Ch.168Chapter 20. Patriot (20)

I scratch my chin a bit. Fiddle with the back of my head. Tap my foot, rolling it slightly.

“This feels rather unfair, doesn’t it?”

No matter how I think about it, it feels unfair.

“Unfair? What do you mean?”

With her safety goggles completely fogged up and a mask covering her face, I couldn’t make out Cassandra’s expression. However, her voice was thick with confusion.

“Well, you know. It’s unfair. I don’t know if sealing off this part of Earth was the work of fanatics or not, but they installed CCTVs and watched everything happening inside like they were observing an ant farm. I don’t like it.”

It’s unsettling.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it feels extremely dirty. Yet, it’s a familiar experience. Like when I was running a raid with a party, and after all other team members died, I was the only survivor being “hunted” by enemy team members who spread out to corner me from all directions—that same irritating feeling.

It’s not for some noble reason like thinking the humanoid zombies are pretty, or feeling human sympathy for their unfortunate state. It’s just that these fanatics’ actions feel extremely suspicious.

Is it really right to let them do as they please?

“I don’t like it.”

It’s not like I have any personal connection to these fanatics. Whatever they do, I just need to focus on my own tasks. But I still don’t like it. The whole situation seems to be unfolding exactly as they want it to, making me feel like I’m being dragged along—that’s what I don’t like.

“Johan, Cassandra doesn’t understand what you’ve been talking about.”

Cassandra tilts her head in confusion.

“Let’s lay out the facts we know from the beginning. As far as we know, they herded the infected into the central district and built barriers around it to prevent entry and exit, right?”

“That’s right.”

“But when we came into the central district, there was clear evidence that the National Military Police Headquarters had staged a rebellion, and the ones behind it were those fanatics. They even used this place as a CCTV surveillance base to voyeuristically watch the surroundings.”

“Correct.”

“So, where did the rest of the headquarters’ fanatical soldiers go?”

Soldier corpses were scattered everywhere. Yet, zombies in military uniforms were extremely rare. Moreover, this health center still had generator trailers and mounted machine gun positions, but no spare rifles or ammunition. Just spent casings on the floor.

There’s only one explanation for this. They’re still alive. Of course, they might be zombies by now. But they walked out of this health center on two feet while still human.

They might even be quite close by.

“I think we need to look into this.”

“Into what?”

“If those soldier-fanatics are out there, and they’ve just temporarily vacated this place for some reason, then we’ve basically walked right into a trap.”

Cassandra seemed startled.

“D-does that mean we have to move again?”

“We should keep it in mind. But don’t worry too much. We’ve established quite a few intermediate bases, right? Even if this place gets attacked, we can temporarily retreat to one of those. Survival itself isn’t a concern.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t want to engage in an all-out war with trained, fanatical soldiers. Especially if they’re hiding somewhere.”

It might be an overreaction, but it’s worth testing. We need to be safe. It’s much more advantageous to lure them in and take them out before they come after us first.

“I wish we could find a nice, quiet place with good mountains, clean water, and working electricity.”

“…Yeah.”

The blood draw was complete. Beep beep, the machine sounded. Cassandra approached me and removed the needle from my arm. She seemed to be breathing heavily, enough to make her mask flutter.

“Cassandra, are you feeling unwell? Are you sick?”

“N-no. I’m perfectly fine.”

Inhale – exhale. Inhale – exhale. Her breathing seemed too deep for someone who was fine. It was puzzling. Cassandra moved away from me and shook a tube of ointment in her hand.

“Sorry. You’ll have to apply this yourself. After the wound heals, you can shower, but avoid strenuous exercise today since we drew a lot of blood.”

The ointment flew through the air in an arc. I caught it easily.

“Now, could you leave?”

“What? You’re kicking me out because you’re done?”

I protested playfully, but Cassandra had already turned her back. Wondering if she really wasn’t feeling well, I applied the ointment and headed for the door.

“Um, wait.”

Cassandra called out from behind me.

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget to take this laptop.”

Cassandra pointed at the desk. Thinking this was convenient, I went back into the room. Pretending to reach for the laptop, I walked purposefully toward Cassandra instead.

“What are you doing? Get back.”

Cassandra backed up until she was against the wall.

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong? I’m not joking. I’m genuinely worried. Why do you keep avoiding me…?”

“It’s nothing like that!”

Suddenly Cassandra shouted loudly. It was the loudest I’d heard her since we met, loud enough to cause a commotion upstairs.

“Whoa, okay. Okay. Don’t worry. I’ll leave.”

This reaction was also a first, so I grabbed the laptop and left again. I ran into Camilla coming down the stairs. She was wearing a sports bra and hot pants, probably having been exercising, but still had a pistol in her hand.

“What’s going on? Did something happen? I heard Cassandra’s voice?”

“Um… first, put that gun down. If you don’t mind, could you check on Cassandra? She seems really off. She denies it, but she’s all bundled up…”

“What?! D-don’t tell me?!”

Catching my hint, Camilla rushed into the examination room in alarm. She nearly broke down the door. And she still had the gun in her hand. There was a commotion inside. Curious about what was happening, I tried to open the door.

“Whoa!”

It slammed shut with a bang.

“Sorry, Johan! Did I hit your nose?”

“Camilla! I thought my face was going to break!”

“Sorry! Step back a bit!”

I backed away, and Camilla poked just her head out. Her face was also sweaty.

“Sorry. I had to undress Cassandra completely. Yeah, she’s perfectly fine. No need to worry. She just seems to have a slight fever. No, no! It’s not the infection symptoms you’re thinking of. She’s just overworked.”

“Have you learned medicine from Cassandra now too?”

“I’m planning to open an internal medicine practice. Go upstairs. I’ll help her get dressed and come up. You’re not planning to peep on a woman getting dressed, are you?”

“Alright, just put the gun away!”

* * * * *

Knock knock.

I knocked on Leticia’s door.

“Hmm? Who is it? Oh…”

“Not today. They told me to rest because they drew a lot of blood.”

I pointed at the laptop.

“Tch.”

Leticia seemed quite disappointed, but she opened the door anyway. Despite having settled in the health center only a few days ago, her room already showed distinct personality.

“You’ve set up your room like a surveillance post. Where did you get that gun rack?”

“Just picked it up from outside. Want a beer?”

“Just soda for me.”

“Boring.”

Grumbling, Leticia left and returned with beer and soda. Thanks to keeping them in the “refrigerator,” they were refreshingly cold. We sat facing each other on her bed, drinking our beverages. There wasn’t really anywhere else to sit anyway.

“How much generator fuel do we have left?”

Leticia pursed her lips at my question.

“Well, at our current rate, about two months? We’re being really conservative with electricity. We’ve reduced production a lot too. Why do you ask?”

“Don’t you find the 284th National Military Police Headquarters troops strange? They left the generator truck and two months’ worth of fuel, but took all their rifles and ammunition.”

I told Leticia about my conversation with Cassandra, my speculation about where the 284th headquarters personnel might have disappeared to, and the possibility that they might return here.

She grew increasingly serious. She even momentarily stopped wiggling her toes, which she had stretched between my legs.

“Actually, after the zombie outbreak, no unit remained intact. There’s no place where infection spreads more chaotically than in the military. Even units that seemed fine overall were often in disarray at the smaller unit level.

It was so bad that the general headquarters gave up on keeping track and issued a directive saying ‘each corps should reorganize their units on their own.’ So the chaos at the 284th National Military Police probably got buried. But as I said before, it’s strange. If the commander and staff ended up in that state, they should have known.”

Leticia crushed her beer can.

“Want to find out exactly what happened? I can access reorganization records on the military intranet. It requires some workarounds, but referencing that could tell us what actually went down.”

“No, that’s not necessary. It’s not that urgent. I came to you for a different reason.”

“Hmm, what is it?”

“Can you find any programs or communication codes used by the National Military Police soldiers on this laptop? If we could contact the remaining stragglers through this laptop, maybe we could lure them in.”

“Let me see.”

Leticia lightly tapped the keyboard. Her fingers danced like she was playing a rhythm game.

“Look at this.”

“What is it?”

Leticia pointed at the screen.

<Elza National Military Police Information System. Operations Staff Officer Ellen Burrow>

“This person didn’t log out.”

Before I could say anything, Leticia pressed Enter. The connection failed. ‘Internet connection required.’ After thinking for a moment, Leticia connected the laptop to her mobile phone. It was slow, but the connection resumed.

“List of written reports… Here it is. ‘284th National Military Police Headquarters experienced multiple infection cases… lost contact with staff… search battalion deployed… out of 253 personnel, 48 survivors were found and returned.’ Interesting.”

This obviously doesn’t make sense. This is an official report. If the survivors had truly “all” returned under the search battalion’s operation, there wouldn’t be any military traces left in this central district. They would have certainly recovered the bodies of the commanders and leadership as well.

“Wait.”

A message appeared on the screen.

『Duplicate login detected. Would you like to log out?』

Leticia and I locked eyes.

“Leticia.”

“Yes?”

“I guess we should ask when we don’t know something, right?”

“Of course.”

The information system menu had a ‘Send Message’ function. Naturally, there was an option to send a message to oneself. After thinking about what to write, I typed:

『To Operations Staff Officer Ellen Burrow. Why did you kill me? – 284th National Military Police Commander, J. Clayton.』