The Girl Wants to Be Murdered

TL/Editor: Butter Cat

Status: 4/week mon-thurs

Illustrations: none

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〈 Chapter 97 〉 888. The Chapter of the Girl and the Zombie (9)

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"—Sweep it all!"

"....Everyone's so enthusiastic, I see"

Watching Hwa-min sunbae and Jung-eun sunbae excitedly stuffing canned goods into their backpacks.

I thought that we wouldn't have to worry about food for the next few months.

One large backpack and one small backpack per person.

Having filled both backpacks with the maximum amount of canned goods they could hold, by rough estimation we could comfortably last for two or three months.

Of course, we'd essentially filled the backpacks with what amounted to chunks of metal so they'd be quite heavy, but if we think of it as extending our lives by the weight we carry on our backs, it wasn't a weight we couldn't bear.

And we didn't know if such a good opportunity would ever come again.

Fortunately, there were no zombies inside the supermarket.

In fact, we hadn't even seen a shadow of a zombie while making our noisy way down to the basement food aisle, so that was certain.

Of course, it wasn't that we hadn't considered this possibility at all, but even I found it quite surprising that what I'd thought was the least likely possibility had become reality.

The only traces we could find were a few items out of place on the shelves and bloodstains here and there on the floor, as if something had been dragged along.

Only remnants of the past, reminding us of the horrific events that had occurred here, remained.

If it weren't for those creepy bloodstains on the floor, and the fact that the space was too wide for the four of us to properly guard the perimeter, the supermarket would have been an ideal place to set up a base.

Literally, it was so perfect that it couldn't get any better.

But.

Still.

—Tap.

"....Is this, right."

My head rang with warning bells louder than ever before.

Like that first day when the outbreak occurred. When I saw my friend with bloodshot red eyes enter the classroom, and then immediately bite off the neck of another friend who had approached to help her unstable-looking state.

No, this creepy feeling was even more ominous than back then, this horrible feeling that I was stepping into death's boundary myself continued to pound inside my head.

A voice told me to run away immediately.

That it's not too late yet.

Perhaps, it was my emotions warning my rationality, which had yet to grasp the situation, that something was amiss.

What was I missing.

What mistake did I make.

—Clench....!

"....I have to find out."

Unable to shake off that persistent sense of unease, I quickly picked some random canned goods nearby and stuffed them into my backpack, then began staring intently at the marks carved nearby.

I could feel Hwa-min sunbae, who was dumping cans into her backpack next to me, looking at me strangely, but I was desperate to solve the doubts that were forming in my mind.

Even as the can I had put in my backpack slipped out through a small gap and fell to my feet, my thoughts continued.

The can that had fallen to the ground wasn't important right now.

Because I have this horrible feeling that if I couldn't figure out this sense of unease now.

I might have to live the rest of my life regretting it.

"........."

A dark red line stretching far beyond the reach of the bright flashlight beam.

Turning up the brightness of the flashlights we each held to maximum, I carefully shone my light on the bloodstains on the floor, which might be the only clue to resolving this suffocating feeling.

With a thud.

I plopped down on the floor to take a closer look at the line and began conducting imaginary experiments in my head to interpret how this trail could have possibly been created.

For this experiment, I needed one person who was likely bleeding profusely from a wound in an area where an artery passes through.

And if I thought of the floor as paper, and the bleeding person as an ink-soaked brush.

The traces that I'd simply thought zombies or people had made by crawling across the floor.

The imaginary brush slowly moved along that line—

".......They didn't crawl."

—And the result was completely different from my initial assumption.

First of all, this red path wasn’t created by a single person crawling and moving.

It was a path created by someone dragging another person.

If you think about the act of crawling using your arms and legs, you'd know that when you crawl, you pull yourself forward with your outstretched arm while simultaneously pushing off the floor with your bent leg.

Then, to move forward again, you extend your bent arm forward and bend your outstretched leg.

And that meant that if a person crawled, they would repeatedly perform the action of moving and stopping, following a specific rhythm.

Think about drawing a line on paper with a brush.

If you were to draw a line while stopping the brush here and there, like I mentioned earlier, thick marks, like nodes, would inevitably be left on the paper in those spots where the brush momentarily stopped.

It wouldn't just be brushes, but any pen filled with ink would leave similar markings.

It couldn't be any other way.

But the thickness of the bloodstains on the floor was consistent without any such nodes, and that meant that whoever created these marks had moved across the floor at a constant speed without stopping.

The only way that could happen was if someone had been dragging another person at a constant speed.

In other words, creating these marks requires at least two people.

The one dragging and the one being dragged.

And judging from the next clue, the one being dragged was highly likely a human being, not a zombie.

I mean, it's one thing if they set up a base and moved the zombies they had killed for sanitary reasons, but in a situation where a fight or a search is going on and there's a chance other zombies might swarm in if you kill one, who would have the time to move the corpse of the zombie they just killed somewhere else?

The very fact that they were dragged across the floor, leaving a trail of blood, meant that it wasn't a zombie, whose bodily fluids are nothing but a rotten ooze.

The one being dragged is a human who has suffered a major injury.

Then, was this trail created by someone dragging a person who was bitten by a zombie?

Judging by the evidence I’ve gathered so far, that seemed to be the most plausible possibility.

Perhaps during the outbreak, when someone was injured by those things their friends or family, in their attempt to help the injured person, dragged them across the floor──

...

Wait a minute.

──Dragged them?

They dragged an injured person across the floor?

Not carrying them on their back or in their arms, but 'specifically' dragging them across the floor?

A critically wounded person who, judging by the amount of blood, had been bitten by zombies on their neck or where major arteries pass through, with blood pouring out profusely?

Not just one or two people, but counting the bloodstains, at least over ten people, all in the same bizarre way that anyone would say was wrong?

...No. That's impossible.

No matter how urgent and desperate the situation was, dragging an injured person across the floor instead of just freezing up and doing nothing isn’t something a normal, sane person would do.

That's right.

If it were a person, that is.

What if the one who dragged them wasn’t a person?

"──────!?"

Goosebumps covered my entire body.

My breath caught, and for a moment my lungs couldn't take in air.

Perhaps I had been thinking wrong from the start.

The deduction process that I thought was perfect from start to finish.

But if the answer I came up with isn’t the right one, there's only one possibility.

That the deduction itself had been twisted from the very first assumption.

That's right.

"....Ah, aah...!"

I was wrong.

**

The sense of unease I had felt upon entering the supermarket could now be clearly explained.

Why were there no corpses left behind here?

A person bitten by a zombie turns into a zombie.

And those already dead don't turn into zombies.

In other words, this means that people who die from excessive blood loss or shock before the zombification process is complete don't turn into zombies, but simply become corpses lying around in the streets.

Corpses horribly mangled and disfigured from being mauled by zombies were surprisingly common, even just by looking out from Hee-ah's house.

Then why.

In this place where more people must have died than anywhere else.

In this place where countless people, clueless about what was happening, were massacred on the first day of the outbreak.

Why were there no corpses present.

—It's because someone hid the corpses or the critically injured people who were on the verge of becoming corpses.

How?

—By grabbing their arms or legs and dragging them across the floor.

Then, who was the one who dragged them.

—The zombies.

For what reason?

It was to—

"—Make people who come to this place believe that it is safe."

The answer was horrifying.

We made a plan to go to the supermarket because we had run out of food.

And that, to put it bluntly, wasn't an unusual choice. It was an ordinary choice that any rational person would have made.

Of course, our survival was accompanied by a fair amount of luck, but it wasn't the kind of extraordinary fortune that could be considered special.

The kind of luck that anyone else could have experienced.

And many others who had probably survived in a similar way to us would have planned a journey to find food, just like we did, with this supermarket as their destination.

Because they were running out of food.

Unlike us, who were lucky enough to have plenty of supplies and could stay in the house for a long time.

But now, where are the traces of those people?

Where are the traces left by the survivors who would have already come here before us?

—Creak, creak.

"....Ah—"

My neck turned unnaturally towards the surroundings like a broken doll.

The countless marks that I had simply assumed were created by zombies crawling around.

But now, those marks held a completely different meaning for me.

Within the thick bloodstains, if you looked closely, you could find four thin lines, about the thickness of a finger.

They were deeply carved into the floor, as if resisting being dragged somewhere by someone.

Those were probably the last traces left by the people who had come to this place.

"N-No."

Even in their hazy consciousness, at the crossroads of life and death.

Those marks were created because the ones dragging them were the very same horrific beings who had brought them to their deaths.

And where are they now, those who committed such horrific acts.

Those who had set traps and laid ambushes in places where people would come, those who had meticulously erased all traces of their actions to make their prey feel safe, where would they be now.

Right—

"—They're here, those things."

They would be watching us from right here, nowhere else.

They would be laughing at the idiots drawn by bright lights from within the pitch darkness.

"They've been watching us all along, from the start....!!"

Thump, I kicked off with my foot.

Toward the two sunbaes gathering supplies in the distance.

Towards them, who were still cluelessly stuffing cans into their bags with smiles on their faces.

I ran as fast as I could—

[""""""───■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■!!""""""］

"""......Wh-what?!"""

"Everyone, ruuuuuuun—!!!"

Everything was already too late.

**

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