Volume 1 - Chapter 29

Mystery At The Museum

Stepping outside, the bright midday sun stung my eyes. It was a welcome relief from the stuffy dark apartment building, but my eyes were not ready.

At least I could breathe again.

My shirt and bulletproof vest were both covered in dark red crimson. The sticky blood felt gross against my chin and chest, and it glued the clothing to my skin.

I didn’t see any zombies in the courtyard or the street, so I wasn't feeling rushed.

Ryotaro opened his van door for the boy and let him climb inside. The old man turned to look at me as I went to the other van.

I opened up the door, threw the rifle in, and then unstrapped the bulletproof vest. It fell from my body after peeling apart the last velcro strip. Being freed from that tight security felt refreshing. I waited a minute before throwing it in.

I used my sweaty, blood-soaked shirt to wipe as much as I could from my neck and face, feeling cleaner right away even if all I did was smear it.

Ryotaro asked, “what’s the plan-oh, stan-oh?”

I laughed, thinking he'd said the phrase from some old American song incorrectly. Then I remembered it was Ryotaro. He always said whatever he wanted and probably meant it to be just that way.

Looking at him, I saw he hadn't lost as much blood as I did. It still stained down his cheek and around his shirt collar. We were lucky to be alive after Genta nearly killed us with his sickening aura.

My first thought regarding a plan was to make a straight shot back to the house in the mountains.

I was thinking about Aiko. I needed to know if she was alive. Getting back to our new home was my first priority.

“We go home,” I said, “unless you have some different idea?”

“No,” the old man smiled.

“Good.”

Ryotaro stepped towards his van and got in. “I’ll lead the way.”

“Perfect."

The plan was simple enough. Then again, every single plan we had devised seemed to fall apart.

He drove away from me and I followed, glad the child was with him.

I didn't have anything against kids but I wanted some time to my own thoughts.

Ryotaro's van lead the way, and I followed closely behind. He was driving at a steady pace, not going too fast or too slow. We navigated the familiar abandoned streets of Kanonji.

The big white TableMark building was ahead on the left and we passed it once again.

I started wondering if there was anything inside worth looting. Right then wasn't the time of course, but in the future it might prove helpful.

As we approached the Zag Zag drug store, I could see the massive horde of zombies surrounding it. Their groans, and the wailing alarm created a cacophony of chaos that squirmed in a mass of moving bodies.

I made a promise to myself that if Aiko had died I would walk into that crowd of the undead and allow myself to be eaten.

An easy quick death wasn't punishment enough for letting the woman of my dreams die alone and scared. For doing her wrong, I deserved a slow and miserable death as a zombie munched on my flesh.

I tried not to think too hard on it since I had no idea. She might still be alive.

Ryotaro turned left down a street, smartly avoiding the horde, and I followed suit. The route was different than the way we had come, but I knew it would lead us back to Iseki Pond.

The streets were eerily quiet. I didn't see many random zombies.

I figured most of them had probably been attracted to different epicenters of noise, or they had been trapped within closed buildings.

Ryotaro’s van weaved through the abandoned cars and debris. For a while I focused on the roads and tried to shake off the lingering fear of new developments in our knowledge of zombies.

Occasionally I saw blurs of human or zombie shaped movements down various roads, but I didn't think much of it.

If they were not near us or chasing us, I didn't care. We couldn't afford to get sidetracked when we needed to make it back home. I already had enough to think about.

My mind wandered back to the women. I didn't want to beat myself up about them unless we discovered they had died. Until then it was all just fear and self-doubt.

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If any one of them were dead because of me, I had made a bad choice. If they lived, I had made a good choice.

That was the way split-second decisions worked in moments of panic. They were not always perfect, but sometimes defined a person for the rest of their life.

One good thing that came of it was that Ryotaro and I encountered Genta without the women.

Who knew what would have happened if the women had been subjected to the man’s sickening aura.

I wondered if his affliction was what happened to all airborne survivors who were bit, or if something else was at play.

I also considered whether or not Genta had been hit by a blue meteorite. It seemed to be likely, and that only got me to thinking that we might end up like him if we became infected.

Most of what had happened to me in the last three days made zero sense, but I wasn't a creative type. I didn't know that much about zombies and apocalypses.

Genta might have genuinely had no idea what was happening to him, but he still dragged us into his control and meant to do something with us.

The boy didn’t trust him, and that was enough for me to leave Genta there to die with a gunshot wound.

His fear of our reaction to the bite was understandable, but he should have been upfront about it on the radio. Being honest from a distance would have been my strategy.

At the very least we could have worked out an agreement that saw us working closer together. Over time we might have been able to trust him like anyone else.

The man clearly meant harm to us, so I didn't have any issues with the way I treated him. He could die or hold a grudge for all I cared.

The road curved gently, and soon we were passing by the opposite side of Iseki Pond.

The sight of calm water was a stark contrast to the chaos we left behind. I knew there was a right turn up ahead, and then a left turn at an intersection that would take us back into the mountains.

Ryotaro's van turned onto a narrow road and I still followed. The trees on either side of us created a tunnel-like effect as it wound us through the countryside.

As we emerged from the tree-lined road, I could see the mountains in the distance, their peaks shrouded in a haze.

It was a reminder of our destination, and I felt a renewed sense of determination to make it back to Aiko and the others.

Ryotaro slowed down as we approached the intersection near the museum. It was the same parking lot where Chiemi found the family sedan with the busted windshield.

He hit the gas hard as soon as we were back on the main road. We had successfully bypassed the dangers of Kanonji on our way back home.

But then, all my worst fears were realized.

I saw one of our vans in the museum parking lot. It had broken windows and bloody handprints all over it. I slammed on the brakes and sat idle in the road, just looking unbelieving for the longest time.

It couldn't be, I tried to convince myself, but deep down I knew it was ours.

My heart raced as I tried to process what I was seeing. The van looked like it had been through a disaster, and I couldn't help but think the worst.

I felt a knot in my stomach as I imagined Aiko, Mio, Chiemi, and Yuki struggling through a frantic, panicked and violent situation involving an escape in the two vans full of supplies.

Ryotaro's vehicle had turned around and I saw him driving back towards me. He was probably wondering why I had stopped in the road.

There was no movement in the parking lot. The busted up bloody van sat like a crime scene, and for the longest time I refused any need to investigate.

The old man drove up next to me. I could see him and the boy through the side windows, and we both rolled the glass down.

"You see the van?"

He looked to the vehicle where I was pointing and I saw his spirits flee from his face.

I asked, "what do we do?"

He didn't answer right away. He just kept staring at the van, his brows furrowed in thought.

"We have to check it out," he finally said.

I nodded in agreement, even though I wasn't sure what we would find. We both drove around to the parking lot and stopped near the bloody van.

I turned my engine off and grabbed the rifle. This fear of the unknown was getting old, and for a brief second I kind of wished my life was boring again. I almost hoped that I would simply wake up at my computer in the cubicle, Mr. Tanaka standing there with another task for me to complete.

Deep down I knew that wouldn't happen.

This was bad. I didn't know what I was going to see or find inside the van, and I didn't know what I would do if I found one of them dead.

Ryotaro joined me, telling Haru to stay in the vehicle.

We walked over to the bloody scene together. The van's doors were hanging open, and there were signs of a struggle inside. The seats were torn and bloodstained, and there were bullet casings scattered around.

I felt a lump in my throat as I realized this wasn't just some random attack. Something serious happened to the van, and it happened right there at the museum.

It was obvious there was shooting involved, and knives or something sharp that tore up the seats. Windows were busted, blood and glass everywhere. Melee weapons of some type were used.

My mind started racing with dark imaginations. We had no idea if this involved other survivors or zombies.

If Genta had taught us anything that day, it was the idea that some infected humans or half-zombies, or something with unnatural abilities would be a significant piece of our new reality.

I shuddered at the idea and kept looking. Most of the groceries were still packed up high in the back. If the women survived they didn't have time to transfer the goods, and they hadn't come back for them.

"Something's not adding up here," I said.

Ryotaro looked along the sides of the van, and I circled it with him.

Four of the windows were broken. Bloody handprints were streaked all over the vehicle. We had no idea whose blood it was. There was a flat tire on the rear passenger side.

"This is bad news," the old man said.

"And look around, there's no dead zombies."

Ryotaro looked, and it suddenly dawned on him.

We both wondered where they all went. There were no undead either, animated or not. And no humans. No one except the three of us. It was quiet.

"Chiemi and Aiko wouldn't have used all this ammo on nothing."

"I don't understand this," Ryotaro asked, "what happened here?"

Shaking my head, I didn't even know what to say. Clearly the women got away from the Halows parking lot but then encountered problems of a different kind.

This new zombie world was evolving quickly. We needed to get back to the house and figure out who had survived, or if anyone had.

Without Aiko I had no reason for living. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know, since that would determine my own fate.

If it turned out they were alive, we had to start rethinking our strategies for surviving against whatever these new threats were.

Looking around once more, I saw no signs of danger near us. I lowered my rifle and reached into the van for a bottle of water. At least a quarter of the vehicle was filled with various containers of the stuff.

I didn't realize how dehydrated I had become until I drank half of it in a matter of seconds.

The other half I poured over my face and cleaned away the blood from my chin and neck.

Ryotaro grabbed a water and a lemon-lime Ramune from the van. He took a few drinks from the water and then carried the glass-bottle soda to the boy. Haru was still sitting in the other van like a good kid.

The boy eagerly accepted the classic drink with the marble pinched in the neck.

After knowing we couldn't delay any longer, we got back in our vehicles and headed to the house.

It wouldn't take long to get there, but it was plenty of time for my mind to create dark thoughts regarding my future.