by Nisioisin
“You’re right.” It was certainly more forward-looking.
“What wilt thou do if some rough-and-tumble codger in a sleeveless shirt appears?”
“I’ll run away as fast as I can.”
“At least thou art honest…”
“As fast as a vampire can.”
“’Tis that distasteful to thee…”
“I’d run from anyone who wasn’t a middle school girl.”
“…”
Thou art too honest, even with no one around, Shinobu scolded as she stepped on my foot again.
Grinding her sandal into it again.
Geez, it really hurt.
But after that, we─what can I say, we didn’t run away.
We managed to get by without running away.
We passed the time sitting on a bench in Unpronounceable Park, Shinobu cradled in my lap, chatting idly and dozing off occasionally beneath a sky even now pregnant with rain─and.
We got by without running away.
Not because no one came.
Someone did come.
And it wasn’t some rough-and-tumble codger in a sleeveless shirt.
Though neither was it a middle school girl.
It was.
026
“……nkk!”
The same feeling as the other night─of being surrounded by the time I realized it. To be more precise, I didn’t until we were surrounded and it was almost too late.
Without a hint of their presence.
Without a sound.
Without a chance of escape, too, of course─Shinobu and I were suddenly surrounded by vast numbers of zombies as we sat on a bench in that ambiguously named park.
Human corpses, their flesh sloughing off their bones like mud.
Vampires reduced to shadows of their former selves, their flesh sloughing off their bones like mud.
Already dead.
And for that reason, no longer able to die.
The town’s residents─though absolutely indistinguishable one from the other, for all I knew, acquaintances of mine were mixed into the zombie horde.
Given how many there were, the chances were pretty good.
The time we were surrounded at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine didn’t even compare.
There were easily over a hundred of them.
Well over two hundred.
Three hundred?
Five hundred?
Maybe a thousand? No, that couldn’t be.
But there were─almost that many.
The park was already so buried in zombies jostling and rubbing against one another that, even under the circumstances, I found myself worrying that the individuals would start melding into each other.
Well, right.
I shouldn’t under the circumstances.
Because we might be joining them─they.
Those zombies─who used to be human, who used to be Shinobu’s thralls.
They were looking at us with stares that didn’t even qualify as vacant.
And gradually.
Not to say sluggishly─they were getting closer.
“Wha? Why are they…”
In a panic I looked up at the sky.
Had the twilight hour passed while I hadn’t been paying attention─while I was getting cozy with Shinobu, holding her in my arms? Had night taken us unawares?
By their clock─by aberration time.
Had night already fallen?
“Of all the careless─I was only trying to have a little fun fondling some ribs!”
“To die for such a reason far surpasses carelessness.”
Then, Shinobu quietly showed me the watch.
The hands didn’t even read four o’clock yet─the twilight hour was still a long way off, let alone nightfall.
So how come.
They were here, now─
“…It seems the fireworks did somehow summon them to us,” Shinobu said.
Even she seemed flustered by this turn of events─which was perfectly understandable.
This wasn’t like the other day. We were surrounded on all sides as before, and this time we couldn’t escape into the sky.
Shinobu could only fly at night. What’s more, her vampiric level had declined somewhat─even if she sprouted wings, they’d be nothing more than a decorative design element.
“Hnh,” she grunted. “It seems that our fireworks were quite the distress signal after all.”
“How can this be… Even if they’re zombies now, these guys used to be vampires, right? They shouldn’t be able to act while the sun is still out─”
I thought.
They shouldn’t be able to.
“And indeed, they cannot. Look, their movements are more sluggish than before, and their melting skin in an even more dire state.”
“Um…”
Now that Shinobu mentioned it─no, even though she did, I couldn’t discern any fine distinctions in the stages of zombie decay─however, the impression that the individuals were melding into one another did substantiate her claim.
Their movements were so slow that they couldn’t avoid one another─and their skin, their flesh, was melting, more like water than like mud.
“The strain of operating in daylight is clearly showing─likely…” Peering upward, at a sky that presented us with no escape route at the moment, Shinobu said, “this cloudy weather is to blame. Those heavy clouds are blocking the sun’s rays─just enough for the zombies to be active.”
“……nkk!”
It had completely backfired!
Waiting for the right weather for the fireworks display…had backfired!
Variations in the strength of the sun’s rays certainly had an effect on my physical condition as well, even as a pseudo-vampire─sure, they had an effect, but come on!
Speaking of which, there was one time during my days as a vampire that I did expose myself to direct sunlight─but although my body burst into flames, the burnt parts healed thanks to my powers of regeneration. It’s not like I was burnt to a crisp in the blink of an eye─and the parts of the zombies that were melting like water before my very eyes likewise seemed to be healing up.
And they didn’t even seem to be feeling any pain.
However─
“‘Just enough’ sounds right,” I observed. “They’re barely able to move. Why push themselves so far during daytime…”
“Like as not ’tis thanks to the fireworks─the directive to destroy human beings is inscribed upon their brains─nay, upon their instincts. Therefore─they will seek to destroy humans if they can, even should it cause them harm to do so.”
So their original order lived on like a stubborn program─even without the vampire master who issued the order.
Or.
Even though one splinter of the two-man cell they were trying to destroy was herself that vampire master.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “Our existence was revealed because I sent up a few fireworks, and hearing them─do they actually hear? These zombies were kind enough to assemble even though it’s daytime, when it harms them to do so… Is that about right?”
“Aye.”
“Wow…”
Well, this wasn’t the time to be wowed.
What were we gonna do?
Our here-goes-nothing distress signal had worked like a charm─this went well past you reap what you sow and on to plain old self-destruction.
Felt like one backfire after another.
Koyomi Araragi at his best.
“What will we do…my lord?”
“Whatever we do…first things first, we have to get out of here…”
I tried to fall back in the face of the threat advancing on us from the front, but there was a bench behind me, and behind it the same threat was advancing on us from the rear.
We were stymied.
Completely hemmed in.
At an intersection where all the lights were red.
“…If you drank enough of my blood to m
ax yourself out real quickly, could you fly?”
“Were I alone. ’Twould be impossible to soar holding another.”
“Then...”
“In other words, no.”
I do not have the option of fleeing alone, Shinobu refused─firmly.
Her words left no room for discussion.
The sentiment made me happy, but there was no time to get emotional─because however slow their movements, the zombies were closing the distance little by little, very little by very little, solemnly, inexorably.
It wasn’t even a state of equilibrium.
It was─a countdown to execution.
I said, “Well, then I guess we have no choice but to fight.”
“It seems so. Indeed, we cannot meekly allow them to drink our blood─and yet, ’twill be no mean feat. As their powers are suppressed during the day, so are ours.”
And worst of all, added Shinobu, scowling at the surrounding zombies, though she knew it made no difference.
“They are my thralls.”
“…”
“Though they have transformed from vampires into zombies, they have not lost that original, fundamental power─and we cannot hope for victory against numbers such as these. We must attempt to slip through the cracks.”
“There are no cracks.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, I can’t quite fly, but I can at least jump, so I’ll pick you up and run away across their heads.”
Surfing, using the zombies as the wave─and running until the wave broke on the far shore of the horde.
I felt no small amount of guilt at the thought of kicking a bunch of zombies whom I probably used to know (and who became zombies because of us), and it was unclear whether the whole thing was realistically possible in the first place (we might get pulled down at some point before we broke free, no matter how sluggish they were)─
But there was no other way out of this crisis.
“Okay, since that’s the plan, no time like the present. We go on three.”
“Understood,” Shinobu assented.
“One, two─”
Three!
With that, Shinobu leapt up onto my hip, and I put my arm around her back and took off running, all in the same instant─
But.
Our split-second timing, and kamikaze-like determination, all got completely derailed.
Because the second my foot touched the ground, it started to rain.
A drop landed on my head.
Causing thoughts to start racing through my head, exacerbating my sense of urgency─if the cloudy weather turned into rain, the sun might be blocked even more fully, allowing the zombies to power up even further─and I might slip trying to run across their heads.
However.
However, what was falling from the sky wasn’t rain at all.
What was falling from the sky was─
“…Rice?”
Rice.
It was─white rice.
Not rain, but a vast quantity of white rice was falling out of the sky─and simultaneously─
“─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────ghh!”
The zombies screamed.
Screamed a scream that wasn’t a scream─consumed only by their appointed task, the zombies, this horde of aberrations who were apparently innocent of will, suffering, or pain, who had emerged regardless of the fact that it was still daytime, screamed.
Like vampires exposed to direct sunlight─
“─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────ghh!”
And in the space of a heartbeat.
The siege line that encircled us, the impregnable wall that seemed impassable by so much as a single ant─crumbled in the space of a heartbeat, the zombies dissipating in twos and threes. We never so much as lifted a finger.
They disappeared as if dawn had come─I have no idea where they went, whether they hid or simply vanished─but in any event, the horde of zombies, nearly a thousand strong, was gone.
Every last one of them.
No, not every last one.
The last one─remained.
But wasn’t a zombie.
She.
The girl who remained, clutching an empty rice sack, the end ripped open, under either arm─was not a zombie, nor was she a vampire.
Nor, of course, was she a ghost─
She was a living human being.
“I have no idea why, but─they seem to be weak against rice. When you shower them with it like that, it seems to drive them away for a while.”
I don’t want it to go to waste, though, so please give me a hand gathering it back up, she requested.
To which I─couldn’t reply.
She was tall.
Her black hair, long enough to fall to her waist, was gathered at the nape of her neck for ease of movement. She was the picture of health, with her wide eyes and long eyelashes, her smooth skin and plush lips. She wore not a trace of makeup.
She had on cargo pants and a tank-top that emphasized her chest, over which she wore a rugged military jacket. On her feet were sneakers so unstylish that it made me feel uneasy to see a girl wearing them, but all the same, considering how durable and comfortable they appeared, mobility was her top fashion priority.
She wore a mountain-climbing backpack, the type that’s secured at the waist with a belt and doesn’t sit right against the body. She must’ve been carrying the two ten-kilo bags of rice in there.
“So,” she said. I saw that she had a Swiss army knife at the ready in her right hand, not out of caution, it seemed, but simply as though it was standard decorum. The blade was pointed down, rather than towards us, but─ “Was it you two who were shooting off fireworks here a little while ago?”
“Y-Yes, it was,” I stammered in reply.
I didn’t stammer because my interlocutor was wielding a Swiss army knife. We sent up those fireworks because we had nothing to lose, without knowing if anyone was around; and an actual human survivor had shown up, and what’s more, saved us with a rice shower, yet I hadn’t given any thought at all to communication methods, and things were tense even though we’d narrowly escaped a besieging horde of zombies─but that wasn’t why either.
Nope.
I didn’t stammer due to any of that.
“Wow, okay. Then I’m glad I came to check it out. That was a dangerous thing you did─if they get up the gumption, those guys can move even during the day. What was that supposed to be, a distress signal? It won’t work, no one will come. They’ll just think it’s some kind of trap, or a warning signal.”
Saying this, she slipped the Swiss army knife back into its sheath, probably having judged “no danger” after talking with us face-to-face─then smiled.
As if to put us at ease.
Well, of course.
From her viewpoint─we were kids.
Wanting to be kind to us like that.
Wanting to help us out after our terrible blunder with the fireworks─perhaps it was only natural.
Sure.
Just like I did for her in the past─
“I… My name is Koyomi Araragi,” I said in a trembling voice─totally unable to hide my agitation. But I forged ahead and asked her.
Just like I once did.
“What might your name be?”
“It’s Miss Mayoi Hachikuji.”
That was how she introduced herself.
Yup.
I’d asked─but didn’t need her to tell me.