Volume 2 Chapter 28 (2/2)

If he looked closely, he could see that human bones had been scattered around.  Unknown meat was hanging from seats here and there, with dried blood scattered everywhere.  It was like a scene at a slaughterhouse.

Abruptly and without notice, two figures rose from their seats on the first floor.

They were girls.

With half eaten bodies and disheveled clothing, it was obvious the two were zombies.  In the thin darkness, faintly illuminated by the glare of a flames by the stage, they gave off a mysterious appearance.

While standing, the two zombies stared up at him.

They had the same inorganic look as skull man.

Yusuke took a step back without thinking.

They weren’t attacking, but there was pressure in the stares the zombies directed at him.  Normal zombies don’t even recognize Yusuke’s presence.

“What is this…..”

It wasn’t just skull man.

There were multiple irregular zombies here.

At that time, from the aisle to his right, a man’s screams rose.  Looking in that direction, he sees something strange.

A diving board-like structure extends from on of the aisle out a few meters over the hall below.

In a doorway near the aisle, skull man appears.  He is dragging the nail gun guy from earlier behind him.  The man which was illuminated by the flames was young and around the age of a college student.  With a sobbing voice, he screams.

“No!  Hiiii…….. don’t!!!  Stop…….. forgive me…….”

Without paying attention to the struggling man, skull man climbs the platform, and drives the man down the plank.  Unable to keep his balance, the man stumbles and it appeared as if he would fall.

Barely catching the board as he falls, he hangs from the board with both hands in mid air.

“Hiiii…… Hiiii…..!”  (TL: high pitched screams.)

The man looks up at skull man looming over him as he gasps for breath.

As if looking down on him, skull man watches the man from above.

Skull man slowly opens his mouth, stretching his bare cheeks, and revealing a heinous smile.

In the next moment, Skull man brings down his hatchet towards the mans hands.

With blood splattering into the air, the mans fingers were cut off, and he screams as he falls into the hole.

Yusuke unintentionally raises his voice.

“That guy!”  (TL: Aitsu)

After confirming that the man had dropped down the hole, Skull man loses interest and disappears back through the double doors.

Re-gripping his handgun, Yusuke follows him.

Going through the doors, he finds himself in a pitch black room.

Taking the flashlight out of his pocket with his left hand, he turns it on.  It looked like it was the control room for the concert hall as there was various equipment lined up along the walls.

There was no sign of Skull man.

Carefully, Yusuke s.h.i.+nes the light around the room.  There were things everywhere.  Cords rose up from behind the equipment in complicated patterns.

Confirming that there were no hiding spots in the room, he discovers a door in the back.

It was open with moonlight s.h.i.+ning through it, leading outside.  It appeared he had left the building.

Peeking through the door, he looked left and right down the hallway, but was unable to see Skull man.

“…..s.h.i.+t.”

Sighing, Yusuke lowers his gun.

(I shouldn’t follow any further than this.)

Leaving the room, he returns to the concert hall.

Below the aisle, the female zombies were eating the man from earlier.

The man was foaming and spurting blood from his mouth while convulsing.  It wouldn’t be long now.  It couldn’t be helped that Yusuke didn’t watch any further.

Tearing his line of sight away from the man, Yusuke looks at the surroundings.

The board that the man had been pushed off was connected to a platform with a staircase that had been built in the aisle, looking increasingly like a diving board.  All around it were pools of dried blood.

(…..no, is it really a diving board…..?)

One word came to mind.

(Execution platform….)

It was something built by humans.

(…………)

Yusuke returns to the control room.  On top of a desk, he found strange items that he hadn’t noticed when he previously inspected the room.

It was a compact video camera and a bundle of mini tapes.  s.h.i.+ning the light on the tapes, he sees that dates are written on them as well as names.  If the man’s name was there, then so were the girl’s.

He felt a strange sense of uneasiness.

“……….”

He stared at the tapes for a while, but finally grabbed one and put it in the camera.  He turns on the power and the screen on the side opens up.  It still had some battery.

Just in case, he blockaded the entrance to the room with machinery.  After making sure there would be no hindrances, Yusuke presses the playback b.u.t.ton.

It was the scene of a human executing a human.  Bound and crying, a young man is hauled to the execution platform.  The camera was diligently taping his appearance.  Off screen, stupid laughter is heard along with people screaming for the person to jump.

As the young man desperately tries to resist, he is prodded by a handmade spear, made by attaching a knife to a long rod.  Stabbed with the spear, the man becomes bloodied and soon loses his footing on the board, falling down into the hall.

Cheers arose from the surroundings.

The camera turns and changes locations before fixing itself again.  It showed the view from the handrail at the top of the hall, looking down.

The young man was crawling along the floor, dragging his body as he flees to a corner.  Chasing after him are two zombies.  One of the zombies climbed over a seat and began eating the man.  The camera zoomed in while shaking, capturing the figure of the predator. As the person holding the camera made elated sounds for excitement from the seen they were capturing, Yusuke began to feel sick.

The two zombies below had flocked to the man that was pushed down.  With his screams coming to a stop, the man stopped moving.

“…………..”

Yusuke stopped the video.

“…………..Fuu.”

Letting out a breath and leaning back in his chair, he looks at the dark ceiling.

(………..)

(A lynching?  Entertainment?)

It could have been that they were trying to overcome their fear of the zombies by keeping them like cattle.  Like keeping a tiger or lion in a cage.

There were still more tapes.

Opening the video camera, he puts in the tape with the latest date.  Fast forwarding it, he skims through the tape.

The content was similar.

The man from the first tape had become a zombie.  Every victim that was pushed down, had added one more zombie to the hall below.

He interchanged the tapes while looking through them.  When the 3rd tape showed a certain man, Yusuke paused it.

It was only a small hunch, but he thought the man wearing the coat in the video was that cop. His face was swollen and it looked like it had been beaten.  Both of his hands were tied behind his back.  His pants had a large tear in them around his thighs, and the leg beneath was bloodied.

He fast forwarded through the tape, so he couldn’t understand the conversation.  However, he could see the cop’s uncompromising att.i.tude through his actions.  Up until the last moments it seemed he was trying to persuade them, but he was stabbed deep in the stomach with a spear and fell down to the hall below.

“…………..”

Yusuke silently changed the tape.

After the zombies below had reached 10, their numbers stopped increasing.  Before the person could turn into a zombie, they were completely eaten.

The cop was among those that flock to the victims when they fall.  His face had been gouged out when he was turned into a zombie.

He had the same appearance as Skull man.

“This is bad….”

Yusuke mutters to himself.

As he went through the tapes, he noticed the zombie’s behavior slowly change.  They started out like wild beasts, but every time they ate a human, their movements became slightly more human-like.

Even Skull man’s movements had been the same as a normal zombie in the beginning.

However, in the 2nd half of the tapes, he had a look of hatred in his eyes.  As if looking for an opportunity to attack.

A s.h.i.+ver similar to fear ran up Yusuke’s spine.

(While filming this…. those guys, why did they not notice this strange behavior?)

Right now, in his mind, Yusuke doubted that they were even zombies.

The zombies which acted like commuters at the station next to his home, and the zombies at the supermarket whom prowled around as if shopping.

Here and there in the city there were zombies moving as if repeating the lives they had.

As the ma.s.ses of zombies wandered around aimlessly, Yusuke had always wondered why a few of them had these patterns.

Within his mind, one hypothesis emerged.

(Once the zombie feeds on a human, only then do they gain knowledge…..)  (TL: Holy s.h.i.+t, Tokiko was feasting on his sperm, that is why her behavior changed.  We may see her again yet.)

If he thinks about the small amount of zombies following a pattern, it would seem that only a small amount of them change.  For instance, even if they were to eat a bunch of humans, at best the would be able to remember some parts of life as a living being.

However, in regards to regaining knowledge if you eat humans………

He remembers Skull man’s figure.

How he took the man to the execution platform and pushed him off, and that heinous smile.

It was a pure hatred for humans.

Looking at the video, there were 10 zombies at the bottom of the concert hall.  They had nearly been released.

The fed zombies had regained intelligence like Skull man, and were now dangerous.

“………s.h.i.+t!!”

Yusuke slams the video camera into the floor.

(s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t, for those pieces of trash to do something unnecessary like this!  Once the zombies become a threat, then what did they intend to do!  f.u.c.king idiots!)

Breathing roughly, Yusuke stands up.

“…………..”

He thinks carefully.

(……….We have to detour around this area, it’s too dangerous.)

Deciding this, there was no longer a reason to follow Skull man.  He should check to make sure the detour route is safe, but he decides to return to the supermarket first.

It is also dangerous to stay in the city.  If the zombies in the city regain their intelligence, then grouping up with a lot of humans would be even more dangerous.  It would be safest in the mountains.

Deciding on a plan, Yusuke removes the blockade and exits the room.

Walking out of the entrance to the concert hall and continuing down the corridor, Yusuke stops.

A few meters ahead of him was a young girl dressed in rags.

In her right hand was a severed head, with its hair entangled in her hand.

It was the head of a man, his face contorted in a painful expression.

In her other hand was a spear, wet with blood.

“…………..”

Yusuke and the young girl stared at each other.

She looked like she was in high school.  Looking at her, she had a crying mole under her right eye.  She was pretty, but she had a big bite marks all down her collarbone.

(TL: I looked up crying mole or “Nakibukuro”, it’s just a mole under their eye, which supposedly is there due to them crying)

She was a zombie.

The young girl s.p.a.ces out, looking at him with a blank expression.

She had long black hair and her feet were bare.  (TL: Sadako?!)

Naked except for the rags on her body, she had the appearance of a savage young tribe girl.

Suddenly the girl looked out of the window.  Following her gaze, he also looked out of the window and saw a ma.s.s of things folding over each other.

With it faded into the darkness, Yusuke couldn’t make out what it was.  Focusing his vision, he tried to make it out in the moonlight.

After a while, he sees them,

(…….Humans……?)

Yusuke swallows a breath.

It was a mountain of corpses.

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, Yusuke returns his line of sight.  The young girl had turned around and was leaving.  The severed head in her hand swayed as she walked.

At that time, off in the distance, he could hear the screams of a girl.

Yusuke realized it.

This campus was their hunting grounds.

Watching the receding back of the young girl, Yusuke stood still.

When her back finally disappeared in the darkness, Yusuke let out a big breath.

“…………Haa…………..d.a.m.n.”

He stops thinking and heads towards the stairs.

There was nothing he could do here.

As if dispelling the cold feeling within him, he quickened his footsteps.

(TL: Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a time lapse between when Yusuke was attacked by a zombie, and when he came back out of his apartment?  And he was a zombie and eating people the whole time, enough to regain all of his intellect and memories, thus thinking that he isn’t zombie, but he really is.  Though I’m sure there are some things that already disprove this theory, it would be a cool Fight Club-esque plot twist. xD)

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