JGSDF 8th Division HQ, Kumamoto

I sat infront of a large office table and sitting across the table is my next interviewee, Captain Erika Itsumi, a tank commander and an officer of the newly reformed western tank army unit of the JGSDF after it had previously disbanded during the war. The unit is a shadow of it's former self with many of it's tank were being sold or turn into scrap metal and only have barely enough soldiers to kept it operational.

She took a deep breath before recounting her story while i wait patiently for her to began.

"I was in my first year of collage in Tokyo when it all started for me. It was early May, a hospital near my campus is treating several dozen infected individual when one day, some of them escape and started biting anyone that crosses their path and by the end of the week, we start to get a few infected cases inside the campus ground. The campus ignore it at first, this is the time when everybody still thought that solanum is just a new form of rabies, so no one bat an eye when campus authority just told the infected student that "didn't reanimate" to stay in their dorm room."

"What about those who had reanimate?"

"Usually the infected student that were already reanimate was found by their fellow student, who then will report them to the campus, the campus then will call ambulance to bring them to a hospital, sometimes with police escort, but they won't shoot them, they just taze them, and of course it didn't do anything as the undead didn't feel pain. Sometimes when the reanimate students were found, they manage to bite a people or two, adding to the list of infected. But the campus won't send these newly bitten victim to the hospital as they thought only some infected and not all will turn "rabbit" they thought as most of them had been vaccinated by phalanx. Because of this poor handling of the outbreak by the campus, if you can call it that, by the middle of May, there are a few dozens of undead students roaming around the campus ground."

"What did the survivors do during that time?"

"Hiding. That's the best option we have to survive at the time. We would hide in every place we could find and once we found a hiding place, no one dared to leave its safety unless abseloutly necessary. On my case, my dormitory was the option. My dorm room was in the top floor of a five story building and there's isn't many students lived on the top floor, i think it was only me, my three roommates and twenty other girls."

"We fortified the elevators and the stairs with makeshift barricade made out of wood planks, old couchs, chairs, tables and was bind together by nails and ducktapes. Our plans at the time was to wait it out until this whole things went away. To wait for a cure to found or something. Even then we still believe that its only rabies."

"That perception of ours was soon shattered on the 29th of May when an American journalist reveal the true nature of the virus to the world. That's when all hell broke loose. Suddenly the news is now filled with footage of the undead wrecking havocks wherever they go. News about new outbreak soon become the main story for weeks, and because we're in Tokyo, it was chaos in it's purest form. Looting is becoming a common thing, riot police and the army was called in to restore order. They were successful at first, on the first month both the army and the police force manage to restore order by enforcing martial law. In some distric things have gone back to somewhat normal and the people of Japan thought that this will be over in a few months at most. But i guess us and them got too complacent as just two weeks after things seem to get back to normal, all hell breaks loose. Looting and robbery become a common thing, we started to armed ourself after we got rob for the first time. He was a janitor at the campus and figure, mostly with a makeshift spear made out of kitchen knife taped to the end of a broomstick to fend of against looters and the zombies, as the media calls them."

"We all hunkered down in our dorm for weeks. A few times we were forced to leave the safety of our dorm to look for food I was hoping and praying that it was all just a nightmare, that before i knew it, i would wake up in my bed, probably late for my exam, it would be a hundred times better than the current situation. But obviously, my prayer went unanswed. We watch TV almost religiously to gained as many information as possible about the undead when the power and Tv station were still operational. And needless to say, the content that the TV has to offer didn't really boost our morale, nor confidance. We watch everything as the world falls apart. We watch the lived broadcast of the US army defeat at the battle of Yonkers, the fall of Cape Town, The Iran-Pakistani war, even the footage of our own air force dropping bomb on our own soil and so much more stuff that made us loose hope in humanity."

"When the powered went out, we used battery powered radio to listen to the news. That was when all hope is lost for Tokyo. After loosing nearly 1/3 of it's population in a month, the JSDF bacame desperate to contain the outbreak. They began to shoot anyone that was suspected to be infected without even comfirming it first. But even with all that, it wasn't enough to stop the dead from rising. I guess the goverment also realized this. Two weeks after the first bomb land on the streets of Tokyo, the prime minister came out with the order to evacuate the home island."

"What were your reaction when you hear that news."

"I was shock of course, we all are. We knew the situation is dire, but this? There's just no way in hell this was happening. But, it sooned dawned on us that this is for real."

"And when is that?"

"When the bombing become more intense. First, it happend once every few weeks, then it was three bombs drop a week, then every day, and finally, Tokyo felt like it experience an earthquake every single minutes. The bombing just won't stop. I guess when it finally click for all of us that this actually happend. We debate for a long time of what our next move will be. One girl suggested that we hunker down in our dorm, another girl suggested we leave for Fuji mountain and wait it out there, surviving on it's natural resources. The former was rejected unanimously, hunker down in this hellhole we used to call city is the same as signing our own death warrant."

"We did consider the latter, but we shot that down that idea as well. Although surviving on the mountain might seem like a great idea, when you look into it, it really wasn't. For once, none of us had any experience of surviving in the wild for an extended period of time. Sure we've gone camping once or twice, but doing it months, if not years at a time? Yeah all of us would die either from starvation, food poisoning or hypothermea. Later on, after we learned of what happend to those who flee for the mountains, hearing the stories from survivors who witness the barbarism of what transpired among the refugees, we know we made the right call."

"After much consideration, we decided that our best course of action is to go to the various evacuation point set up by the army. The question is, which one we would go too? There are only one evacuation zones inside of Shibuya, where i was at, because it's so infested the JSDF didn't think it was worth it to set up multiples evacuation zone. So that leaves us with two option. The first one is go to Shibuya crossing street, you know the giant crosswalk, which is the nearest evacuation point from our location and by far the most dangerous, as it's the only evacuation point in all of Shibuya. That means there would be tons of people flooding there waiting to be rescued, and of course, if there's a large group of people gather in one spot that means zombies won't be far behind. Our second option is to reach another evacuation zone outside of Shibuya that will likely to have less people flocking into it. After much more consideration, we decided our best chance of escaping is to go for an evacuation zone in Tokyo bay where the navy would bring us to their ships."

"After we esthablish where would we go, we spent two more days making plans of escape. We looked at the maps of Tokyo over and over again to find the best and safest way to reach our destination. We look at every streets, every alleyways and every sewer system that might lead us to our destination. We also spend time to prepare ourself physically and mentally, when one of us isn't looking over maps, we would do basic exercise like push ups or jumping jack to make sure we have the stamina to run when things go south, or we would do something to calm our mind like meditating or read a book so we would be calm under pressure."

"We'd also pack our bags with the essential, water, first aid, foods, though we didn't pack a lot on the last one as we didn't expect to be out in the open for a long time."

"Finally, after two days of preperation, the time comes for us to leave. We armed ourself with our makeshift spears, baseball bats and fireman axe. We cover our arms and legs with old magazines wrap in ducktapes to protect ourself from bites and other hazards. After that, we all took a collective deep breath and took our first step towards our salvation."

"There are twenty four of us, and marching together to the evacuation point with a group that large isn't really practical. So we decided to split into three smaller groups, and each groups would take a different route so we can reach the evacuation point faster. I was a leader of my groups, the position were given to me pretty much unanimously as i had been a vice-commander and then the commander of the Kuromorimine sensado team so it was really a no brainer why they choose me. My friend Kuome also choosen as a leader of her group because she'd been my vice commander back in Kuromorimine."

"Before we split up, we bid each other goodbye an wished everyone good luck before leaving for our respective route. My group went with the most straight forward route, it's risky but it's the quickest route there is. We tried our best to avoid the streets since it's very infested. We would used short cuts by going through alleyways and abandoned buildings when we can and only used the streets when abseloutly necessary. We encountered a lot of infected along the way, we try our best to avoid most of them when we can since out of eight of us, only five carry a weapon. But perriodically, like once every twenty meters there will one or two, sometimes even five that got into our way that we couldn't ignore and were forced to take out."

"I remember the first zombie i took out, i remember every detail of it like it happend yesterday. We just left the campus ground and as soon as we step our foot onto the street, we immidietly encounter a small pack, around fifteen to twenty. As soon as they notice us, we booked it across the street, jumping over cars, squeezing our way through road blocks and all the while trying the best we can to stay together. I then spot a building just a few meters away with a door that looks sturdy and its open. I called out to my groups to follow me as i ran for the open door. When i reach the door, i stayed to make sure every one of my group reach the building safely before i closed the door. After i felt everyone had enter the building, i did a head count and my heart drop when i notice one of them is missing. I look out to the street and saw the missing girl. She's one of the older ones in our group, but she lacks the confidance that a 21 year old should have. I saw her getting pinned down on a hood of car by a zombie that's actually smaller than her. She could've fight back, but i guess she's to frightened to do anything about it. I told the rest of my group to wait at the door as i rushed at the zombie that was about to bite my friend. Just before it could sunk its teeth on her cheek, i bashed him across the face with a baseball bat, sending him flying backwards and drop dead into the concrete. I yelled at her to run as i bashed another approching zombie head. After that, i tucked tail and ran for the safety of the building."

"I ran back to the building and closed the door shut behind me. It was a fire escape door made out of steel, so it was sturdy to hold of the incoming zombies. After i lock the door behind me, i look over to the girl i just saved and saw her curled up in a fetal position and the others are surrounding trying to snap her out of her trance. I pushed the others aside and shook her to snap her out of it, but she wouldn't budge. Finally, as a last resort, i slap her across the face. That did the trick, she snap out of her trance, i then yelled at her to get her act together or else, i would leave her behind for the zombies. Now you might think that it sound cruel to said that someone that weak and vulnerable to be left alone, but it is necessary. We only cross a street and she almost get herself killed. We still need to cross many streets to reach the evacuation point. If she want to make it, than she need to get her act together."

"After that i lead my group to some back alley as a short cut. It follows the same path as the main road, so we didn't have to worry much about navigating the alley. Once or twice we have to cross the main road and were forced to kill a few of the living dead that got to close to us. The girl that i saved, Kiyomi ran away each time. That near death experience really shook her up that she refused to help us take out a few zombies before moving on, even though she holds a weapon."

"I think it was three hours after we left the campus that we have our first encounter with a swarm. We took cover in an abandoned apartment building. We were about to move on to our next destination when one of the girl, Mei notices that the road were full of zombies. We climb up the apartment building to get a scope of the situation and we're baffled at what we saw. There were thousands of them, just streching for kilometers in this unholy ocean of walking corpses. We look for an opening for us to slip over but found none. At this point we were exhausted, we've been running and fighting the undead for hours now with little room to rest. After seeing that horde, we knew that we needed more energy to escape the horde. So we did just that, we took 30 minutes to rest and recover our energy before we starts moving again."

"We drink some water, eat our snacks and even took a quick nap to recover our energy. After that, we're back on business. We know we couldn't possibly sneak past the swarm using the road. We could however sneak past them from underneath. We enter the sewer system through an open manhole outside of the building. We manage to climb down the sewer undetected, and let me tell you, it smells like shit down there. I mean obviously, it's a sewer afterall, but man it smells a whole lot worse than i ever imagine. Its not only shit that's lurking around down there, there's also the telltale smells of rotting corpses. We then light up our torches to illuminate the darkness."

"Torch? Why not use flashlight?"

"All of them had ran out of batteries, and we have no means to charge them. The power had been out for weeks, remember? Torch is more practical than try to find a new flashlight in this whole chaos. We made our torches using broken broomsticks and old underwears/bra that nobody uses as the cloth and we use hair spray as the fuel to light them up."

"Walking through a literal piles of shit in the pitch dark was no vacation. But it is much better than trying to dodge zombies teeth every couple of meters. Trying to navigate the sewer though is a nightmere on its own. Trying to read maps in almost zero visibility condition is next to impossible. Sure we have torches to illumunate the darkness, but we have to be extra careful with it. It's not a flashlight where you could point everywhere with no effect on your surrounding. You had to be careful with torches, point it on the wrong direction and you'll might risk of burning your friends face or your own. Another girl, Kimura accidentally light her own hair own fire because she's not careful with her torch. She panic and drop her torch in the process while also smelling awful after dunking her head on the piss infested waters to put out the fire."

"Keeping the torches lit up is another challenge of its own. The wet and humid nature of the sewer system makes it difficult to maintain the flames from extinguishing. If one of our torches shown signs of dying down, we would add in an additional cloth and spray it with more hair spray to keep the fire going, we do it with caution of course. Still, doing that in the best of condition is hard enough, doing it inside the damp and dark sewer is near impossible. By the time we reach our "exit," mine is the only one that still on."

"After we climb out out of the sewer, the first thing we did is to find a shelter, we found it in a form of an abandoned book store. After we closed all entrance leading into the store, i let my groups rest while i check the map. That's when i realized we had made a terrible mistake. We had come out on the wrong exit and now we are of course by five kilometers."

She seemed to anticipate my next question, she made a 'shush' noise so i wouldn't interrupt her.

"I know what you're thinking. "Oh how did you got lost that bad?" Well, try to read a goddamn map in a zero visibility condition surrounded by a group of scared and anxious people and didn't know what's going on around you. I dare you, if you manage to do the same thing without getting lost then i'll owed you 900,000 yen."

After she's done with her little rant, Erika took a deep breath to regain her composure.

"I debated with myself for a few minutes on wheather or not i should tell the group. If they knew that we had spent a full hour walking in a dark and cramped sewer just to get lost would hurt their morale. But i decided it was best that they learned it now rather than hide it for them to find it later and 'cause a bigger problem for all of us."

"What were they're reaction to you coming clean?"

"The kind of reaction you'd expect. There were a lot of swearing and groaning and a lot of griping, i couldn't really blame them really, we've been walking almost none stop for over seven hours and to find out that you're heading at the wrong direction this whole time will put everyone in a bad mood. I let them gripe as their heart pleased, that's the least i could do for them for getting our self lost."

"As the sun began to set on the horizon, i decided that it is best to let the group rest for the night and continue our journey tomorrow morning. When night falls, i couldn't sleep, i was to busy thinking which route to take and made sure that we didn't ended up lost again. That's when i feel a tap on my shoulder, i look up to see my roommate, Kiko standing next to me. I ask her if she need anything. She said she had an idea of what to do next. By this point, i'm exhausted so i'm open to any ideas. Her plan was, instead of heading for the evacuation point like originally planned, we instead should headed for a hotel not far from here and headed for the rooftop and set up some sort of signal there to attract nearby helicopter. I ask her how are we suppose to make a signal, she just smirk and open her bagpack and reveals that she's been carrying fireworks this entire time. I ask her where she get them, she said she found them in one of the store we hide in earlier in the day. I consider her plan, the change of a helicopter seen us is pretty good since we've seen them flying overhead countless times in the last few weeks, it wasn't a bad plan, not at all, in fact it was practical considering our current circumstance. I then proposed her ideas to the rest of the group and they all agree to take our chances."

"The next morning, just before sunrise we made our move. We left the bookstore as quietly as possible as not to alert any zombies in the area. We were quiet, but the city were not, we could hear their sounds though, their eary moaning sounds was echoing all over the city, the sound of a loud explotion followed by the roars of figther jets, the distant sounds of gunfire served as an excelent distraction for us, almost every zombies in our street block ended up heading for the direction where the gunfire was coming from."

"We reach the hotel without any hitch. There were a few zombies inside the lobby, we take out a few of them and avoid the rest. This is a five star hotel and it has sixty different levels, easily over 130 meters in height, which makes it an ideal spot to make a signal. The problem was, the thing that made it and ideal spot for us also turn into the biggest inconvinience. Like i said, the hotel had over sixty floors, and since electricity had been out for over five weeks, so that means elevator no longer works, and that means we have to climb, on foot to the rooftop using stairs."

"The only stairs that lead up to the rooftop were the fire exit, and you know how fire exit is. Dark, cramp, humid and had a very creepy thing going on with it. Luckily though, this time we didn't have to use torch, we found some flashlight on the security guard post and used it to navigate the dark stairway. None of us dared to even attempt to look down after we past the 5th floor. Climbing all those stairs really drained our energy, we felt more tired climbing those stairs than we did from walking all day from yesterday, maybe it was because we were climbing instead of walking straight and added to the fact that all of us are still exhausted from yesterday and the anxiety of the dark really put a strain on our mind. We took sometimes rest every seven floors. It took us over two hours to reach the top."

"Two hours, why so slow?"

"It's because of Kimura, the girl i saved from being eaten the day before. The minute we began to climb the stairs, she suddenly began complaining of feeling dizzy and lightheaded. I put my hand against her temple and right then i knew she had a fever, a bad one at that. I could feel my hand burning just from touching her. Because of this, it was difficult for her to walk, so we were forced to walk at her pace. After floor number twenty two, she's too weak to walk and we all had to take turn carrying her. If it weren't for her, we would reach the rooftop in thirty minutes."

"There were also the part where we slowed down not because of her, rather it was because of the bombing going on outside. Each time a jet drop a bomb nearby, the whole building would shook with a force that resamble an earthquake. We couldn't see them, but we sure as hell we could hear them flying by and dropping their loadout on the horde bellow. One jet drop it's bomb so close to our building that it shook it with such a force that made us to afraid to move for twenty minutes."

"After we reach the rooftop, Kiko prepare to set up the fire works while the rest of us sat down to catch our breath after the long journey. We drink our water and eat some snacks. After finally reaching daylight, we finally had a good look on Kimura's face and it wasn't good, her fever had worsen and her face are pale as a ghost, she's barely consious and mumbling in gibberish. I got a hold on her face and force her to focus, i told her as soon as we reach safety there will be doctor's there waiting for her."

"Then we heard the telltale sound of a helicopter blades chopping through the air. We all look over the skyline and saw a Chinook helicopter fyling nearby. Kiko hastily light up the fuse of the fire works and aimed it into the air. When the fireworks went off, we saw the Chinook divert its way towards us. At that we started cheering and hugging and high-fiving each other. We were so happy that we're finally leaving this godforsaken city."

"Once the Chinook pulled up we could see that there are at least five more people onboard, not counting the crews. Me and Kiko boarded first, we then turn around to help get Kimura into the helicopter, then followed by the rest. Once each one of us had boarded the helicopter, the Chinook takes off and flies of into Tokyo bay where the ships are waiting. I remember feeling a wave of relief washing over me, finally, we were safe. I knew that the future was uncertain for us, but at that time, i didn't really care, i'm just glad that i survived."

"But then, i notice Kimura started to squirm like she's gonna throw up, her face are even paler than before and she's drifting in and out of consciousness. I look around and see two of the helicopter crew, a door gunner and a medic. I flag the medic down to check on her. When the medic came to check on her, i hear him gasp. Before i could ask what was wrong, he pick her up and threw her out of the helicopter."

"I saw that, everyone in the helicopter saw that, but none of us says anything at first, just shock at what we just witnessed. Suddenly, i felt rage building up inside my chest, i grab my baseball bat and hit him in the head with such a force that it made a dent on his helmet. I then grab him by the collar of his jacket and yelled at his face why the hell would he do that. I look into his face expecting him to get defensive or angry, but there's only the look of resignation on his face. He muttered his response so softly that no one but me heard what he just said. She was bitten."

"Then it all finally clicked for me. It all make sense now. But what didn't wasn't make sense is how none of us notice it, or why would she hide it from us. I still ask myself that same question 'till this day. I let go of the medic and slump down, i had my eyes fixed at the open cargo door, admiring the sight of Tokyo as it's getting smaller and smaller each second. Even though it was now nothing but a dead city, i somehow find the sight to be beautiful."