A Date with an Old Man (2)
In every age, romance and marriage had always been a means to an end.
A marriage filled with love would be ideal, of course… but take the stories of Egypt and Rome.
Just as Cleopatra threw herself at a Roman general thirteen years her senior to consolidate her power.
In this apocalyptic world where strength and power were everything, it was hardly any different.
Start as a male character and a woman would seize the advantage, or you'd end up dealing with survivor groups where women held the key positions.
Start as a female character and you'd face survivor groups under a man's command.
Marriage as a tool for alliance wasn't uncommon, and even I used to think of marriage in the game as synonymous with alliance.
Because that was what it meant to stake your life protecting people who had no prior connection to you.
And if a child came of it, all the better.
But I hadn't expected them to openly squabble over me like this.
Then again, the settlement was still in its early stages.
It was also a place we'd already had to relocate once after being chased by the Zeroth Reich.
"What the hell is with all these cables? Where were they even planning to use this much wiring, hoarding it like this?"
I watched him open and shut drawers until he finally gave up, perched on a chair, and took a drink of water, muttering the whole time.
The way he kept glancing at me every so often was particularly hard to ignore.
"Find anything on your end?"
"Not yet. A military radio isn't exactly the kind of thing that turns up easy."
"If Sarah were here, she'd be moving a lot quicker than an old wreck like me with these creaky joints."
The way he cleared his throat and watched my reaction was thoroughly uncomfortable.
Curtis pressing me for a quick decision was a little…
How to put it.
It was like he was making it painfully obvious he wanted a leash on me.
Of course, I had no intention of buckling under the pressure… and while it wasn't exactly good manners, there was no reason to jump at an offer just because someone shoved it in my face.
In a situation where we couldn't even grow our own food yet, starting a relationship meant losing time—and if someone suddenly got pregnant, you lost manpower too.
If the delivery went wrong, mental health went to pieces on top of it. Romance in the apocalypse was a dangerous business.
Sure, while it lasted you got a massive mood bonus, and just being together dropped anxiety by a huge margin, so the benefits were real.
I even remembered there being players who ran same-sex romance routes just to skim all the relationship bonuses without the risks.
Even if it was a game, that… wasn't really my style.
And more importantly, this was my reality now.
"Nothing on this side either."
We'd already torn through two rooms, and that black box-shaped device still refused to show itself.
All we'd managed to scavenge were power strips, wiring, computer parts, and spare LED lamps.
"Should we move a little further?"
"Let's. I'd like to get out of this dustbin of a room as soon as possible."
We left the room and started walking. Before long, another iron door appeared.
I grabbed the lever and was about to shove my way through when Curtis suddenly tapped my shoulder.
"Hey—what's that?"
I followed his finger and saw something hanging from the ceiling.
When the flashlight beam hit it, what emerged was the kind of directory sign you saw all the time in airports and hospitals.
"What's it say? My eyes aren't what they used to be."
"Medical wing… cafeteria… broadcast room. Broadcast room!"
A place where we were almost guaranteed to find a military radio.
And if we stripped out the right parts, we could even build a Morse code transmitter for facility upgrades.
"Don't rush it. We need to mark the way back first."
Curtis left a small chalk mark, adjusted his grip on the shotgun, and frowned.
"Letters that tiny—really now."
"Says right from here. It's next to the cafeteria."
"Means we can grab food supplies while we're at it."
"If we have the capacity, making regular runs here might not be a bad—"
Clank.
Excitement was excitement, but then came a sound that seemed to split the air—metal striking metal.
If I wasn't imagining it.
And if it hadn't come from Curtis, whose face had gone hard as he clenched the shotgun.
"…Down!"
Curtis slammed into me with everything he had, driving us toward the room we'd left open.
Gunfire filled the corridor just as I was about to hit the floor.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
"Get those bastards!"
Of course. There was never going to be nothing here.
If there were no monsters, there were people. If there were no people, there were monsters…!
Crash.
There wasn't a shred of hesitation in the way Curtis had thrown himself into me.
He kicked over the iron desk on the left and ducked behind it.
I scrambled up and pressed myself against the metal shelving on the right.
The flashlight had probably ended up somewhere out in the hallway.
"Kill the old man and drag the young one out alive!"
"Meat, meat, meat!!!"
"Kik, kihhihihik, kihahahahaha!!!!"
A cannibal pack, then.
From the footsteps, it sounded like a decent-sized group.
"You shoot first, I'll cover you. Get ready."
I listened to his low voice and pulled the slug round out of the gun.
In its place, I loaded a shell packed with sharp fragments.
"I can't take it anymore. I can smell it in there! And it's clean. Clean meat."
"The young one looked especially fresh, didn't he?"
"I like carving sashimi raw myself."
"A female who hasn't birthed would make even better sashimi—but clean meat's clean meat either way."
My hands shook uncontrollably.
The cannibals' banter among themselves—
Those deliberately loud, cackling voices were all rough and grotesque.
It was enough to make me newly aware of just how soft-spoken everyone at my settlement was by comparison.
"Throw this one in first?"
"We go in together. There's only two of them anyway, right?"
I could see a gaunt arm rapping idly against the open door.
A bloodstained rusty knife scraping iron. Metal shards embedded in a wooden bat, spun around like a prize.
Did the shadows the flashlight caught even still look human?
"Deep breaths. If you're shaking, even the bullets you line up will miss."
I knew that in my head. Knowing it didn't make my body obey.
I bit down on my lip and gripped the gun tight.
Even if they had guns, everything they'd shown so far was blades.
The diseases and debuffs that came with cannibalism made hands shake—so even with a firearm, they wouldn't shoot straight.
No—even so, if the berserk status closed the distance…
"Breathe!"
I deliberately inflated my chest in an exaggerated breath, then let it out, and bit by bit I steadied myself.
Maybe I'd forgotten because things had been too peaceful for too long.
This was the apocalypse.
One wrong step and you died.
I held the gun with my left hand and locked my right around the grip.
I could jump out any second.
Any second—
"MEAT!!!!"
In the end, the owner of that ragged voice came charging first.
The face submerged in darkness and shadow was hard to call human—wild hair and beard flying.
A mane like a lion's, thick with feral savagery. The cannibal closed the distance in an instant, blades in both hands, roaring.
BOOM.
I pulled the trigger, and for a moment everything seemed to move in slow motion.
The position of the fingers on the gun.
The recoil wrenching my wrist.
The sizzle of powder.
And the face opposite me, shredded and pulverized by a spray of metal fragments.
Crash.
He'd been charging so hard that the body that took the shot just slid across the floor and slammed noisily into the far wall.
"G-guns—"
No time to hesitate. No time to check.
I immediately fired the second barrel and put a round into his leg.
"AAAAARGH!!!!"
It didn't explode the way a slug would have, but I watched the leg tear to shreds and drop him flat.
I cracked the shotgun open and was loading a slug when—
THOOM.
Curtis dropped the next one—a guy with a sickle who came barreling in without stopping even after seeing the guns.
Three corpses in the room already.
And the stench started spreading almost at once.
"B-boss, they've got guns—s-shotguns, shotguns!"
"So what if they do? We've got more people! You not gonna eat!? Push them!"
The relatively coherent-sounding voice of the "boss."
Probably the one who'd been shooting.
"KIHYAAAAAAA!!!!"
Three of them came through the door at once—and Curtis's slug punched through all three in a single shot.
"Uh, uhh… uh…"
One of them, still breathing, gurgled as he collapsed and impaled his own ally.
Even so, Curtis didn't finish him off. He kept watching the door.
"When I run dry, you cover me!"
Did he really need to shout that so loud?
My ears were ringing from the gunfire—but those bastards would hear it too.
"H-he's got one left, I think."
"One? Two? The gun—the gun was thick, boss."
"One round or two, we've got numbers. We push and it's over. You think we're doing this 'cause we don't have guns!? Get in there!"
"B-but—"
Two rounds left in my gun.
Curtis held his shotgun with what looked like its last two shells, no move to reload.
Outside, more than four—a whole swarm of cannibal voices, milling and restless.
Even if that lucky shot had gone through three of them, could four slug rounds really hold until the rest were dead?
"The mouths that were eating all the food are gone anyway! Fat Tom's dead, so the rest of you get more to eat. Right!?"
"Y-yeah, yeah. Right. Right."
"B-boss is smart. Hehe."
"I'll cover you. Go!"
"UWEAAAAAAAH!!!"
A pistol appeared and started spraying rounds everywhere.
At the same time the cannibals ducked and charged—
BANG, BOOM.
Curtis, already lying on his side on the floor somehow, blew the legs out from under two of them.
"AAAAARGH! AAAAARGH!!"
While the fallen ones blocked the path, I pulled the trigger on the one going for Curtis—
"Not a chance!"
Bang.
"Urgh!"
I managed to get one shot off through the incoming fire, but the follow-up round went sailing into the ceiling.
My pierced left arm burned hot.
"HYAAH!"
The last one I couldn't stop piled onto Curtis, and in front of me the boss finally stepped into view, still hammering the pistol's trigger.
Click, click, click, click.
"Damn it!"
He flung the spent pistol aside, yanked a knife from his belt, and set his stance.
Curtis and the cannibal tangled on the floor, rolling, locked in a brawl.
"Been a while since I had a full course. I'll carve you into sashimi while you're still alive, and the old man I'll stew down into soup."
Reloading wasn't an option.
All I felt from the bleeding arm was constant pain.
As for a sidearm… the Phillips-head screwdriver in my coat was about it.
"Hyaah!"
I yanked the screwdriver free, but he was on me first.
The screwdriver bounced and skittered across the floor.
"Grrr… Die… DIIIIIE!!!!"
I grabbed the arm driving the knife down with his full weight and shoved with everything I had.
It was as hard as trying to turn a wrench that wouldn't budge…
"Ghaaaa."
The reek of his breath was foul.
Teeth that didn't look like they belonged in a human mouth.
And on top of it all, blood pumping from my arm.
The knife was getting closer.
The tip wavering toward my heart was unmistakably sharp.
Somehow—somehow—I had to push it off…!
"Heart's delicious when you boil it. A beating heart is all muscle—lots of meat on it."
I did not want to be eaten.
After everything it took to get this far, I was not dying like this.
But my arms were at their limit, and the knife was already about to touch cloth.
So I wrung out the last of my strength—and shoved off the floor with my right leg.
Thuk.
"AAAAARGH!"
I twisted enough that the knife finally buried itself in me, but only deep into my arm.
I smashed a fist into him and he went down, losing the knife as he hit the floor.
"UWAHHH!!!"
I tried to grab the knife, but his head slammed into me and drove me into the wall.
I hammered his midsection with my good arm—and a fist punched into my gut right after.
"Ghk…!"
I hit the floor, and now he was looking straight down at me.
"That was fun. It's been a while. Now—"
Click-clack.
And behind him, Curtis, finishing a reload into the forend.
BOOM.
Brains painted the wall, and warm wet things rained down across my face.
"…There are humans in this world even worse than Nazis."
I forced my eyes open at the sight of him limping, and saw the long gash across Curtis's leg.
The cannibal who'd jumped him… had my screwdriver stuck in his eye.
"You all right?"
…Looking at it this way, bringing Curtis along might have been the right call after all.