When Gu Cheng returned from gathering that afternoon, Zaria was waiting inside the entrance way with a scowl on her face, and her arms crossed tightly over her chest. The younger boys all scurried off in different directions, sensing that death might await them if they stuck around to see whatever was about to go down.
"You." She announced the pronoun coldly, every fiber of her being wanting to hit the person in front of her, but knowing it was wrong.
"CEO Gu," she continued, biting off each syllable. "Exactly what made you think you had the right to decide what tasks I was best suited to complete? Did some part of you think I secretly liked being confined to someone's home, forced to clean up after them, and obey their wishes? It happened in the last two worlds I stepped into. It must be what I am good for?"
"Joseph Zaria, you need -" he tried to interject, but when his voice came out cold and angry, she didn't give him the chance.
"No, never mind. The great CEO Gu has decided that all I am good for is cleaning up after others and being a servant." She walked away from him before the rest of the hurtful words she wanted to say came out.
It took some pressure before Yamashita leaked that Gu Cheng told the others Zaria would be staying in the house from now on and was not allowed to go hunting for food and water with them. He thought it would make her feel better that Adachi-chan had been sidelined as well, but when Zaria saw the other girl stalk into the kitchen around lunchtime, she did not look happy about it either. She couldn't talk to her about it, but she nodded angrily along with her, and they went their own ways.
Zaria did not speak to anyone at dinner other than to say thank you when Yamashita passed a bowl of noodles around to her. The dinner the night before was so grand because they were welcoming two new living people to the house. The ramen smelled delicious, though, so Zaria had no problem with eating only that every night. The freezer in the kitchen was stocked full of bags of frozen vegetables. At the beginning, they gathered as many as they could from the local markets since fresh produce would be impossible to grow. The serving of veg was small, and each person received one multi vitamin to make up for some of the missing nutrients. The group had put a lot of thought into how to sustain their health in the future at the very beginning, and that was probably why there were so many survivors left. When dinner was done, she went to the kitchen with Adachi and the older woman, whose name she still didn't know. The older woman spoke to the teenager and pantomimed the actions to show Zaria what to do.
Despite being angry about her current role, Zaria did appreciate everyone welcoming her into their home. A little room to herself, food, and nothing trying to eat her or mate with her. The least she could do was clean up the dishes and help clean around the house. If she had to touch a chamber pot besides her own, she would dump it on Gu Cheng's head, though. There would be no guilt. Only so much understanding could go to a mindset where women were there to have kids and clean, and not to kill zombies. So far, all three worlds she had gone to, the women were treated as less than. Not that things were so great in her own world, but they were a sight better than what she was seeing these last few months. Well, some areas of her world were.
The next day went the same, with minor dusting and cleaning shown in the different areas. After dinner and nighttime cleaning, Zaria realized that she had not spoken a word to anyone since her thank yous at dinner the night before. She scowled when she came off of the stairs to see Gu Cheng leaning against the wall by her door.
"May I use your sword when we go out tomorrow morning? I would feel more confident with that than the bat they lent me." His words and expression were cool and calm, much like his regular demeanor. Zaria walked past him, taking off the sword belt as she went. She stopped just inside of the room, handed him the sword, and closed the door in his face. There was no reason to break her no speaking streak yet.
During the next week, Yamashita spent some of his free time showing her the surveillance network he was putting up around the property, and even a bit farther up into the neighborhood as well. He said he hoped to be able to get more cameras with solar cells to be able to monitor the T-rex's movements so they would have a good head's up if he expanded his territory in their direction as he ate up the food available in his current zone. Zaria listened quietly to him, very occasionally asking a question to clarify something, but otherwise keeping her thoughts to herself. What the boy was doing sounded like a great idea, and she didn't get why the other boys seemed to enjoy making fun of him. She couldn't understand what they were saying, but the purpose was clear. His idea would work as long as he could build his own network and not have to rely on already existing ones that might go down at any time. It was doubtful that any of the others would let the thin boy out to put the new cameras up. He would need to convince the gathering group to do it for him.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Since joining said group, Gu Cheng kept his distance. Zaria did not mind at all. She was still furious with him, but she was more angry with herself for thinking that he was respecting her as an individual. In his world, being male meant you had the final say, and it was what he had grown up in. A decade of reading silly light novels on the internet had convinced her that he might be a domineering, cold man, but inside, he was probably passionate and understanding with the right woman. Well, either she was definitely not the right woman, or that was all nonsense made up by a romance addled brain that was inspired by his universe.
With nobody else to talk to when Yamashita was locked up with his computers, Zaria spent a lot of time thinking and reading. The previous owner of the home had a penchant for mysteries, and the time not cleaning or eating was spent curled up on the soft brown leather couch with a book in hand and the door closed. Sometimes, she would stare out the broad windows at the silent city beyond. Besides the occasional dead person shambling by on the street or the pacing of the person at the gate as they tried to keep their muscles warm, there was no movement. Even the skies were clear.
"Where are all the birds?" She asked Yamashita one day when he stopped by the kitchen during dinner prep to talk.
"Nobody else has ever talked about that," he replied with a chuckle. "It's like they don't even notice that all the animals are gone. I don't know. I had hypotheses at the beginning, but there was no way to test it all out, and nobody else wanted to think about it because they were all hoping to be rescued any day and were so focused on that."
Zaria nodded, ladling noodles and broth into bowls as Adachi-chan set them out. The older woman, whom she now knew as Ohno-san, followed behind her and added steamed broccoli florets to the top. Not many of them liked the broccoli when it was served, but they all ate it because of it's importance to their health.
"So what were some of your hypotheses? If you don't mind sharing, I mean."
He smiled brightly, happy to have someone who was interested in the same things he was. "I think it was the contaminated food. I said before that animals weren't affected by the virus that was spread through the water, but I think they sensed the food and water were not right anymore and stopped eating it. There were a few dogs running around at the beginning. Most pets were likely trapped indoors with their owners when the humans all died, so those animals would have died early on when their food ran out. Dogs with leashes trailing behind them were running along the streets for a while, but the walking corpses attacked anything that made noise so..."
"Eww. So they were eating any animals that stayed behind?"
"Well, they and the big dinosaur, I think. The birds didn't have food anymore since the green spaces were denuded by the herbivores, and there was no new garbage being thrown out for them to eat, so I think they flew somewhere else. There are plenty of wooded areas for them to survive outside the city. Maybe that's where the rest of the animals went. There is a lot that doesn't fit in that hypothesis, though."
"Like what?" Yamashita helped to carry the bowls out to the people waiting at the table, both ignoring Gu Cheng and his icy glare and leaving his serving to be delivered by someone else. Yamashita was scared of the man, and Zaria had no intention of dealing with him.
"Like the rats and the bugs. There should be cockroaches everywhere without any sanitizing officials walking the streets, and they are so small that the tyrannosaurus won't even notice them to eat. They make no noise, so the dead won't hear. But there is nothing. All the little scavengers are gone. It seems to be us few humans, a couple of big meat eaters, and the dead. And we have seen some flies, but mostly in enclosed spaces where fresh food was left out."
Zaria thought about it as they brought out the last bowls and took their seats around the beautiful walnut table. " I hadn't noticed that. Yeah, even as clean as this house is, I would have thought I would see the occasional spider web in a corner. Huh. So, what's your hypothesis for that part?"
He did not answer until after the bowls were empty and everyone was socializing quietly around the table. He turned in his chair and adopted a very serious expression. "I think it's pheromones."
"Okay, I understand the basics of what you are thinking here. But is it the dead that are secreting it? Or the dinosaur? Or both?"
"I wish I could make it to the school's science labs," he said wistfully, settling back into his chair when it became obvious that she was not going to mock him. "I think the virus is self, actually. I think that whatever it touches has traces of it left behind, and it is enough that anything that survives by paying attention to them is gone. Humans are weird. Those of us who survived are able to fight the desire to flee because our brains are advanced enough that we can examine the dangers involved in running. And we probably are blaming the 'go go run run away' feeling as just being regular old fear."
"Wow, Yamashita-san. Those are some very well thought out theories. I wish you had the ability to figure out which it is." Zaria lowered her eyes to the table. Yamashita-san might be the most intelligent person she had ever met,but he was stuck in a world that actively wanted him dead with people who couldn't appreciate his worth. She had no desire to give up her spot getting out of this death filled world, but a tiny part of her began to think that it would be better if someone who had more to offer like Yamashita was able to escape. Assuming Gu Cheng was still going to take her with him, they would be leaving knowing that everyone in the house had a grim future ahead of them. Six months. Thinking the government would save them was just empty hope, and they all knew it deep inside.