Staring straight ahead, Saya Takagi's pupils suddenly dilated.
Up front, an elevated railway the bus was about to pass beneath let out a piercing screech. A derailed train car was hanging halfway off the track, teetering as if it could drop at any moment and block the underpass below. It was directly on the bus's required route.
Worse still, the train was packed with people, and now they were all tumbling down.
At this rate, they would fall right onto the bus.
One or two wouldn't matter, but this was dozens. The bus would be in trouble.
But if they slowed down, all those bodies piling up ahead would turn into a wall. Slamming into that could flip them.
And the most lethal possibility of all… the train car itself might fall and crush the bus.
No. Even braking now wouldn't be in time.
"Drive straight through!"
The words came with the shriek of tortured metal.
By the time Saya snapped back to herself, she saw that he had forcibly cut open a hatch in the roof. Even though his body shouldn't have been able to squeeze through, he hauled himself up and jumped onto the top of the bus anyway.
"Ms. Marikawa, don't brake. Just punch through!"
Saya immediately reinforced the order. At this moment, she was choosing to trust him completely.
"Huh? O-okay. Then… we're doing it!"
Two seconds later, everyone braced for impact.
But they didn't feel the bus being struck by anything heavy.
Saya whipped her gaze around and saw mangled bodies being flung to both sides of the road, as if the bus had hit them and thrown them aside.
The truth was probably that he had batted them away.
No way…!
A harsh squeal of brakes cut through the air—Ms. Marikawa had stopped, because they had already cleared the underpass. She must have also noticed that he wasn't on the roof anymore.
All she could see were bodies dropping and piling, as if they were swallowing him whole.
No—!
The train car fell.
Boom—!
It looked like the train had exploded. At the very least, when it hit the ground, firelight erupted and swallowed everything.
Inside the flames, the living dead still writhed. As long as the head wasn't completely destroyed—and until the muscles were burned down to ash—these monsters didn't seem to stop moving.
And in that moment, everyone stared at the fire, tense and anxious.
Most of them weren't worried about him out of pure concern.
They were terrified that if someone that strong died, then who would protect them?
"Saeko, you don't seem worried?"
Saya noticed how calm Saeko was. It wasn't that she didn't care. It was that she was confident he'd be fine.
"He's not the kind of man who dies from something at this level."
That was Saeko's answer.
This wasn't hell to him, because he'd lived through scenes far more hellish than this.
"Oh?"
Saya raised an eyebrow slightly.
Saeko's words carried information that wasn't simple at all.
It was as if Saeko knew he'd faced situations far more vicious and brutal than anything happening here, and that this kind of danger simply wouldn't register to him.
There—!
In the firelight, the writhing silhouettes gathered toward the center. Then, all at once, the upper portions of those shapes vanished—split away.
Decapitated.
They collapsed almost immediately, one after another.
Only a single figure remained, growing clearer as it walked out from the flames.
It gave Saya an absurd, movie-like feeling—like a superhero making an entrance.
High-energy. Cool. Unfairly dramatic.
"S-so cool! That's literally Superman! No, it's the T-800 from The Terminator—coming out from under the bed to save the world!"
The one shouting in excitement was the fat kid, Kohta Hirano.
He looked like a crazed fan seeing his idol in person.
"That kind of thing can't happen in reality… from the future to save the past, or whatever…"
One student muttered bleakly.
"It's not impossible! He might actually be—"
Kohta's last words were very quiet, but Saya still heard them.
This idiot's brain was broken. What kind of sci-fi delusion was that? How could something like that happen in real life?
It was completely—
Saya's internal denial stopped right there.
Because her own experience with him, and his performance, had already blasted past the limits of "human" in her understanding. The strange metal prosthetic. Ammunition that could effortlessly melt through armored vehicles.
And that hard drive… it had made her certain that, in at least one domain, her knowledge had undergone a massive leap forward.
It was too absurd.
When she analyzed rationally, Saya realized some of what she now "knew" didn't match this era at all.
No… the better way to put it was that she'd been taught—trained—by an advanced educational program, something from the future.
When she cracked that hard drive, the code and structures she saw felt like they'd been implanted into her mind, optimizing the way her brain worked.
Now, when she thought through certain problems, answers came easily, and she could even outline the steps in a simple, intuitive way.
She no longer needed to grind through tedious possibilities that used to require repeated experimentation.
So no—she wouldn't outright reject Kohta's guess.
But she wouldn't fully accept it either.
When he climbed back into the bus, he didn't look injured at all. He only seemed slightly disheveled, as if the flames had roughed him up a little.
Especially his metal arm.
This time it was fully exposed, and it looked unmistakably sci-fi.
Could he actually be a robot?
No. That metal arm was clearly larger than the flesh at his shoulder. It looked more like a piece of military hardware—some kind of armored augmentation.
Either way, Saya was getting more and more curious about him.
But that curiosity quickly shifted into unease, because the mini-bus couldn't move forward anymore.
If it were just the living dead blocking the road, he could carve a path through.
But this was different. Abandoned cars jammed the streets in every direction, sealing the road completely.
And Saya's house was still far away. If they couldn't drive there, walking would take most of a day.
And walking was dangerous.
No matter how strong he was, he couldn't be without limits. One person couldn't cover everyone.
Which meant… someone would probably be abandoned.
"Ms. Marikawa, one of your friends has a military Humvee at home, right? The kind that can drive through a river."
The mysterious man's words made Saya freeze.
If they followed the river, there really wouldn't be many obstacles. They could reach somewhere near her home quickly.
But why did he know Ms. Marikawa had a friend like that?
And owning a military Humvee wasn't a "normal friend" detail at all.
This airhead teacher had connections like that? A boyfriend, maybe?
"Huh? Ah, y-yes… I do have a friend whose family has a vehicle that's kind of like a tank."
"Just one?"
"Two! One is smaller."
"Then everyone can fit?"
"I… think so."
"Then we go to your friend's place, and we leave by river."
"Okay."
They turned around and drove back for a while, then suddenly braked.
"Huh? Huh? Huh? Wait, how did you know I have a friend with a tank-like vehicle?"
Saya was speechless. She thought they were about to crash into something, and this was an emergency stop.
Instead, it took Ms. Marikawa this long to realize what she should be shocked about.
"That isn't important. What matters is moving."
"It is important! It feels like you know tons of things about me. Like you know all my secrets~"
Ms. Marikawa complained with a hint of resentment, then got the bus rolling again.
Half an hour later, the bus stopped once more, and Saya swallowed as she stared ahead.
At the intersection in front of them, a car's loudspeaker was still blaring—campaign speech, vote-grabbing propaganda, that kind of thing.
And the living dead were clearly sensitive to sound. They had massed up and clogged the entire route.
It also looked like there had been a parade or rally here earlier, which meant more victims—meaning even more living dead.
It was densely packed, stretching for hundreds of meters. And on the streets branching off the intersection—places they couldn't even see—there were probably just as many.
So many that anyone with trypophobia would have a breakdown.
No—forget that. With how grotesque these monsters were, even a normal person would be terrified watching that many bodies writhing.
And if they wanted to reach Ms. Marikawa's friend's house, they had to pass through here unless they took a detour.
But if they detoured, they'd be on major roads… which were likely gridlocked.
Huh?
Saya's eyes widened.
He got off the bus.
He wasn't seriously planning to cut his way through that, was he? This wasn't a joke.
But he really did.
He walked straight toward that sea of the dead and launched into them.
And then… a one-sided slaughter began—outnumbered beyond reason, yet the side with the numbers was the one being crushed.
A bloody, violent hell unfolded in front of them, and everyone could only stare in numb silence.
(End of Chapter)
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