Bloom and Scatter [Free! Zombie AU]

The Boss - Part 4

The blood trail got thicker and heavier and came to an abrupt halt.

It was clean as a line and suspicious as hell. They crouched down to inspect the ground, feeling around the smooth planes of concrete for well over five minutes before Makoto managed to discern, in the darkness, the faintest recess in the floor. It was so well made that had they not been specifically looking for it in the dim subterranean light, they wouldn't have found it at all. Makoto pressed his fingers against the recess, unable to do much with it until he discovered that it needed a bit of pressure before revealing, with a sideway slide, that it concealed a panel in the concrete. They puzzled over it in confusion. The panel was completely empty. If it contained something, that something was long gone now. And yet, Rin put two and two together and used the panel as a handle, needing Makoto's assistance to pull upwards, revealing a trapdoor in the ground. There was a flight of stairs that descended into a lit corridor.

And the blood trail had continued, completely unbroken, from the cement floor onto the steps.

"What is this place?"

Fluorescent lights, looking decades old, flooded the dark earthen passage with a sterile white glow. Some of the bulbs further away from them flickered at times, drowning that particular section in darkness whenever it happened.

The blood trail they were following had evolved from splatters to long and thick tracks, as though something heavy had become drenched in blood and could only be dragged along. And it was fresh as ever.

It was bad news, to say the least.

"I had no idea this place even existed," Makoto said, looking around at everything but the blood on the ground, "This must be the air raid shelter."

"It doesn't look like an air raid shelter," Rin crossed his arms, "Maybe it's just the passage leading to one?"

Makoto agreed absently, "They have electricity here..."

"Well, they have a radio station."

"Radios don't necessarily need power to function."

"Yeah, but speakers do, right?"

He hummed his agreement, "Something's been bothering me for a while."

"Aside from what is most likely a dead body waiting for us wherever the trail ends?"

"The air," Makoto seemed distracted, "In Iwatobi High. It's... clear. Clean."

What?

Rin took a good look around and realised that Makoto was right. It wasn't thick or yellow. In fact, it hadn't been for a while. When Rin first realised how empty the interior of the school was, it hadn't just been the lack of furniture or people that had bothered him. The sickly yellow of the fog had also disappeared, only it had completely escaped their notice because they had nothing to look at that could have been tinted a different colour from what they were used to. Iwatobi High was clean.

Something was definitely wrong.

"It's been bothering me for some time now, but... where are all the people?"

"In hiding?"

Rin shook his head, "Not the ones in Iwatobi High. I mean, everyone else. The gang members outside... they aren't human. They're these... strange semi-feral creatures, completely primal and instinctive like ferals, but strangely organised. I mean, aside from the DJ, who doesn't count because we never met him in person, can you think of a single human being we've had an actual conversation with? Or who we've overheard talking, like a normal person?"

The fact of the matter was that it was weird. Where was everyone? He and Makoto hadn't come across a single human being throughout their trip, and ferals didn't count. During their conversation on the radio, no one else had chimed in. Even as the broadcast continued, there was no trace of anyone other than the DJ on the radio. There had been no other 'call ins'. He was beginning to wonder if he had imagined the DJ altogether, but Makoto assured him that he'd heard him too. The only other explanation could be that the DJ was lying about the other humans, to manipulate them... The thought made him sweat a lot more than he should have.