"The Lost", Chapter Five

[katmillia]

Title: The Lost
Chapter: 5/10
Fandom: Arashi
Character, Pairing(s): all
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, horror, violence.
Summary: Do you remember me? Lost for so long? Will you be on the other side? Will you forget me?

“What’s the cafeteria set-up?”

Nino, which couldn’t be his full name Jun imagined, was rapid fire with questions while O.S., Satoshi, whoever, was walking with purpose at the front of their group. It was dark - the lights along the campus paths were all out, although their newest companions claimed that they’d only cut the gym’s power.

It was strange, walking through the darkened campus at this hour. They could hear some of the other guys who’d left, mumbling to themselves as they wandered off while the five of them walked to the southern end of campus. “There’s a main entrance, offices, mailboxes and the cafeteria. And then four buildings. My dorm’s on the right, fourth floor.”

Aiba was still angry, and Sho was oddly quiet. It seemed that Jun would have to be their representative with their strange saviors. The campus grounds were overgrown with weeds. Flowers were wilted and dried up in their beds, and the occasional flier for a sporting event or club meeting drifted along the sidewalk in the breeze. The University of Central Tokyo, the one Jun had known, was gone.

They passed the student union, and Jun shivered. The doors had been torn off their hinges, and all the glass was smashed. A lecture hall where he’d had several classes was covered in graffiti, and Sho’s voice was shaking. “Japan is lost,” he read, and Jun’s eyes felt dry and itchy at the sight of the neon yellow spray paint on the brick building.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Nino said, fingers flicking over the buttons of the Wii controller, almost as if he needed to be doing something with his hands or he’d go crazy. “Ohno and I will see what’s salvageable in your cafeteria. You guys go get changed. You look like shit.” Jun found that hard to believe, considering how filthy O.S. and N.K. were, but he said nothing. “If anyone’s in the building, we’re leaving. So hurry up.”

“So what if they leave,” Aiba mumbled, out of Nino’s earshot. “I don’t think I want to go around with them.”

“But we don’t know anything. They know where it’s safer to walk around. We’re as good as dead if we go out into this blind,” Jun tried to reassure him, but his words seemed to ring false.

Being out in the fresh air after being cooped up for so long felt good, but there was something else in the air. Jun had never been around corpses, but the lingering smell. It could be nothing else. If they went into the lecture halls, the library, the student union - just what would they find there?

It was just the way it had been that night he’d been on the roof, alone. There were lights in the distance, flickering in the high rise buildings. Were there people there? Or were the buildings just empty, hollow shells? And it was quiet. Aside from their group and the few others Jun knew were wandering around, it was so strange. He finally realized why. There were no airplanes in the sky. Maybe Japan was lost after all.

The dorm entrance was closed. The windows were spray painted in several places.

“Fuck everything.”

“The government has abandoned us.”

“Pray.”

Some of the windows on the dorm floors above were open, curtains flapping. Why hadn’t anyone broken in? Why some parts of campus and not others? Maybe it was serendipity. Maybe there was no one left around to break in.

He swiped his keycard, and the beeps were almost too noisy in the dark. “Use the stairs,” Nino mentioned calmly before he and his partner headed left towards the cafeteria.

“409,” he called after them, wondering if they’d go upstairs and meet them. His foot still hurt, but he had better sneakers in his room. Sho and Aiba stayed quiet, following him to the stairwell of his hall and up to the fourth floor. He wondered if they wanted to go back to their own buildings? Neither had expressed a desire to do so.

Where would they go? Home was in different directions for all of them. And what home was waiting for them when they got there? If his parents and his sister went to a safety center, he’d find an empty house. But if the house wasn’t empty, if it was spray painted the same as the buildings here on campus…

He wanted a shower, but there was no time. They passed the floor bathrooms, reaching the end of the hall. If Jin had come and gone, he hadn’t locked the door. He didn’t even need to take out his key. The cheap, student housing curtains were pushed roughly apart and the window was open, letting in the moonlight and the flickering from the parking lot just past the dorm complex. But there was still a pretty stale smell. Nobody had been in here in weeks.

Aiba entered, sitting down on Jin’s bed almost immediately. Jun watched as the other boy scooted back on the bed, leaning his back against the wall and pulling his knees up to his chest. There was no sign of his roommate. All of Akanishi’s things were the way they were that last night. Laptop still open, but the screen was off. When the power to the dorm went off, the battery had probably died. But Jun’s own laptop had been off - he powered it on, hearing it whine a bit as it booted up after being off so long. There was still enough battery left.

Sho hadn’t entered the room, Jun realized. He was hovering in the doorway, peering down the corridor every few seconds in nervousness. He decided to ignore it, reaching for his chest of drawers. “Aiba, we’re about the same size, right?” Aiba said nothing, eyes staring at the stripes adorning Jin’s duvet cover. He grabbed one of Jin’s abandoned overnight bags from his closet and started shoving a few t-shirts, boxers, socks, a pair of khakis and jeans into it. He was glad he’d done laundry a few days before it had all gone to hell. “This can be your bag then.”

He tossed it on the bed, and Aiba didn’t move to grab it. All he did was incline his head slightly in thanks. Jun grabbed a bag from his own closet and put a few more changes of clothes in there. Sho was still in the doorway. He was a bit broader, was a bit bigger around the middle too. Jun swallowed down the lump in his throat at the memory of what Sho looked like without his clothes.

“My roommate has some things. He probably isn’t coming back for them,” was all he said to Sho as he stared at the laptop screen. After weeks with dull music, he opened up his music program and found something a bit noisier. Guitar instead of piano, some bass instead of violins. Finally, Sho entered the room, and behind him, he heard the other man opening up Jin’s drawers.

There was nothing more to do. It was so strange being in here after so many weeks in the gym. His things were here. Textbooks, clothes, cologne, music collection. He sat down heavily in his desk chair and rested his head on top of his arms on the wooden surface, letting the music just drift in and out of his head. There was some shuffling over the next few minutes. Sho and Aiba were changing.

Had it only been a month since he’d been in here? Watching TV when Jin was gone, playing game after game of Solitaire on his computer to avoid studying, sitting in the floor lounge alone whenever he came back to find a sock hanging on the doorknob. He wondered if he really missed it. Was this the life he wanted to get back to?

All the stuff in this room. He’d been without it for a month. It had been hard, really hard. But he’d survived. There was no knowing what was out there, no knowing if his family was still breathing. Maybe a DVD or a few volumes of manga or his phone charger didn’t really matter in the long run.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Aiba muttered, and he heard his footsteps retreat down the hall. He still needed to change. Jun ran a hand through his hair and sighed, getting out of his desk chair and looking through his drawers.

The door of the mini fridge opened, and Sho grumbled noisily. “Ugh, why the hell did I do that?” Jun was a bit too uncomfortable to laugh, keeping his back to the rest of the room as he pulled off the itchy shirt. One of his softest, most broken-in t-shirts felt almost like heaven against his skin as he pulled it over his head. He had a thin jacket in his closet, still smelling like smoke and the bars just off campus. He inhaled the scent of it, finding it far more comforting than he’d expected. Well, the top half of him was changed, but the rest remained.

Sho was busy digging around under Jin’s bed. “Juice under here should still be okay. Don’t know where we’d boil the water, but you’ve got some ramen.” He continued on, mumbling to himself, and Jun just decided that clean clothes were more important than modesty.

He still stayed between the closet door and the wall, slipping out of the scratchy pants and the safety center’s finest underwear. He nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to pull a clean pair of boxers on, but when he reached for his jeans, he saw that Sho hadn’t even looked over. He shut the closet door, exhaling softly as he took another look around the room.

They couldn’t stay here. They just wouldn’t last. The campus was too open and exposed. Nino and Satoshi didn’t seem too keen on sticking around, but Jun wasn’t satisfied with any of the answers they’d offered so far about what was happening to people. He’d done his fair share, getting them into the dorm. They owed him now, in a way. They’d just have to follow along and let the two other men guide them through the hell his city had become.

Sho was zipping up the bag he’d given him. He leaned an elbow on the windowsill, finally turning around and meeting Jun’s eyes. It hadn’t been so long ago that Sho had been in this room for hours at a time, standing right where he was while Jun worked at his desk. He felt his breath catch, remembering how Sho would trail his fingers across the window screen in boredom, looking out across campus while Jun wrote and rewrote parts of his essays. It was strange how quickly things could change.

He wanted to say something. He wanted to just ask why. But he wondered if Sho even had an answer.

Jun didn’t get a chance to ask.

His closet door opened with a bang, and Nino was already poking through his stuff. “Jesus, do you have enough hats?”

Sho looked away, hoisting the bag on his shoulder. “I’ll go see if Aiba’s okay.” He grabbed the other man’s bag as well, heading out of the room and off towards the bathroom.

Jun cleared his throat, standing aside as the other half of the radio duo came into the room. For the first time, Jun noticed that the guy didn’t have a walking stick - it was a canoe paddle, covered in dried blood stains. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask those particular questions yet.

“Nice dorm,” O.S. noted as he sat down on Jun’s bed, setting down his tackle box. Nino closed Jun’s closet just as noisily, heading for Jin’s.

“Sho found most of the salvageable stuff in here.”

Nino nodded. “Yeah, the cafeteria was shit. We just have a hot plate, so we took noodles and things from down there. There was a lot of water though.” He gestured out to the hallway. “Let me and Ohno take care of any creepy crawlies. There’s a case of water that you’re carrying.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are we splitting it evenly?”

“Alright, I get it.” Nino flopped down unceremoniously on Jun’s bed and sitting rather close to Ohno, who was going through his tackle box without a care in the world. “You think we’re assholes.”

Jun shook his head. “I…”

“No, no it’s fair. We are assholes,” Nino admitted. “But you have to be if you want to get by. You’ve been safe for the past few weeks. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

“Then tell me,” he said angrily. “Tell me what’s been happening!”

Nino waved his hand dismissively. “It’s hell, alright? Not everyone had a place in a safety center. Not everyone was guaranteed food, water and shelter. There’s one hundred and twenty-seven million people in this country, and they had a matter of days to try locking them all up. You know, before they got in their fancy jets and got the hell out themselves.”

So it was true. The government had left everyone behind. “What happened? What’s infecting everyone?”

“We don’t really know,” Ohno said, breaking his silence. His voice was still so calm it gave Jun goosebumps. “Nobody does. Information’s a tricky thing. You can’t really trust what anyone tells you. You have to see for yourself.”

“We’ve been taking notes. Keeping track of the stages,” Nino continued.

“What stages?”

“Of the disease, idiot.” Nino didn’t seem to be a very patient person. It took Ohno squeezing his hand to get him to calm down, and Jun felt like he was interrupting a private moment. Yet the two guys sitting on his bed didn’t seem to care that he was there at all.

Nino met his eyes, and Jun couldn’t look away. There was just something about Nino that hooked you, an intensity just bubbling underneath the surface. “Look. It’s everyone for himself out here now. And yes, we use the radio to cheat a bit at this whole survival game, but don’t kid yourself. If you’d been out here, if you’d gone weeks without your cushy little shelter, you’d be just as desperate as us and everyone else.”

“I wouldn’t steal. I wouldn’t give people false hope and then take everything they had.”

“You would,” Ohno said. “You would and there’s no way you’d feel bad about it.”

“You’re lying.”

“People are infected. People are dying. And they’re pissed about it. If they’re going down,” Nino went on, “then they want to take us down with them. It’s all the brain can do at that point. They just want to live. And they can’t.”

This was what the disease did? It turned normal people into savages, leaving the ones still not infected to do the same? Nino untangled his fingers from Ohno’s and stood up. He was a few inches shorter, but he was intimidating enough that Jun backed up until he was against Jin’s dresser. “This is humanity now. It only took one month. It is what it is.”

He shook his head. “Not me. Not everyone’s like that.”

“Now who’s a liar?” Nino backed off. “Water’s in the hallway. Get your things if you’re still coming with us.”

Aiba and Sho were in the hall, peering in as Nino and Ohno moved past them and towards the stairwell. Jun stayed in the room, glancing around for a few moments. He wasn’t going to get back here, at least not any time soon.

He closed the laptop, shutting off the music and pulled open his top desk drawer. A picture of his parents, his sister, and himself, smiling at the beach, was lying in there with extra pens, post-it notes and his checkbook. He slipped it into his bag and left the room, closing the door with a decisive click.

------

The night air was prickling Jun's skin and setting his nerves on edge, and the box of bottled water was heavier than he ever remembered bottled water being. His shoulders were beginning to throb with every step he took.

"If it's so dangerous here, why are we walking around at night?" he choked out, glaring at Nino and Ohno's backs as they slipped underneath a bridge. The lantern Ohno was carrying provided far more light than Sho's flip-phone had, but it still wasn't much; anything more than a few feet away was shrouded in ominous darkness. It was worse knowing there was something out there- many somethings, many, many somethings- than it had been imagining what could have been lying in wait for them. Jun bemoaned his inquiries to the radio hijackers in his dorm room. He wished he didn't have the information now, walking along the sidewalk feeling terribly, horribly exposed.

Nino reached into his jacket and produced a tattered, folded paper. When he began pulling it apart, Jun could see it was a map. From the glow of the bobbing lanterns he could see dark, red X's drawn through several areas of it- quite a few areas of it. "This area isn't very infected- it's been largely hollowed out."

"How do you know that?" Sho demanded.

Nino just shrugged, pulling the map closer to his face as if examining it. "Trial and error, how do you think? Have to avoid the nests."

"Nests?" Aiba asked, in a voice that seemed to not actually want an explanation. Either Nino understood the implications or ignored it completely- Jun couldn't be sure. He just shifted the box of water in his arms, wincing.

"The infected are usually drawn towards the still-lit areas," Nino explained. "Stuff with neon lights like that screams fresh blood, so that tends to be where they congregate."

"And the subways," Ohno supplied helpfully. He seemed disinterested in the conversation going on behind him, only glancing over once at the map in Nino's grimy hands.

Sho shook his head, perhaps in disbelief, and Jun caught the movement in the corner of his vision. The older man seemed shaken, but still on the edge of incredulity. "This doesn't make any sense, there's no way that something like this could-"

"Where's Tokyo Tower?" Aiba asked, suddenly, as the five stepped out from under the bridge and back into the open air. Jun glanced over to his right- he hadn't even noticed that he had failed to spot the lights usually easily distinguishable in the sky. He'd been so preoccupied, had assumed they would be there.

They weren't. Where they should have been was a void, a blankness.

"Tokyo Tower?" Nino scoffed. "That came down over a week ago."

"Came down?" Jun whispered, even as the memories flooded back- the explosion. They'd all heard it, clear as day, they just hadn't known what it was. Someone had taken it down, and he was willing to bet it was deliberate.

He glanced behind him to see Aiba shaking, and Sho put an arm around the other man's shoulders.

"Bunch of Lost decided they didn't like it anymore," Nino said, humming a little bit to himself. "Maybe they didn't like the aesthetics."

There was a very long silence, and Jun tried to look anywhere but at the hole in the sky where Tokyo Tower should have been. It had been a symbol, hadn't it? It had nothing to do with aesthetics, nothing to do with beauty. He knew without really knowing that if things were as bad as their radio guides said it was- and he was inclined to believe it, finally being outside the safety center confines- it hadn't been about anything but anger. Denial. Furious rage at knowing that death was looming and imminent. What better to take out than a national landmark?

Japan is lost.

And it seemed it really was.

For a long time, all Jun could hear was the scraping of their soles against the cement. Nino put his map away, and sighed a little, gaze sweeping from side to side. Jun didn't need the light to know the man's hand was wrapped tightly around the controller hanging from the chain- he played it off well, but there was still an air of nervousness surrounding them, enveloping them completely.

"What are the Lost?" Sho asked, quietly- subdued.

"Who knows?" Ohno sighed, and Nino made a noise of affirmation.

"One of the stages," he said vaguely. "Who knows what they are really called, if anything. But they're dangerous."

Another silence, stretched like a rubber band. Jun kept waiting for the sting when it bounced back against them. Aiba spoke again. "Dangerous?"

"They retain a lot of cognitive thought," Nino said. There was a rustle to their left, but small- animal rather than person, it seemed. After a moment, Nino's shoulders relaxed again. "A lot of anger. The beginning of the flesh-lust."

Jun did not ask about what he meant by that. He couldn't. His throat was already closed, and just hearing such a name fall so easily into the conversation- he could picture well enough. He might not know the causes, but he understood. He understood what had been lying in wait for them outside the safety center, what had been in the bushes below the gym's rooftop that night.

Behind him, Aiba gave out a sigh that sounded like it was a reaction to the shiver running down his spine.

They walked a long time in silence, with Jun's fingers trembling around the bottom of the water. It was dark and too, too quiet- but Nino seemed to be right. He didn't see movement anywhere since they were sticking to the smaller, residential streets. The draw did appear to be bigger places, with more activity- or, at least, what used to be more activity. Without even planes flying overhead, the entire city felt like a bomb just waiting to explode.

It was the smell that hit Jun first. It wasn't really new, since the whole place was tinged with it, but it was strong- it gagged him, made his tongue swell. He stopped because he couldn't breathe and nearly dropped the box he was carrying. It was so overpowering he couldn't think straight.

He shouldn't have taken the extra steps to one side, because the back of his ankle hit something lying in the grass. He knew instantly. He all but threw the box of water down, flinging himself to the side- he knew, he knew what it was that was lying on the grass. He could smell it, taste it, feel it in the atmosphere around them. It was a body, it had to be a body.

And then Ohno swung the lantern over to illuminate it.

It was barely a body, barely human- it might have been at one point. It was contorted and festering- all blackened, rotting skin that was slowly falling off the bones underneath. Jun got one look and had to look away, swallowing down hot bile. His eyes were pricking with the sting of automatic tears, and it was only half due to the stench.

Nino snorted. "Made it all the way here? I'm impressed."

Aiba was looking closer, peeking in, all science and curiosity and wide, barely seeing eyes.

"Aiba, Aiba stop-" Sho was moaning, stumbling backwards from the sight. He fell down beside where Jun had collapsed on all fours, and then there were arms wrapping around Jun's shoulders, hands tangling in the back of his hair. It seemed instinctive- had Jun been more coherent, he would have frozen from the contact. But he could barely breathe, lungs wheezing, and he just half-buried his face in the crook of Sho's arm.

"Is it dead?" Aiba whispered, as if it wasn't terribly obvious.

"Was dead long before it got to this stage," Nino replied.

Jun heard Aiba's soles scrape backwards, and the other man was silent for a second. "Is this- what happens?"

"Eventually?" Ohno mused. "Yes."

"They're like zombies," Aiba whispered. Sho's arms tightened around Jun's shoulders.

Nino's map crinkled again, and the lantern moved so that the decaying body was no longer visible. Jun could still smell it, would probably always be able to smell it, and not being able to make it out in the shadows didn't really help anything.

"At one point," Nino agreed. "But by the last stage- well, they're just dying. Already dead. Literally the living dead, in a way."

Jun's flight response was on overdrive. He pushed himself up to his feet, using Sho as a support without really thinking about it. He just wanted to get away. He was exhausted, his head was pounding, his chest was constricting, and his nose was burning- he couldn't process anymore. Any belief was overloading his brain, any more information was simply going to slide away.

"Let's go," he mumbled. "Please, let's just go."

"Mm," Nino said. "Better get moving. If they are trickling down here from the downtown areas, who knows what we might hit."

Sho's arms fell away. At the edge of his vision, Jun could see Sho pulling Aiba away from the corpse, pulling him along- Aiba looked stunned and horrified, but still mildly interested. You could take scientists out of the labs, Jun supposed, but you couldn't take the natural inquisitiveness that accompanied them.

Nino picked up the fallen box of water, and he and Ohno started talking in front of them, in low tones Jun couldn't decipher. Sho kept his arm around Aiba's shoulders, and then reached down to lace his fingers through Jun's. Even in the midst of everything, in the rankness and the soul-wrenching disgust, Sho had strength to spare.

And Jun just squeezed his hand, and tried to breathe again.



They’d just missed the cherry blossoms. But the scent of them still lingered. The sun was rising, streaming through the trees. Aoyama Cemetery didn’t strike Jun as a place he’d want to wait out an apocalyptic nightmare, but as they left the main path and headed past grave after grave, it started making more sense.

“They don’t come here,” Ohno was saying quietly as they sidestepped one of the metal gates around some famous writer’s resting place. “It’s like they’re losing their minds and want to get them back. It’s a waste to come here. Everyone’s already dead.”

Surrounded by death and the disappearing aroma of flowers, it may have been the most logical hideout in the center of Tokyo. Jun liked movies. He’d seen his share of horror films with zombies crawling, desperate to eat the brains of the living. They usually came tumbling out of graves. But the cemetery was calm, almost peaceful. There was trash, as if other groups of people had passed through, but it didn’t seem like anyone else had set up camp here.

Nino and Ohno led them down a small hill to a small crypt. “In there?” Sho asked nervously. The idea of hanging out in a tomb where families had buried their loved ones didn’t sit too well with Jun either.

“Home sweet home,” Nino said, setting down the water and pulling the gate open. They followed him inside. Thankfully, there were only two graves within, a husband and wife, and it was sealed shut. The room, smelling of incense offered over the past several years, had a simple stone floor, a bench and an incredible stockpile of bottled water and snacks.

Aiba collapsed on the bench, laying on his back with a sigh. They’d been walking for hours, and Jun slumped down against the wall opposite the sealed graves. Sho was examining the family’s nameplate, running his fingers along it. Ohno and Nino were far less contemplative, instead going through the bags of loot they’d claimed from the safety center and from the dorm cafeteria.

Jun saw that the two men had made the little mausoleum their own. There was a Tokyo subway map hastily taped against another wall with more heavy marks on it. Entire wards were crossed off, and one Nino had even labeled “Here be dragons” like the old sailing maps. The man’s sense of humor was lost on Jun.

“We’re not used to company,” Ohno remarked, holding out a bag of wasabi peas. “Breakfast?”

Sho took the bag gratefully, scooping out a healthy handful before passing it on to Aiba. Jun wasn’t feeling terribly hungry, not after the body they’d seen. That was what happened to the people infected with this? Left on the side of the road in the grass, nobody around to even bury the body? It was hard to think about, but the person he’d seen had had a family. Friends. A job. Only a month ago, they’d been no different from Jun, had they?

“We’re supposed to be making rounds,” Nino announced. “But I think we hit the jackpot with you three. We haven’t had much luck getting in touch with anybody. I didn’t think anyone was listening to the radio.”

“We wouldn’t have known you guys were out there if we hadn’t broken into the radio rooms. They were just playing…”

“Elevator music,” Nino interrupted Sho. “We know. You weren’t the first safety center we’ve been to.”

“Just the first one where the people were still…” Ohno’s voice trailed off, and he looked almost sad before shrugging and pulling stuff out of his tackle box to add to their stash.

That quieted everyone down. Other people, forced into the safety centers and told to stay calm hadn’t been as fortunate as he had been. They’d probably had no idea what was out there until those lost souls, those things that were barely recognizable as human, had swarmed. A chill went down his spine. It could have been any center, but theirs had survived until now.

He held his bag close, saying a silent prayer for his family, his friends. People on the outside or on the inside - nobody was safe from this, were they?

“So where do you record your broadcasts?” Aiba asked a few minutes later, as soon as the reality of what Nino and Ohno had probably seen sank in.

Nino was eating a handful of gummy candy like sitting in someone’s crypt was nothing strange at all. “Oh, there’s a radio station a few blocks from the cemetery entrance. But we can’t record now.”

“Tower’s out,” Ohno reminded them. “But it was fun while it lasted.”

“And where were you? I mean, you from around here?” Sho wondered.

Satoshi didn’t look up from the tackle box while Nino fished around in the bag for more sugary treats. “Don’t feel like sharing everything. We don’t know you.”

Jun rolled his eyes. “What does it matter?”

Nino stared at him. “Look. It hasn’t been the best few weeks of my life, alright? Can’t you just stick to one annoying, invasive question an hour?”

“Sorry,” Aiba offered on behalf of all three of them, taking the duffel bag full of clothes and putting it under his head. Even though it was morning, there’d been no chance to rest since they’d left the safety center, and Jun was curious but just as tired.

There wasn’t too much room, and Sho moved away from the sealed side of the room to crouch down next to him. Jun couldn’t blame him - there was no way he’d be able to lay down and sleep knowing there were caskets just on the other side of the wall.

Sho set down his bag, the one full of Jin’s clothes, and used it for his own pillow. Jun kept next to the wall. It wasn’t as comfortable as the cots in the gym, not like they’d been all that comfortable to begin with, but beggars couldn’t be choosers he figured. Nino was still making noise with the candy wrappers.

“If we’re gone when you wake up, don’t freak out. We’re probably just off being morally bankrupt,” Nino informed them. Jun didn’t care to find out exactly what that meant.

“When you’re fully rested, we’ll get you some things to protect yourselves,” Ohno said, his voice a bit more gentle and calm than his friend’s.

He felt a blanket smack him a few moments later, just big enough to cover him and Sho. “Thanks,” he heard him mumble just beside him. For all his bark, Nino didn’t have as much of a bite as Jun might have originally thought.

-----

Nino was ridiculously vague with what "going to procure weapons" meant, but Jun wasn't entirely sure he needed an explanation; Nino's controller-on-a-chain and Ohno's splattered canoe paddle spoke volumes on their own. He wasn't sure where exactly they would be getting anything new to use, but things started to click into place when they arrived after a long walk at a deserted mall.

After the discovery of the body earlier, Jun felt like there were eyes constantly on the back of his head. He checked every corner of his vision for contorted limbs- but there was nothing. The mall was as empty as the streets were, with a scattering of trash everywhere that hadn't been picked up for weeks.

"So we are getting weapons?" Aiba clarified.

Nino made an exasperated sound. "That's what I said, isn't it?"

"But in zombie movies, people always use guns," Aiba said. He frowned, hair falling in front of his eyes. He looked like he hadn't really slept much- Jun could relate. If he hadn't been so exhausted, he didn't think he would have slept at all after discovering the corpse on the roadside.

"Wow, you're right," Nino said. He stopped completely, turning around with wide eyes. For a moment, Jun even believed it- the man was a good actor. But the sarcasm was obvious, even if Aiba himself seemed to be missing it completely. "What the hell have we been thinking? Let me go and get my shotgun- oh wait, I don't have a shotgun."

There was a long silence, and Jun could see Aiba's face fall.

"There's no need to get mean about it," Sho interjected.

Nino glared, and for the first time, Jun wondered how much of his bravado was a cleverly crafted defense mechanism. The shorter man seemed to snap anytime the atmosphere got particularly tense. Black humor and inappropriate jokes might just be his way of keeping his own fear carefully in check. "If we had access to something like that, we'd be using it right now, wouldn't we?"

"Kazu," Ohno said, suddenly. It wasn't very forceful, and it wasn't very loud, but it stopped Nino's tirade. After a tense moment, Nino turned and started walking again, with Ohno very near his shoulder, and Jun fell into step beside Aiba, who still looked hurt. When he caught the other man's gaze, he gave him a sad smile- it was the best he could do, under the circumstances.

The closer they got to the buildings in the building, the more Jun could see the littered trails of destruction that surrounded it. There was broken glass everywhere, crunching under the soles of his shoes. Fliers, broken boxes, even pieces of cars- it covered the parking lot. There were several abandoned vehicles that looked like they'd been hit by a twister and completely raided. The infected- if that was who had hit the mall- had left very little salvageable, but Nino and Ohno seemed to know where they were going. They led them inside a side entrance nearly completely hidden behind an overturned dumpster, and into the half-broken doors.

"Ugh," Nino commented, stepping over what appeared to be a box of rotting food long since past its prime. Jun was inclined to agree with the statement.

The interior of the mall was just like the inside of the dorms had been. There was spray paint everywhere, dripping like blood splatters against the drywall in various pleas, curses, and resigned statements- the county is lost. You cannot escape. Why have they forsaken us?

Aiba shifted closer, and Jun was glad for it. He reached for Aiba's elbow and squeezed a bit, just a little bit of affirmation for both of them.

As they got closer to the store Nino was obviously headed towards- what appeared to be a sporting goods store already heavily pilfered from- there was another set of footsteps down the hall. Jun spun in panic, hands out in front of his face, while Aiba jumped and gave out a little cry of alarm. Ohno's hands were immediately on his paddle.

It was a guy around their age, palms out in a gesture of surrender.

"Wait, wait," he said- he sounded normal. He sounded so normal and relief was almost painful when Jun drew in another shaking breath. "I'm-"

"Okay," Sho sighed, obviously feeling the same adrenaline crash. "You startled us."

Nino didn't pocked his make-shift whip, but he did lower his arms a bit. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to find something to defend myself with," the man answered. When there was a long pause, he bowed a little stiffly. "I'm Kame."

"We're not stopping," Nino said curtly, and started back off towards the sporting goods store again. When Kame paused, clearly unsure of what to do, Aiba motioned for him to follow.

Their feet crunched over broken display cases.

"Sorry about him," Sho said, gingerly stepping around a mannequin that had lost its head- the visual was a little too close to home to sit well with Jun. "He's- prickly."

"Well, we think he is," Aiba agreed.

Kame seemed to be digesting this information. His clothes looked dirty, like Nino and Ohno's- it seemed no one in the city had showered since the outbreak had begun, really. Jun wondered if he'd gotten into a safety center and had since left. He wondered if he should ask; he decided not to. He wasn't quite ready to hear about other safety centers failing, because he was still clinging to the hope that his parents and sister had gotten to one in time.

It burned the back of his throat to think about them.

"It's just the situation," Kame said. "Everyone's on edge."

He had that right. Nino and Ohno had both disappeared somewhere in the aisles that were barely pathways at all anymore. Nearly everything on the shelves had been overturned, and many of the shelving units had been, as well. The store was in tatters, in complete disarray, but there were still bits of merchandise beneath the broken boards and ceiling debris that covered the tiles. Jun wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking for- something to fight with?

How did one fight against a sentient, human enemy?

Sho and Aiba turned to the left, so Jun tried the right, with Kame on his heels. He picked around boxes and some pieces of cardboard that had obviously gotten soaked and since dried in odd, contorted curves.

"Is it just you guys?" Kame asked, reaching for a piece of clothing and then making a face of disgust when it came up with a dark crimson splotch on one sleeve. "Just you five?"

"Yeah," Jun answered. "Well- three of us were in a center, for awhile. But now it's the five of us, I guess."

He wasn't entirely sure they wanted to stick with Nino and Ohno. They were still unknown, still potential threats. In a city of violence and danger, they knew it better than Jun did, and he would give them that, at least. He just didn't know. Safety in numbers sounded better than being lost with Sho and Aiba, didn't it?

He frowned at the baseball cap he pulled up under insulation.

"I just came to get something to fight with," Kame said, sighing. "I wasn't in a center, but I have a place to go back to. It's pretty safe."

"Really?" Jun asked. His curiosity was piqued- had Kame found a crypt like the one he'd slept in last night? A bank vault? Something fortified against those who wished to break into it?

Maybe he had access to someone in the government. Maybe he knew more than they did.

"Mm," Kame confirmed. "You guys are welcome to come back with me."

It was tempting, especially given the looting and raiding Nino and Ohno seemed to take as necessary measures. Jun didn't like the idea of stealing from those who might need it. The safety center had needed the food they'd taken as thieves in the night; it was wrong. Everything was wrong, but adding more wrongness to it didn't help make the situation right again.

"Maybe we will," Jun concluded. He stepped around a large puddle on the floor- it was clear, so it was probably just water, but Jun wasn't willing to take any chances. There was a noise of success from down the aisle, and he turned to see who it was.

Aiba was holding a golf club, making short, checked swings in the path.

"5 wood," he said gleefully, giving Jun a thumbs up.

"Good find," Jun called back. He turned his attention back towards an overturned box. It was filled with mostly packing peanuts, but at the bottom he found a tennis racket. It was a little bent, and one of the strings of twine had come loose, but maybe it would serve his purpose.

Kame held up a life preserver that was ripped across the front. "Think we'll be doing much swimming?"

"Don't think so," Jun said, grinning a little despite himself. It was nice to have someone whose humor wasn't marred with the stench of death. He kept a hold of the tennis racket- maybe it would come in handy.

"Hey!" Sho shouted, from the next aisle over. "Can I get some help?"

When Jun got closer, he found the older man struggling to get a baseball bat perched high on a set of shelves that hadn't fallen. He banged on the side, but it wasn't enough movement to dislodge the object- it had wedged itself against another box, and stubbornly refused to move. Jun could only assume it was the reason the bat hadn't been taken yet.

"I'll get it," Kame offered. He pulled over an overturned cooler, the hard kind one packed with drinks for an all-day beach excursion, and righted it, closing the lid with a pat. Standing on it got him just high enough for his fingers to reach the handle of the bat, though he was obviously straining on his tip-toes. "Just about got it-"

Jun hadn't even seen Ohno approach. The canoe paddle made a sharp hiss as it sped through the air and then a crack when it hit the back of Kame's head. Kame slumped immediately and fell, landing in a crumpled heap on the floor. The cooler beneath his feet jerked to one side and rolled a little ways away until it caught on some pieces of the ceiling that had broken off and fallen to the ground.

"What is wrong with you?!" Sho exclaimed, when Ohno merely stood over Kame's body looking dispassionately down. "He was helping us!"

Jun nearly choked on his fury. "He knew of a safe place, did you hear that? He was going to show us where it was. Can't stand having anyone else know more than you, is that it?"

The look Ohno gave him then was eerily unreadable. He didn't even say anything, and for a long while, no one really moved. Then Ohno used the flat end of his paddle to push back the bottom of one of Kame's jeans, revealing the skin of his calf.

It was black and decaying, red at the edges and flaking off. Jun took a step backwards, gagging.

"Shit," Aiba whispered from behind Jun's shoulder.

"No," Sho gasped. "No, that's not possible."

There were footsteps behind them, and Nino approached with one eyebrow raised. He didn't look surprised, and he didn't look concerned- he didn't look anything, really, which was worse than any expression would have been.

"This place isn't safe," he said, and for the first time Jun noticed how tightly his fingers were wrapped around the chain of his controller. Nino's hand hadn't really moved from the weapon since they'd entered the mall. "We should go, they're watching it."

"No," Sho repeated again. "Why- why would they do that?"

Ohno kicked a bit at Kame's body, pushing him closer to the shelves he'd been trying to reach the top of. "Fresh meat."

Jun unconsciously tucked the tennis racket under his arm. Nino reached forward for the baseball bat that had clattered back behind the shelves when Kame had fallen, and held it out for Sho. When Sho just stared at him, Nino sighed and shook the object. "Look, this is the way it is now, okay?"

After a very long moment, when Jun almost forgot to breathe, Sho reached out to take the baseball bat offered.

"What do we do?" Aiba asked, quietly.

"Can't leave him here," Nino said.

Jun stared down at Kame's body, and tried not to look at the decaying skin on his leg. The other man had been talking to him like normal, chatting with him- said he knew of a safe haven. That had all been a lie, hadn't it? Every word had just been to lure them into something, a trap, an ambush- maybe something worse.

Sho recoiled. "You can't be serious. You can't kill him!"

"Wanna let him live?" Nino shot back. "You wanna run into him again in a couple of days when the flesh-lust has taken over and he's trying to eat your face? He's dying anyway- why do you think he was so keen on getting you guys to go with him?"

Sho didn't answer; it didn't look like he could. Jun swallowed hard.

Then Ohno stepped forward again, eyes still on Kame's form. "I've got it. You get them out."

Jun didn't want to know what he was going to do. He didn't want to know what was going to happen, how long Kame had left before he became mindless like the person in the safety center gym had been. He stumbled out of the store behind Aiba, with Sho and Nino behind him, clutching the tennis racket like his last lifeline and just stared out at the hollowed cars that sat in the parking lot.

Ohno came out a few minutes later, and no one said anything at all as they walked back to the crypt.