~ Chapter 9: Exploring the streets ~

[Kardian’s point of view]

Almost everything that I managed to scavenge and was deemed useful for my continual survivor in this hectic world was packed into two big bags and a backpack. Whatever didn’t fit inside was in a plastic bag next to the bed.

“Initially, I thought that we didn’t have that much stuff...” I said as I looked at all of it with my arms crossed at my chest.

“In theory, this quantity of resources isn’t enough for long term survival.” Pointed out Xerya.

“What do you mean by long term survival?” I asked raising an eyebrow.

“I estimate anywhere between ten months to two years.” she replied.

“...”

That was... a lot. Practically, she was right, I didn’t have enough stuff here to last me for ten months, but two months on my own was doable. Still, I wasn’t expecting to stay hogged up in my apartment building all this time. With the Universal Credit Cards (ICC), I could essentially acquire any amount of food and goods I needed from local shops. With my current abilities, only a horde of more than twenty Nano-Z would be a problem for me. Actually, depending on how scattered they were and the way they attacked, I could probably handle twenty or more of them.

“Sigh... I’m not expecting to survive on only these bags...” I said and then began to reorganize my stuff.

The extra stuff that I didn’t immediately need and could be scavenged on the way was tossed over on the bed. I then repacked my backpack so that it contained only the minimal requirements for survival. Although the food was a given that I would bring with me, I did leave a few cans behind which had a long expiration date. The other stuff that I didn’t immediately need were spare clothes, a towel, two ICC, a dagger, a gun with some ammo, a bat, and a bunch of various other tools and scraps which according to the information on the survivor camps could be used for trading. I placed all of this in the two big bags and then hid them under my bed as a ‘secret stash’ of some sort.

Walking around while dragging two stuffed bags while also fighting off Nano-Z and maybe fleeing from other humans wouldn’t increase my chances of survival. However, I did grab three plastic bags which I could use to store stuff in just in case I stumbled upon something good.

Before leaving my apartment, I messed it up to make it look as though it was already looted, just in case there were any survivors who searched this place after I left. In case they found it, well, I just hoped they would use it wisely and that later on, I wouldn’t need it.

What I took with me was most of the food, spare clothes, a blanket, three lighters, two flashlights, two daggers, a gun that I kept on my person, most of the ammo I could take with me, a heater, a bunch of ICC, and a tablet for reading and browsing the net. Xerya could use now any surface as a makeshift tablet but having one myself was supposed to keep the other survivors from looking at me funny. Besides, you could use it as a distraction and for Xerya to use as a medium for hacking the TechScope of other survivors. Well, of course, if they made it clear that they wanted to be our enemies, we had no problem in hacking their stuff and even harming them to protect ourselves.

I could easily kill Nano-Z now, but killing other humans wasn’t something I could handle.

Actually, this was one of the subjects of our conversations during this past week. Xerya asked me why I would be so against using my abilities not only for my own survival but also for protecting others, however, she was referring to the situation in which I used them in order to take the life of other human beings. For her, this was a simple matter of preserving and continuing her own existence, but in my case, it was a moral and ethical dilemma. I understood and was aware of the fact that I couldn’t be a judge, jury, and executioner for anyone. There were rules within society even if right now it seemed that all of it went to Hell. Once the United Planets of Sol reached this system with their fleets, law and order would have to return. At that time, those who crossed the bottom line, emergency situation or not, would end up facing the court.

For me the fear of the law was just one of the many things that kept me from thinking that I could kill another human being, the other was simply the fact that I couldn’t see myself do it. I was powerful now, true, but before that, I was just a normal teacher at the local high school. There was nothing that special about me in regard to personality, background, or genetics that would inspire the idea that I might have it in me to kill another person.

“But, if you were placed in a situation where that was the only option, would you do it?” was what Xerya asked me back then, and I couldn’t answer.

I wanted to say that “No, I wouldn’t.” It was the answer of my logical and ethical side, but not that of my own actions.

Humans were part instinct and part logic. We acted based on our instincts for the most part in our lives and then translated those actions with words of so-called wisdom. We excused our actions with various ideas and supposition, with theories and so-called facts, but in the end, we couldn’t escape the moments when our instincts kicked in. Those were the instincts when we wanted to kiss someone we loved, when we felt as though what we ate was going to be bad for us and pushed our plates away, when we felt as if our lives were in danger. There were many moments that were dictated by instinct and not by a logical thought connected together to form an idea or hypothesis.

A long time ago, someone said: “Man is the smartest animal on the planet. He may know how to dress and not poop in the middle of the room, but in the end, he’s still an animal.”

This was the truth, wasn’t it? This was also why the law was so permissive to some situations when our instincts kicked in before our brains could.

“Once I leave this place, I might actually end up in the situation where I would be given the choice to either kill or spare someone’s life... I wonder what I’ll do then?” I asked myself as I looked back for one last time at the hallway of the 16th floor of my apartment building.

I shook my head and then headed out.

Five minutes later, I was walking down the street filled with broken down cars and littered with the bodies of those who were too unfortunate to survive the attacks of the Nano-Z or who died as a result of fights between survivors.

I stopped in front of a family car, inside, the Nano-Z was a woman with bitten off arms, an empty look in her eyes as she opened her mouth and then closed it again. Down, on the floor, her child was dead, shot in the head by someone, but clearly after he had turned. If I were to guess, this mother saw her child turn, but she couldn’t have it in her to kill him, resulting in the child killing her and eating her arms. It was a tragedy that was probably all too common now, so I did the only thing I could... Aiming my right arm at the unaware Nano-Z, I activated my Retractable Blade, and pierced her head.

After taking out her core, I moved on, but after I took a few steps, I stopped and looked back at the car where the tragedy took place.

“Man is an animal... but sometimes, animals won’t abandon their young even if they are dead...” I said and then turned around.

If I could shed a tear for her, I would have, but my eyes were dry. Besides, if I were to cry for every single tragic scene I would come across, I would run out of tears before reaching Resonance High. My only choice in this case was to simply do my best to ignore the deaths of the Nano-Z, end their misery if I was close enough and then move on.

Not far from the car, I saw a bus that had its doors ripped apart and from within it, you could feel the stench of death. There were no life signs detected in there, not even the Nano-Z ones, which meant that whoever was in there and whatever attacked them was now long gone. I didn’t even try to go inside to see if I could find a gun or something, instead, I just moved on, doing my best to ignore it and not puking my meal out.

The city streets weren’t the only ones marked by the coming of this apocalypse. The buildings themselves bared the scars of mankind’s struggles. Explosions left burning marks, bullets and energy weapons left deep holes in the walls, while those who died struggling at the windows, had their blood paint the sides of the buildings. I felt as though I was walking through the middle of a war zone, but instead of fighting against other humans, we were fighting against demons that possessed our bodies. It felt demoralizing when I remembered just how calm and beautiful these streets were three months ago, when I came back from Resonance High on foot, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the sight of this new city that had yet to be stained by corruption and greed.

I knew that those pleasant times weren’t going to last, but I never expected them to end so abruptly.

As I made my way through the wreckage on the street, I also took care of the Nano-Z who came too close to me. The number of cores I was gathering was starting to grow nicely, and I had already reached the maximum amount that I could upgrade in one go. I placed the extras in a plastic bag tied to my bag.

“That’s...” I stopped when I saw a body dragging itself on the ground towards me.

The blank expression on the man’s face told me that he felt no pain nor fear of what was happening to him. His lower half was gone, eaten, or maybe ripped off under some strange circumstances. The trail he left behind would lead me to the spot where he was turned, but before that, I decided to end his miserable existence by stabbing him in the temporal lobe. With a quick use of the Extractor tool, I pulled out his core and then cleaned it with a piece of cloth before tossing it into my bag.

“Do you know him?” Xerya asked me.

“Yes...” I nodded “He was one of the teachers who worked with me at Resonance High, mister Rudmera Sevesto. He was in charge of class 14. I didn’t really talk that much with him, but he was known to be a kind teacher who migrated here from Planet 2.” I told her as I looked down at his missing ring finger. “That’s weird... someone must have cut off his finger.” I said as I lifted his hand and looked at the wound.

Xerya scanned it with the help of the EyeCoat and then showed me the result.

“They used a dagger... So, maybe he had the bad luck of meeting raiders. That being said, wasn’t the Symbol Camp supposed to be nearby? Did something happen over there?” I wondered.

“Didn’t you plan to go there initially?” she asked me.

“Yes, but that was four days ago... I think I can reach the High School without needing to stop by the camp to resupply or look for an escort.” I told her.

“You are worried about something.”

It was true, I did feel as though something was wrong with this, but maybe it was just my intuition screaming at me because of all the death and carnage I saw on the way here. To be honest, I felt as though there were far too many Nano-Z wandering around for an area that was supposed to be near a human camp, but maybe that was just me being too jumpy about this whole thing.

“Maybe...” I replied as I looked back at the Nano-Z scattered among the wreckage of the cars a bit farther away from us. “I don’t know, I just feel like something’s wrong...” I said and then started to follow the trail of blood and guts left by the former Mister Rudmera.

There were quite a few Nano-Z in these parts, but since they were slow and stumbled a lot on wreckage and sometimes the dead bodies on the ground, they were easy to avoid and then kill with a single stab to the head. Eventually, I reach the end of the trail of blood. The man’s lower half had been crushed under a truck that flipped over. His actual remains were now just a paste of meat and bone together with a bunch of Nano-Z that were crushed under it.

“The truck was turned over during a drift...” I pointed out when I noticed the skid marks left on the pavement.

“It was driven like this intentionally. Maybe they tried to prevent a horde?” Xerya asked.

Looking back at the number of dead Nano-Z scattered across the entire area, I felt as though this theory couldn’t be completely unfounded. After all, in every post-apocalyptic media, you could see these mindless monsters flocking together and forming hordes that usually rushed towards a camp of survivors, devouring anything on the way like a plague of locusts.

“Let’s keep going, this place is giving me the creeps.”