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Mikaela’s growls had quietened to scratching at metal walls. The back of the van shook, barely managing over a crawl. Yuuichirou didn’t let himself look through the rear-view mirror. He couldn’t stand the sight of Mikaela’s broken, rotting body.
Distantly, Yuuichirou knew how messed up this was; taking the zombified husk of his childhood friend in a stolen army vehicle. He had no plan, no destination, no realistic way of keeping both of them alive.
The only good news was that the army wasn’t after him anymore. In general, the army didn’t pursue deserters further than the city limits; point it was a waste of resources.
The van Yuuichirou had taken was falling apart, liable to break down at any moment. Yuuichirou had spent the first fifteen minutes driving on the verge of a panic attack driving as slowly as he dared for fear of putting the van through too much stress.
Mikaela had spent the time throwing himself against the van walls trying to break them down. Yuuichirou had been listening to the crashes and groaning metal terrified that at any moment Mikaela would spring free and Yuuichirou would never see him again. Yuuichirou suspected that it was only thanks to his malnourished 12-year-old body that he was still contained.
Mikaela’s arm was missing, there was a hole in his torso that had long since crusted over. A deep groove had been carved from his eye to jaw, likely from a machete. Injuries Yuuichirou could remember from years ago. Any more from the four long years in-between. Injuries that should have killed Mikaela.
The world had already taken so much from him, and now it had taken a human death as well.
The procedure was to kill all zombies they came across. If Yuuichirou took Mikaela into camp as he was now, Mikaela would be put down like a sick dog. Yuuichirou would be ousted for endangering the camp.
Yuuichirou remembered rumours of a cure. Small bits of information circling around, claiming that the army had found a way to start to reverse cellular degradation associated with zombie-ism.
Yuuichirou couldn’t leave Mikaela, regardless of what he had become. He had spent four long years in a haze of rage of grief. If there was even the slightest chance, Yuuichirou was going to take it.