"Okay, I won't gather food stuff then, unless they want me to. I can take a bag in my hand, though, if they want me to carry more?"

Another whispered exchange, this one pulling in the other three. When they were done talking, they went back to rigging a backpack and filling extra bags with bottles. "They have asked if you could run defense with me. They are going to give me one of the bats since my weapon is too loud. Then they will all carry as much water as they can, and we just have to protect them."

"That's awfully trusting of them," she murmured as she walked back toward the door to wait for the others. Gu Cheng followed her, a stuffed bag in one hand and a bat in the other. There was no need to guess what the stains were that covered the bulbous half. When everyone else arrived, she asked, "How far away is their home? Are they really comfortable with us coming back with them?"

A whispered conversation, and then, "They said it is about thirty minutes if running, but we will have to walk since we are all carrying so much weight. Most is through the big dinosaur's territory, that's why they haven't gotten this far before. They seem to be more scared of it than the dead."

"I mean, it's a big freaking dinosaur..." There was no response to that, and she and Gu Cheng led the way outside.

The group stayed clumped up as they went down the street toward the road the Tyrannosaurus had turned off of earlier. Zaria stayed on one side and Gu Cheng on the other so that they could respond quickly no matter where danger came from. The weight of the bag was pulling her down, and she would have loved to ask for a break, but she kept going, and her legs burned with their 'not quite a run' pace.

Zaria could tell when they left the outer edges of the dinosaur's area. She began to see more bodies strewn along the road, heads bloodied. With nothing that wanted to eat the corpses, they sat out in the sun. The weather was still warm enough that she could smell the decomposition as the sun hit the bodies.

Twice, Gu Cheng moved away from the group to take care of a threat coming out from an open door along the way. Zaria felt her heart race as she dealt with hers. She wondered if he was as scared as she was. Nothing showed on his face, but each time she moved back toward the group, she could feel that the air was chillier. She didn't mind because the duct tape reinforced leather jacket was almost too warm, but the others were just wearing thin track jackets and what looked like a school uniform. There was a pair of sweat pants under the knee-length skirt, but the top looked too thin to offer much protection from the weather. Or zombie bites.

Were the zombies not as much of a problem as she had feared? In her mind, she had made them into a giant threat, but in reality, there was no ravenous horde like in the movies. Had this oddly inattentive group somehow thinned the herd so much that they were not a real threat anymore? If they had, then where were the corpses? Why were there not more lining the streets?

Thanks to too much manga and anime, Zaria was fully expecting to be lead directly to a high school or some other communal building. Instead, they stopped in front of a large home surrounded by a two meter high wall. To each side rose modern homes surrounded by tiered bushes and carefully landscaped entry ways, most stacked directly against each other like townhouses. At a small wrought iron gate, they were ushered inside by an older man who quickly closed the gate behind them. They left him behind, leaning against a cane with a bat in his hand, presumably on guard duty. The short wall wouldn't stop anything massive from stepping over, but it would hold up to the odd corpse walking around. She wondered if the gate would hold if there were a lot.

The home that rose up ahead of them was an interesting mix of modern and traditional. Between rows of solar panels on the multilayered roof, she could see black tiles and broad wooden beams. Light colored wood created a barred effect across the front of the building, framing modern triple pane windows. They walked up stone steps and through an ornate crimson door.

In the large, wood paneled hallway inside, they were greeted by a smiling woman who stepped out of a room just off of the entrance.

She said something to them in a sweet, high voice, beaming at their full bags of water. They set down the bag they carried in each hand and then helped each other remove the cords that strapped the bags to their backs. Zaria stood still, sword pointed at the floor as Gu Cheng helped remove hers. When it was off, she groaned in relief and pulled a strip of the remaining jean material out of her bag. Once the blood on her sword was cleaned off, she slid the sharp metal back into its scabbard and stood awkwardly in the middle of the foyer. The woman finally noticed that there were two new people in front of her and turned the brilliant smile their way.

Zaria listened as she and Gu Cheng conversed. When the woman turned to her and said something, she awkwardly waved and gave a polite smile. They talked some more as the others took the bags further into the building. Nobody was yelling, but it felt odd to hear someone talk at almost normal volumes. Since leaving the duke's manor what seemed like so long ago, everything had been quiet or in whispers.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"I am Rika Saito. I speak english," the woman said to her with a shy smile. "Only a little. "

Gu Cheng turned to Zaria. "Miss Saito is a nurse and wants to give us both checkups before they find us somewhere to stay. To make sure that we don't have any scratches or bites."

Zaria nodded and let herself be led away into a small room deeper in the building. A stretcher was pressed against one wall, and cabinets lined the others. Everything smelled sterile,like an exam room in a clinic. Zaria removed her bag and sword belt as the woman smiled and waited, followed by the jacket and leg coverings. "What do you need?" She asked the woman.

With calming gestures, Miss Saito patted the stretcher, indicating that Zaria should climb up. The next few minutes were spent being poked and prodded, her heart listened to, blood pressure checked. Her shirt was tugged, and the buttons pointed to. Zaria closed her eyes and removed clothing as it was requested. She understood that they didn't want anyone getting in who was going to turn into one of those things, but it was uncomfortable baring so much skin in front of someone that she didn't know. It didn't take long to see that she was clean, and then she put her pants and top back on again. The woman frowned at the mostly healed bruises on her face and neck. After a couple of weeks, they were just a slightly darker patch, and the cuts on her lips as well as the swelling around her eye were gone.

"That man, did he do this?" She asked, her face somehow even prettier with the show of concern.

"No, it wasn't him. He's a good person." Zaria politely smiled again, the movement rusty from lack of use the last few weeks. They didn't say anything else, and Zaria was let out into the hallway where a boy with hair spiking up naturally, someone she had not seen before, waited.

"I will take you to put your stuff down," he said in perfect English. His teeth were bared in a sparkling white smile. "I'm Yamashita Hideki, but you can just call me Yamashita like everyone else does."

"I'm Joseph Zaria. Joseph is my family name, even though it sounds like a boys name. You can call me that if you are comfortable, or my full name is fine too. "

"Joseph-chan,I am pleased to meet you!"

Zaria followed him along, passing Gu Cheng in the hallway and heading the other direction. She felt the teeniest flare of jealousy that he was okay with showing his body to the nurse woman and was arguing with herself about it being stupid to be jealous. She missed what Yamashita-san was saying and had to ask him to repeat it.

He chuckled and showed her to a wide staircase leading up to the next floor. "I was saying that we have a lot of rooms on this next floor that we converted to bedrooms at the beginning. Many of us shared rooms because there were so many of us, but over time our numbers have dropped so there are a few empty ones. Would you and your boyfriend want to share one?"

"He's not my boyfriend," she said quickly. She nodded her head and smiled. "I'm sure he would be much more comfortable having a room to himself. He has had to share space with me for too long. If that is really alright."

"Of course." They stepped off of the stairs and walked to the forward-most room. "This used to be an office, but nobody wanted it as a room because it just has a couch, and there was no room to put a mattress on the ground."

Zaria entered the room first, a real smile on her face seeing the rich wood bookshelves lined with real books. She lightly touched the spine of one, surprised to see that the title on the spine was in English.

"The man who owned this house was a professor who spoke many different languages. Nobody else cares to read any of these, but if you see something you want to try, then please feel free to do so! If you like it, then this room would be yours for as long as you want to stay." He did not say 'as long as you are alive,' but the words hung in the air regardless. Yamashita cleared his throat and put his hands in the pockets of his running jacket. "Would you like to stay here? I can show you another room..."

"No, this room is great," she assured him, looking out one of the many windows toward the towering skyline in the distance.

"That is good, Joseph-chan. I am in the room next to you if you need anything. I will bring you some wipes and one of the portable toilets once I find one not being used." With a cheerful wave, he backed out and shut the door to give her privacy.

Zaria lifted the messenger bag up over her head and put it on the floor next to the brown leather couch. The material looked soft, but as sore as her legs were from the half run while carrying so much weight on her back, she was worried she wouldn't get back up for a while if she sat down to try it out. For the time being, she was content to move to an open space in front of the farthest window and look around.

She could see the guard at the gate, resting on a wooden chair with cane in one hand and bat in the other. Beyond him, most of the street was blocked by the wall, but the far part was still visible. There were no corpses on the road nearest to them, a free-zone that she noticed began several buildings away. The air had a definite chill in it, winter was right around the corner in this world, but she could imagine that the smell of decomposition was bad enough to be obvious even through the closed windows when the weather had been warmer.

Zaria placed her phone on the windowsill to top up the charge. Standing in what she was letting herself hope was a safe space made the things she had seen so far since arriving in the universe seem scarier. There was no choice about letting her knees shake while something was shambling toward her, trying to eat her flesh. Her body took over, and she killed things that were once human so that they could keep going. But now that it was done, at least for the moment, the memory of the sharp blade plowing through bone and brain played through her brain over, and over, and over.