Fate
The Feeder shook, cold sweat slicking his skin.
Acute food poisoning, most likely. A case like that usually needed a few hours to incubate, but if the cause was spoiled zombie meat, the symptoms could show inside ten minutes. So that was why he had stopped halfway through feeding the pink dress. The rest had been his share.
"What were you thinking, eating this?"
"I... I wanted to live..."
What was that supposed to mean?
"If you were desperate enough to eat zombie just to stay alive, you could at least have picked something that hadn't turned. Can't you smell?"
"This... was all I... aagh!"
He had already looked like a man with one foot in the grave, and now he had hurried the rest of the way. Tsk. The pack was heavy enough as it was. Might as well burn one consumable and be done with it.
"What are you— ugh."
"Hold still."
A painkiller shot. Not something I usually carried; it had come in the survival kit Bae Guk-jang pressed on me when I left Headquarters. Fast, brutal relief, and side effects to match. Not that side effects mattered now.
"You'll feel better soon."
Death would get here before they did.
"Ulp..."
Ah. The vomiting won the race.
"If you're going to throw up, throw up."
"Hrk—"
The mildest of the side effects. A small mercy: some of the zombie meat came back up with it.
Even emptied out, the Feeder's face stayed pale. Not that the color was ever coming back.
"Did this shot... cure me?"
He was the one who had sworn that when his time came, he would throw himself to her as food. Which meant there was something he still meant to do before he died. Better he saw his fate clearly.
"No. It only takes the edge off the pain. You won't see tomorrow, so spend what's left carefully."
"Shame."
No flicker of panic. He must have felt it coming for a long time.
"Nothing else to eat, so you put that in your mouth?"
"..."
He had been lying on his back, staring at the sky. Now he rolled onto his side and gave me his back. Whether he didn't want me seeing his face, or didn't want to look at the zombie meat he had bitten into, I couldn't tell.
"Did you think even this would keep you alive?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I wasn't thinking anything."
His mind had shorted out. He couldn't make a sane decision. Ordinary enough. Push a person to the edge of starvation and it happens all the time. The conversation was familiar, too. I'd had one like it before, with a starving hunter who swallowed a battery. Set beside that, spoiled zombie meat almost made sense.
"Haa... The cold sweat won't stop. Still, I think I can walk now."
"You're on your way out anyway. Lying there and resting until you go isn't the worst of it."
"I'm going? Where, up to heaven?"
"No guarantee the ticket says heaven."
"Hell of a curse."
The way his mouth was working, the painkiller had taken hold. I sat down beside him where he lay stretched out and extended my legs. Nothing in particular to say. Standing over him the whole time felt wrong, too.
When I went quiet, he came out with something from nowhere.
"If I die like this, those bastards will be thrilled. They'll laugh themselves sick. At least I won't have to watch. Small mercy, I guess."
One-Ear and his crew.
"Those three?"
"No. Two. I heard the woman who's a little off bet that I'd end up as food."
Right. Only the Match Girl had taken his side.
"The bet isn't settled, is it? You said you can walk. Why not go get yourself eaten now?"
"Hah. You said you bet I'd become food, too. That desperate to win?"
That had only been a kindness. A lie.
"You think I'm shoving you into it so I can win a bet?"
"Obviously."
Fine. Believe what you like.
"Hoo... Thinking of them laughing twists my gut, but I couldn't do it."
"Scared of becoming food?"
"...You already know. Why ask."
Of course. The Match Girl's bet had been hopeless from the start.
This is reality.
Just as One-Ear had said, the sacrifice the Feeder had talked up so grandly was nothing but a fun story.
"I knew I wasn't going to last long. I still tried to hold out as long as I could... This time I really couldn't find food anywhere. The only thing I managed to scrounge was—"
"That stinking meat."
"I figured finding even that was something. I couldn't eat it, but Sun-young could."
The pink dress, then.
"If I die, Sun-young won't be far behind. She'll starve. Thinking that, I wanted to leave her as much food as I could. One last time."
"Spoiled meat, plus your fresh carcass on top. She would have eaten well."
"That's why I went to her..."
And in the end, hunger that extreme had turned his eyes.
"It happens. I've seen it more than once."
"...Are you comforting me?"
"If that counts as comfort."
"I've only ever been around people who couldn't wait to laugh at me. So yeah. It's comfort enough."
A man worn down to nothing. No raider would have bothered robbing the Feeder: a dying wreck, dressed like a beggar. Attacking someone like that was a waste of calories. That didn't mean he'd had no use. He had played the neighborhood punching bag to perfection, a human being who existed to be despised. The others would have laughed at him and let off steam, so if he died, quite a few of them might actually feel the loss. No one left to laugh at.
"I wanted to show them. I had to... I made this bracelet on purpose, too. I needed proof that I'd become food."
That part had bothered me from the start. Swearing he would become food was one thing. Why go around announcing it was another. Looking at it now, it had been a way to patch his pride: a hard will to do the thing none of them would dare, and land a blow with it. The feeling of This is the kind of man I am. Well. That was only why he had gone around talking. The vow itself had begun, of course, as sacrifice for the pink dress. Two birds with one stone.
"It's not too late even now."
"...Forget it. I can't."
The Feeder rolled over again and lay looking at the sky.
"Sun-young managed it..."
He kept using her name. His guard had eased a little. Worth asking once more.
"So what were the two of you?"
"I already told you. We weren't anything."
Tsk.
"You think I'm not being honest? I mean it. We really weren't anything. I only found out her name was Sun-young, and that she was younger than me, after she became a zombie."
"Hm?"
"I dug through her things later. That's how I found out. She was a nameless woman I'd never seen in my life."
Unexpected.
"For a stranger, you say her name awfully fondly."
"Otherwise she'd be lonely up there. All I could get from Sun-young's diary was her name, her age, and a dream of having a friend. It called itself a diary, but every page was about friends."
Their bond had been short, and it had cut deep. His explanation was over in a minute. He had found her running from zombies, and by then he himself had already been running from them for a long while. Common enough. One zombie wakes, a runner screams, the sound wakes more zombies, and that makes a new runner. The people who had been hiding come spilling out and flee, and the dead chasing them gather into packs of dozens. A moment when strangers become one. Not that everyone cooperates. Offer up a single person and the rest buy time to run.
Anyway, she had been a different kind of human being.
"I'm still alive because Sun-young made herself into food."
"Made herself into food?"
"Just what it sounds like. She didn't trip while she was running, and a zombie didn't grab her. She just stood there, still..."
Remembering, the Feeder's brow twitched.
"...stood there still, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled."
So feeding the pink dress had been his answer to that sacrifice.
"I'm not crazy. I know all of it. The girl is already dead, and a zombie is just a zombie. What meaning is there in throwing food at that horrible thing? It isn't even a prayer for her rest. I do it because it makes me feel better. Calling garbage like this repayment— huk!"
Getting his blood up when he was already dying. He retched again, but nothing came up.
"Anyway... I'm sorry, Postman."
"For what."
"You put a round on me being able to do what Sun-young did. Said it was nice to hear."
"Oh, that? I was just talking. You think I'd take a bet I knew I'd lose?"
"Son of a bitch. Wise as a damn dog."
His breathing went ragged, all at once. Sepsis. Given the cause, it was moving fast. His heart would stop before long.
"Kkh... You friends with those guys too?"
Not an unreasonable thing for him to think. One-Ear had said he pulled his friends into the bet, and he really had called me and Clock-out Man friends when he led us to Sanctuary.
"They decided that on their own. I don't keep friends."
"Yeah? Everybody's dying to be that bastard's friend."
One-Ear had a name in these parts, then.
"And they wanted you, of all people? The same guys who never shut up about trashing civil servants— kkh!"
The reason was obvious.
"I took care of two of his friends."
I had seen Thumb Man in Sanctuary with my own eyes. No doubt they had been friends. The sniper had been in another building, but that perch had been chosen to cover Sanctuary. Someone must have watched me catch them and break them. Rather than something empty like avenging a friend, One-Ear had chosen to keep me close and cut off any trouble later. Well. I had gotten a safe shelter out of it, too. Fair trade.
"Yeah? That's welcome news. Which two bastards— kkh."
Blood sprayed from his mouth.
"Ngh... So which two did you take care of?"
"The one left with nothing but his thumbs, and the sniper."
"Huh? I thought those sons of bitches had gone missing. What'd you do to them?"
"By now the girl called Sun-young is probably working them like slaves."
"Ha, shit. Happiness isn't far off, is it?"
The Feeder smiled so brightly that his eyes shut on their own, and the drop of blood-red tears caught at the corner spilled down his cheek.
"Hoo... Girls like Sun-young aren't common, right? Sacrifice isn't a complete fantasy, but how many people can do that for a total stranger? Am I wrong?"
The way he talked kept reaching for my agreement, but it wasn't because he doubted his own words. He was only starved for someone to agree.
"Yeah."
"Right?"
The Feeder closed his eyes.
"Ugh... my throat's closing... can't breathe..."
"One painkiller left. Take it and you'll be comfortable again."
Two doses in a short span made it a dangerous injection. Comfortable, in other words, in a different sense than before.
"In the end... I... right to the last... wanted to be... comfortable— kk!"
The one who had been afraid of making himself into food. Unlike her, who had let the dead tear into her of her own will, wanting an easy death even at the very last must have felt like a sin.
"I wanted to show... everyone... rare, but... the world still..."
He had started his last words too late. If the shot was going to work, I couldn't wait.
I said nothing. I got the injection in before it was too late, and the Feeder soon went still.
If he's going to see her again, it had better be heaven. Who knows.
He had nothing you could call belongings. No point searching him. What he left was one body, dried thin and light, and the bracelet hanging on it.
I thought again about what he had meant, offering himself as food.
So it wasn't two birds with one stone.
A sacrifice for the pink dress. A blow landed on the ones who had laughed at that kind of sacrifice. I had thought those were the two reasons. With his last breath, the Feeder had tried to say the real one.
A thin wind hissed in, full of sand. The body he left was so light that even a wind like this looked ready to roll it away.
"He's gone by now, right?"
"Should be. Postmen are busy. Looked to me like he was heading back to Headquarters."
"True. They always rush the return something fierce."
"Headquarters is safe, and if you've picked up a core along the way, word is you get it appraised the second you walk in."
"Aha. No wonder they're in a hurry."
The jerky peddlers didn't show themselves in the Truce Zone until the sun was high. They had meant to come the moment dawn broke, but facing the Postman had felt like too much, and they had kept putting it off.
"He's really gone! I think he left!"
"Whew. That's a weight off."
Sanctuary showed signs that someone had stayed and gone. They assumed it had been the Postman. In truth, it was what his companion, Clock-out Man, had left behind.
"Shouldn't we check whether anything was stolen?"
"Ah, no way... Let's look anyway."
While the two of them went through Sanctuary, a voice called over.
"Hey. What are you doing. You check too."
The woman with a match between her lips was only staring out the window.
"A toast. This round is for my leg. So, the ammunition?"
"There she goes again."
The man pulled the pot off his head, as if to show the lid had come off.
"I won't say anything about you not making sense, but you've still got to do the work prop—"
Only then did he see what she was looking at.
"...Boss? We've got a problem here— no. Something's happened."
"Hm?"
Three heads crowded together at the window. Their eyes went to the zombie in the pink dress, wolfing something down. The shape of the bones said it had been a person, but the flesh was nearly all torn away, so sex and age were impossible to guess. All that stood out was a piece of metal on an arm of bare bone, winking as it caught the sun.
"The ammunition is for me. All of it. I won't let anyone point a gun at my head again. Heh."
She wiggled her fingers and grinned. The man with one ear gone put every round of the stake into her hands.
"That bastard really... How could he do that?"
"Hell if I know."
"I'm not saying this because I grudge a single round—"
"I just can't understand it, and it makes me feel filthy."
"Right? That's exactly how I felt when I heard there was such a thing as white ramen broth."
"Wait. Maybe..."
One-Ear thought of the Postman all at once.
"While we were gone, you think the Postman pulled something?"
"Why would he? There's no reason, is there? He didn't even join the bet."
"True... Come to think of it, the Postman's companion bet his rounds on the same side as us."
"He actually went through with it. That guy was no ordinary man."
"Damn it!"
The boss fumed, and then—
"Hoo."
—settled just as quickly.
"Who cares. He was crazy to begin with. A crazy man did a crazy thing. Let's get to work."
"Yes, sir!"
The man turned the pot back over his head. The boss fiddled with his ear. Their ordinary day went on being ordinary, except for the woman, who took out a fresh match and set it between her lips.