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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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Cassandra was desperate. No one would listen to her words that the world was ending. So much so that she desperately clung to me, a complete stranger, when I agreed, ‘That’s right. This world is going to end.’
It meant she was being hounded mentally, that she was impatient. But now, she was saying ‘you’re lying’.
I looked for something to say and saw her hands.
She was constantly fidgeting, rubbing, and even pinching them. The marks on her thumb and index finger, bitten out of anxiety, were evident.
Her lifeless eyes never rested for a moment and constantly scanned her surroundings. Her highly raised shoulders seemed to be an expression of tension.
Bloodshot eyes. A shadowed face. A frightened, wary appearance. Anxiety.
“Did you not sleep well?”
Perhaps because it was an unexpected question, Cassandra hesitated a little.
“I slept a lot last night.”
“It doesn’t seem like you slept soundly.”
“It’s always been like that.”
Even as she said that, she gripped the door handle tightly. Grunting, she took off her thin windbreaker. Thanks to Cassandra’s help, I finally managed to take it off.
“Why are you suddenly taking off your clothes, Johan?”
I extended my right arm.
“Tie the sleeve of the coat to my arm. Tie the other side to your arm.”
“What are you doing?”
“I told you. I’m not going to abandon you. Tie it.”
Cassandra narrowed her eyes and glared at me.
“You’re a strange person, really.”
Look who’s talking, I was about to say. She tied it to my wrist quite meticulously. She left a good amount of slack, so it wasn’t too tight. After tying it to her own arm, the trembling seemed to stop a little.
“Cassandra. I didn’t say I would believe you without any thought. The fact that the zombie problem is not to be taken lightly hasn’t changed from the first time we met until now. You know that too. Besides, I’ve seen many things I couldn’t understand even after that.”
I told her about the strange things I had seen on my journey so far.
The story of the plants that grew excessively large and grand at the agro-food center. The abnormally fast and gigantically grown fruit. And the vines that grew explosively from a zombie corpse.
At the time, they just seemed bizarre.
Now I think I knew what they were. An intentional mutation caused by humans had escaped the lab and been released into the world. And the aftermath had spiraled into an uncontrollable range.
“I don’t know science or medicine as well as you do. But I know how to judge things at a common-sense level. All the things that are happening right now, none of them make sense.
The people in power don’t try to solve the zombie problem. You said the Disease Control Bureau is like that too. Even the Elza Liberation Army, which set out to liberate Elza and therefore should be on the side of the people more than anyone, was the same.
As far as I know, Cassandra, you are the only scientist who is looking at the zombie problem itself. That’s why I came to rescue you with Camila. We have to survive, don’t we?”
Of course, I knew what would happen after this world ‘ended’. But no matter how out-of-the-ordinary Cassandra was, that story would sound absurd to her.
I just hoped she would accept at least this much of the story. Cassandra was silent for a long time, then rubbed her eyes. A cracking sound was heard, perhaps because the inside of the truck was dry.
“I’m sorry.”
For the first time, her voice didn’t tremble.
“I’m sorry. Cassandra has been… ignored so much. No one would listen to Cassandra’s words. They mocked. They scoffed. A certain bad woman understood Cassandra’s words, but she didn’t care and instead… seemed to want the world to end.”
“Who? Can you tell me?”
“…Virginia Halford.”
Virginia. A mysterious woman. Vicious, big-chested, pretty, and ridiculously strong. And she was trying to capture and kill us.
What did we even do?
“Anyway, I didn’t want to be disappointed again. So I said some harsh words without even realizing it.”
“Let’s call it even.”
“What?”
“The Lambert incident and this. Let’s call it even.”
“Okay.”
Reassuring someone is hard work. As soon as she finished her answer, Cassandra yawned so wide her mouth could have torn.
“Sleepy?”
No answer. She was already asleep with her head bowed low. I reached out and rested her head against the seat.
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A long while later, Camila, who was ahead of us, turned on her hazard lights. A gas station was visible a little ways off. It meant she wanted to stop for a moment to refuel.
Camila, who had gone ahead, circled the gas station once. No zombies or people appeared. Camila, holding her rifle, got out of the driver’s seat and checked all around, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.
Just a corpse with a gunshot wound to the head, and a gas pump swinging, hanging from its hose. It seemed someone had hastily refueled and left.
“I’m curious, who is tied to whom?”
From beyond the open door, Camila asked with her arms crossed. Cassandra was clutching the cloth that tied us together as if it were a lifeline.
“I wonder.”
4:00 PM.
The scenery outside hadn’t changed much from before. A wide field, zombies staring at us from a distance, a still-blue sky, the force of the sunlight having waned a little.
Cassandra finally woke up.
As soon as she woke up, she smacked her lips and looked for water. I handed her the water bottle that was placed between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and she gulped, gulped, and drained half the bottle.
Her eyes were red, but the trembling in her body was noticeably less than before.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah. I slept so well, I can’t remember the last time I slept like this.”
Her pronunciation was clearer than before, so it seemed lack of sleep had played a part in her frantic state. Seeing her even give a slight smile, it seemed she had calmed down quite a bit.
“Do you remember what we talked about before we left? We’re going to sleep in a suitable garage today. One person will stand guard, and the others will sleep in the car. Do you know how to use a gun?”
“Yeah. People at the Disease Control Bureau also receive basic military training. But my accuracy wasn’t very high. About twelve hits out of twenty shots.”
“That’s enough.”
Camila and I were both good enough with guns. It would be enough for Cassandra to just hold a light gun and watch a side path.
“But weren’t you good at hand-to-hand combat? I saw you in Lambert.”
“I’m somewhat confident in unarmed combat. I’m also decent at fighting with a weapon. I learned that kind of thing since I was young.”
Surviving as a boss’s daughter in the back alleys of the criminal underworld, something like that, I guess. Anyway, you have to know how to protect yourself.
But how far did we have to go?
Although it was early summer, the sun set surprisingly fast. We had to find a place to rest quickly before it got dark. Otherwise, we would have to park on the shoulder of the road and sleep.
As if sharing the same concern, Camila increased her speed. After passing a flat land mixed with red sand and gravel, a field of dead corn appeared. It was so endless that I wondered if a picture of a cornfield had been pasted on the window.
After passing through the field, a silo for storing grain and a warehouse for storing farm equipment came into view. The warehouse door was firmly closed and even padlocked. Camila turned on her hazard lights. It meant she wanted to check that place out.
The parking lot-slash-open space was quite large. We circled it twice, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Camila waved her hand out the window. It was a hand signal to get out and take a look.
Cassandra and I untied the cloth that bound us. I handed her a pistol. A 1911. Someone like her would be able to control the recoil without much difficulty.
“You know how to handle it, right?”
“Yeah. I’ve used it.”
“For now, Camila and I are of the mind not to use guns much. But when necessary, we use them decisively. So, until we shoot, you must absolutely not shoot first.”
“Got it.”
I took an MP45 submachine gun, and Camila took an R-15 rifle. It was one of the useful items we had salvaged from the resort’s armory.
“Don’t worry, Doctor.”
Camila shrugged her shoulders. Cassandra nodded her head.
“Even if you get hurt, I’ll keep you breathing.”
“…That’s not very comforting.”
First, we circled the perimeter. Other than a musty smell, there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was a little different from the smell of rotting crops in the field. To be precise, it was the difference between the smell of dried leather and damp straw.
There was a window on the wall of the garage. I shone a light on it, but I couldn’t see anything remarkable. I tried to lift it up just in case, but it wouldn’t open.
“Camila. Should we break the window and go in?”
“It might be easy to get in, but hard to get out. It’s dangerous. Let’s just open the door.”
“It’ll be a bit noisy.”
“It’s the same as breaking the window. Just hold the rifle for me. Doctor, please cover me. Let’s go to the truck.”
Camila brought a sledgehammer from the truck. I could see her loosening her arm muscles by lifting and lowering it slightly like a barbell.
I aimed the submachine gun at a spot far away.
Camila swung the sledgehammer.
Thump!
The handle broke through the door and bounced into the garage. The door, which had seemed so sturdy, gave way helplessly.
I shone a light inside. At a glance, there was nothing that looked special. Just in case, I picked up a rock that had fallen on the floor and threw it. I heard the sound of the rock hitting the wall and bouncing off, but that was it.
“Going in.”
“Be careful.”
Camila and Cassandra stuck firmly to the side of the door. I burst inside. It was a spacious and wide area, enough to park our truck. On one wall, rusted folding chairs were neatly arranged against the wall.
“Ugh.”
The smell of decay was overpowering. I covered my mouth and looked inside. I saw a man slumped against the wall. He was in a suit, with a withered flower in his breast pocket. In one hand was a pistol, and near his heart was the trace of life that had already escaped and hardened.
Behind the man, a terrible picture was drawn. It was a drawing of the goddess of hunger. I shone the light around more.
I saw a picture that seemed to depict the goddess of hunger, and a bulletin board with posts like [This Week’s Activities] and [Gospel Message]. It seemed it had been used as a small chapel. A broken birdcage was rolling on the floor.
A whiteboard next to the bulletin board caught my eye.
Whatever you hear in the fields, never go alone. It was even marked with an asterisk and emphasized as important.
There was WD spray, perfect for rusted hinges, a shovel that could dig a grave, and a cutter that could easily cut through an old chain, but there was no deodorizing spray for the smell.
With the three of us digging together, we were able to bury the man deep before the sun set. Since there was no proper coffin, we had no choice but to put a sack over the body. I hadn’t heard any stories of zombie rats or zombie humans digging up the ground to eat corpses, but this rudeness seemed better than having the deceased desecrated.
“If I had known, I would have bought some deodorizing spray in Hampton. Even if it wasn’t a clean shroud, I could have at least made it so it didn’t smell.”
Camila seemed to feel bad about it.
“You’re a kinder person than you look.”
Cassandra chimed in, in her own way. It would have been better if she had omitted the unnecessary modifier ‘than you look’. Camila flinched a little, but seeing my expression, she seemed to be holding back.
We put both the trucks in the garage and firmly barred the door from the inside. We stuffed clothes into the windows and cracks to prevent light from leaking out. The door, whose handle had flown off, was blocked completely with furniture.
Dinner was water and canned bread. It was by no means an environment where we could cook. Because of the smell of rotting grain, all three of us came inside the pickup truck and forced down our food.
“Hey. There are two trucks, but let’s all three of us sleep here together. Two people can recline their seats, and the back seat is spacious enough to sleep without any problems.”
Camila opposed my suggestion.
“I’m against it, Johan. If something goes wrong, all three of us could be gone at once. Besides, the 2.5-ton truck has a higher garage. Surveillance is that much more convenient, so why should we give that up?”
“I’m for it. We’re going to stand guard today too, right? It’s better for the three of us to be together than separated when we switch shifts.”
Cassandra shook her head. They both had a point. I also thought about the three of us sleeping in the truck, but the inside of the truck wasn’t that spacious.
“Let’s just sleep together in one place.”
I pushed for my decision. Camila seemed a little dissatisfied, but since my and Cassandra’s arguments weren’t entirely wrong, she nodded her head.
Today, we changed the order, so Cassandra was first, I was in the middle, and Camila was last. After simply brushing our teeth and rinsing our mouths with bottled water, we changed clothes in the truck one by one, then returned to the pickup truck and went to sleep.
I don’t know how long I slept.
“Johan.”
Cassandra whispered.
“Johan, wake up.”
It seemed not only me but also Camila in the back seat had woken up. Hearing a low metallic sound, it seemed she had reflexively grabbed her gun first.
“Cassandra, what’s wrong?”
“I hear a sound.”
I opened the truck door slightly and listened.
Help me…
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