Day 402, 6:15 PM
Forest
Pulling up next to a tree, Kaminari looks ahead and waits for his eyes to adjust before setting his feet down on the dirt ground. He holds a hand up, letting her know it's okay for Jirou to lean over the bike without the risk of falling. He checks to make sure the headlight is off before he leans forward again.
Zombies continued to stagger up and down the road only fifty feet away but compared to the intersection, there were few and far between and a lot of gaps to ride through. After Jirou spots what Kaminari sees, she taps him on the shoulder.
"What do you see? Is there an opening?"
"Uhh, I'm not sure, Jirou. I mean, there are a lot of zombies. I mean a lot."
"Okay."
"No, I mean a lot."
"And I said 'okay', okay?" She looks around. "Look, I can't believe I'm saying this but... I'm putting this choice in your hands, Kami."
He looks at her with an accusatory look. "Excuse me, punk rock girl, what?"
"Yeah, you heard me. We're kinda on a time limit here."
"We got plenty of time; it's still six o'clock. We got what, a little more than twelve hours to make the delivery."
"Not just that but look." She points to the sky. "In just a few minutes, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, it's going to be dark and we won't be able to see for shit. The longer we wait, the more visibility we lose and the more likely we are to crash into zombies. We gotta clear the streets fast and we need to clear all roads leading to the intersection before nightfall, got it?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess so." He looks ahead and flexes his knuckles. "But, man, I'm so nervous. Maybe we should've stayed with Kuroiro and-"
She slaps him upside the head. "Dude, focus, Kuroiro is busy with his own thing, pay attention. Come on, cross the road when you feel like it, okay?"
He nods hesitantly. "Okay. I trust you, I trust me."
As much as Kaminari wanted to silence his bike, he could only do so by turning it off completely. Dragging it forward... or wheeling it forward across the street to the other side of the forest was not an option because a horde that big was bound to have runners and they needed to keep their distance between the zombies as distant as possible. He keeps his bike turned on before pulling the throttle.
He rides forward, careful not to hit any trees, and navigates as best as he can without the headlight. He stops only ten feet away from the road with some zombies turning in his direction.
Jirou slaps his back.
"Idiot, if you hesitate, they'll be on us and our opening will close. If you're going to commit, commit."
"Okay, okay, sorry." He feels his palms sweat up. "I'll do it, I'll do it."
Kaminari revs up and speeds through the opening between two zombies approximately five feet apart and rides into the forest. The noise of the engine drowns out the sounds of the zombie growls as they speed through with Kaminari doing his best not to hit any trees. He pauses momentarily to catch his footing when the trail angles uphill awkwardly and feels Jirou clutch him tightly.
"Hang on tight, Jirou."
Kaminari rocks the throttle to shoot up the small hill and back onto flat - somewhat solid - ground. He turns on the headlights so he can traverse the forest while Jirou looks behind her, checking to make sure not too many zombies are trailing them.
"Holy crap, whoah, did I do that? Jirou, did I do that?" A smile brightens his face. "Yeah, I totally did that; I'm a total badass. Don't worry, Jirou, you can count on me from now on."
She rolls her eyes. "Oh my god, you're such an idiot."
After riding for about two minutes, Jirou softens her grip around the electric boy's body.
"Hey, don't get too comfortable; it's going to be a bumpy ride so I suggest... you know, hugging my body, just in case."
Jirou blushes furiously before slapping him upside the head again. "Don't even think you're getting into my pants for two seconds, idiot!"
"Hey, why would I even want to get into your pants; I'm pretty sure my waist is too big to fit your pants."
"You idiot."
As Kaminari slowed the bike down as speeding through the forest was a hazard, he thought he heard something. He slows to a stop to keep the engine noise to a minimum and looks around. "Did you hear that?"
Jirou wanted to use her earphone jacks but after barely surfing through the zombie horde on the road, she didn't want to risk attracting the big horde, not while they still had at least nine more miles to go. She perks her keen ears out to listen to what Kaminari had been hearing.
Grr...
"Shh, I think I hear something." Jirou leans forward, hoping she'll get a better listen to what's going on. "What's that sound?"
"It sounds like-"
"Shh, whisper voices."
He lowers the volume. "Sorry. Now, I was going to say something but now, I totally forgot."
"Total idiot. Then let me hear it out then, okay?"
Grr...
Jirou clenches her knuckles while subconsciously holding Kaminari tighter like a scared child holding onto their mother for dear life. "What is that sound?"
Grr...
Is that an engine? Jirou wonders. Maybe it's the bike but, no, it can't be the bike; the bike doesn't sound like the sound of a dog growling and-
Her eyes shoot open.
The sound of a dog!
"Bloodhound," she whispers loudly.
Kaminari's eyes widen and he quickly rides off, going full throttle, slowing down only after riding thirty feet down.
"What are you doing numbskull, why are you slowing down?"
"The trees!"
"Well, unless you applied for a lumberjacking job and know how to cut them down, I suggest driving around!"
"For the umpteenth time: you don't drive a dirtbike, you ride!"
BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!
He jerks the handles to the left and right, narrowly avoiding the trees like a snowboarder heading downhill. Jirou almost falls when they fly off a small hill and land on solid ground about half a second later. She clings onto him for dear life while looking out.
"A little warning next time would be much appreciated, Kaminari."
"Sorry, Jirou."
The growling and barking sound doesn't vanish, no matter how far off they ride.
Jirou continues to hold the ice chest in her right hand as she lifts her hand and wraps it around his stomach. Kaminari winces at the feel of the ice chest touching the front of his body.
"Kaminari, hold this ice chest."
"Ahh, with what?" He winces at the feel of the ice chest in front of his body with the cold bouncing off his groin area. He fights through the pain and clutches the handles hard enough that his knuckles turn white. "Hurry up!"
Jirou pulls out a knife with her left hand and waits carefully.
"Hold on!"
He screams as the ice chest slides closer to his groin. "My balls are being iced!"
"Good, you could use a nice cool down!"
"Really, Jirou?!"
All of a sudden, a four-legged creature leaps out from the trees and lands near the bike, almost crashing into Jirou like a football player. It rolls across the ground before recovering and pursues the dirt bike.
Jirou taps his back with her forehead. "It's after us. Just, focus on riding and I'll take care of it!"
"I don't know, it's hard to multitask when my balls are being frozen at subzero temperatures!"
"Call it payback for knocking me off your bike all those months ago!"
"That was an accident!"
She turns and continues to struggle to keep her arms wrapped around Kaminari as he constantly swerves through the trees while being chased by some kind of bloody white zombie dog with a disfigured snout and missing left eye. She holds the knife hand around, ready to stab. She whistles at the bloodhound and urges it to come at her.
Kaminari makes a hard turn to the right as the bloodhound leaps and crashes headfirst into a tree. It bounces off but simply shrugs off its attack and continues its chase for the pair of teenagers.
The bloodhound leaps and lands on the back of the bike, catching itself only by sinking its vicious blood-stained fangs into Jirou's backpack like a piece of meat. It growls and rips at it like any dog would with a chew toy but Jirou focuses. Since the dog is directly behind her, she can't get a good angle where she can swing the knife effectively. Without thinking, she holds the knife in her mouth by the handle, frees her left arm of the backpack strap, and lets it dangle over her right inner elbow. The dog keeps biting the backpack, even as he is dragged across the ground, but Jirou can grab the knife from her mouth and drive the blade through the dog's head.
The dog growls at the sudden assault but doesn't let go. Jirou rips the knife out and stabs the dog again in the head. She pulls it out and repeats the process, stabbing the dog at least four more times before the dog goes limp and finally frees itself off the backpack when it crashes headfirst into a tree.
Jirou tucks the knife away in her holster before pulling her backup up and flinging it over her back. She carefully put her left arm through so the backpack was secured and she could finally relax by using Kaminari's back as a pillow.
"How do your balls feel now?"
"Better, much better." He sighs with relief. "Wait till I tell Mineta about this."
"What, that I tried to freeze your balls off to castrate you?"
"No, the moment I took two bitches for a ride."
He feels her glare at the back of his head. "I... probably shouldn't have said that, right?"
"Denki, as soon as we get off this bike, I am going shove my foot so far up your ass, you'll be choking on it. And that's a promise."
Kaminari winces and mentally slaps himself. Stupid, Denki Stupid, stupid, stupid.
After a few minutes, they finally reach another one of those roads with zombies coming down the street and towards the four-way intersections. Kaminari repeats the process of slowing the bike to a stop and then riding off once the gap is big enough for the two of them.
Emergency Medical Center
Grape Juice listens in on the conversation with Xanax and someone on the radio.
Xanax sighs heavily before taking a water bottle and taking a gulp of it. He turns back to the microphone.
"So don't worry, your shipment will be there on time. You can assure your freaky handsy boss that we fulfilled our end of the deal," Xanax speaks in a soft voice.
The voice on the other end of the microphone is anything but. "And you're putting your faith in this goddamn delivery team in the hands of those UA brats?"
"They have a special kind of experience that we don't. It works in our favor, right, doesn't it?"
"Don't ever cross those kinds of motherfuckers, you fucking dumbass."
"It wasn't my idea, it was CC's idea."
"Well then CC needs to be fired."
"Hey, do I get to be the leader if he's fired?"
"How the fuck should I know? Whatever decisions your group makes is up to you, don't waste my fucking time asking stupid questions, you fucking dumbass."
"Your words are hurtful, man."
"Good, I hope they are. And these brats you're holding as collateral, who are they?"
"Uhh, why bother asking? You already called them brats so what's the point of me telling you?"
"Xanax, you stupid son of a bitch, tell me who they are."
"You called them brats so I guess they're brats."
"You idiot."
He rotates in his chair absentmindedly before standing up and heading to the first in the corner, ignoring everything the speaker is blabbing on about. With only a few items inside not needing electricity - which the fridge doesn't have - he pulls out a nonperishable can of sardines and opens it with a knife.
"Excuse me, I have to go now."
The speaker returns. "What, your CC ordering 20 CCs of a meeting?"
"No, I'm hungry."
"We're in the middle of talking and you're worried about eating?"
"Uhh, yeah, why not? I mean, isn't eating healthy?"
"Don't take me for a fucking tool, you fucking r-"
He turns off the radio. "I really don't like the R-word."
After using his knife as a fork, he heads to the door and pushes it open. He nearly cut himself upon seeing Grape Juice stagger back and nearly knock himself against the wall.
"Grape Juice, what are you doing here? Were you peeping on me using your ears?"
Grape Juice looks at Xanax nervously. "No, no, no, I was just looking for the bathroom."
Xanax eyes him suspiciously. "You were... oh." His face softens. "It's down that way, last door on the right." He points down the hallway to his right. He takes another bite of his sardines with Grape Juice looking at him hungrily. "Want some?" He offers him a bite with one of the little fishes dangling off the end of his multi-tool knife.
Grape Juice laughs awkwardly as he shakes his head. "No thanks, I'm good."
"Are you sure? We made sure these sardines were nonperishable. Sardines are good for you. Here, just be careful not to cut yourself like I did twice."
"No, no, really, I'm good. I'm just... heading to the bathroom. Thank you."
"You are very welcome, Grape Juice." Man, I could go for some grape juice right about now.
Without saying anything else, he heads off for the bathroom.
Xanax happily waves at him.
Grape Juice heads in the direction of the bathroom but stops halfway through. After seeing Xanax return to the radio room, he continues to head down the hall to check for any suspicious activity. For such a small emergency medical center, there were sure a lot of rooms and doors. He figured it made sense since this is an emergency center in the middle of the woods with the nearest town being kilometers away in almost all directions. Thinking about it, Grape Juice had never been to this part of Japan. He wondered what this place was like before everything went to Hell. He thought about how many people could've come camping here and laughed heartily on the inside. Camping, he misses those days.
He remembers back at UA, they were training hard to get their Provisional Licenses by drilling a whole semester's worth of training, quirk development, and education into them. He passed the UA final exams by beating Midnight and now, the reward was the camp where he would feel like dying every day just to develop his quirk. His head still hurt from all the balls he pulled off of it but now that was in the past. It will always be in the past because they can't train their quirks like that anymore. Quirk usage attracted zombies in all directions the most one used them and the more one used them, things also escalated. Brainiacs would be attracted or worse... beasts. And then those bloodhounds.
Yeah, training with our quirk isn't worth it if we're going to be tired, exhausted, and surrounded in all directions by zombies of all types. Grape Juice passes a room with a faint odor that smells like a bottle of leaking perfume. The scent was so strong he had to cover his nose and turn away.
Turning to the door where the smell was coming from, he puts his ear to it after seeing light shine through via the cracks at the bottom of the door.
He hears the sound of something cooking and sizzling and the soft hissing sound of something spraying. Honing in his hearing, he hears several voices inside. Sounded like two.
"How much gas?"
"Uhh, not sure. It's saying we got like, less than a quarter tank."
"What the fuck? And we're supposed to fucking incinerate this fucking body with less than a quarter tank? What the fuck; we'll barely be able to burn it to the bone. Even if we set the body on fire, do you know how long it'll take to cook to the perfect crisp we want to dispose of it?"
"I know, I know, yeah. But don't worry, I'm pretty sure a bottle of gasoline or two was part of the deal."
"It wasn't. We rarely use this room unless we have corpses to dispose of and we let the gasoline dry and expire. Ahh shit, we're going to have to demand gasoline as payment for the incinerator, and a lot of it."
"Don't worry, ICU, I'll talk to CC in the morning about getting some extra gasoline from our clients. Now then, let's burn up the girl with what gasoline we still have."
"Yeah, you're right. Goodbye, Reiko Yanagi."
He steps away and hits the wall. He quickly takes off while keeping his eyes on the door. Yanagi, they said Yangai. The... the organs Jirou and Kaminari are delivering... they belong to Yanagi?
Without looking, he bumps into someone and falls flat on his ass.
Grape Juice jumps to his feet and helps Shemage to her feet like a gentleman. He holds her hands carefully.
"Komori, you are not going to believe this."
"What, what is it, Mineta?"
"The organs... the organs that Kaminari and Jirou are delivering... they're... they're from one of your classmates."
Shemage replays his words to make sure she didn't mishear her. "What was that?"
"Yanagi. The organs belonged to Reiko Yanagi."
Gasping under her breath, her eyes widen above her mask as she clenches Grape Juice's hands tightly. After a few seconds, she softens her grip. Shemage grabs Grape Juice's hands and carefully leads him away. They reach the end of the hallway where they meet up with King Dragon, who looks around the hallway anxiously.
6:55 PM
With Kaminari
"Ahh shit. Maybe I was a little hard on myself earlier when I said the first horde was a lot."
Jirou looks at him with a look of disbelief. "Really, ya think so, Jamming-Yay?"
No luck with this final horde. No, this was the last street leading to one of the zombie-infested intersections and this one was by far, the most crowded. Just the street to get to the intersection was flooded nearly every inch with zombies.
Jirou grabs Kaminari's shoulder and pats him.
"Hey, we're losing sunlight. We can still see but the sky is losing its orange color. Come on, do something, I do not want to be out here in the woods surrounded by zombies man, hurry."
"What do I do?"
"Drive alongside the road. The closer we get to the intersections, the more crowded they'll be but if we go up and down the road where the zombies are coming from, it should be less crowded. Come on, drive up the road, and don't stop until you see an opening."
"Ride," he corrects under his breath.
Kaminari turns and takes off to his right to see if they can find another opening. The closer they got to the intersection, the more crowded it would be so chances are, it would be less crowded down the street where zombies were coming from. He pulls the bike to a stop and sets the kickstand down so he can get a good look. No, as far as the eye could see, there were too narrow gaps for the bike to pass through without ramming into some zombies.
Kaminari makes sure his headlight is turned off before looking at the sky. The sun was almost gone and he could barely see. The moon was coming up eventually and would provide some moonlight but not enough. If they decided to wait for this horde out, then the night would fall and it would be too dark to see.
"I don't see anything. Damn it, shit." He brings the bike to a halt. "Jirou, what if we did wait them out? I mean, zombies can't-"
"Your headlight will draw them to us and we need the headlight to see. What if we're getting chased by another bloodhound? Only this time, it'll be a pack because from what I've seen and from what I've told you, bloodhounds travel in packs."
"Oh, yeah, I guess so. Okay, maybe we can-"
"Wait, Kaminari." Jirou points to something. "Look, up there, edge of the road."
Kaminari sees it: a hill leading up the road where - if he got a good angle - could launch him into the air and onto the other side of the road.
"Oh, yeah. I see it. A good launching point for my dirtbike. If-"
"Take it."
"What?"
"You heard me, take it."
"That's not a good idea. I told you that this dirtbike can launch into the air, yes, but not night enough like twenty or thirty feet in the air with a passenger on the back. I'm not saying you're fat or anything-"
"Good, because I would've sliced your ass up if you implied something about my weight. And no, idiot, we don't need twenty or thirty feet in the air. Can it launch us teen feet in the air?"
"Uhh, yeah, just about."
"Then that's the plan. The road is only ten feet apart and if we time it right with the right speed, we should be able to launch ourselves over the road and over the zombies' heads, and onto the other side of the forest. After that, we won't have any more intersections to deal with. What do you say?"
Kaminari hesitates before he plays out the scenario in his head. "Huh, I guess that makes sense. We only need ten feet up and over the air. Yeah, we can work with that." He looks her directly in the eye. "Hold onto me, okay, no matter what, got it. Do not lean where the bike is going, lean where I am going, understand?"
"Yeah, I got it."
"I'm serious, Jirou. If I lose balance, we both crash and those zombies are on us, got it?"
"I heard you the first time."
"It's going to be like a rollercoaster. You know that feeling you get when you're on a rollercoaster? It's going to feel like that for you."
"I like rollercoasters."
"Good. But I also like jumping thirty feet in the air with my dirtbike so let's hope this works."
"It will."
Kaminari kicks the kickstand up and makes a U-turn. After riding a good distance, he makes another U-turn and revs up the bike. "Get ready. Remember, lean with me, not the bike."
Jirou wraps her arms tightly around him and snuggles her face into his back like a pillow once more. A pillow to scream in if she felt the worst.
He revs up the bike and rides off. "Three... two... one... go."
He speeds through the trees, and goes downhill a bit before-
The dirtbike launches through the air, soaring over the road like a bird, before landing on the other side with a bounce that makes Jirou yelp into the back of Kaminair's jacket like a dog being stepped on.
Kaminari laughs through his mask and thrusts his left hand in the air. "Did you see that?!" He swerves the bike to avoid the trees. "We did that, hell yeah, we did that, man!"
Jirou peels herself from his back once she's sure that the rollercoaster ride is over before lightly slapping the back of his head. "Holy crap, man, I don't miss those."
"We did, we totally did it, bro!" He continues to cheer as he rides through the forest with one hand on the throttle.
A few minutes later, after coming down from his high of excitement, the sun finally sets and darkness overtakes the sky.
