her head and sat tall, keeping an eye out for any stragglers –human, or otherwise.
9.58 AM, USA Central Time
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