ArukuShibito Chapters 1 - 4

ArukuShibito

Dead People that Walk    





Marc LW Sherratt





 





Chapter 1

         She was disorientated as she ran down what seemed to be a long stone corridor, feeling her exhaled breath chill and wash over her face as she sped through it. Her body aching from the chase that this disgusting creature was giving her; she’d seen them before. However this one was mutilated and the mere sight of it was enough to let her know she didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Her legs burning from run; were being pinched and rubbed by the jeans she wore. Adrenaline was running through her, but it wasn’t enough she was losing speed, and the creature was relentless. Soon she wouldn’t be able to go on and she knew she was slowing down. Her legs ached so, as the sounds of the creature were becoming clearer and louder through the darkness. Its breathing was growing heavier in her ears and the sound of its sodden and rotting limbs smacking against the ground and walls were all she could hear. Almost as if in one motion, she stopped dead. Her legs had just given in, the fatigue stopping them going any further and finally condemning her to face her pursuer.

She tried to turn and face it, but trying to move her legs just didn’t work, they couldn’t hold her weight any more, she dropped to the floor. Falling hard against the hard stone ground landing on her right shoulder, the ground was freezing, but she never noticed as her body was numb from the chase. Falling like the proverbial bag of shit. The shock of landing and the thoughts that stormed her mind, it’s gonna get me, I’m gonna die here in this miserable country. Chilled to the bone and covered in a freezing cold sweat, she twisted her neck to see her predator. She could see it now, for so long it had been hidden in the dark night, but now it was there. She could see it, and even worse, now she could smell it.

The creature was lurching towards its prey, now moving slower itself. Through the pitch darkness and the distance it could have just looked like any old office worker, crooked neck tie hanging from its stained shirt. It kept drawing closer. With each second, and each movement she could make out more and more of its features. The shirt’s stains were deep reds, and greys, obviously from where its own rotten flesh had fallen from its still walking cadaver. Its face was no longer bore human features, its nose looked to have been torn or bitten off, the white bones protruding at the front of its face. Its skin had become greyed and had rotted to jelly. Lurching closer still and she was now vomiting from the smell; her head jerked to the side as she emptied her stomach. She felt warm spots, as the fresh vomit splash against her face. She raised her head back to face the thing that was pursuing her. Panic was gripping her even more now. Sweat was pouring from her brow, freezing against her skin she was too scared to scream. Her lungs were heavy in her chest; they felt too heavy to make the sound needed to scream. Her throat ached from vomiting and in this mess, all she knew was. She was going to die here.

Finally the monster had reached her, its single remaining eye rolled in its socket, jerking in spasms until it settled on her, helpless and sodden with vomit. It started trying to reach down for her, reaching too far, it lost its ill-kept balance. It fell on her; she felt pain in her ribs as the weight of her stumbling attacker winded her. It began to scrabble, trying to regain its balance; its scrabbling was met by her hands pushing away at the rotten flesh of its face. She could feel her fingers pushing into the jellified skin, it was cold and squishy. Chunks of the disturbed flesh were falling on to her as she struggled against it. She felt the creature’s forehead land with a splat against her frozen cheek. Her hands slipping against the smooth newly exposed white bone that was its brow. The chunk slid from her cheek, effortlessly, leaving a slimy trail as it flopped to the ground next to her. She kept pushing, the decaying monster seemingly falling to pieces in her hands. This one must have been dead for some time. She kept pushing back against its head, wary of its salivating mouth. That’s what they said right, zombies bite you, and you become one, the thoughts trembled through her mind. She kept up her struggle. Pushing against anything she could get a firm hold of.

CRACK! It was the monsters neck; she had pushed on its head so hard that its neck gave way. The head flopped behind, still attached at the broken neck. Even now with its head resting between its shoulder blades, it was still moving, grabbling furiously. The creature’s face was still contorting in its hungry motions. I need to separate this thing from its head, now. Her vision shot from side to side, stone floor all around.

Panicking at the lack of a solution she pounded her fists against its chest, one hand puncturing the decayed ribcage. The office wear clad monster pulled back, its torso now upright, she tried to crawl backwards, from underneath it. As she scurried she felt a sharp pain in her hand and then warmth… warm, nothing was warm there, everything here was stone… she looked at her hand, blood what trickling from a gash across her palm. She looked for the source of the cut. It had to have been a stone to cut her, as all there was here were stones. She looked for the culprit, hoping that it would be something she could use. The monster lurched forwards again, knocking her back. Now she knew where the sharp stone was, it was pushing against the back of her ribs. She frantically reached behind her, trying to kick away the macabre office worker as it neared again. She felt it, not much bigger than a house brick but it was there and it was all she had. The stone felt loose, but she was still on top of it. She rolled to the side, rolling the dead man from on top of her.

It dislodged, finally, she drew her hand up. Rock clutched firmly in her hand she struck the monsters flaccid neck, and again. The monster was trying to edge from side to side, her rushing adrenaline helping her to pin it to the ground, sitting on its chest. Her arms plunging the stone frantically into the putrid remains of it’s neck. She was losing herself, feeling fatigue vex her while she was trying to thrust the stones sharp edge into the monster. She lost herself for so long when she came to she realised she was stabbing into mush, the bones around its neck gone, the collar bone destroyed. Her would be attacker had long since stop moving.

She had bested this living dead man, so well in fact that it had now become a real corpse, unmoving and dead, but she was exhausted. The fatigue washing over her, the last of the adrenaline had ebbed away. She looked further into the darkness, not knowing if her eyes were open or closed. Her conscious self was waning, fading into the darkness, falling deeper. Gone.

Chapter 2

When she finally awoke she was in a world of bright light. It hurt her eyes at first, but soon she managed to open them fully. Her mind quickly guessing that it must have been the morning after the night before. After a few minutes gazing at the blue skies overhead, she managed to pull herself to her feet and survey the area. Far from the stone corridor that she’d thought that she’d been in fighting the necktie wearing corpse, she appeared to be in an alley way between rows of housing apartments. There were tall stone walls that must have been what gave it the image of a corridor. The stone walls gave off the feeling of being in a maze. She thought of mice in a maze, somehow the mouse was always expected to find the cheese in the maze… I guess I’m the cheese. The corpse was still there, a grotesque Rorschach test existed where its head used to be. She looked down at herself, her t-shirt was soaked, she couldn’t tell what was vomit, guts, semi-coagulated blood, putrid flesh or Japanese curry… but she was definitely a mess.

She could smell the corpse from the other side of the street, the thought of going near it again made her gag, but she wanted to check it out. She looked down to examine the corpse, searching the former man’s pockets for information or anything she could use. She found its wallet. She opened it to look, inside was the usual. A drivers Licence, apparently the man, Tanaka according to the card was a gold license holder… he’d never had an incident, well not before he tried to eat me he didn’t, she thought. There was a photo, the man in the picture was very different, but the same as the man in the license picture, he was maybe thirty or forty years old. She couldn’t tell, she’d only been in Japan for a month or so, and she hadn’t got used to how young the Japanese can look into their later years. And she couldn’t tell from the license either, the number she’d guessed was Tanaka’s birthday wasn’t in Gregorian calendar form. Just behind some of the cards was a photo, next to Tanaka in this picture was a woman, she was smiling, with a young girl sat between them. It was his family. Grief swept over her, and she pushed it away, grief was for humans, and this man died a long time ago. Piece of shit zombie probably ate them anyway. She kept riffling, finding a good amount of yen, a condom and point and membership cards to just about every shop in Japan. She stripped the wallet of its money and tossed it back on to the corpse, she realised that it was now crawling with bugs and must have been the whole morning, maybe even when it was moving? The thought of this sent a shiver down her spine. They were devouring the remaining soft flesh, thousands of little ants and huge roaches chewing this guy down.

Taking money from a corpse never seemed to happen in the monster movies. I’m guessing that means in America, the usual setting for these monster movies, they don’t live out of vending machines. Money was essential here. Even in the arse-end of Japan so much was controlled by electronic systems, Vending machines, Electronic Tolls and so on. Even the speak your weight machine at the gym demanded one hundred yen before it would work.

All around her was apartment buildings. She pondered that the Tanaka corpse might have once lived here. She realised that she desperately needed to change her clothes, so she looked to see which building was nearer. She struggled to read the characters on the side of the wall, she had a small white and red pocket Japanese phrase book, she pulled it from her back pocket, the denim rubbing the little cut on her hand. Consulting the book she made out the katakana script on the wall, it said “haitsu yamada”… and she took this to mean Yamada Heights. Her Japanese lessons weren’t paying off, she’d only taken a few before all this, she could read some of the symbols and she knew the different character sets from each other. But she still couldn’t read without the help of a cheap phrasebook. Even before all of this shit with the zombies, our protagonist was truly fed up with her lack of ability in the Japanese language.

She moved over to the first apartment of Yamada Heights. A-101. The door was locked, the next door was open. This door went on to the second floor apartment, and so she quietly entered apartment A-201. At the door there were scattered papers, adverts for houses and local newspapers. She didn’t take her shoes off to enter, this is very rude, she thought to herself as she sidled along the wall. Carefully checking for any movement inside, looking through the frosted glass of the dividing door to see if anything moved. It didn’t. She leaned against the door and pushed the handle down, her ears pricked for any sounds. Her eyes darting back and forth from the exit to the door she was opening. As the door finally cracked open it wasn’t her ears that were alerted, but her nose, the smell hit her hard. Rot, but not a meaty rot, this was different. She pushed the door open to see that the apartment was vacant. Phew she thought, as relief came over her. She relaxed, dropping her guard.

The sink was full of green moss and rancid looking liquids that had obviously been the source of the odour. She looked around, there was a little TV in the corner, and large tatami straw mats covered the floor. She looked in the drawers next to the TV. The top two draws were normal men’s clothes, jeans, and shirts of various colours. More rubbers, at least the people here were safe when they weren’t trying to chew on you. But who knew, maybe they’d wear a rubber for that too.

The remaining draws were clothes for a girl obviously much smaller than our protagonist… The trousers were out of the option, her ass wouldn’t fit, but maybe there’d be a top she could wear. But she really needed to wash first, the rot and moss of the sink wasn’t the only thing that stank in this place. She smelt awful. She made for the bathroom, and hissed the sink into life, careful not to make more noise, as that would attract the rest of Tanaka’s friends. Cheese doesn’t really shout out where it is in the maze.

She levelled herself up in the mirror, shoulders back chest out. She was a mess, jellied flesh still hung from her cheek, and the light from the ceiling now showed her exactly what was what vileness covered her tight t-shirt. It was originally sky blue, but now, now it... She ripped it off immediately with disgust. Her blonde hair was a mess of dried blood and vomit… sexy. She ran the water through her hair first, yanking dried chunks from it. The small gash on her palm aching as she did. Watching the dried chucks settle on the surface of the water, in repulse she drained the basin and refilled it. She grabbed the sponge from the side of the bowl. Peeling the fallen flesh from her cheek and flinging it in the corner, before taking the wet sponge to her face. The dirt came free quite easily and her pale skin was once more pink. She moved down her body, from her face, to her neck, her arms were the worst. Her arms were stained, reds and jellied tide marks from where she’d pushed into the corpses’ rib cage, then there was the mess from trying to separate the thing from its head. It had left most of her front a mess of lumpy blood. She scrubbed hard, but too little avail. The blood on her arms was stubborn. After most of the dirt was gone, she wiped quickly over her chest, around her plain black bra. She knocked her running shoes off, before stripping her sodden jeans off. Then she strode back into the hallway to find a shirt and some clean trousers. Her stomach growled, but she didn’t want to stand around in her underwear all day. So she headed over to the chest of drawers next to the TV.

She flung the clothes from the drawers in a style that reminded her of going out for a night on the town. Unable to find something to wear, she checked the man’s clothing again in the top drawers. Japanese fashion was a strange thing to the western girl; there were clothes in that draw that she thought were too girly to wear. She found a pink t-shit with some bad attempt at Japanese French scrawled across it. She slid it over her head. It was tight on her chest but it would do, to wear anything more in the midsummer humidity would be suicide. She stood there in the pink t-shirt now riffling through the man’s clothes for some jeans or any good trousers; she held several pairs up to her half naked body. Assessing the trousers against her body before she threw them aside and cursing the apartment’s tenant for having a smaller ass than she did. At the bottom of the draw there was a baggy pair of jeans, well baggy for the original owner. They had a big koi carp fish embroidered on the left leg; she slid them over her legs, fighting a little for the last few inches before buttoning them up. Afterwards she searched the drawers near the sink hoping to find a bandage or a plaster that she could use on her hand. In the third draw down she was lucky, plain white medical bandage and some small clips to hold it in place. She wrapped her palm quickly. Wincing in pain, she pulled the bandage tight. Finally she clipped the material into place.

Her stomach growled again, and the pain of her empty belly was hitting her. She tried to cushion this by hugging her stomach. They’re going to her my tummy grumbling at this rate, she thought before searching the cupboards for food. There wasn’t much, only several bags of crisps, peanut butter and rice. She looked over to the little rice cooker… it was green, well it was originally white, but the cooked rice inside had gone mouldy. Rice was off the menu. So she feverishly tucked in to the crisps. Strange flavours, but they were good food none the less. Pizza flavoured crisps, covered with real cheese. Roast chicken flavour that tasted like feet. She dipped the feet flavoured ones in the peanut butter. She chuckled nervously to herself, zombies everywhere and I can still get chips and dip, she thought.

After she’d finished the feast she looked for a weapon; this had been a difficult task so far as the low crime rate in Japan was mostly due to people not having access to weapons. Searching every cupboard, and wardrobe, the best things that she found were, a large cooking knife, but it had no weight to it, it was flimsy. And an old baseball bat, it was wooden and decorated with some unreadable signature. The logo at the end she recognised from TV, it was a tiger logo, one of the Japanese league baseball team. It would do for now, although she really hoped she’d never have to use it.

She quickly looked for anything else she needed, changed her socks from the soggy ones she wore to a clean set from the dresser. After, she went to find the bathroom, and then sat down to take a piss, which was lucky, a European style loo, no squatting. The Japanese style toilets that weren’t all robotic and futuristic were pretty much a hole in the ground you squat over. Her legs still ached from the run, without adding squatting to the grief given to the painful limbs. How anyone could read the paper on a Japanese loo, she didn’t know. She pulled her jeans back up, rinsed her hands, drying them on the back of her jeans, realising with a soft squelch that she’d soaked her bandage. It felt better than the dry rubbing material she thought. Rubbing her hands on her jeans, she realised that she’d left her phrasebook in the sodden jeans pocket. She doubled back to the wash room; the jeans were still in a damp pile on the floor. Quickly she emptied the pockets on to top of the washing machine that sat in the room. Phrasebook, money, wallet and house keys were all that she had. She stashed them all quickly into the new jeans. The embroidered fish on the left leg made the pocket so small it could only carry the keys.

Part of her wanted to stay here. Sure it stank, and there wasn’t any food left but at least it didn’t have any monsters. The thought of quietly starving to death crossed her mind, the thought of her cowering and hiding for days on end. She hated the idea. Grabbing her new baseball bat before opening the front door, and walking straight in to the putrid chest of a waiting Zombie.

Chapter 3

The force of her body bounding into the zombie knocked it backwards, making it fall to the ground. It landed with a thud, and slowly tried to re-erect itself. Seeing this walking corpse in the bright sunlight was more terrifying than in the dark. These bastards seemed less human when you could see all of their details; its skin had turned green and translucent from decay. Its eyes greyed. This newly appeared monsters extremities, its ears and fingers were all torn with the remaining flesh hanging off. She looked down disgusted that she was yet again looking at one of these creatures. Just as it was pulling itself to its knees, she brought the tiger logo baseball bat up and smashed down into its head. The noise of the impact proved its success, the satisfying crunch of a destroyed skull. Bits of flesh flew from the creature, yet again covering her t-shirt in decaying flesh and jellied skin. She unseated the bat, which had gone so far into the skull that it was laying in between the things eyes, although one of its eyes now hung loosely out from its socket. She looked down at herself. She could feel her t-shirt dampen.

Rage as only a girl would know, the top she’d decided to wear was ruined. She burst back into the apartment. Throwing open the top draw of the dresser. Tossing the newly ruined shirt aside and dug into the draw to find something clean to wear. Another t-shirt, this one was black, and plain. She donned it quickly, grabbed the bat and left, again.

The remains of the zombie still lay on the ground twitching. She wanted to kick it for making her get changed again but she didn’t, as it would have only sprayed more guts over her. Baseball bat in hand she started looking around, surveying the area. She couldn’t see much, the apartment buildings all around obstructed her view quite nicely. She didn’t know where to go. But she needed to move. Her plan was to keep close to the walls of the buildings that were surrounding her. She decided to go right from the front door of the apartment. She started along the way. Swiftly her pace quickened as she got bored of her almost comedic “spy walk” along the side of the walls. Eventually she just gave up and walked normally.

All she saw for so long were Japanese style stand-alone houses and apartment blocks. But she needed to find a way out of here, this shitty little city or even Japan. She didn’t know how far this had spread, how far would the monsters follow me. Was there life outside of the city, or anyone outside of Japan? She thought. Just then she decided what she really needed was a map, something that would say some nice friendly words like “You are here” and “Go here to be safe”.

After looking for over an hour, she didn’t find any maps handily littering the suburban streets. However she did find the post office plan of the neighbourhood. It was like a billboard to help the posty find his way around. Convenient as almost none of the roads have names here. She looked around to find her bearings on the simplified map. It wasn’t difficult, there was only one convenience store on it and she’d just noticed it down the row of houses. She saw haitsu yamada there too… it was only three or four houses down. She’d been wondering around in circles for the last hour, just fucking great, she thought to herself.

Now she was becoming more frustrated with herself because she couldn’t read most, if any, of the billboard. She was starting to hate herself for not putting in more effort when she was studying Japanese. She decided to check out the convenience store before she pulled her hair out trying to work out what this billboard had to say.

The entire outside of the convenience store was red, and there were yet more characters that she couldn’t read next to a picture of a leaf. She assumed quickly that they were the shops name. A hurried glance at the building and nothing looked particularly out of place. She walked towards it. The electric doors started to spring into life, well the left one did. The right side door jerked to a stop when it tried to slide open. She walked in, leading with her nice new baseball bat shaped friend. “IRASHAIMASE!!”  A recording dictated from the speakers, it must have been automatic, but is still made her jump. Her eyes darting around to look for movement, there was nothing. She looked down, there was a corpse blocking the rest of the door from opening. It was dead, but she poked it with the tip of the bat just to be sure. This corpse was a traditional sort of corpse, no getting up for a walk and hopefully no chasing her around. She liked this guy for that. It was wearing a uniform, the same red as the store front. He must have been an employee here. His neck was crooked. He must have been thrown against the door during the panic when this all started, or he had fallen against it. Either way, Unlucky bastard, she thought. 

In the store the shelves bore little food, some bread that had turned turquoise with the bloom of mould. A full rack of Japanese chocolate bars and one she recognised from home. It was a Kit Kat Chunky bar; she didn’t know why these had made it to Japan, but before she realised it she’d eaten half of a bar. It tasted like home. She kept on munching down the rest of the bar. The store clerk’s corpse was not complaining about her shoplifting. She looked around, smiling at the corpse for staying still. Treating it like a dog that had learned to play dead. There were drink chillers to the back of the shop and a rack full of magazines covered the window side. She glanced over them as she went to the drinks. Beauty magazines; some English words were on the front cover “Try Pale White”. After this she thought, nobody would try that again. Car magazines; how to make your small box car look cheaper and tackier than it already does. Comic magazines; there were some elaborately drawn action comics, with characters holding swords and guns laden across the covers. Porn magazines; next to the kids comics, quite typical, but to add more confusion to the boundaries of children, there were both porn magazines and porn comics… only in Japan eh?

Just next to the chillers were some map books, there were different ones for the different prefectures. She was in the dull end of Japan, it was also called Yamaguchi prefecture, a place where nothing was ever supposed to happen. She tried to remember the characters for it. No luck. She checked in her phrase book; at the back of the book there was a list of the prefectures. “Ah hah!” She’d found Yamaguchi, it was typically just next to the bottom. It had two simple characters; they looked like a trident and a square. She looked over the map books. There it was, on clear display. It was on the top of the shelf, at the back, hidden in plain sight behind six other road maps. At least she now had the map book, now if only it would say “Go here and be safe”.

She eyed the drink chillers; there were lots of chilled teas and coffees. Some soft drinks were there, like cola and Japanese vitamin drinks. She grabbed a coke. Her diet was off since the world had effectively ended two weeks ago. She drained one bottle immediately, sighing as she regained her breath.

She realised with her arms piled high that between the food drinks and the map she couldn’t carry all of this. She looked behind the counter. There were a few vinyl bags baring the store logo. Then in the corner was a satchel bag. It was a nice black one from some designer label. That poor bastard must have saved up for months for that bag, she thought before emptying its contents on the counter. All that fell out were a few comics. One ironically fell open on a scene with a zombie eating a school girl, of course this being Japan meant that the school girl had an unrealistic chest and still managed to show off her underwear in every frame of the comic.

She loaded this bag with a few bottles of water and some of the vitamin drinks, the prefecture roadmap and as much junk food would fit. Anything other than junk food had long rotted by now. 

She looked out of the window. There were a few bloody hand prints on the glass that she hadn’t noticed before. These didn’t faze her; she’d seen it all by now. Two weeks ago, maybe she’d had screamed and run around like the school girl in the comic, but not now. What did catch her eye was that it was getting brighter outside, the Japanese autumn was much warmer than it was back home, warm in the day freezing in the night. She took one more of the drinks from the fridge and drained it before exiting and returning to the post office plan billboard.

There were some characters on the top left corner of the board and she started searching the road map for them. They were too complicated to describe as tridents or boxes but she searched the index for them. After almost ten minutes stood in the sweltering heat she found them, spinning the map book on its spine to page twenty two. It still wasn’t apparent where she was. She tried looking for more symbols, that didn’t work. She was starting to worry now; she’d have been stood in the open for an hour soon. Some thing would come and try to eat her again at this rate. She decided to try looking for the shape of the housing area on the map. Too many looked similar. Then she spotted it, next to one of the similar looking housing areas, the leaf logo for the convenience store she’d just stolen the food and map book from. She’d found herself, well as much as you can find yourself in a foreign country where you can’t read and don’t speak the language.

The sound of an oddly winded exhale came from behind her; she turned to face it, another zombie. On sight of this new creature she broke into sprit. Bat in hand and bag flailing from side to side. The remains of the last zombie flung from the bat as she ran. After a minute or so of running she turned to see where it was, there was no sign of this newcomer. It mustn’t have been very quick. It was gone and she was safe again, for now. She pulled the map book out again. Relocated herself, this didn’t take long this time; she could still see the corner of the red convenience store. Sweat was now dripping from her brow; her t-shirt had formed a damp V shape around her neck. She looked at the area around her on the map, there wasn’t much but housing. According to it a few kilometres up from her there’s a shopping mall. It’s where they always go in the movies, she thought. But then the movies are from America, and in the malls in America they have guns… 

The thought that the mall might have some other survivors was nice. This would be her target for now. She traced the route with her fingers. She’d go past a small marina and it was just north of that, but all of this was on the other side of the new zombie. She needed to get past it quickly. She gripped the baseball bat so hard that the cut on her hand started hurting. It focused her attention in the heat, calming her before she went up against one of them. She stashed the map and started walking towards the un-dead creature.

As she neared the monster, it was still trying to lurch forward in chase. But it was slowed down by its leg. “She” was slowed by her leg; it had been a long time since she had seen a female zombie. Given how this started women were usually the first to die. The leg was broken, and the woman was quite old anyway. She walked close up to it, she could already smell it, urgh!; just as the zombie pulled its hands forward to attack her, long groans as it reached. She slashed the bat from over her right shoulder. Sending the zombies rotten head askew. The old female zombie fell quickly, her groan cut short with a sharp crack from the bat. She looked down and smiled, not because she’d just knocked the head off of some old lady, but because she’d done it without ruining another t-shirt. She moved past the corpse, now spewing its insides out from the new hole above its chest as it fell to the floor, and found her way to the main road that she could follow to the mall.

She walked for about thirty minutes, quietly and discretely before anything interesting came up. The main road was a typical Japanese road; quite narrow just enough room for the boxy cars to pass then a thin footpath, with little white railings from time to time to protect pedestrians from cars. Just away from the side of the road there were some rice fields, divided by grass into square shapes. On the other side of the road there were more Japanese style houses. Occasionally there would also be a house or a hut actually in the rice paddies.

In the fields there were a few rotten corpses laid awkwardly floating in the rice fields, or on the road side, but they were dead. One was pretty much just a skeleton. Just a skeleton, that got her thinking. Maybe if they don’t have their heads knocked off, after a few weeks would they all be like the skeletons that came from the Hydra in Jason and the Argonauts. She started chuckling at the thought of some of the short Japanese zombies trying to pick up heavy Grecian shields and swords. Maybe it wasn’t right to laugh at this, as these Japanese Hydra would likely be the death of her, “Well they’ll kill me either way might as good laugh about it” she said. She said out loud with only the dead to listen to her.

She dismissed her temporary one sided conversation and continued on. Different styles of architecture passed her by, some very colourful buildings that must have come from the seventies and eighties stood out against the traditional style buildings. Then she saw two people, people or zombies? No people, they were running across the road carrying stuffed shopping bags, zombies can’t run, they have shit balance, she thought and started running towards them. “Hello” she shouted. They heard her and dropped the bags they’d been carrying and ran from her. She chased them “Hello, help me!” she continued shouting. “My names Jess, I’m not a zombie!” they still ran. They headed into a large house and slammed the door behind them. She ran up to the door. “HELP ME!” she pleaded as she banged on the door. She turned and slumped against it, taking a breath for a minute. She heard a shout from behind the door “Gaijin! Go Away!”… She took this to mean that she really wasn’t welcome.

Tearful from the rejection, Jess picked herself back up, she now felt disgusting from the amount of sweat pouring off of her. She took a bottle of spring water from her bag and had a few good mouthfuls before stowing it back in the bag. She walked back to the main road, now feeling the sun burning her arms and face quite severely.  She looked at the bags the inhospitable men had dropped. Inside there was fruit, tiny fresh oranges each about the size of a muffin. She grabbed a few of them. She tried to grab some more but she was dizzy in the heat and leaning over to pick them up didn’t work well. She fell over, landing on her extended arm. She took a minute to right herself, drinking more water. Then she continued on, trying to walk in the shade where she could. There were more corpses as she went along. Some people were dead and rotting against the road side. A child’s body lay in the centre of the road; its head and chest had been run through, obviously hit with a car in the initial panic. The small bones of its hand were reaching from a torn stained sleeve towards the roadside. Maybe it was reaching for its mother to save it.

Chapter 4

The destroyed corpse of the child reminded Jess, our protagonist, of how it was two weeks ago, and how this had all started.

Wives had turned into monsters and attacked their husbands and children. School girls had eaten each other and their classmates. Female office workers had made places of business into places remnant of a nightmarish horror scene. People didn’t realise what was happening for the first few days and at work it was business as usual. Then the changes became more frequent as the days got hotter. Our protagonist was a classroom assistant in a high school when she’d first seen it.

Teaching English to a class of thirty, when one girl that had appeared to be asleep for most of the lesson just stood up and grabbed the boy sat next to her. All of the class thought at first that she’d kiss him, and then she got closer. Ignoring the teachers telling her to sit down, she lunged in and with one bite tore the boy’s throat out. Blood sprayed everywhere covering the nearby students in arterial spray. Almost at once all of the students ran from the classroom screaming words Jess couldn’t understand. With one very clear message, run.

Jess’s teaching companion, Nishimura-sensei tried to order the girl to stop in Japanese. But she didn’t respond she just let the blood flow down her pale face as she continued chewing on the boy. Nishimura grabbed the girls arm. She dropped the dead boy and thrust her head at him, he blocked with his arm. But she had then bitten down on that. Nishimura screamed for Jess to get help, so she had ran to the staffroom looking for help. She’d been screaming for help all the way down the corridor. No one had responded. When she got to the staff room, there were three teachers chatting and playing solitaire on their laptops. They were oblivious to the world. She screamed at them to help, but they didn’t understand, they just looked dumbfounded at her and kept playing their games. Quickly she eyed up to see which was the biggest she grabbed him and dragged him by the collar back up to the classroom. In the classroom Nishimura no longer needed her help, he was too far beyond that. His arm was torn, and his neck was broken, his eyes were open and he was just laying there covered in blood. The girl was still eating the boy. Jess had turn to see the big teacher’s reaction, but he wasn’t there.

The large teacher had speed waddled as fast as he could in an attempt to run from the scene. After seeing this for a second time, so did Jess. She ran back to the staffroom, no one was there. She decided that today might be a good day to leave school early. She grabbed her bag from her desk, throwing her phrase book in before she left the staff room. She went past a few classrooms on the way to her bicycle; the classroom windows had been smeared with blood and the fresh bodies we scattered randomly throughout the school. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Tears streamed from her eyes looking at her mutilated students. She collapsed, and puked several times looking down at the horrific faces of the young Japanese boys and girls. She saw a girl in blood stained school uniform at the end of the corridor she’d just came from. Blood covering the girl’s mouth, it was a different girl from the classroom. But it still made her run. Straight through the door, the young pale girl chasing her, but her pursuit wasn’t quite running. It was like a fast unbalanced walk. Jess found her bike quickly and escaped from the school. At first she was unsure of where to go.

First she went to try the police office near between the school and her apartment. Blood stains covered the windows, and at the front of the police hut the body of a broken cop lay there with his face torn. He was in a pool of blood. What was happening? This was all that she could think at the time.

The roads were bad; cyclists usually run their life on the edge here but this was nuts. People kept swerving and crashing people were panicking. There were some people dashing across the road trying to avoid the cars… some failed and had ended up flying over the top of the larger cars, some ended their life strewn across the front of box cars. Jess had never seen so much blood; everywhere she looked was blood and death. But she persevered onwards. She wanted to get back to her apartment. There she could check the news and find out what was happening to everyone.

Just before her apartment block there was a rail crossing, corpses were everywhere. And a train carriage lay on its side, people still crawling out of the wreckage. A car, a big family people carrier type car was crushed up next to it. The survivors from the train had stumbled over to the remains of the car. Tearing the people from the seats, wounded people, already covered in blood torn from their seats. The one she could see was a woman being pulled from the driver’s seat. Her right leg was missing; just a bloody stump remained below the knee. She screamed as she was thrown against her own car and the train’s survivors began to eat her. Biting into her where they could. Jess saw this and cycled on as fast as she could. Ditched her bike a few feet from her place and bolted her apartment door behind her. Everything in here was the same as it was in the morning when she’d left. The sun was shining through the windows. It was peaceful. It was here that she’d realised her heart was beating madly. She walked slowly into the main room of her tiny apartment, instantly drawing the curtains before she went to sit down, but ended up passing out on the floor. Our protagonist was utterly exhausted from her first encounter was the walking dead.