Chapter Text
Makoto had forgotten what he had for lunch earlier that day. But now that he was staring at it, on the cemented floor, mixed with bile and goo and dirt and several unmentionable things, the haunting memory of his lunch came back to him.
Sundown had settled across the city, smearing the sky with hues of orange and purple. Makoto would’ve loved to watch the regal scenery if it weren’t for his churning stomach and the decaying body he had recently bashed with a bat. This really wasn’t very good for his weak heart. He woke up late that day to get ready for school and ate last night’s leftovers for breakfast and lunch. Makoto wasn’t really one to skip class, but he opted not to attend his morning classes. The next thing he knew, the world looked like it was plucked straight out of a video game.
It was around three when he discovered that his dormitory was overrun with dead growling cannibals.
Heart beating tremendously too fast, Makoto wasn’t certain how long he had been hiding in his dormitory room. He sat on the floor, back against his locked door, shaking hands holding a baseball bat. He didn’t know which was weirder; him owning a baseball bat or the drooling deformed cannibals just outside his door. He could hear them moaning and coughing mindlessly, dragging their malformed feet across the ground.
The first thing he thought of was his family. Thinking about them and wondering whether or not the outbreak had already reached Iwatobi made him want to cry. Just imagining his lovely little siblings get eaten and his parents dying was something he couldn’t simply bear. It hurt when he felt his stomach up in knots. Makoto sat for a moment and let himself cry. It really was too much to handle. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath.
“You can do this,” he whispered to himself, grasping the bat tighter.
Makoto would’ve been satisfied to stay in the dormitory until the flesh-eating creatures outside his door would go away. He had plenty of food and water to last him for a week, and he was on the third floor, so his room would be unlikely to be subjugated.
But then he thought of Haruka. He was still in the university. Makoto’s breath hitched when his phone rang, recognizing the tone instantly. He had to hurry to shut it up, afraid the monsters outside would hear. It was still unknown to him whether they had super hearing, super eyesight or super whatever, but Makoto wanted to be as careful as possible.
Just in synced with his thoughts, Haruka was the one calling.
Makoto answered in no time. “Haru! Haru, where are you?! Are you alright? Tell me where you are!” He couldn’t help the urgency in his voice. Makoto heard a relieved sigh on the other line.
“…Calm down, I’m not hurt.”
Hearing his voice was enough to make Makoto cry. “Haru…” he muttered, pushing the back of his hand against his eyes in frustrated relief. He said in the midst of his quiet sobs, “Oh, god. You’re alive. I was so scared… I—!”
The sound of banging and inhuman groans filled his ears. Haruka must’ve heard it too. “Makoto? Makoto! What was that?! Are you okay?!”
Makoto had never heard Haruka so worried before. Another loud banging and growling was heard. He jumped away from the door before turning around and checking whether the wooden frame could last, fear carved on his face before realizing that the flesh-eaters knew he was there. The hand holding his phone shook violently. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t even hear Haruka’s worried shouts on the other end.
The pounding on his door kept him from focusing. “I-I’m locked up in the dorms. I… I can’t get out. I—Haru, I’m…” Makoto didn’t move and backed away from the door slowly, his eyes never leaving the only possible exit.
In a matter of seconds, the door detached from its hinges and Makoto had to drop the phone. Tears were blurring his eyes but he could see it—the mutilated figure of an undead man, hurling itself to attack him.
“Stay away!” He shouted, despite knowing it was no use against the undead. His hands shook even more.
He had to kill it. There wasn’t any other choice. But Makoto was bigger and stronger and he knew that. Swiftly but hesitantly, he raised the baseball bat above his head and smashed the end into the creature’s head, breaking its skull apart as thick dark blood and small tissues of flesh splattered on his arms and face.
Haruka was still on the other line, hearing every thud and clatter. “Makoto!” he kept saying, but Makoto couldn’t move an inch afterwards, too busy catching his breath and mourning for the man he killed.
He killed someone.
He killed a man.
Unsteady green eyes slowly traveled down, greeted by the morbid sight of a bashed head, brain matter oozing out, all splattered sloppily on his room floor. He felt something going up to his gullet until he felt the sudden urge to puke. Nothing came out. His arms weakened. Dropping both things in his grasp, Makoto fell to the floor and gasped for air. His breaths came out in choked sobs and wheezes before he started to feel nausea.
There was blood on his hands and face. He quickly wiped the blood off his face along with his tears. Catching his breath, he held the phone against his ear again.
“…Haru, where… are you?” Makoto asked weakly before letting out a series of coughs. He sensed his heart shrinking. He chose to avoid looking at the headless body next to him.
“What was that?! Are you okay?”
Makoto swallowed, wiping the tears that kept coming. “I’m… I’m fine. I killed... it.” It was difficult for him to refer to the monster as something inhuman. His voice and hands couldn’t stop shaking.
Sensing Makoto was alright after that ordeal, Haruka said, “I—I’m locked up too. As in, locked up. Someone trapped me here. I’m somewhere in school. I… I don’t know where I am, I can’t really see anything.” He spoke in a soft voice, like he was hiding from something. “I woke up in this dark room. There was this… this horde of—”
“Haru?” The phone was cut off and Makoto panicked, shouting repeatedly in horror, “Haru! Hey! Can you hear me?! Haru!”
Staring at his phone in horror, he then pressed his hands against his blood-stained face, trying to figure out what to do. His door was completely wrecked. There wasn’t really any other option but to get out of the building. He needed to save Haruka. With his wobbly knees and bloodied torso, he stood up. Though he knew his appetite won’t be coming back for a while, he took the canned beans and chowder from his cupboards, the bottled waters from his fridge, and chucked them all into a backpack.
He took a deep breath before grabbing the bloody bat from the floor.
Slowly he reached the hallway, dark and deserted, with nothing but debris and human tissue on the floors. There weren’t any screams from people, so Makoto assumed they were already dead, or turned into the undead. He mourned for them quietly as he made his way down.
It was eerily quiet. Makoto knew silence wasn’t really a good thing.
Then something grabbed his ankle.
“Ungh!” Makoto groaned as he fell on the floor with a loud thud. He whipped his upper body around and saw a moving corpse clutching strongly at his foot, working to drag Makoto closer. Makoto slammed the other end of the bat to its open mouth before it could bite him, as saliva and blood spewed from its jaws.
The hissing growls of hunger stopped. And Makoto could feel his heart bursting out of his chest. He hadn’t been able to breathe normally for the last hour and he could hardly stand up again. He had to stop and think about Haruka. Because he needed to save Haruka. And he has to survive in order to do that. Makoto was scared—the scariest he had ever been in his whole life. He was alone and the world was ending before his eyes, but the thought of Haruka being alone was even scarier.
The doors to the other rooms were mostly destroyed and he ran as fast as he could to get out of the building, evading the undead who were unable to detect him.
Outside, Tokyo still existed, and it smelled awful—a rotting, toxic-kind of stench. He could see skyscrapers and smoke in the distance. The neighborhood he lived in wasn’t crowded so he could still sigh in relief. But he knew as soon as would arrive downtown, it would be much worse than hell.
Makoto walked quietly. The roads were blocked with deserted cars and dead bodies hanging from broken windows. Driving would cause too much attention, so he scratched that option out. Turning to the next corner, another infected corpse almost got him, but Makoto acted quickly enough to bash the top of its head off. The repugnant smell of death, the sight of a head falling off from the corpse’s neck, and the realization that he had just killed three people finally dawned on him. He felt his diaphragm contract. That was when Makoto could no longer hold the bile creeping up his throat, and threw up then and there.
There goes his lunch.
With his ragged breaths, Makoto closed his eyes and tried to regain his composure. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, both from the smell and his recent vomiting. His noises had probably attracted the infected as he saw others walking towards him in less than ten feet away. With one last glance to the walking bodies, Makoto ran straight to an abandoned restaurant and stepped inside.
There weren’t any sounds of moaning or flesh being ripped, causing Makoto to sigh in relief. If he could get to the back door, he would end up on the road towards his school. He could only hear his ragged breath and footsteps, the sound somehow loud in the unnerving silence of the empty restaurant. He headed behind the counters and opened the door to kitchen, causing a drawn-out creaking sound.
The machines inside the kitchen left a soft whirring sound. Makoto’s heart thumped at full speed, syncing with the flickering of the broken fluorescent lights. The room darkened and lighted up alternately, the light going on and off as Makoto walked further. His green eyes saw a glimpse of the back door; the exit. As he fast-walked to the end of the room, he stopped suddenly. Right in front of him was a man, crouching over a body.
“No…” he gasped. There was another one. He couldn’t bear having to kill these things even though they were now mindless cannibals. Aside from that, he couldn’t bear the very sight of them. Guilt overwhelmed him. They were humans once. They had a family, a house, a job, and they had feelings. But now that this ‘once-human’ was eating the intestines of a waitress, Makoto knew he had to do something.
Then a rush of fear flooded him. He couldn’t help it. His remorse disappeared when the flesh-eating man stood up and creepily turned his head to him. Its misty eyes and uneven jaw looked straight at Makoto, who was frozen in horror.
“Don’t come any closer,” Makoto pleaded between ragged breaths. The man took another step forward, its head tilting and slobbering mouth juddering in hunger. Makoto was about to hit it with his bat when the room suddenly turned pitch black.
A loud hissing growl. He felt the creature charged at him. Makoto shouted a short cry of surprise as he tried his best not to get bitten. Managing to push it away with brute strength, he swung his bat aimlessly, hoping it would hit the creature somehow.
And it did, thank god. The soulless grunting had stopped and he heard a body flop to the floor. The light flickered bright again and his eyes confirmed that the dead man was, indeed, dead. Two corpses now laid in a pool of blood. Makoto decided to head out quickly before he would throw up again.
It was dark when he got out of the restaurant. The sun had completely set, and he hoped the streetlamps and lights coming from the buildings wouldn’t fail. The university wasn’t that far off, but distance wasn’t really the problem. Makoto lived in the eastern outskirts of the city, so it wasn’t as populated as downtown Tokyo. He made his way through the streets carefully and quietly. Stealth was the only sane choice. It was impossible to fight the infected by himself, especially since he only had a metal bat as a weapon—which was now pitifully bent almost to an L-shape. It surprised Makoto that it took four hard skulls for it to actually bend.
He needed to get a better weapon, or else he wouldn’t be able to survive the night.
So far, Makoto had been efficient in staying undetected. From the looks of it, the walking corpses couldn’t see, and would rather react on noise and smell. It was helpful that Makoto’s upper body was covered in human entrails and blood from his previous kills. He’d like to avoid confrontation at all costs; mainly because it was both pitiful and horrifying at the same time. Eyeballs hanging from their sockets and dismembered limbs weren’t really a pleasant sight. Makoto had thrown up too many times on random occasions, so he chose not to look at them directly. On the other hand, he still mourned for the undead. They were people at one point. He couldn’t get that detail out of his head.
The hardware store up ahead looked like a decent place to rest and to get some weapons. Looking around for other potential hideouts, and discovering nothing better than the hardware store, Makoto ran straight to it.
Except the entrance was blocked by an inoperable car. He sighed out loud. Nothing was ever easy. To the right of the shop was a dark alley. He could get into the store through the back door. Makoto stopped in front of it and hesitated.
“Oh, come on…” Makoto murmured to himself. He hated the fact that he could bash human skulls and not venture into a creepy alleyway. He was still a big ‘ol wimp even after encountering the living dead.
He moved forward in a slow pace, bat raised, ready for swinging. He breathed in deep inhales until he saw the door. Sighing in relief, he was about to go inside when he felt something in his ankles again.
“Wha—?!” Makoto yelled in surprise and instinctively thumped his foot on the crawling corpse. He had stepped on its remaining arm. Then it began to move again, using its torso to inch towards him. From afar, he could see others approaching. He made too much noise. It was a good time to go inside except—
The door was locked.
Makoto stared at the knob in horror. The infected were approaching fast. He glanced left and right and saw that he was cornered. Three on the left, two on the right. His bat could only endure one blow. Panicking, he rattled the doorknob, pushed his shoulders to force it open, and even banged on it, hoping that someone—a real person—was inside.
“Is anyone in there! Let me in! Please!”
The banging made a lot of noise. But he still took the risk.
“Anyone! Open the door!”
The door flew open too fast that he stumbled roughly inside. He groaned in pain along with the impact as the door closed instantly after.
“Thank you, I thought I—”
He was about to look up until he saw a gun pointed at his face. The next thing he knew, the stranger was yelling at him.
“What the hell, man?! You just attracted all those fucking bastards in here with all that knocking, you bloody fucking genius!”
That voice! Makoto recognized it so well, he could almost cry, despite the harsh words thrown at him.
“Rin!”
The room was dark, but he was so sure it was Rin. A flashlight was soon lit up. Makoto had to cover his eyes in reflex at the sudden brightness.
“M-Makoto?”
The light confirmed that it was really Rin. Before Makoto could stand up straight, he felt Rin wrap his arms around him, still dangerously holding a handgun.
“Holy shit, I thought you were dead…!” Rin cried in relief, rubbing his face against Makoto’s shoulder. The taller man could feel his shirt getting soaked. “Holy shit, holy shit…” He murmured again and again.
For someone who cussed and shouted at him as soon as he got it, Rin cried like a girl who got reunited from her mother. And Makoto could relate. He had been seeing only the dead, and the fact that he met with Rin—still alive and intact and with no eyeballs dangling from his sockets, got him into tears as well.
“I’m so glad you’re safe!” And alive. He felt so relieved he could barely contain his happiness. Makoto reciprocated Rin’s kind actions and hugged back, even more tightly.
A loud thud from the door behind them caused them to pull away. They shared the same look of surprise. The flesh-eaters were close and were forcing their way inside, singing a chorus of coughing moans and lingering gasps.
Rin’s smile faded away as soon as he saw it was only Makoto. “Haru? Where is he? Why isn’t he with you?”
The panic in his voice reinforced the guilt welling up inside him. Rin had always thought it was a bad omen whenever Haruka wasn’t with him. Makoto looked down in shame. “I… He’s not…”
The other man’s eyes widened in horror and disbelief. “D-Don’t tell me…”
“He’s alive! Just… He called me but he got cut off, I… I don’t know,” Makoto said miserably, trying to make up the right words. He shook his head, trying to get rid of negative thoughts. It was Haruka. Makoto knew he had a high survival rate. Nevertheless, he was still in danger. “I’m coming to get him. He’s locked up in school.”
Rin exhaled loudly, sighing in relief once more. “I knew that guy won’t get killed off that easily,” he said, laughing a bit. He opened the lights and Makoto could finally see the surroundings.
“Does that mean I’m someone who gets killed easily?”
Rin averted his gaze and pursed his lips. “Well, to be honest, uh, yeah, you are.” He raised his hands in apology. “Don’t get me wrong! It’s just… you get pretty scared easily and…” Rin stopped and just scratched his head, which was covered by a baseball cap.
“I threw up about seven times on the way here and thought about killing myself so I really can’t argue with you there,” Makoto managed to joke, though it was kind of sad that he was saying the truth.
“I only puked once, if you could call that an achievement.” He heard Rin scoff and laugh. “Anyway, sorry I shouted at you,” he said regretfully. Rin always had a soft side for Makoto. It just wasn’t right to mistreat him.
It has been a while since Makoto smiled. “It’s fine. I was pretty noisy back there.” He dusted off the dirt on his hands before letting out a breath.
“Let’s get inside,” Rin said, ushering Makoto into another door. He looked back from where he came from and saw that the door looked durable enough, metal bars supporting the main frame. It was a shop after all, so it must’ve had a good security system.
They soon got into some kind of office. Makoto assumed it was the office of the hardware store’s manager or owner. “Are there any…” Makoto trailed off, giving Rin a knowing look. The other didn’t seem to get it. “You know, those things here?”
“Infected?”
“You call it that?”
Rin plopped down on the soft brown desk chair, making it spin as he landed on it. “The news call it that.” He opened the television via remote, but there was nothing but static. “There were news earlier. Stations were probably overrun by now.” He turned it off again before looking at Makoto. “It’s sorta cliché if you ask me. Evil corporations, biological warfare, secret experiments gone wrong… It’s like a movie. I could hardly believe it.”
“I had no idea… what happened. All of a sudden my dorm was filled with these… infected. I didn’t know how to get out until they broke my door.”
“It traveled that fast, huh?” Rin clicked his tongue. “It’s a virus transmitted via bite. I think that’s obvious enough. A scratch can get you infected too. I’m not sure, the news said not every single infected can transmit the virus. They have distinctive eyes. Clouded eyes are the ones that can turn you.”
Makoto stiffened. The one from the restaurant had clouded eyes. If he had been unable to shove it off, he might’ve been a goner by now. He felt chills down his spine. “Have you seen one like that?”
“I got to kill some when I was clearing this place up. There’s still some outside, but not worth killing.”
Makoto couldn’t help to be amazed. Rin killed every infected in the store? Judging from all the blood in his clothes and the melee weapons hanging from his back and buckles, he must’ve killed a lot. He really wished he could be just as fearless as him.
“Where did you get that gun?” Makoto asked, curious. He was certain he wouldn’t be able to handle using a gun. Rin seemed like the type to use something like it, though.
“Oh, this?” Rin stared at the pistol in his hand. “There was a dead police officer in here, thought it would be a nice loot.”
“Have you used it?”
“The thing is… I—can’t. It’s harder than I thought.” Rin looked at it one more time, scrutinizing the symbol of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department embedded on the holster. “Look, we’re gonna need this if we’re going to get Haru. I know what you’re thinking, alright? Let me handle the killing. What’s your plan?”
“I… don’t have one.”
Rin closed his eyes in disappointment and sighed. “Well, we’re going to have to start by getting you something better than that.”
Makoto noticed Rin’s gaze on his curved baseball bat. “Yeah, that would be great.”
“Let’s head down to the store, then.”
Makoto had to look away from several corpses before arriving at the actual hardware store. Just how many of these infected had Rin killed? He had lost count. There was even a dead body of a young boy, about the age of six, next to a corpse of what looked like his dad. He wondered if Rin was the one who finished them off.
“Why a hardware store?” he asked as they walked through a dim aisle of wrenches and other carpentry supplies. The whole area only had a few lights on, so even though it was dark, Makoto could still see clearly, even without his graded glasses.
Rin grabbed a huge monkey wrench, swinging it a few times to test its speed. “Was about to try the supermarket, but the alarms went off and suddenly there were hordes of them rushing inside. They’re sensitive to noise apparently.”
On one aisle, there were a few sports equipment available. Rin got hold from the sports aisle and threw a heavy polypropylene bat towards Makoto, who barely caught it.
“It’s more durable than what you’re holding. You’re strong as hell, the light weight of the bat’s an advantage for people with great upper body strength.”
Makoto just nodded and walked behind Rin, who kept stealing things from the store and stuffing them inside Makoto’s backpack and his own. Batteries, flashlights, a bundle of rope, a portable water purification device that cost more than ten-thousand yen…
“Rin, do we really need to steal all these?”
The said boy turned to him to simply raise one eyebrow. “Oh, sorry, let me just get some cash and pay by the counter—yes, we have to steal these things, Makoto! The world’s ending, remember?”
“Then at least get a can opener or something.”
“…A can opener,” Rin repeated flatly.
“I have canned beans in my bag and I won’t be able to open them.”
Narrowing his eyes, Rin stared back unamused. “We can open it with a knife.”
“I’ve tried that before and it was messy.”
“I don’t ca—alright, fine, fine, damn it. We’ll get your stupid can opener.” Rin rubbed his hands on his face before turning to another lane of tools—
—when a horrible-smelling thing lunged out from the other aisle. Both Rin and Makoto screamed in surprise. The dead creature grasped strongly at Rin’s arms with its disfigured hands as it struggled to get a bite off him.
“Goddamn it!” Rin yelled as he kicked the hungry being off of him. It was a good time to test that monkey wrench he had found. In one solid strike, he brought the heavy red tool across the infected’s face, severing half of its head, blood spurting everywhere.
Makoto only watched in fright as the corpse dropped on the floor.
“Don’t you feel… bad?” Makoto asked with hesitation, green eyes sullen in repentance. Again, he avoided looking at the dead body. He squinted his eyes so he wouldn’t be able to see it clearly. The smell of slaughter was enough to make him vomit. “They were people once.”
“Once,” Rin repeated sternly, blood-stained sweat trickling down his face. “Note the once, Makoto. They aren’t going to turn back. People don’t eat other people! I just saw a father eat his own son, alive. And I couldn’t do anything. You’re right, they were human once. But they aren’t now.”
Makoto was taken aback. He was right. They weren’t human anymore. The grip on his bat tightened and he finally looked straight at the dead body, with its severed head and maggot-infested wounds. He felt like he needed to see the corpse that Rin had killed, to see that they were no longer human. They were flesh-eating beasts, deceitfully hungry and out of their minds. He moved one step closer to the body. Rin seemed to have an idea what he was doing. Makoto’s green eyes blinked fast as he observed the headless man, human tissue and skin speckled on the once pristine floors. He needed to drill into his brain that they just weren’t human anymore. He had to stop himself from mourning every time he had to kill one of them.
“Sorry,” Rin apologized again, dropping his tense shoulders, watching Makoto stare dreadfully at the corpse. “If you want to survive—to meet Haru, you’re going to have to kill these sons-of-bitches.”
“I know,” Makoto said softly, switching his gaze down on his new baseball bat. He was going to cry again. Things might’ve been easier if Haruka was with him. “This is just… too hard for me to take in.”
Rin suddenly felt bad. “It was a lie that I didn’t feel bad on my first kill. I was in my condo, had to kill my neighbor. He was an old man, so he was slow. It took me quite some time to… put him down with a cricket bat.”
The tall man holding the bat couldn’t find the words to say. So Rin still felt some slight remorse. He was afraid he was becoming someone coldhearted. Rin breathed in deep before letting out another sigh.
“Let’s get you that can opener.”
For a short moment, neither of them spoke. Rin had found a can opener, and was now searching for other tools that might be helpful in one way or another. They had a bat, a wrench, an crowbar, and a pistol with ten rounds—against an entire city of the undead.
The unnerving silence was soon broken by the ringing of Makoto’s phone. There was only one person who would call him. He answered it immediately.
“Haru? Hey! Are you okay?!”
There wasn’t a reply, just the usual noise due to bad signal.
“Is that Haru? What’s happening?” Rin asked with worry.
Another static noise then—
“Mako—get me out—here!”
“H-Haru? Haru!? I’m coming to get you! I’m—” Makoto’s words were lost in the static noise that came after. The line was cut off and Makoto felt like having a panic attack, his hands seemingly numbing and his eyes blurring.
He needed to get Haruka fast.