Then the grating wail of the man and the thud of his body over the ground resounded.
He clutched his bleeding elbow, wreathed in agony, "FUCK! FUCK! GODFUCKING HELL!"
Rei stumbled away, jerking back upright as she furiously turned, seemingly shooting the four remaining bullets of the revolver into him with her irate glare.
"How dare you! How dare you try to....!" She roared as she whizzed a hand through her uniform to pull out one of her extended batons.
"Please, no! Please stop!!!" He whimpered through snot-nosed, slobbering shuffles across the pavement, "I'm begging you!!!"
She had stomped ahead after him, yet Takashi pulled her back by the arm, firmly saying, "Stop. We don't have time for people like him."
"But..." She complained wearily. The ache of that man's hand over her breast almost choked her soft words at Takashi.
While he turned back to the bike, humming it to life, he said, "We've been making a lot of noise..."
Her visage dawned back into the awareness of their surroundings...dozens of zombies were encroaching upon them. She hurried to hop onto the back of the bike, hugging Takashi's waist tighter - yet glaring knowingly at the whimpering man, waddling over a pool of his blood.
"H-Hey-wait," He quivered, "You're-You're just gonna leave me...?"
The bike rumbled away there.
"Please, save me!!!" He hollered.
A distance away, with the ravenous groans of zombies fading into the obscurity of distance and the wails of Rei's assailant, Rei laid her head gently over Takashi's back.
"I'm sorry," He said softly, "This won't be the last time we'll have to deal with this kind of thing,"
"..."
"Yeah, now that you mention it..." She muttered weakly, "Yeah..."
There, Takashi and Rei finally got it - unfortunately through experience - they understood the gravity of it all; the darkness of terror that the world had been sunken into.
And Dion's words came to them.
If they wanted to live without losing themselves...they had to change accordingly.
Takashi and Rei had just filled up their motorbike's tank, leaving behind the tragic consequence of their grit, while the survivors of Fujimi Academy struggled within the stalemate of impossible traffic and unmoving processions of people attempting to escape across the bridge.
Past the Seaport, across the waters and over the Floating Airport ~
The bright, scalding sun battered the eerie path of the runway, over which sat a humming aeroplane, preparing for its liftoff - just over a dozen zombies almost begrudgingly accompanying it, wandering aimlessly.
Within the cockpit of the plane, the door whined open and closed shut as the co-pilot returned, seemingly having aged a little more than he should be as a man in the prime of his life - or at least, what was meant to be the prime of his life.
He leaned down slightly from the tall of his stature, getting himself back into his seat.
"We're finished checking the passengers." He muttered to the pilot - a stern-looking man. "None of them are injured or sick."
He put his microphoned headphones on as he continued:
"And none of them are already dead..."
The gruff pilot beside him fell into a slightly sterner contemplation briefly. He ran through a practice of operations to prepare for liftoff that should have otherwise been routine, yet weighed him down, almost making him seem sluggish.
"Your family's in Tokyo, right?" He asked with a dullness tainted by resignation.
His co-pilot adjusted his microphone closer to his mouth, his eyes falling to a faintly furrowed close.
"Nobody picked up when I called," He said faintly.
Thereafter, he spoke into the microphone:
"Tokonosu Tower, this is 'JX089'. We are ready for takeoff."
Through their headphones, the firm response of a man came, "'JX089', this is Tokonosu Tower. Standby on runway 34. We will deal with your little...problem shortly."
A distance away, over the roof of a building adjacent to the runway, two officers were posted draped in black SAT-issued uniforms with bulletproof vests hanging over their chests.
The one towards the right, a male - Tajima - sat over his knee with a spotter's scope mounted before him, his gaze trained through its lens; the other, a woman - Minami Rika - lay prone over a mat, she postured with a sniper ahead over her, a marked focus to her gaze through its lens.
The sniper is the Heckler & Koch PSG-1, an accurized semi-automatic version of the German G3 military rifle. It's 1230mm long, weighs 7.2kg, and fires the 7.62x51mm NATO Cartridge. The sighting system is the Hensoldt ZF6X42PSG1.
Through his spotter scope, Tajima's gaze trained on a particular man trudging over the runway. A rather dapper man - or at least, he once was - dressed in designer clothing, a pair of glasses threading over his nose. He strangely, and eerily, despite having become a zombie, wore a wide, blood-slathered toothy smile.
"Oh no, I remember him being a good guy," Tajima said almost jokingly, "He came to Tokonosu to perform. He's an actor and comedian."
Yet, his visage hardened therein as a command came in through his earbuds and he continued:
"Wind is minimal, no need to make adjustments. Permission to fire granted," He firmed.
Through the sharp crimson of her gaze, Rika's sights glint over the zombified actor. She whispered in a deep breath, holding.
Then the thunderous discharge of her rifle pealed and her body jerked slightly at its recoil. The bullet spun, piercing through the air and distance, penetrating through the actor's glabella, tearing through and shattering out the back of its head in the grim firework of brain matter and blood.
Thereafter, through consecutive, resounding shots that each lead to the busted and ruptured heads of zombies, they completed their task, only stopping for the seconds necessary to reload, then continuing their scarily efficient hail of sniper fire.
Tajima unconsciously grinned appreciatively at the masterful display.
"Nice going! You got 'em all," He praised as he watched the final straggler of the zombies drop dead.
Rika shuffled herself away from her rifle, standing to the full of her 170cm height.
Her brown skin gleamed under the fierce light of the sun, and her deep violet hair cascaded into waves at the ends. Tied into a high ponytail, her hair framed her face with thicker strands. Her eyes, a vivid, piercing red, held an intensity that seemed to cut through the air, born from the lingering focus from her prior shooting - nevertheless, it was giving way to an almost playful and naturally attention-grabbing gleam. Around her neck, a grey choke collar rested snugly, with a rose crimson lipstick painting her lips.
Her black combat suit hugged her form, sleek and functional, while the bulletproof vest across her chest, well complemented the colour of their black ensemble.
"Whew..." She sighed as she reached within the sides of her vest, holding gently and massaging her breasts.
"...What are you doing?" Tajima asked with a deadpan curiosity.
Rika faintly giggled, stretching her chest out with her arms reaching back, her head leaning back to the skies as she gave a relieved hum briefly before she collected herself.
"I've been lying down here for hours, since the start of all this," She said as she lightly shook her tingly legs, "They were numb."
Tajima grinned, standing to the full of his 185cm height as he crossed his arms, glancing at her.
He was a good-looking, hardened man with short black hair and brown eyes. A scar marred across diagonally from the outer edge of his right brow, yet it did not take away from his looks.
"I can massage 'em for you if you like," He offered with apparent interest.
Rika merely smiled as she began to pull off her bulletproof vest, responding with assurance, "If you can shoot better than me, then sure,"
"Traditional as ever, huh?" He said as he sighed. "Ain't you leave home because you hated all the stuck-up stuff? It breathing down your neck all the time?"
"I didn't leave because I hated tradition, just the control," She said smilingly, "I kept what matters to me. The rest? They can have it. Besides, just because I'm not under their roof doesn't mean I've forgotten where I came from."
He shrugged and helplessly sighed another time, his shoulders rising briefly at his umpteenth failed attempt.
"You were inducted into the best five of all the police officers in the country," He said with the full of his voice, yet sighed again. "I don't stand a chance,"
"Then give it up, little man," She said through a brief chuckle.
Rika dropped her vest, unbuttoning her top to reveal her white sports bra, freeing a bosom more than ample in taking Tajima's attention away from his dejection at another rejection.
'They're as perfect as ever...' He thought.
Quite rightly so as Rika possessed and flaunted a curvaceous and lean figure, fit and enticing. That coupled with her natural feminine wiles - that oh-so-entrancing aura of hers.
He thought it was no wonder he had fallen for her. He dared any man to spend as much time with her as he did and not fall - happily relishing in the thought of the detail that much like him, it would end up as a one-sided longing.
After all, in that list of the best five police officers in the country - the guys who she could have potentially gotten with, there were three men, all of whom were older than her by a fair few years. Something she had explicitly told him she did not want, recounting through irritation the stifling of almost being married off to old men more than a few times.
He often joked to her that she would have to leave the country to even begin to hope to find a man that she wanted.
"Christ, It's scorching hot," Rika complained as she fanned herself.
Tajima began unbuttoning his top to reveal a vest as he responded, "You can say that again,"
Rika's expression then fell into a faint seriousness looking into the distance of the runway at many other straggling zombies, said, "Hey, didn't they check everyone who was coming in here before this place became infested? I can't believe they got in..."
Tajima gave a heavy look and answered:
"This whole thing...it stinks of something real nasty. Something beyond us. I saw one of these things in the process of changing from a normal human," His brows furrowed, "No bite, no injury, nothing. I listened to the guards who had checked 'em. One moment they were human, the next they were...dead."
She glanced at him with a disturbed crease to her visage, "Spontaneous zombification?" She asked in bitter humour.
He nodded deeply.
"I can't imagine what it would have been like if we hadn't been dispatched," He said firmly as he glanced toward the airport building a little ways away from the one they had stationed themselves over. "But it's not like we have an unlimited supply of ammunition..."
Rika gave way to an intrigued smirk, "Are you going to run away?" She asked.
"No. Not yet anyway." He assured. "What about you?"
Thereafter, her smirk changed to a reminiscent, faint smile - there within the depths of her crimson gaze hid worry - as she said, "I'll be going back to the city sooner or later,"
"Don't tell me you finally found a man and he's waiting for you at home with all your toys in hand?" He asked.
"No. I'm going back for a friend. My best woman."