Chapter 40: What Happened Two Doors Down
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 40: What Happened Two Doors Down
A relief? I suppose you could call it that.
No one was living in the building next door.
It was a very old building, and seeing how trashed the interior was, it seemed everyone had left in search of a safer place.
In a way, an apocalypse like this could be a land of opportunity for those living at the bottom.
When else would they ever get to live in a nice, clean apartment?
Amidst the chaos, even if someone broke into an ownerless house and claimed it, there was no way to verify who the actual owner was.
Then again, it was highly likely they had either fled or died after seeing the zombies swarming around my building during the Zombie Rush.
Since I was protecting my own building, the Auntie from the 2nd Floor was able to commit the atrocity of mindlessly stuffing her face with meat. But for the other surrounding buildings, many people had suffered indirect damage because my siren drew the zombies' aggro right to them.
Was living right next door too intimidating for them?
I'm not actually that bad of a guy.
Confirming it was an empty building put my mind at ease.
But you never know.
Someone might be hiding somewhere after I only gave it a cursory look.
I could just use the game system to double-check.
[Installing Warehouse [1-Star] at the current location.]
When I purchased the warehouse, a translucent projection of where it would stand appeared before my eyes, overlaying the existing structure.
It really felt like playing a city-building game like SimCity.
I placed the warehouse, which overlapped with the building next door, right up against my studio apartment building.
Then, I went inside my place to find a spot to install a door.
"Hmm. This spot looks good."
A translucent outline of the door was projected onto the wall. Once I finalized the placement, my Coins were deducted, and a heavy thud! echoed.
"How long will the construction take?"
Wouldn't it take at least a few days to demolish the building and put up the warehouse?
But when I stepped outside, a brand-new warehouse had already replaced the old building.
"Insane."
The moment I bought the warehouse, it instantly demolished the building on that site and replaced it.
There wasn't even any debris left behind. It was perfectly clean.
The warehouse itself was just a container-style structure, but that was fine since it was only Level 1.
It had a large entrance where a lock could be installed.
Since it was exposed to the outside, I'd probably need to upgrade it and install a Safe Base-exclusive automatic door if I wanted to use it properly.
The interior was spacious.
At around a thousand square feet, it wasn't the massive, Costco-style warehouse you'd typically go to loot in a zombie apocalypse, but even this was incredibly spacious compared to Room 201 and Room 202.
The inside was also neatly swept clean.
There was no need to worry about whether I could find enough shelves to fill the space.
Under the warehouse sub-menu in "Safe Living Facilities," it said that any necessary items for the interior could be purchased directly with Coins and would be delivered at the earliest supply time.
I guess these weren't things I had to buy through a "Visiting Black Market Merchant."
Perfect.
I hadn't liked how mismatched the shelves and boxes in Room 201 and Room 202 looked since I'd scavenged them from the outside.
"Whoa! It's incredibly spacious. Are we going to use this as our warehouse now?"
"This will be the food warehouse. The one next to it will be the weapons warehouse."
"But there isn't one next to it."
"I'm about to make it."
I would connect two warehouses and use them together.
I could connect them to my place through a door for direct access. The main warehouse entrances would be controlled with Level 3 Automatic Doors to restrict outside access, only keeping them convenient enough for occasional entry from the outside.
It would be great if I could upgrade the warehouses to have bunker-level durability.
I was about to spend 50 Coins to attach another one right next to it, when...
[Living organism detected.]
[Installation is not possible.]
The building two doors down from my studio apartment building.
It was a house.
A modest two-story house.
Although it seemed like a place where someone could live, the door was broken, and the interior didn't look inhabited at all, so I had never given it much thought when passing by.
I headed inside immediately.
This was the first time I had stepped foot inside this place during the nearly two weeks I'd been here.
I suppose it was because I had just focused on my own business, not caring whether anyone lived near me or not.
There was no need to pick any locks; the door to the first-floor house was already wide open.
The inside of the house was a total mess. Rather than looking like someone lived there, it bore the clear signs of having been ransacked.
Belongings lay scattered all over the floor, dishes were either shattered or missing entirely, and aside from the filth, the rooms had been thoroughly looted.
In an apocalypse like this, clothes and blankets could be valuable resources, so it was only natural that nothing was left if the place had been raided.
There was no electricity, and the second floor showed no signs of human presence either.
"Hmm."
Even when I tried to install the warehouse again, the system only repeated that a living organism was detected.
Looking behind the house, I spotted a staircase leading down.
A basement, perhaps?
Holding my dagger, I headed down the stairs.
Since no light reached down here, I shone my flashlight and opened the door, only for a foul stench to assault my nose.
The basement was quite spacious.
The house's boiler and various utility equipment occupied one side, while the other side seemed to serve as a storage area, featuring shelves half-filled with preserved food.
The floor was a complete landfill.
It was mostly littered with wrappers from preserved food and food scraps, and blankets and clothing were piled here as well.
Had the house not been looted, but rather had everything moved down here?
I couldn't know for sure, but one thing was certain: the living organisms were here.
"W-who's there?!"
"What the hell?!"
Two youthful voices called out from a makeshift bed of piled blankets in the corner, shielding their eyes from the sudden, bright light.
They looked to be in their late teens or early twenties.
Two men were lying there, wearing nothing but boxer briefs.
"Oh. My bad."
I saw something I shouldn't have.
Two guys in a dark, gloomy basement like this.
And lying together on a makeshift bed, no less.
I'm open-minded when it comes to sex, but I'm not exactly into this gay shit.
"I asked who you are!"
The youthful voice asking again was thick with alcohol.
As I shone the light on the floor, scattered liquor bottles came into view.
Seeing the boxes of alcohol under the shelves, it seemed the owners of this house had prepared quite diligently.
Did they know the apocalypse was coming?
If so, they had been squandering it all in a remarkably filthy manner.
Instead of answering, I simply informed them.
"Take your butt-sex somewhere else, you two. I have to demolish this place today."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Who the fuck are you, asshole?!"
Oh, look at that reckless confidence.
One of them stumbled to his feet and approached me.
"You bastard. Do you want to die?"
He wasn't entirely bluffing, though. His stats were Level 2/2/2/1, and he even had a Level 3 Combat Mode.
The only problem was that his opponent was me.
I kicked the approaching guy straight on.
"Urgh!"
What the hell does this crazy bastard think he's doing inside my invincible base?
"Cough, cough."
His coughs were laced with blood.
Since he was an insolent punk, I kicked him a bit hard. Did I break his ribs?
Well, living like that, he'd die anyway once the food ran out. Dying now wouldn't be a bad option either.
"Don't make me say it twice. Just get the hell out. I'm busy."
"...Fuck. Who the hell are you? Hey, are you okay?"
The other guy rushed to help the fallen one.
But as I looked in their direction, I noticed something else.
"What is this?"
There weren't just two people here.
There were other people near the boiler equipment.
Though it would be more accurate to call them things that used to be human.
Three corpses.
A middle-aged couple and a boy who looked to be in middle school.
And next to them, a naked woman curled up, covered only by a pile of clothes.
Seeing her shivering, I could easily paint a picture of what had happened.
"You guys aren't the owners of this place, are you?"
It was glaringly obvious.
Having witnessed countless zombie apocalypse scenarios, I could get a feel for the situation just by looking at the people involved.
A safe shelter prepared by the homeowners.
The emergency rations inside.
But the corpses lying there?
That didn't fit.
Who would keep corpses in a safe place?
Unless you were insane, letting corpses rot in an enclosed space was suicide.
"It's our house now, fucker. Get lost."
Hearing him scream in desperation, he sounded like a terrified dog.
That explained why they hadn't even thought of clearing the corpses, turning this place into a landfill without stepping foot outside even once.
Ignoring the two barking dogs, I approached the trembling woman.
I lifted the head of the woman, who was looking down.
She was covered in bruises, with dried tears and other bodily fluids caked on her skin.
Some white substance had clumped and hardened in her hair, and her entire body was black and blue.
"Are you the owner of this house?"
The woman, her eyes half-unfocused, nodded.
She looked to be in her early to mid-20s.
She was just an ordinary-looking woman you'd see walking down the street.
The kind of woman who wouldn't be very attractive without makeup.
I guess that didn't matter to them in the dark.
She couldn't meet my eyes, likely having been severely tormented by the two men.
"Hmm."
I waited for a moment to see if she would trigger a quest, but nothing popped up, suggesting it wasn't a quest that would yield Points.
I considered waiting a bit longer, but in my judgment, this wasn't a major event, and since it had nothing to do with me, it seemed best to wrap it up quickly.
The woman didn't have the charm to make her worth taking in.
Nor did she possess any special mode.
"Any last words?"
"What do you mean by..."
"I think it'll be easier to just kill you guys rather than kicking you out."
"Aaargh!"
Scum like this didn't deserve to live.
Slaughtering an entire family, and then beating and raping the sole surviving woman.
Anger welled up inside me.
"Why the fuck are these bastards causing trouble right next to my house?"
Wasting a whole thirty minutes of my time.
I approached the woman as well.
"Hmm."
To be honest, she was so broken that it might be a mercy to just kill her.
It wasn't just the bruises; her mind itself seemed completely shattered.
And understandably so.
If you had to watch the corpses of your parents and brother rot before your eyes, while being trapped and abused by their killers without even being allowed to die, you'd be consumed by every negative emotion imaginable.
If this were a game, I would have killed her without a second thought, judging it to be the better outcome. But this was reality.
Having confirmed she still had enough sanity to respond, I asked her.
"Do you want me to kill you? Or do you want to pack up whatever's left and leave? Just so you know, there's no room for you at my place."
The woman hesitated for a moment, looking at her parents' corpses, before standing up on trembling legs and starting to gather the remaining food from the storage area.
She packed as much as she could fit into a large hiking backpack and headed out of the basement.
By the time I went upstairs after her, she had already vanished.
Will she survive?
Thud!
As if clearing away the remnants of this brief encounter, the warehouse settled into its place.