Chapter 59
Chapter 59
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 59
Chapter Title: A Prayer's Answer
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Grace leaned against the stairwell wall of a building, catching her ragged breath as she hid her body.
After steadying her breathing for a moment, she cautiously peeked out to check inside the doorway beyond the wall where she was concealed.
And into her blurred vision came three shadowy figures.
But unlike normal people, they stood dumbly in place, blankly staring at the floor.
—They were zombies.
‘…Three of them here.’
The place she had reached after leaving the cathedral was one of the Italian restaurants she had scoped out during her usual searches.
She planned to find food here.
‘At least it’s down two from a few days ago….’
Normally, she would target a convenience store or supermarket stocked with canned goods, snacks, and drinks that could serve as preserved rations.
But the survivors in the area had already ransacked the local convenience stores, leaving nothing to be found there.
So she had been searching restaurants, chasing slim possibilities.
If luck was on her side, she might find relatively long-lasting ingredients from the restaurant’s stock.
“…Hoo.”
Grace took one more deep breath and steeled herself.
This was already the fifth restaurant she had passed through today.
This one had the fewest zombies of them all.
‘Today, I have to check this place no matter what.’
The children back at the cathedral were starving.
Normally, even one zombie would make her prepare for the worst and look elsewhere.
Because if she disappeared, the cathedral’s children were as good as dead.
She had always prioritized her life above all else.
That was how she had survived until now.
But today, playing it safe like that meant too slim a chance of finding food.
If she failed to secure food today, the children would be in danger.
With that life-or-death resolve set, Grace opened her closed eyes.
She lifted the brick clutched in her hand up to her chest.
Counting to three in her mind.
“…Hup!”
She burst out from behind the wall, hurling the brick raised to her chest with all her strength.
The brick, thrown at full force, soared through the air at high speed across the distance.
In a situation allowing no mistakes, the brick sliced through the empty air and struck the restaurant’s cracked window dead-on.
With a thunderous crash, the brick shattered the window and flew outward to the height of the second floor.
-Uh, uuhhh….
Zombies that sensed their surroundings through sound soon lifted their heads at the explosion filling the restaurant and shuffled forward with creaking steps.
‘Please…. Lord….’
She had even lured the zombies outside away from the restaurant like this.
So once she confirmed their positions, the chance of other zombies swarming here from the window’s noise was low.
But still, it was a matter of life and death.
Imagining the worst, Grace clutched the cross at her chest and prayed to God.
Then she counted to ten in her mind.
When her arbitrary ready signal hit zero, Grace bolted from the wall without hesitation, charging toward the window without looking.
—Thud thud thud thud!
The three zombies drawn by the window noise turned their heads toward the door again at the sound of Grace’s sneakers pounding the floor.
But by the time they registered her, Grace had already leaped.
The zombies clustered at the center of the broken window lost their balance under Grace’s sudden flying weight and toppled like dominoes.
In the end, the three zombies shared the same fate as the brick she had thrown.
“Haa, haa….”
Breathing heavily from the tension, she peered down below the shattered window.
The zombies writhed atop one another like cockroaches stuck in glue.
‘They won’t even die from this….’
Even from the height of the second floor, the zombies—lacking the intelligence to brace for impact—took the full force of the fall yet showed no signs of harm.
A normal person would have at least been knocked out.
‘Time’s short….’
Other zombies might come running at the sound of their fall.
She had no time to idly watch the fallen ones.
Snapping to attention, she spun around and headed straight for the kitchen.
She would quickly check the kitchen, then rummage through the storeroom.
Confirm if there was any edible food or useful supplies….
—Flutter flap!
“Kyaa—!”
As she moved toward the kitchen, thinking of the tasks she needed to hurry through in the restaurant.
Grace startled at the sudden noise and let out an involuntary scream.
Startled by her own voice, she clamped her mouth shut and immediately looked toward the source of the sound.
The noise came from the shattered window where she had stood moments ago.
“…W-What? Oh, it’s just a pigeon.”
The culprit was the flapping of pigeon wings.
Bright sunlight poured in through the broken window.
Bathed in that backlight, the pigeon’s dark silhouette stared at her.
Clutching her pounding chest to calm herself, Grace suddenly remembered something as she looked at the pigeon before her.
‘…But can you eat pigeons?’
She vaguely recalled hearing something about viruses, but couldn’t remember if it was life-threatening.
‘It’s sad, but if I catch that pigeon….’
Even if there was no food in this restaurant, at least she could feed the children.
Fortunately, the pigeon sat dumbly on the window frame, unmoving.
If it flew off later, regret wouldn’t help.
Grace stopped hesitating, grabbed a nearby tablecloth, and fixed her gaze on the pigeon.
There was a risk of missing, but attempting it was far better than doing nothing.
Praying the pigeon wouldn’t flee, she slowly crept toward that shadow.
“……Huh?”
As she drew closer, a rising sense of wrongness made her face twist in confusion, a foolish sound escaping her lips.
The pigeon came into clearer view the nearer she got.
It was no ordinary pigeon.
‘Z-Zombie…!’
She had sensed something off since it didn’t move away as she approached.
But the pigeon was an infected one.
Its small body made zombie traits hard to spot.
Yet her instincts, sharpened by life-or-death games of hide-and-seek, told her it was infected.
‘It came at the sound of the window.’
Zombies were sensitive to noise.
Unlike normal pigeons that would flee from sound, this one had come drawn by the window’s crash.
But unlike the human zombies outside, the pigeon showed no sign of lunging at her.
Maybe because it was a pigeon.
She couldn’t understand it, but it didn’t seem dangerous.
‘Ah, this isn’t the time.’
Dazed by the first zombie of another species, she had wasted time.
Snapping out of it, Grace turned back toward the kitchen.
‘Please, anything at all….’
With desperate hope, Grace entered the kitchen and began searching every messy corner.
She wasn’t even hoping for cans.
She prayed just to find sugar to replenish calories.
But against her earnest wish, all the food in the kitchen was rotted or contaminated.
Even the sugar jar she minimally wanted had spilled on the floor, utterly inedible.
At that wretched sight, Grace despaired for the first time today and sank down for a moment.
But fighting back the urge to cry, she clenched her fists.
“There’s still the storeroom….”
It was too early to give up.
The greater the hope she had pinned, the harder the crash, but Grace refused to quit.
If she gave up now, the cathedral’s children couldn’t survive either.
Rising from where she had slumped in exhaustion, she pulled herself together and stood.
Leaving the barren kitchen behind, she headed for the storeroom.
Unlike other restaurants, this large one surely had stockpiled ingredients.
Especially sauces, which often came canned—finding those would provide minimal calories.
At the storeroom door, she clutched her cross once more and prayed fervently.
Please, let there be food inside.
Opening her eyes, Grace grasped the storeroom door handle with trembling hands.
“……Ah.”
She found it.
Peas.
Canned peas.
She didn’t know what dish they were for.
But Grace clasped her trembling hands to her chest before the seven cans tucked in the corner of the storeroom shelf.
Tears of relief streamed down as she thanked God.
With this, the children could live.
Just a few days, but even a few more days of survival.
So Grace gave thanks.
‘Alright, hurry and pack them….’
Finishing her grateful prayer, Grace wiped her tears and rushed to stuff the cans into her backpack.
No longer needing to stay in this terrifying space, her movements grew even more frantic.
As Grace rose with a satisfied smile, having packed all the cans.
-Uuh, ugh….
-Kuhhh….
A chilling groan that froze her heart came from behind.
Grace whipped around, shoulders flinching.
In the restaurant hall behind her, two zombies were approaching.
The two zombies staggered directly toward her.
‘Why…! I didn’t make a sound…!’
To avoid any mishaps, Grace had minimized noise while searching the kitchen and storeroom.
With no zombies inside the restaurant, they couldn’t have heard her.
That left only one possibility.
Her scream from when the pigeon arrived earlier.
If they had come from outside at that sound, the timing matched.
‘F-First, I have to evade…!’
Two opponents.
The path from storeroom to restaurant hall was a narrow corridor.
Against two—not even one—a frail girl like her couldn’t force her way through.
With no choice, she shut the storeroom door and toppled a shelf beside it to barricade it.
Then.
—Rattle, rattle.
The zombies, arriving at the door by a hair’s breadth, pounded roughly as they groped for her.
Grace stared blankly at the door, her face drained of color.
“W-What do I do….”
She had bought time by hastily barricading the door.
But the storeroom was a sealed room without a back exit.
She evaded the zombies, but now she was trapped inside.
“I finally… found it….”
Tears she had held back poured from her eyes, splashing to the floor.
Food found after days of searching.
She could finally feed the starving children.
Yet her carelessness had ruined it all.
If it had just been no food, she could chalk it up to bad luck and rise again.
But this was all Grace’s negligence. Her mistake.
Regret flooded in, and unlike her earlier tears, this time despair and pain welled up as she collapsed onto the cold storeroom floor.
If she couldn’t get out, the children would wait for her and starve to death.
The children would die of hunger because of her.
But she had no way to overcome two zombies.
She had no weapons, and nothing in the storeroom would help in this situation.
。 。 。
Exhausted from crying, Grace hugged her knees and buried her face, waiting in silence.
Please, let those two outside get drawn away by something else and leave the door.
It was mere reliance on luck, but all she could do now was pray for that luck.
She waited motionless, doing nothing, and a long time passed.
She didn’t know exactly how long, but she could tell the sun outside had set.
A chill that cooled her body unlike the daytime told her so.
‘Maybe like this….’
Amid thoughts filled with hope for a miracle, an alien idea began to surface.
It was of her failure.
Just as God had ignored her until now, ignored again this time, her body growing cold in the cold storeroom.
She envisioned herself dead there, overcome by guilt over the children.
Until now, she had dismissed such thoughts as negativity from fatigue.
But not anymore.
That imagined scene was now nearly reality.
“Ugh…. Hic…. Uhic….”
No sooner had the thought ended than a sob escaped Grace’s tightly sealed lips as she waited in silence.
Hoping the zombies would leave, her firmly shut mouth.
Her body rigid, allowing no movement—she finally couldn’t hold back and sniffled.
Deep down, she already knew.
She would die in the end.
No matter how quietly she hid, the outcome would be the same.
Realizing that made waiting for a miracle feel futile.
Grace broke down sobbing like a child.
Until now, acting the strong adult for the real children, she reverted to a fragile girl.
“Lord…, uhic…. Why, hup, why won’t You save me….”
No matter how dire, she had tried not to doubt the God she believed in.
But in this moment, with death breathing down her neck.
Grace doubted the God she believed in.
Despite her desperate prayers, not even one scrap of food, and now this after finally finding some.
No matter how positively she framed it, she couldn’t shake the thought of being abandoned by Him.
She knew it was a sin.
But she was only human.
Pushed to her limit, she doubted her God.
And.
[ Hey, get lost. ]
As if her God answered her doubt.
From beyond the door, where only eerie knocking had sounded.
—Knock, knock.
[ …You there? ]
A voice of salvation rang out.
“Ah, aaah….”
She cautiously raised her eyes, hollow from despair.
The miraculous human voice from outside.
To her, its owner.
Felt like an apostle sent by God.
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