Sky Glow
Silence hung over the rooftop.
Anyone would freeze when a door got smashed open without warning and some stranger walked out gripping the wreckage with a grotesque arm. Even I would have locked up if I'd been standing on their side of it.
One guy hoisting a generator. Another stuffing food into bags. A few more sitting at the tables like they owned the place. Every last one of them was a raider.
"Hey, what the hell do you think you're—"
BANG!!
I swung the iron door still clenched in my left hand and slammed it into the idiot charging me without a second thought. A massive crash rang out, and his body went flying sideways like a rag doll before crumpling to the floor.
"Hoo..."
It's not like I was the type who could murder people without blinking. And not every raider was some psycho who got off on killing, either.
But most of these guys had already taken lives—or done something close enough. And whatever they would have done to me would have been just another ugly memory for them.
I'd already started this. I'd already made up my mind.
So I was going to finish it clean.
"Hey... what the fuck are you doing?! Kill him, you bastards!"
A man pointed at me, bellowing the order a beat too late. The raiders dropped whatever they were holding and pulled out kitchen knives, makeshift spears lashed together from wood, axes—anything they could get their hands on.
Alright, Jompari. Let's do this.
Normally I would have run. Two opponents, maybe I stick around—but three or more and you don't hesitate. You bolt. The only reason I wasn't running now was the thing buried in my left arm.
Some strange confidence I couldn't explain. A weird, absolute certainty that I could pull this off.
Whoosh—!
I gripped the door sideways and swung it with everything I had for the first time.
"Huh?"
CRACK!
Two raiders' faces met the hard edge of the iron door. Their necks snapped backward and they collapsed like puppets with their strings cut—instant death from broken cervical vertebrae. A smear of their last blood stained one side of the crumpled door.
The ones who'd been closing in left long trails of blood as they faltered. I decided to go to them instead.
"W-why the fuck are you doing this to u—!"
BANG!!
"Guh..."
I brought the door down on the skull of a guy still spitting out useless, wounded questions. He hit the ground pouring blood from the hole like he'd taken a sledgehammer to the head.
The opening cost me. Another raider drove a knife toward my side—I braced myself to take the hit.
CLANG!
"...What?"
I'd been clenching my teeth, ready for the pain, when a sharp metallic ring cut through the air and a dull ache flared through my right hand. The knife had been blocked by the broad face of the axe. Before the guy could even process it, I knocked the blade aside and buried the axe in his throat.
THUNK!
"Ghk—khk!"
I finished the job myself, but the block hadn't been my reaction. Recalling the sensation—it was the same feeling as when my left arm had moved on its own and torn a zombie apart. Incomplete, faint, but that same instinct seemed to be seeping into my right arm.
"Die, you crazy monster fuck!"
Wonder. Or terror. I didn't have time to sort out which feeling was aimed at myself before another raider's axe came screaming for my neck.
Whoosh—
CLANG—!
I whipped the door across again. A violent ring of metal, and his axe went flying backward. The force snapped his wrist; he screamed as I brought my own axe down on the crown of his head.
CRACK!!
A spray of blood erupted. I didn't have time to be annoyed about it—I just wrenched the axe free.
"Haa..."
Only then did I realize I'd been holding my breath. I forced myself to breathe properly.
Six raiders dead in a blink. The rest, still armed, started hesitating—no longer so eager to close the distance.
"..."
We stared each other down in silence. The only sounds left were ragged breathing and the soft drip of blood.
"Hey... I don't know what we did to piss you off, but if it's supplies you want, we'll split them with you. How about it?"
A thick-bearded man stepped forward carefully and made the offer. After watching six of his people go down, the cost-benefit math must have finally clicked. He set his weapon down gently and raised both hands.
I did a quick headcount of the survivors. Five left at most. Add the two I'd killed on the stairs and the whole group had been thirteen—a mid-sized raider band by their standards.
When I still didn't answer, he revised the deal.
"F-fine. We'll give you half of everything here. Just let us live, and I swear we won't breathe a word about what happened on this roof."
"Hooo..."
I let out a long breath. The man in front of me flinched at the sound. I understood. Who actually wants to die? Resentful looks slid toward him, but nobody was brave enough to argue out loud.
Moments like this always dragged the self-loathing up from somewhere deep. Who the hell was I to hold someone's life in my palm and turn it over like a coin? Some people get a power trip out of that. I felt nothing of the kind.
It was just disgusting. This whole ruined world was nauseating.
But the more I felt that way, the clearer my job became. My gaze went cold as ice on the bearded man.
"You fucking son of a—!"
He must have read the intent in my eyes. He yanked a small newspaper-wrapped knife from his pants pocket and lunged.
CLINK—!
It wasn't much of a threat. I caught the blade on the door in my left hand, and he abandoned the knife entirely, grabbing the door panel with both hands instead.
"Why?! We're just trying to survive too! We're worth sparing, aren't we?! Is it a grudge? Then I'll apologize—I'll beg if that's what you want! Is it really that hard to just let us live?!"
His voice cracked with outrage from behind the door he was clinging to. Something about it set the others off—they raised their weapons again and started closing in.
"This is exactly why I didn't want to talk."
BOOM—!
"Guhhk!"
I ripped my left hand free of the door and drove a punch straight through it. Man and metal crumpled together under the impact.
BANG!
I brought my fist down again where his head should be and crushed it for good measure.
Four left.
I rolled my eyes across the roof, trusting Jompari to handle anything outside my line of sight, and locked onto the guy charging me head-on with a bat.
"Hup—!"
He swung wild. I kept my distance and slipped the first blow—he was thrashing like he only needed one lucky hit.
Whoosh—
THUNK!
"Aaaagh!!"
Too hard to close in, so I put some space between us and hurled the axe with everything I had. Luck was with me—the blade buried itself in his forehead. Before he could even process falling, I ran up and stomped the back of the axe head deeper.
"I don't wanna d—"
CRACK!
I didn't listen.
I turned toward the last three—two still showing fight, one frozen in terror.
Skrrreeee—
I dragged my left arm along the ground as I sprinted. Sharp metal scraped concrete, throwing sparks from the fingers.
SHHNK—!
One raider died without even putting up a fight, my fingers punching through his jaw. I tore my hand free like I was ripping his head off, then shifted the axe from my right hand into my left. The last two realized they were alone and fled with weird, animal noises.
Whoosh—!
CRACK—!!
The axe flew harder and faster from my left hand than it ever had from my right, burying itself dead-center in one runner's back. It went so deep the blade punched out through his chest before he dropped.
"N-no, no, stay away, you fucking monster!!"
Maybe because I was near the entrance, the last raider had nowhere left to go. He just stood there sobbing until he climbed onto the railing and threw himself off the roof.
THUD!
"..."
I walked to the railing, confirmed the last one was down, then slowly sat with my back against the wall.
"Hooo... that wasn't easy..."
My hands were shaking. No—just the right one. Fuck. Like a zombie arm would know anything about human feelings.
I scrubbed my face with the cleaner of my two hands, dry-washing it over and over.
Even as a one-year veteran survivor—high-spec, by the standards of this world—I'd never done a slaughter like this. At most I'd set fire to a raider base and burned it down, or herded a zombie pack to surround one until it collapsed. The difference between taking them apart indirectly and killing them myself was bigger than I'd expected.
I tipped my head back and looked at the night sky.
One of the few good things about the world ending: the stars you could never see before were out in full force. Yohan always said it was the artificial lights that had drowned them out. Moments like this almost made me think the apocalypse hadn't been entirely bad.
But it wasn't over yet.
If you start something, you finish it all the way to the end. That was the rule. The school group, though—they were rough, sure, but they weren't like the raiders. They hadn't crossed the same lines.
...Except they already crossed a line when they teamed up with raiders to hit another group, didn't they?
I snorted at my own counterargument. Already rationalizing? Or was it just the truth?
I yanked the axe out of the dead raider's back and gave it a big swing to fling the blood off. Bad form—I only managed to spatter more of it onto myself. In the movies they always shake it off looking cool. Media really is nothing like reality.
Crunch.
I flexed my left hand, making sure it still worked, and the fingers scraped together with a rough, grating noise.
Was I even human right now, or a zombie?
Even having the thought was ridiculous. A normal person doesn't massacre thirteen people. A normal zombie doesn't try to save anyone. I didn't eat people, I tried to stay clean, I avoided conflict when I could, and I was looking for a shelter—just another survivor. That was what I'd decided to be.
I braced my left arm against the ground and pushed myself up.
The Rooftop Market raiders were cleaned out. All that was left was to go to the school and pull the Rooftop Market people out. Whatever the school group's real goal was, I could settle an old personal score, do a little good, and maybe pick up some supplies from the market survivors for my trouble.
I turned my head and looked toward one edge of the city.
On the outermost fringe, tucked against the mountain, stood Mohyang High School.
The first group I'd ever belonged to—and the place I'd fled in disappointment.