Book 8 Chapter 4
There was no time to think.
There was not even time to be afraid of those slimy aliens with frog-like skin the color of dry grass.
My mind was full of terror. The dark and the storm kept me from seeing the top of the broadcast tower above us.
“Dammit, which way is it going to fall!?”
Staying inside a building would be safer than blindly heading outside.
I understood the reasoning. It was probably accurate and without fault.
But only when the standard assumptions still applied.
If that 650m mass of glass and steel beams collapsed like a giant’s club swinging down, what building could stop it? None of them could. Not in a world where a screw could pierce right through my body. The buildings around here would only be crushed, reinforced concrete and all!!
Indoors and outdoors was the same. If we stayed put, we were dead. We would be slaughtered. That severely limited our options.
“Run away, Ayumi, Erika! We have to run away!!”
If it simply fell in one piece, it would cover 650m. If it broke apart in midair and the wind carried the shower of shards, it would cover an even wider area. Making a mad dash directly away from the Skytool probably would not be enough.
I had to think about it.
“Run against the wind!”
Ayumi’s eyes bugged out as her track jacket flapped in the wind.
“Fugu. Onii-chan, what are you talking about!? The storm is nearly blowing you off your feet, so we’ll never make it far like that!!”
“Did you forget the wind will carry all the shards, Ayumi!? Actual physical distance isn’t what matters. If we run upwind, the odds of having something fall on us are a lot lower. Isn’t that right, Maxwell!?”
“Sure. But since the actual terrain is not flat, continuing to run in any one direction will be difficult. Plus, the winds intertwine complexly thanks to all the buildings, so understanding which direction is ‘upwind’ will not be so easy.”
While I read that text on the screen, I felt powerful grips on both my shoulders. Needless to say, that was my sisters. I had said we needed to run against the wind, so…
“Waaahh!? That’s pretty much a cliff!!”
“The Skytool’s base is a 5-story mall, so we’ll find this drop-off no matter which way we go, Onii-chan.”
Yeah, but…
“So let’s do our best to survive, Satori-kun. Go! Let’s go!☆”
“Wait, wait! That’s five stories! That’s taller than a school building!!”
My struggling was useless with an Archenemy holding me from either side.
The pull of gravity seemed to suddenly vanish.
I could tell we had jumped over the railing.
But, um, what was this?
It was pitch black below, so I couldn’t tell how high up we were! Did we have 10cm to go or a few dozen meters!? I couldn’t brace myself when I couldn’t see!!
“Awaabfwah!?”
I had intended to scream for a while longer than that, but we landed unexpectedly soon. I once more used my phone’s backlight to check on the ground below my feet. I wanted to know I was safe and I knew there was a greater threat to think about right now, but if I didn’t check, I swear my heart would have stopped.
We had supposedly been 5 stories up, but this made sense once I thought about it. There were other houses and buildings as well, so we had apparently ended up on some other rooftop.
I did not have time to calm my pounding heart. With the sound of sizzling air, a few strands of my bangs scattered. I also heard a horrific sound at my feet like a thick wood board had cracked apart. It took me a second to realize what had happened. A bolt or something had fallen from high in the sky!!
A hand reached me from a torn sleeve.
“Let’s go!”
“Wait, hey, Erika!?”
Why did Erika’s usually elegant voice sound so panicked? I should have used my head more and questioned what she must have seen with her vampiric night vision.
In the pouring rain of the storm, my sisters jumped from the roof while still moving against the blowing wind.
It was like a bombing.
With a deafening roar, the building roof we had left sank down. It vanished. No, several steel beams thicker than railroad rails had fallen on it and crushed the entire building!?
Fear clutched at my heart, but we were in the air again. We could not return to the spot we had just left.
More and more sounds if impact rang out as the collapse of buildings and houses seemed to trigger a chain reaction. The thick darkness obscuring the view may have been a good thing in this case. If I had seen how high up we were or the destruction all around us, my hips would definitely have given out.
“Damn, there’s this much falling debris even when we’re move against the wind!?”
Creeeeeeeeeak.
The collapsing Skytool raised a death cry. The glass, the steel beams, and all other falling objects were influenced by the blowing wind. We were upwind and the amount of debris should have been smallest here, so what kind of hell would someone downwind be experiencing!?
“Warning.”
Just as I was wondering that, words appeared on my phone’s screen.
I was trying to give myself some guilt-free relief by forcing even greater misfortune upon some hypothetical person, but apparently that counted as tempting fate.
“The wind current overhead has changed. It appears to be developing an S-like twist from top to bottom.”
“Huh?”
“Simply put, there is a much greater risk now that the top of the Tokyo Skytool will fall towards you. This qualifies as an extreme warning.”
“Wha-, bu-, waaaaait!?”
My sisters picked me up and jumped, so there was nothing I could do. I felt us land on a shorter building somewhere, but that solid feeling suddenly sank down and vanished. The steel beams and whatever else crashed down, broke through, and smashed up the flat footing we had found. We were all dragged inside the building like an antlion pit. I heard an unpleasantly soft sound amid it all, so was that one of those slimy boomerangs?
I may have been lucky the antlion pit did not shred my flesh and blood with the rebar or jagged concrete pieces jutting out from the edges.
“Gh.”
Erika groaned, but she did not seem to be injured. Vampires couldn’t enter homes without permission from the owner, right? That may still have had some effect even if the house had collapsed into ruins.
But this was not over yet.
Steel and glass continued to fall from high in the sky, so a concrete roof over our heads did not mean much. If we happened to be in the exact spot something fell, it would pierce us along with the building. We had to move. If we came to a stop, we were as good as dead.
“Pant, pant, pant.”
I could not even speak. I waved my phone’s backlight around randomly to find us in the corridor of what looked more like a multi-tenant building than an apartment. The narrow corridor was piled so high with cardboard boxes and beer cases I had to question whether it had followed the fire code in the first place, but the concrete rubble had also half buried it and a small waterfall of rainwater was getting in thanks to the storm.
There was no time to worry if we were making the right decision.
Ayumi the Zombie pulled on my hand and we ran through the half-destroyed building. The shape of her small butt showed right through her white shorts, but I was too panicked to focus on that. It did not at all feel like we had escaped inside a sturdy building. Yes, it was more like being inside a cave as it threatened to collapse. With each heavy sound that erupted nearby, the ceiling or walls would collapse toward us. The piles of rubble moved almost like living things and we were done for if they managed to bite our wrist or ankle.
“What are we supposed to do now!?”
“Run to the window! Then jump out!!”
Erika was probably trying to motivate me, but the thought only scared me. Jump out? What floor was this? Even if this was a short multi-tenant building, we had fallen through the roof, meaning this was the top floor!
But then a thick steel beam broke through the ceiling directly behind us, cutting off any other route. I stumbled a bit and lost my balance right in front of the starting line. It was no use. I could not go on or head back.
“Waaahhh!!”
I had done my very best.
Yet for some reason, my vision dropped straight down.
Oh, no. Had that steel beam broken the floor apart!?
Erika seemed to notice what happened to me, but she had already jumped out the window. Fortunately, Ayumi had found a way to come rescue me. No, wait. She had simply stopped at the last second and fallen with me!!
“Dbh, bh, Ayumi.”
“The rainwater is pouring down like a waterfall, so you’ll drown if you open your mouth, Onii-chan. Here, this way.”
I couldn’t believe this. What floor were we on now?
Rubble blocked every single horizontal direction while the ceiling and floor were full of holes. Plus, everything was still pitch black. This felt like a maze, but one where the entire building could collapse at any moment.
“The water pouring in is too strong to climb back up. It’s a pain, but we’ll have to head down to the ground.”
“It’s that bad? Even with your Zombie strength?”
“Get Maxwell to calculate out how hard climbing up a waterfall is. Even on a normal slope, this wouldn’t be possible.”
Not to mention that climbing higher was a bad idea on its own. Instead of attempting a death-defying jump from up there, wouldn’t it be safer and faster to head down to the surface?
Even now, screws, nails, glass, steel beams, and those strange slimy brown things were pouring down. We just could not see it from here. If we stayed here, we only increased the risk of being caught in the collapse when a direct hit inevitably brought the building down. We had only had one option ever since the roof had been broken through. If we did not stay on the move, we could not avoid being hit.
“Okay, Ayumi. Let’s head to the ground.”
“Do you really understand what that means? Things are dangerous down there, too.”
“?”
I was puzzled, but now was not the time to play a riddle game with my stepsister whose wet white tank top was plastered to her chest. She tugged on my hand as we ran down the dark and half-crushed corridor. I shined my phone’s light around to search for the stairs or a sufficiently large hole in the floor. We could hear near-constant violent impacts from the floor above. Needless to say, that came from the many falling objects.
After descending three floors, we finally arrived on the first floor. Which was when I discovered lukewarm water rising up nearly to my hips. It caught me off guard, so my lower body was hit by an uncomfortable wetness, like I had pissed my pants.
“What, it’s flooded!?”
“Of course it is when the rain’s coming down like this. Onii-chan, once we’re outside, watch out for the ‘landmines’ in the muddy water. There will be screws, nails, and glass, but also steel beams being carried by the current. It’ll be just like those logs used as battering rams in old samurai dramas.”
“Y-you’re kidding. What good is watching out for something you can’t see!? I’m not psychic!!”
“Do you think we have time now to climb up onto the smashed rooftop? Don’t let go of my hand, okay!? Here goes!”
With the floodwaters nearly up to my hips, the door would not budge whether we pushed or pulled. Once Ayumi used her Zombie strength to break it with a kick, the water rushed in with even greater force.
Was this for real!? It was a legitimately powerful current! We might as well have been drowning in a river here! Why did everything that idiot Ayumi did eventually come down to brute force!?
“Ghh, I’m slipping to the side.”
“No, Onii-chan! Don’t try to swim to make it easier! Once your feet are off the ground, you’ll never be able to stand up again!!”
We argued while a large mass of black leather was swept in from upstream in the current formed by the many small streams arriving around all the obstacles.
It was Erika floating in a sprawled-out pose.
“Oh, no!!”
“Oh, right. Vampires have trouble with flowing water, don’t they?”
How could Ayumi sound so calm!? I frantically grabbed Erika’s slender wrist and pulled her toward me. Floating in the water made her fairly light.
But wait. Huh?
“This could be bad. The Tokyo Skytool was right next to the Sumida River, wasn’t it? I have no idea where it is with all the water everywhere, but if we run across it, won’t it act like a wall in the way!?”
“No,” said Maxwell. “The Tokyo Skytool is located where another river branches off of the Sumida River. In other words, it on the inside of a Y-shape. If the flowing water of a river or the ocean are off limits, then you only have one available direction left.”
“A-and which way is that?”
“The exact opposite side of the Skytool from your current location. Also, the larger Arakawa River is waiting for you in that direction.”
So were we really and truly screwed!?
However, Ayumi tilted her head in an oddly cute way for a Zombie who was taking the full brunt of the raging current and whose clothes had grown fairly see-through.
“But Onee-chan rode the bus with us on the way here. She crossed the bridge just fine then.”
“…?”
“The world’s most famous Transylvanian count slept within his coffin while traveling down a river by boat,” said Maxwell.
Come to think of it, there had been a few times on the bus ride that Erika had fallen asleep like a switch had been thrown. I had assumed it was because we chose a night bus for her sake, but night and day should have been reversed for a Vampire anyway. Had that been her way off crossing the rivers?
A long trip like this may have been a frightening thing for her. Her gothic lolita dress and leather pants were like a heavy-duty riding suit, so they were somewhat different from what she normally wore.
So…
“We have to do this while she’s still dizzy. Onii-chan, let’s drag Onee-chan over the river.”
“Do idiots ever stop relying on brute force?”
My phone’s light was just about the only light around. We had no idea what was flowing in the hip-deep muddy water, a manhole cover could have been lifted from the opening, and there could be a ditch nearby. We also did not know where the river in question actually was. I had endless reasons to fear that cold water.
But I certainly hadn’t expected an explosion to erupt far too close for comfort. Orange flames blossomed and I felt a prickling heat like when you stood too near the stove.
“Bwah!? Wh-what!?”
“A tank of propane or something was floating there. Staying here isn’t going to end well, Onii-chan!”
We were in the water, but we had to worry about fire elemental attacks? And it did not look like this had been just a tank or two stored behind someone’s house. Was it a collection of several from an apartment complex, or had a truck been transporting a full shipment of them? More and more of them exploded while the danger zone crept ever closer.
“Crap. Crap, crap, crap!!”
It was not like the previous dangers had gone away. Even now, countless glass shards and steel beams were pouring down from above, the hip-deep current carried dangerous objects, and we still did not know what those dry brown, crop circle-y, slimy things were. But it turned out human minds were not that strong.
All that danger was wiped from my mind.
It was overwritten by something else.
If I was caught in one of those explosive blossoms, it was all over. I kept my grip on Erika’s slender shoulders while Ayumi and I followed the current to distance ourselves from the army of propane tanks. I had struggled with Erika’s weight on the elevator, but I could handle her with one hand while she floated limply in the water.
“It’s too dangerous out here. We need to get inside a building somewhere!”
“What about the steel beams falling from above, Onii-chan?”
Some kind of large bubble burst up ahead of us. I thought maybe a manhole cover had been forced up, but that was not it.
I could see its eyes.
Its eyes? What’s eyes???
What home had that thing escaped from!?
“Watch out, Ayumi! It’s a croc! There’s a white croc there!”
“Oh, iiis there?”
“You don’t have to get all competitive just because it’s a monster known for its bite! We need to get inside a building!”
“And again, we don’t have time to travel along the rooftops! If we stay in one spot for too long, the steel beams will hit us! Plus, we’d have to carry Onee-chan around with us!”
“I’m not interested in the rooftop!!”
I rushed over to the window of an already-broken house, but I wasn’t climbing inside. It was probably as dark and flooded as an undersea cave in there. The current would be even more complex and there could be household tools like saws or kitchen knives floating around.
I wanted something else.
“Get on, Ayumi! We can use this storm shutter as a raft!!”
“Fugu?”
“If it’s not buoyant enough, we can tie on buckets or plastic tanks. I want to see if it sinks with all three of us on it!”
What was it made of? Aluminum? Stainless steel? Either way, getting the storm shutter to float on the water like a surfboard was not easy. I held it in both hands so it wouldn’t be swept away by the current while Ayumi placed Erika on top. Then the two of us climbed on as well.
“It’s…floating?”
Ayumi was on all fours and extremely cautious.
Good. By matching Ayumi’s movements while staying at the opposite angle from her, it wouldn’t suddenly capsize on us. Once things had calmed down more, I could get after her about how the shape of her butt showed through those skintight white shorts.
“If we just want to follow the current, this is faster than swimming and we don’t have to worry about the rebar and glass in the current. Here, Ayumi.”
I reached for an aluminum clothesline pole floating in the water and handed it to my little sister.
“We have no rudder, so you’ll have to direct us by pushing off the ground with this pole. Listen, only use it to change directions. Don’t try to fight the current.”
“Even with my Zombie strength?”
“That thing was floating in the water. It’s only meant to let clothes dry over it, so use too much force and it’ll break.”
The raft was moving as we spoke, so we couldn’t wait around. What else did we have to do? Oh, right.
“If things look even a little dangerous, immediately abandon the raft and jump off. We don’t know where the Skytool’s steel beams will fall, after all. This thing is convenient, but don’t hesitate because of it.”
“Whoa.”
Ayumi was struggling with the clothesline pole. What was that biting at the other end of it? It looked like a tropical fish of some kind. I didn’t know its name, but it did look bigger than a piranha!
“Do you still want to jump back in the water, Onii-chan?”
“What is wrong with Tokyo’s rare pet lovers? If it comes to it, weigh the risks. Would you rather deal with what’s in the water or the steel beam falling like a meteor?”
At this point, we were talking about choosing between an instant and painless death or having to watch out body gradually eaten alive. Measuring the extent of the damage was no longer enough. No, wait. I had to stay strong. Ranking different deaths against each other was a waste of time. I had to focus on ways to survive.
And while I hesitated from that, a speech bubble appeared on my phone.
“Warning.”
For some reason, I doubted this was good news.
Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak.
I was used to hearing that noise by now, but it was so much louder this time!! Ayumi and I looked up toward the Tokyo Skytool’s scream and saw something very odd.
For a brief moment, it looked like the torrential rain had stopped.
“Fugu!? The Skytool is blocking the sky!!”
The wind was blowing too, so that “ceiling” did not fully block out the rain. Still, this was on the same scale as a god splitting the ocean and creating mountains!!
It was coming.
Not just the sprinkling of steel beams. This time, the full 650m Tokyo Skytool would be falling toward us!
Should we remain on the raft?
Should we jump into the water?
“Ayumi, get us over to the wall!!”
There may not have been a right answer.
As soon as she used the clothesline pole to push the raft against the concrete wall of a multi-tenant building, an explosive boom sounded overhead.
The entire steel tower had crashed into the building rooftop!?
Against that weight and height, the building’s reinforced concrete might as well have been sponge, but it still bought us some short time. The multi-tenant building itself seemed to sink down as it held up that massive weight. Various pieces of debris shot out like a mille-feuille crushed from above in a careless attempt to slice it with a fork, but this was still better than taking a direct hit from the Skytool’s viewing deck.
The raft was traveling through a tunnel-like space.
I could only lie on top of our defenselessly sleeping older sister while shouting at my little sister.
“This won’t last. Ayumi, get us out of here before the building is entirely crushed!!”
“I’m trying but – argh! – this thing is way too weak! The clothesline pole is bending!!”
The reinforced concrete building was squishing down like butter left in the car during midsummer.
Would we make it out?
Or wouldn’t we?
“Enough, Ayumi. Grab Erika and jump-…”
“Fuguu! Not yet!!”
She gave up on the bent pole and instead moved her legs which were showing off the stitches up to the base of her thighs. She pressed the soles of her shoes against the building wall and kicked off.
The Zombie Archenemy had ten times the muscular strength of a human.
The raft quickly picked up speed.
We slipped out of the tunnel of steel beams and rubble.
Just then, a powerful shock shook my body. Instead of the entire broadcast tower, a part of the exterior had apparently broken apart.
“Fugu!?”
“Oh, hell. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
We had survived the big piece falling, but the steel beams falling now were much more numerous than before. We picked up too much speed, bumped into a beam sticking up from the water, and got stuck there.
“Just getting through here isn’t enough. We need to give up on following the current.”
“Give up? But what else can-”
Ayumi trailed off.
It looked like the Tokyo Skytool had fully collapsed now. That meant the falling objects problem was almost entirely gone. No more glass or steel beams would rain down on us.
Thus, the remaining threats were the things hidden in the water: the dangerous pets and the debris that acted like mines or caltrops.
Which meant…
“The Skytool.”
“Yeah, it acts like a giant bridge while lying on its side.”
The giant mass of steel beams had collapsed at an angle, knocking over the houses and multi-tenant buildings in its way. But it had not completely sunk to the surface. Traveling along it would be the best way of keeping out of the water.
“You can only hope those unidentified creatures are not clinging to it,” said Maxwell.
“Oh, right. Them. What even were they, anyway?”
Even with this abnormal weather, it seemed unlikely some wind and rain would be enough to knock over the country’s largest broadcast tower. That tragedy had only occurred because those boomerang things with froggy skin had clung to one side to overbalance it.
“Fugu. So what do we do?”
“Can you carry Erika, Ayumi? Whether those things are Archenemies or not, I doubt they could still be clinging to the tower after that fall. They had to have been knocked off.”
Those were not the only dangerous animals out here. Traveling through the floodwaters would be a lot more dangerous.
Now.
Even if it had been crushed, there was no way we could get on top of the collapsed tower by climbing up the outside wall in this blowing rain. If we could use stairs, we needed to use them as far as they would take us. I took the clothesline pole from Ayumi and stirred up the bottom of the floodwaters nearby. There was no sign of sharp glass or rebar. Nor did any dangerous pets bite at it. Okay, I was still scared, but now was our chance!
“Let’s go, Ayumi!”
“Fugu!”
I threw myself into the muddy water. During a disaster like this, there were no guarantees. We could only choose what was “relatively better” and death was a very real possibility on both sides of the scales.
We wanted a house that was near our makeshift boat, directly contacting the collapsed tower, looked like its stairs would still be usable, and that had a broken entrance since the water pressure would make opening the door nearly impossible. We were lucky to find just the one place that matched all those conditions and we waded through the hip-deep muddy water to get inside.
“It’s dark. Again. Will my phone’s battery last?”
“If you wish to preserve the charge, I would recommend avoiding any unnecessary commands,” replied Maxwell.
It was a small home spread out across three floors due Tokyo’s limited land. But the first floor was flooded and the ceiling was bowing. The place would be uninhabitable after this.
But on the other hand, there really was no one here, just like in that multi-tenant building. That felt especially weird in an ordinary living space like this.
“Where are the stairs? We need to get as high up as we can. Come with me, Ayumi.”
The stairs were soaked too. They had taken the brunt of the steel tower hit and looked half crushed from the outside. Rain was pouring down like a waterfall from a large hole in the roof.
That was a tragedy for the house, but it made a valuable relay point for us to safely reach the tower. We used my phone’s light to carefully climb the creaking wooden stairs.
Once on the second floor, we had escaped the hip-deep water. The threat of attack from a dangerous pet was not entirely gone. Carnivorous fish were not the only things that could swim in that water. Venomous snakes and crocs could swim too.
“But to put it another way, we know we have a source of food if we need it.”
“Fuguu. I don’t like the sound of that. I’m a Zombie, but you’re the one that always eats the weirdest things. You always go for the bizarre foods on our family trips.”
Ayumi was purely carnivorous and Erika had to consume blood products and plasma substitutes, so they seemed more careful about what they ate than most people. Humans, on the other hand, were omnivores who could eat anything.
But we had more to discuss than food.
“Look, Ayumi, I found a towel. Dry yourself off, okay?”
“Why bother when we’re headed right back into the rain? That’s like a shower, so what does this muddy water matter?”
She looked puzzled, but I placed the towel over her twintailed head anyway.
Amatsu Ayumi had not picked up on her big brother’s concerns. Those jogging clothes were thin enough already, but soaking them with water made it so much worse! She needed to dry off and cover up!! This did not even have the protection of the nametag like her gym clothes did!! Erika was passed out and defenseless (while wearing a thick outfit with a lot of black leather), so how did she seem more ladylike here!?
And.
To be blunt, staying here and waiting for rescue did not sound realistic. With the Skytool fallen, the only direct threats were the storm and the floodwaters. It kind of looked like we would be fine if we got inside a sturdy building and stayed well off the ground.
But that only worked if we could find a sturdy building around here. This house was half-destroyed and could collapse at any moment.
Plus.
Our family had unique issues in situations like this. Because two of us were Archenemies. A Vampire like Erika was weak to sunlight and a Zombie like Ayumi would start to rot if she stayed in unhygienic places for long. We could not stay in this building with holes everywhere that would let the sun and the storm in. We could not survive here.
So no matter what, we had to escape to a safe location before dawn. Where exactly we could find that safe place was the real question here, but we at least needed to get away from the Skytool. This was Tokyo’s city center. If it was this empty, there had to be largescale shelters set up somewhere else. At this point, those shelters seemed like Penglai or El Dorado.
All of this was buzzing in my mind as we climbed to the third floor.
There was no ceiling.
Broken wood beams were scattered about and the entire third floor had been crushed down to half its height. The oppressive atmosphere clutched at my heart. A complex arrangement of steel beams lay across the third floor while half embedded in the cheap-looking inner walls and wood flooring. That was the Tokyo Skytool. The scale was so different I had trouble grasping its shape at first.
It felt kind of like having a bridge extending out from the third-floor balcony, I guess.
The white-painted steel beams were as thick as a concrete telephone pole. The cross section was round instead of square. That would be hard enough to climb on under the best of circumstances, so how bad would it be while slick with rain?
I hesitantly touched a cold steel beam and walked across the mess of a floor to reach the edge of the crumbled outer wall.
I did not have time to look down.
A gust of wind smacked me in the face like a solid blow and I nearly fell back onto my ass.
“Whoa!?”
Had the wind always been this strong!? I couldn’t believe I had been walking around outside with that blowing in my face. The short time spent inside must have reset my senses to normal.
The tower had looked like a sturdy bridge when looking up from below, but to reiterate, the individual steel beams were only as thick as telephone poles. There were no railings, they were slick with rain, and the wind was blowing unpredictably. Let your guard down for a second and you’d fall.
It scared me that this was the relatively safe route, but complaining about this was not going to make the surface route through the floodwaters any less difficult. Needless to say, the many sharp obstacles, the dangerous pets, and the propane tanks would lead to an even greater tragedy than this.
“Fuguu. What should we do, Onii-chan?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
That was when I remembered Ayumi could not use her hands while carrying Erika on her back. Even if the tower was made up of a complex arrangement of intersecting beams, there was no way you could walk across it without using your hands.
That meant we needed some way of freeing up her hands. Would a plastic rope work? If not, we could wrap duct tape around them several times over. Zombies apparently had ten times the strength of humans. Ten people would be enough to lift someone up, so if Erika was bound to her back as if in a baby carrier, she would be able to move around just fine.
“Ugh.”
That was when we finally heard something from Erika’s alluring lips.
“Ayumi…-chan? And Satori-kun too.”
“Sorry, Erika. The situation isn’t looking much better. We’re still in the middle of a flooded area. Maxwell, check a baby products site. See how the ropes are arranged to distribute the weight and run a simulation.”
My blonde ringlet curls sister took a few deep breaths to calm herself and she finally climbed down from Ayumi’s small back. She may have looked so pained because we had carried her into someone’s house without permission.
“I’m…fine. I can’t fight like this, but I can walk slowly while propping myself up with a hand.”
“Onee-chan, don’t fight your Vampire nature here!”
“I more or less heard what we’re doing. You’re cro
