ArukuShibito Chapters 5 - End

Chapter 5

Now-a-days the child’s bleach white corpse didn’t really affect Jess, it was just there. The child laid there, a horrifying memorial to the panic that hit the whole city two weeks ago. The child was small; near him was a crushed lunch box. Mould green bread seemingly poured out of it. Before moving on Jess wondered for a minute if the child parents escaped or ate each other, or maybe they’d even had a nibble on their crushed son?
Jess continued down the main road. She was getting nearer to the marina; the smell of salt in the air was getting stronger. She passed a few more bodies as she walked in the shade, some were still fleshy. The smell coming from them was terrible, it was getting worse. They were covered in insects, occasionally birds. Others were just piles of bones that had already been eaten by one thing or another. Either way, they were dead; the remains of each showed quite clearly how it died. Some had broken arms and legs. Skulls crushed in different ways, some run through with tyre tracks, some smashed against walls. She could start to see the sea in the breaks between the houses, it was nice and blue. The sea breeze wasn’t getting rid of the rank awful smell that filled her nose though. The sight of the blue sea was filling her with a false hope that the world outside of Japan was normal and somewhere else in the world people weren’t eating each other.
Maybe I could get a boat and get out of here, she thought. The reason that this wasn’t going to work would become obvious quick soon. Her face sunk as she actually saw the marina. The fishing boats the usually birthed here were gone. Several sunken small boats remained, and the marina itself had become a cesspit of bloated floating corpses. The smell was rancid, and she couldn’t believe her eyes, it was like a sea of bodies. This was what she’d been downwind from. In the bay of the marina she couldn’t see a clear patch of water, it was just dead people. The thought crossed her mind of running to another island on the back of the corpses… like a sick parody on Jesus and his ability to take a stroll on the water. But that wouldn’t work, after the entrance to the marina the bodies were sparse. The current from the sea had obvious washed those nearer the mouth of the bay out to sea.
She reached in her bag for the map book. Spun the book back to page twenty two and found the little fishing marina. Not too far from that mall now, she thought with only a small glimmer of hope left in her mind. The shopping mall was still her goal. More so now that the boating option was prematurely cancelled. Around the bay area she noticed a few small bars. Maybe they’d have a weapon to scare off the deadbeats, well that’s what she had hoped. The nearest one to her was called Snack Sakura, it was written in English. Jess had know, from her introductory parties in Yamaguchi that the word “snack” meant it was some type of hostess bar. A popular night out for the local business men, well the ones that can afford to pay to have a young lady stroke there ego all night.
Jess nudged the door of the hostess bar. Shit! It was locked, she couldn’t move it. She tried the bar next door, the sign was in a similar style but this time it wasn’t in English and she could read it. She slid her hand over the handle and pushed inward. The door opened and a whiff of stale air blew past her. The door jerked forward and one of the undead grabbed for her, she tried to pull back the door. No luck. This was a young girl of a zombie, still strong enough to pull against a door when it had a meal on the other side. It was wearing a black dress; the dress was grey where the decayed flesh had soaked into it, the dress didn’t cover much. The baseball bat, she thought. She let go the door handle and thrust the bat straight into the dead tart’s chest. It fell back a bit but it didn’t stop trying to grab at her. Another thrust, this time it landed square on the hostesses jaw. The jaw crunched and it fell back. Sprawled on the floor, Jess didn’t waste any time in pinning its arms. She stood upright on the things arms, and then drove the bat down to its skull several times before it stopped squirming under her feet.
The bar was covered in the blood of Jess’s attacker; bits of zombie slut had sprayed over the chairs in front of the main bar. She looked around, and to her relief, she was alone. The bottom of her shoes had bits of zombie stuck in the tread, and there was also some fleshy jelly on the bottom of her jeans. It was ok; it was just the rims. It was nothing like the mess that the Tanaka zombie had made.
Jess had shut the door behind her and clicked the lock on to reassure her a little. Then she began to search the small room. There were a few tables, all with comfy looking leather chairs. There also was a row of bottles behind the main bar and a machine at one end to pour beer; it was next to the karaoke machine. Several televisions were scattered around the bar in various places, and on the tables there were half drunken drinks. The occasional glass had an almost stereotypical lipstick mark. Some spilt glasses were strewn across the floor. Mould grew from where the drinks had made puddles, and also in the glasses.
Between the mould and the dead girl this place reeked. Jess looked behind the bar; there wasn’t much there just some perfume and papers. Clean glasses were pushed to one side. She looked into the back room. There was a small kitchenette, a little cooking stove, a fridge, some pans. Nothing that could be of much use, well unless she wanted to run around hitting zombies with frying pans like some bad comedy. In the corner stood a baseball bat, it was in worse shape than Jess’s was. Some knives in the draws but they were difficult to use against the creatures, she remembered trying the first time she left her house.
Thud! A bang on the door of the snack bar disturbed her reminiscing. One of them was trying to get in and she could hear its heavy breathing through the door. It kept on banging and Jess held her bat close. After ten or twenty minutes of listening to the unrelenting banging, she decided that it wasn’t getting in, and so, she left it to its banging on the door.
It kept on banging against the strong metal door of the bar. Jess went back to investigate the kitchen. There wasn’t much she could use, there was some rank looking fish in the refrigerator… and some very far gone milk, the fridge stank worse that the dead tart. In the freezer there wasn’t anything either. The banging continued on the door.
There was nothing useful in the whole bar and the banging continued from the door. Jess checked the time on a clock behind the bar, just gone six in the afternoon.
She decided to wait out the banging, no point rushing to get eaten, she thought. She sat down in the soft chair that was the furthest from the girl’s cadaver at the door. It wasn’t very far from the girl, maybe eight or nine feet in the tiny bar. She sat and listened to the banging for what seemed to be forever, the clock said it was only an hour. She got up and grabbed a clean mug from under the desk. Filled it with beer from the machine… it tasted bad, but it was still better than Japanese lager usually tasted.
She returned to her chair, put her feet up on the table, and started waiting again. Her feet started to ache as she rested; she’d been running around a lot and it was now catching up with her. The banging persisted. She sat there in the chair, listening, watching the clock spin around. Before she realised it she was sleeping, dreaming of the life she’d left behind in London.
Jess awoke with a strange sensation; there was something on her nose. She could feel it moving. Her eyes jerked open, she tried to look around, but her eyes were still out of focus. It took a few seconds for them to come back to life. The moving sensation was on her cheek now. She slapped her cheek to try and stop it. It stopped it and she felt the fly on her cheek, crushed and mushy. Her eyes were in focus now. The girl’s corpse had flies all over it. Everything had flies on it now.
Jess suddenly realised that the banging outside had stopped. Jess grabbed a wet wipe from behind the bar and promptly removed the dead fly from her face. Realising she needed a piss she opened the toilet door. Oh fuck, it’s a Japanese one, she thought. She tried her best to squat over the porcelain pot, set in the ground. Her jeans tucked up around her knees, she fell backwards a few times during the attempt, managing to grab something in time. Eventually she re-emerged from the toilet, with a few new bruises on her arse, but on the whole feeling more refreshed, not sure what I should be more afraid of, zombies or the johns here. She checked the time, half five in the morning. It was time to leave the little bar.
She grabbed her bat from next to the chair, batting the flies aside with her hands. Lifted her bag over her shoulders and then she tried to prepare herself for what awaited outside. She jumped over the corpse and ran through the door. Brushing flies off of her until she saw the bay again… it was sunrise and the sun looked like it was rising out from the sea of corpses. Disgusted by the sight, she puked. The hot sticky vomit covered the bar’s sign.

Chapter 6

The first few days

Jess awoke with a start late next morning, sitting bolt upright and looking around for a few seconds. Afterward, the nightmare she remembered what she had seen at the school, the students and teachers dying everywhere came back to her.
The first thing she did was to check the windows. Jess had been lazy when she’d left for work the morning before; she’d left the curtains closed. She nudged the curtains aside a little to see outside. There were bloody handprints over the little window. Outside of the window there was a small bicycle shelter and a car park. A few cars had been crashed into others, and some people had been crushed underneath them. Some of the cars still had drivers, well there were corpses collapsed against the steering wheel. Jess ran to the bathroom at the sight of the assortment of corpses, vomiting so much that her throat had hurt.
After rinsing the sink she returned to the main room of her tiny apartment. At first she tried to turn on the television, but it was only the emergency broadcast signal. On every channel, repeating the same message in Japanese. She had left the television on and tried her laptop. No such luck the laptop loaded fine but the internet wouldn’t logon… shit. She was beginning to panic a little, grabbing her work bag and upending it on the floor. Its contents spread over the floor, and she kneeled next to the pile, searching for her phone. Got it!
She searched through her phonebook for anyone that might be of some use. She hadn’t been in Japan for long; this had only been Jess’s third week here. She hadn’t made many friends yet either. The search didn’t take long as her phonebook was sparsely populated. There was another foreigner she’d met at a meeting at work… what was his name… she looked through. Jason, there it was. She pushed the call button at the first sight of his name… a Japanese recording answered the phone. No answer, she thought.
She was alone.
Over the next few days she’d barricaded the small apartment. Bolted every lock on the heavy front door, and locked all of the windows. For over a week she lived on the food she had left in the cupboards and in the refrigerator. She tried to make the food last as long as possible. All the time she’d hidden on her own, in solitude.
After a few days she realised that when the television is on that they would come, and bang against the glass. Whether it was the light or the sound that attracted them, she didn’t know. The television hadn’t shown anything useful anyway.
In the days, when she was sure the light wouldn’t attract them, she watched old video files on her laptop. A few clips of The Simpsons and a few old movies she had on DVD, Jason and the Argonauts, and a few others. She tried to watch them with headphones, no sound right, but you can’t hear them coming then, she was scared but the sound of them, even more so by the idea of not hearing them, as they tear down the door, break through the windows, pin me down and kill me.
Four days into her new hermit like lifestyle she rolled over, knocking the television remote. The TV sprang to life, it was the emergency broadcast picture, “’ank you for listening, stay safe…” it blurted out and then it continued on in Japanese. English! All that ran through her mind was that it was in English. For the next few hours she sat huddled next to the television waiting for it to repeat in English. When it went dark outside she head them banging again, she panicked and threw her futon cover over the TV to hide the light that radiated from the screen, and plugged her ear phones into the jack on the front. She listened with one ear for most of the evening, not leaving the spot, not even to eat. Not that there was much to eat.
She grew tired of waiting, maybe it was hopeless, and she just sat in the corner huddled next to her TV half listening to the Japanese message repeat for the millionth time for nothing. Maybe they only said it in English once, and I’ve gone and missed it, she thought as her eyes started to well up.
She sat there most of the night in tears, half listening to the banging outside, half the Japanese broadcast repeating constantly. It wasn’t until one in the morning that the message started again in English. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a state of emergency. Please stay in your homes, lock your doors and windows” well duh! She thought as it continued, happy to finally be able to listen to another English voice. “Early Monday morning reports started to come in of women savagely attacking people all over Japan. All of these women appeared to have unnaturally pale white skin. A cosmetic drug ‘Pale White’ is currently believed to be the source of this epidemic. Use of this cosmetic cream is now a crime. For the time being remain indoors. Barricade your homes, thank you for listening, and stay safe” The recording ended.
Cosmetics! Cosmetics caused all this! Jess couldn’t believe it. She had always known that the Japanese idea was that pale women were considered to be prettier than their darker skinned companions, and that many women wore makeup to make them look whiter. But this had been ridiculous. All the death and blood she had seen, the days she’d spent hiding in her own apartment, all because of makeup.
Jess had then been almost hysterical for the next few days, frequently breaking down and crying.
After a few more days the food had finally dried up. The last of the crisps was gone. The last of them had been foul tasting and soggy as the bag had been open a few days as she had rationed them.
Over the next few days she sat in the corner, hugging her empty stomach hoping that it would stop the pain of hunger. It didn’t. She decided on that night that she needed to leave.
In the morning after, she lined up what she would need. She got dressed, boots with a flat sole, jeans and a shirt. It should do, I’m only nipping to the shop, she thought. She looked at her line up, a Japanese phrasebook, a large kitchen knife and her phone. She tossed aside the phone, pocketed the phrasebook and grabbed the large sharp knife. I’m as ready as I’m going to be, she thought, as she pushed open the door and looked out.
It had been a mess. Her bike was still where she’d abandoned it, but it had been run over now, probably by the car that had crashed in to the wall of the next apartment block. The bodies that lay under the various smashed cars look to have been picked clean, eaten.
It was eerie, she walked through the same buildings she’d gone through every day in the weeks before. It was never like this before. There certainly weren’t dead bodies laying everywhere. Before there had been no pools of candy red coagulated blood. The thing that stood out most was the smell. Japan has some open sewers, so a girl would get used to funny smells around here, but this was rotten. The drains near to her apartment still ran, but the grate had caught all manner of foul smelling artefacts over the last two weeks. At the top of the surf, pushing up against the grating was an arm. Well as much of an arm that there was from hand to elbow. She couldn’t see the severed end for the running water. Jess couldn’t take it, her gut wrenched and she keeled over to spew again. She opened her eyes after emptying her stomach to realise that she was only a few inches from the now vomit sodden half arm.
She forced herself to her feet and continued on. She knew that the nearest supermarket was past some of the housing, past the elementary school, the little shrine and then down the road to the right. Just thinking about how much could go wrong before then made her shiver. I’m gonna get eaten, is all that she could think.
She walked slowly past the housing. A new smell was filling her nose, it was the recycling cages (each house, apartment block has a cage for rubbish and recycling) they’d not been emptied in weeks. Bags had split and rancid green and brown slush water covered the area nearby. Maybe the crazy people eating people don’t like the smell of this shit either, she thought as she pinched her nose to walk past it.
While she had made her way down towards the supermarket, she’d seen so many corpses now that they had just started to Jade on her. Well, that was until she had hit the primary school.
The first sign that the primary school was coming into sight had been the edge of the painted wall. As see began to spot the usual montage of animals, she could also now see the blood stains against the fur of the panda’s image. The school gate came into view and then she saw it, a little girl, wondering around in the playground. The girl walked around next to the soccer nets.
Jess called out to her “Hey! Are you OK?!” This had been a big mistake. The little girl, clad in her school uniform, craned her neck around so that she could see our protagonist. Her face was pale, and there was dried blood on her face. By the time Jess had notice this it had almost been too late. The little girl had bolted towards her.
She gotten within maybe one or two metres when, CLUNG!! The little girl had run straight in to the heavy metal gate of the school. After striking the gate at some speed she’d bounced back. Almost instantly she’d started to get back on her feet. Jess saw her face once more; the gate had smashed the little girls jaw, breaking it in two.
It just hung from her face, the two halves of her smashed jaw just hung from her face. Oh god... Jess thought.
The little girl charged again, slower. This time when she hit the bars of the gate she didn’t bounce back. She had clung to them and had started to squirm through them. Jess was in shock at this, she’d started to edge slowly backwards. The kitchen knife had been in her hand.
But it hadn’t been quickly enough, the instant the little girl in the school uniform was free, she had run for Jess. Jaws flapping as she ran, thumping into Jess. Jess had toppled; landing on the ground, the knife sprang from her hand and landed next to her. The little girl, landed on Jess’s body. Her arms had been gripping its potential victim’s shoulders. Her loose jaw was flapping above Jess’s head. The Jess kicked her. I just kick a little girl she thought. She looked over to see where this picture of innocence had landed.
She hadn’t landed too far away. Jess rolled over and snatched up the knife as the little girl had charged at her again. She had held the knife forward, and it plunged into the arm of the girl. The girl span to the side and the knife ripped out, a chunk of upper arm went with it. She turned and started to charge again. This time the bull fight was to stop.
The little girl had charged Jess for the last time. Once again she had held the knife forward. This time, it hadn’t the child’s arm. The knife had lodged firmly in the little girl’s forehead. The child’s corpse fell back, twitching but dead. What the fuck have I done!?
The little Japanese school girl was a mess, her jaw and one of her arms lay destroyed, and Jess couldn’t bring herself to recover the knife from its forehead. She broke down, collapsed and started crying beside the girl.

Chapter 7

Back outside the hostess bar. Jess pushed the vomit covered signboard out of her mind, and she’d tried to avert her gaze away from the marina of the dead.
She continued making her way down the long road to the mall, the morning air starting to smell less as she’d gotten upwind of the rancid marina. Baseball bat in hand. She had known that she couldn’t have been far away from that shopping mall now.
She didn’t see any corpses for around an hour after that, they must all be in the marina, she figured.
After she walked past the sports club she could see the mall building. It looked absolutely normal. Just like a normal sunny morning. The massive orange building with its gigantic lettering on the side was illuminated by the sun as if it were going to open like a normal business day.
Jess continued on. The mall’s car park slowly edged into view. It was a mess. There weren’t a lot of cars there, but the ones that were there were trashed. Broken windscreens covered in blood. Eaten corpses were hanging out of car windows. Cadavers of all shapes and sizes were littering the parking lot.
This was nothing new to Jess; these sights had become usual to her. Through the entrance of the car park, she walked meandering around the bodies. She made her way up to the automatic doors. They didn’t do anything. There was no sign of power there, or life.
She walked around trying the other doors, there were five public entrances to this mall, and they were all shut. The deliveries came in through the back, but the shutters were down there too. Jess walked about for over an hour trying them all, before she found a staff entrance near the delivery loading point. It was open. She tried to ease the door shut behind her, but it was heavy. It had closed with a slam. Over the eerie silence that would have been heard from quite a distance.
Jess was in a small boxy staff room. There had been a vending machine and a small table in there, but she’d paid them no notice as she passed through the room. Survivors! She’d hoped. Jess opened a door into the main mall. There was nothing, darkness, the only light coming in from the automatic glass doors.
In the gloom she had seen some of the dead, the shade had preserved them better than those outside. She started to run around, bat swinging in her hand, as she searched for people. Please let there be people. Her hope had started to fade.
She heard a banging on the windows as she searched, they’d heard the door. She took to the first floor; she figured that the higher ground would give her a better chance to look around. Most of the shops had their shutters down. One or two didn’t and she slowed her run, striding around the mall now as she looked in any open shops for signs of life. There was nothing, not a soul. It was just her, in a shopping mall full of dead people. The outside was just more dead people. And then there was the living dead that were tried to eat her whenever they’d get the chance.
There’s no one left.
No one.
She was on her own.
Jess stopped her searching, hungry, tired and desperate. From her bag she rummaged some food, a kitkat and some water. Tears had been running down her face, as she sat slumped eating the chocolate bar that had given her a homely feeling.
Before the end Jess had spent three days in this mall. She’d examined every corner, looked for saviours from the roof. She’s eaten the last of her food. Then she gave up. There were no more ways she could survive. She cried as she made her mind up. As she chose the way she would die.
People don’t often get a choice in that; most aren’t unfortunate enough to have a warning about it. Usually it’s just, here today, gone tomorrow.
Jessica had stood at the edge of the roof, and she’d shouted. “Come on then you horrible fucking monsters”, “Get over here you shitheads”. The tears never stopped. She didn’t want to die; she was only twenty-one years old. Under normal circumstances she’d have her whole life ahead of her.
Zombies, being polite and punctual creatures came to her. They crowded the mall. Surrounded it, just like Jess had known they would.
She thought about leaving a will or a message. She even found a camcorder to record it on before throwing it aside and condemning the stupid idea. No one was left, who would watch it.
She stood, only a few minutes before she was to die, in the little staff room. Her bag was laid out on the table. The only thing she took with her was the bat.
From the dark little room, light burst through the door as she opened it. Pushing back any of the dead that were close to it. She had swung the bat down on the head of the first zombie she saw. Then she pushed through, swinging around, catching several of the creatures to her left as she exited her safe haven.
They kept coming and she kept swinging the baseball bat. Knocking any that came close to the ground. Smashing bones and crushing skulls. All the time tears had streamed down her cheeks. She stepped over the fallen to get to the creatures that were still hungering for her. And then, a little boy, maybe only a few years old, bit her leg. Fuck! It hurt her, and she stumbled as she ploughed the bat into the child’s head. Then it happened, she whaled as she felt hands grabbing her everywhere, pulling her limbs in different directions then the biting started. She screamed and cried, as her skin and muscles were bitten into and torn from her body.
The last thing that Jessica had felt was fear and despair as her neck was torn into.