"!!!"
Skreee!!"
"Marikawa-sensei!" Saeko hollered as a bus full of zombies came screeching and swerving madly down the road they had stopped beside.
It soon flipped through the air, tumbling and rattling wildly against the tar. It crashed against the entry, blocking with its length, the under-bridge passageway that Takashi and Rei had just entered.
Saya jolted out of her seat, jumping out towards the bus that had exploded into a blaze of fire, barely leaving a gap through the top.
"Komuro!? Are you okay?!"
"!!!"
Zombies shattered out of the bus's windows with flaming bodies, jolting her into a retreat with a grimace. Saeko came out at this point, her wooden sword ready.
"The police station! We'll meet at the East Police Station!" Takashi's voice came yelling from beyond.
"What time?!" Saeko hollered to ask.
"7 pm! If not today, then tomorrow!"
"Let's go, Sonokawa-san!" Saeko said.
And they entered the mini-bus to find Dion speaking coldly:
"I'll give you a fair warning, Shidou. You might have deluded into thinking you're some kind of messiah, or perhaps this is a deliberate ritual. And that's good and all, to maintain your depraved sanity. But keep my friends and I out of this,"
The two of them were staring at each other, Dion's expression still haunted by an eerie calm while his otherwise languid eyes came off carrying a violent sharpness beneath their dulled colour.
Shidou had a sweat drop as he adjusted his glasses, and Dion continued:
"I haven't been in the best of moods for a while now," He said. "I can't guarantee that you won't end up worse than a mushroom top over there if you push my buttons as well,"
Tsunoda, who had stood up, glared deeply at Yanis while he still clutched at his ribs. They felt like they fractured, but how could he voice anything at this point?
Dvrroomm!
The bus roared to life and with Shizuka's hands faintly trembling as she steeled herself, clutching the wheel; they got on their way.
"How boorish," Shido huffed as he turned on his heel, heading to the back of the bus and continuing, "All I desire is the survival of me and my precious students! Yet you, a teachers assistant, threaten me with violence?"
"You're the type to suffocate on your dick and plead with others to give it a try after all."
Saeko, Saya, Kouta, and even Shizuka chuckled at this momentarily, leaving Shido gritting his teeth while Dion simply went back to his seat.
Saeko came back to his side once again while he returned to simply staring into the distance beyond his window.
A little while of driving and for a long time now, they had found themselves trapped within a honking, hollering and roaring mess of traffic leading towards the bridges leading across the wide, tumultuous river of the city. The waters had strangely been turbulent for a long while now.
They were decisively stuck in such abhorrent traffic that they had switched the mini-bus off, not having moved an inch ahead for over two and a half hours.
Shizuka leaned over the steering wheel, a sigh escaping her lips while her eyes fell to a half-close. A slightly doleful gleam to her bored gaze.
'I hope Rika is alright,' She thought. Then she smiled faintly and gave the tiniest of giggles, 'Knowing her though, she's probably blasting every one of these things that comes her way,'
Ensuingly, her faint smile fell, and her visage overcast with a dithery shadow.
'Yet here I am...'
Meanwhile, Dion still sat looking through the window. He hadn't noticed any of the time passing at all when considering that it had been hours since his world was turned into a haunting hellscape.
Within those hours, each moment was so long and yet so rapid it was disorienting, yet he did not moan again.
'It'll never happen…' Dion thought to himself, 'I'll never let it happen again; this time, I'll be able to protect my family, I had said,'
His hand clutched his pants, biting his bottom lip as he continued:
'Look at me - what am I now? A grand failure,' He warred in his mind, 'I've been deceiving myself all along. All my confidence? In what when I'm hardly a Fallow myself? Complacency... that's what did it. I let my guard down, and now my family is gone. And for what? Because I believed I could handle it, I believed that I'm special and Earth won't be dangerous when it Awakens. How foolish. How utterly, hopelessly stupid!"'
Leaning forward in his seat, he wiped down his face with his palms, giving a long sigh. Visions of a tall female figure, the woman that cared for and helped raise him, images of the two daughters of hers he had grown up with came to him, and the pleasantry of it bled poison into his throat. His heart whad been pierced by the teeth of a mamba's maw .
'I'm a fool.' He thought, his expression hardening into an off amalgamation of helplessness and resolution.
'But I have to get this lousy self together. I have to be strong now,'
He clenched his jaw, his eyes gaining a little more light to them, and his thoughts continued:
"Pick yourself the fuck up, Dion!'
Just then, within the rekindling embers of his grit and will, he felt the gentle caress of Saeko's hand over his back, and he glanced. Her beautiful visage was glossed over with a gentle concern.
It seemed like she had been mulling over what to say to him for a long while. After all, despite his state for the past three and a half hours, it was not possible for him, at least, not to notice that she had been keeping a close eye on him.
"I know...your heart must be broked. I will not lie to you and pomise it will get better," She said softly, through hushed murmurs as she leaned in closer, unwilling to let others hear of his business, "But if there is one thing I can still dare say I understand of you after all this time, it is your character - your valor - Sil-kun."
The oceans of her gaze washed gently over his amethyst gems. His pupils constricted slightly.
Then she continued softly:
"You will carry this sorrow, I have no doubt; not as some kind of burden, but as a force that helps you push forward. For in carrying it, you carry the love it comes from."
Here, his gaze gained a little more of its life. It was a gleam different from that of himself from hours ago. Even Saeko herself could tell, and she gave a slight smile unconsciously.
Dion chuckled ever so lightly as he leaned back into his seat - she took back her hand - as he turned his body slightly to have his arm lay over the armrest between them and he gave her a long look.
Here he was, cheering himself up, reaffirming his resolve amidst grief, and she was thinking of such words for him.
He wasn't hoping for any sort of thing from anyone, he didn't even think he wanted it. Yet hearing it from her - words so thoughtful despite the ignorance and confusion he knew he had subjected her to because of his unexpected breakdown - he found a rope of aid thrown his way as he had been dragging himself out of an ocean of quicksand.
"Thank you for that." He said softly.
Seeing who had sent it for him, he took it without hesitation.
She smiled faintly seeing his expression at least change for the first time in nearly four hours, the fact the he even laughed was a better relief.
"Say, Saeko-san, by any chance, do you have someone that you like?"
"..."
There, she was stunned, taken and dragged away by momentary shock and within those throes, Dion's gaze never broke from her eyes as a long moment of silence lingered.
"What...does that have to do with this?" She asked faintly.
"Nothing," He said through a slightly wider smile. "But that's the point. So? Has there been any man who has had the honour of your affection?"
She blushed faintly, glancing away, unable to meet his gaze any longer.
"Why this kind of question, though?"
"Hmmm," He muttered with a faintly amused look, "So there is someone. "
Her blush deepened, and she shyly glanced back at his eyes. They seemed oddly, ever so slightly disappointed.
"Despite being like this," She muttered, "I am still a woman,"
Dion gave an interested look, then shook his head lightly, "I guess I should have expected that, for a girl like you."
"..."
"It was long ago," She said softly, almost with bitter reminiscence from what he could hear.
"The last time I fell for a boy was long ago. I even...believed it to be love,"
Dion raised a curious brow.
"And what became of him?"
Her expression fell into a slightly tense dull as she lowly said, "I never told him how I felt. We never became a couple."
"Now that doesn't quite sound like you," He chuckled faintly. "I imagine you're the type to tell him of your feelings. And I can't imagine a man that would reject you; they'd know it instantly that they'd regret it for the rest of their lives."
She smiled wryly. Giving him a deep, long look, almost slightly forlorn.
"What do you think of me, Sil-kun?" She asked.
The answer came after hardly a moment, "A strong-willed, traditional woman of great principle and strength. Remarkable and polite. Beautiful in mind, body and soul," He said with a faint smile.
She stayed a little stunned for a moment, her blush deepening a little more.
However, then she glanced away, her blush fading away, and her expression falling slightly doleful.
"..."
"I suppose it comes down to that, not everything is as it seems."
Seated a few seat rows ahead of Dion and Saeko were Saya and Kohta.
The short, big-boned young man was snoozing quite delightfully beside the beautiful young girl; unceremoniously drooling beside him with none privy to the details of his evidently comforting dreams.
Yet, Saya - lost in thought with her thumb flattened against her lips - seemed off-put and distressed.
Not because of him, but rather, by her analysis of their situation.
"Hirano~" She nudged his side with her elbowd as she summoned him from the depths of his dreams.
He murmured a humming question as he awoke, "Sonokawa-san? Goo' mornin',"
His attention was quickly drawn to the honking impasse of their circumstance.
"What's all this?" He asked.
The blare of a policeman's whistle rang in the distance as he guided the thick, trudging processions of pedestrians down the road. He was but one of many policemen trying to maintain some semblance of organisation in the snakepit of people's attempts at escape.
"We should have driven away from the city. Even towards the forest would have been a better option than this," Saya said as her hand reached across him, a finger pointed towards a plane that had lifted off, gliding through the air. "Ideally, we should be in one of those."
"Ah, the Floating Airport," Hirano mentioned in realisation, silently thinking how lucky those who were already there or nearby to it were.
"Obviously, densely populated areas would be the most dangerous, so people are probably trying to get to some island off the coast, or other isolated places with little population." Saya remarked with a lingering bitterness.
Their situation was far from ideal: Not only had none of them met their families, or at the very least, come to know of their family's fates but there was clearly no hope-worthy chance for them to make it out of the city as they were in the current moment.
"So we should be trying to head to places like Okinawa, huh?" He asked unconsciously in realisation.
"If they were handling this properly....the planes would be heading for Hokkaido or Kyushu, yes." She crossed her arms as she said. "But we're too late to be thinking of anything like that. Just look at the streets, and we aren't anywhere near the seaport yet."
Saya clicked her tongue as her mind raced:
"Everywhere that's currently under some control by the Self-Defence-Force and American Army is sure to be strict about who they let in. We'd have long become zombie food by the time they even see what we look like if we try."
She glared at herself then and with a brief side-glance at Kohta asked, "What would you do if you got cut off from other people because they were too afraid of "Them" getting in."
With almost desirous hum to his instant response, Kohta said, "I'd become a shut-in."
She held her chin and, with a curious gleam to her gaze, then said, "What if the rest of the world did that too?"