Employment Ice Age of the Dead Chapter 5

 Chapter 5: The Collection Continues

「From now on, food and supplies may never be transported here from overseas or other regions again. And losing electricity means no more refrigeration or freezing. Any perishables and frozen food that can't be collected in time will thaw out and rot before anyone can use it. Let me see...」

Using a map I'd found in a bookstore, I was working through the local cold-storage warehouses and collecting refrigerated and frozen goods from shops.

The silver sword I'd been able to equip after leveling up was certainly handy. Silver equipment was effective against not just vampires but weaker undead too. Even the weakest zombies, when cut apart, would collapse in a pale blue flame without me spending any mana.

And again, only bones were left.

「Who knows when the bones of the zombies I've defeated will rise as Skeletons... I'll level up as much as I can before then.」

Skeletons were stronger than zombies. I had to level up enough to handle them reliably before they started showing up.

「More importantly, I need to hurry and collect the refrigerated and frozen food.」

If I stored things in my 『Item Box』 it kept them cold and frozen, so with just myself to worry about, I'd never have to go without decent food for the rest of my life. In a world where civilization had collapsed, these would be precious commodities so I planned to collect as much as possible.

It was outright theft but letting it all rot would be worse.

「Is this... refrigerated tuna?」

Shinmei-cho was home to a well-known fishing port with a deep-sea fishing base. There was also a tourist fish market, so getting my hands on large quantities of seafood was a major score. On top of that, I managed to collect large quantities of imported food and alcohol that had been sitting in storage.

「I just don't have the capacity to hit other towns, though.」

Unfortunately it was the height of summer. Without electricity, refrigerators and freezers didn't work. Most fresh and frozen food would rot and become inedible in no time. And what that would lead to...

「Without a doubt, the survivors will start fighting each other for food.」

People might think they could get by on emergency rations or shelf-stable food, but in modern society refrigerated and frozen goods favored for their taste had come to take up a far larger share. Just look at the canned goods section in any supermarket. It had gotten much smaller than it used to be. When was the last time you actually opened a can of something and ate it? Do you even remember?

The reason I'd started paying attention to things like this was my time in the other world. The other world had its own version of refrigerators and freezers, powered by mana but they belonged to royalty, nobles and a small number of wealthy people. When those stopped working, with the Demon King's army bearing down and no way to move the food out in time, it all rotted quickly. Farmland and pastures were ravaged, monsters ran rampant on the roads linking them to the towns and food transport ground to a halt.

I had seen it with my own eyes.

The number of people who had died because monsters destroyed their basic infrastructure, leaving them cut off from the food and supplies they needed, starving to death, falling sick from malnutrition or killed by other humans fighting over food, had outnumbered those who died directly at the hands of demons and monsters.

That was why I was making it a priority to collect fresh produce, refrigerated and frozen food that would otherwise just rot. Along with other food, of course.

「...Just as I thought.」

When I opened the door of a food warehouse I'd found on the map, zombies were feeding on the contents. With nothing but instinct left in them, when zombies couldn't eat human flesh they fell back on whatever memories of eating they had from life and went for food instead. Some had their bellies torn open by other zombies, so whatever they ate fell right back out, but they didn't care and just kept ripping open bags of raw rice piled up in the warehouse and eating.

Food that zombies had already eaten was not recommended for human consumption, for obvious reasons: the decomposition, the smell, the bacterial risk. Not to mention it was deeply unpleasant, and zombie saliva or bodily fluids would accelerate the rot. Zombies often felt something like hunger, but eating normally did nothing for them since they couldn't absorb any nutrition. It came back out undigested wherever they happened to be, which rotted and became a source of disease. Another nuisance.

「You can't digest it anyway. Stop eating that.」

I wiped out every zombie in the warehouse and collected all the untouched food.

「I've got the car, so I might as well go further out and collect supplies and food from more distant towns too...」

With the electricity gone, frozen and refrigerated food probably had about half a day before it all went bad. After that I drove at full speed, collecting supplies and food from towns and villages around Shinmei-cho as fast as I could. Every zombie that got in my way went down and my level was steadily rising.

「Phew... I think that'll do for now.」

Three days since the zombies had appeared.

I'd been active along the coast but hadn't run into any survivors. When I checked the beaches and shoreline, it seemed the zombies had indeed come up from the sea. There were plenty of footprints and now that I thought about it, some of the zombies I'd defeated had looked like they'd originally been drowning victims. Drowned bodies decay quickly so it wasn't as if they'd swum in from somewhere else. The likely conclusion was that people who had died at sea long ago had risen as zombies and come ashore at ports and beaches all around the world.

「The survivors probably fled from the coast in a panic.」

And that was exactly when I'd returned from the other world to my room...

「Now, what should I do from here...」

Zombies were quick but struggled with vertical movement so I'd moved my temporary sleeping quarters to a hotel. There had been zombie staff there, but once I dealt with them, the chance of more coming up the stairs from below was nil...

「It happens occasionally but zombies aren't that strong.」

A zombie dog and zombie cat snarled and drooled as they lunged at me but I cut them down with the silver sword. Just as in the other world, pets had turned into zombies too. Zombie dogs, cats and birds were weaker than human zombies but capable of vertical movement. Since even a small bite would turn a person into a zombie, when I slept I used the 『Defensive Barrier』 I'd taken out of my 『Item Box』. Setting it up around my sleeping area kept out weak monsters, zombies and even Skeletons. It used mana but I could replenish that with magic stones collected from the zombies I defeated.

「What am I really going to do from here?」

I'd tried testing the limits of my 『Item Box』 for the first time and found that it could still hold more. The sheer capacity must have been one of the perks of having been the hero of another world.

「The mountain side seems relatively safe. I should move there. Which means my late grandfather's place, I suppose. He had farmland there too.」

My late paternal grandfather had farmed in a remote mountain village but neither my parents, my brother nor I had taken over and with no way to sell mountain farmland, it had been left to sit. The village itself had been abandoned long ago and was now a ghost town.

「I suppose I'll head there...」

Come to think of it, what had become of my parents, my brother and his family? It might seem cold-hearted to be thinking of them only now but I'd more or less been written off by them. My brother's kids should be university students by now, if I remembered right and I'd long known that my niece and nephew, my brother and his wife all thought poorly of me. My parents had always prioritized my accomplished brother and his family and kept telling me I was a failure.

They were capable people, surely so they'd be handling the zombies just fine. Either way, they lived quite far from me so there was no way to check on them.

「Phones don't work anymore anyway and it's not as though they had sent me any messages asking if I was alright. That's just how the world works, I suppose.」

Looking at my situation, some former coworkers and relatives had irresponsibly told me things like 『You're family, so you should get along better』 or 『If you work hard, get a full-time job, marry and have kids, your family will see you in a new light.』 When I said 『If I could do that, I wouldn't be struggling in the first place,』 they'd just reply 『You're just not trying hard enough.』

It was all going in circles so I'd cut ties with them. People who hadn't lived through the Employment Ice Age couldn't understand how hard it was, and once I realized all they were going to do was lecture me from on high about not trying hard enough, I made a point of doing things at my own pace.

The desire to marry had faded away too. I'd come to realize that the only reason I'd wanted to get married when I was young was because everyone around me was doing it. It had never actually been what I wanted.

「I'll spend the rest of my life at my grandfather's place, living off the land.」

I'd live without being a burden to anyone, as long as I could, and then die. Japan had been worrying about a declining birth rate lately but with zombies around there were bigger things to worry about. And if things kept going the way they were, not just Japan but the whole world might perish.

So maybe the man who'd been a hero in another world should save this one too? Why should I have to do that? I'd worked hard in my own way all along but in the eyes of society and my family I was a useless man who'd settled for non-regular work through his own lack of effort.

「People who actually tried hard wouldn't want to be saved by someone that useless.」

That was why I'd made up my mind to live out my days quietly and alone at my grandfather's house.

「But I'll have to pass through that place...」

"That place" was the school where I worked as janitor. The prestigious private Banryu High School, up in the hills, attended by the children of wealthy families. Whether the students were safe or had become zombies, I no longer had any obligation to act as that school's janitor. With no paycheck coming in, I had no desire to even look at the faces of those brats who'd enjoyed mocking me.

「...I wonder if that girl is alright.」

But she was the one person I did find myself thinking about. She always came to the janitor's room to hang out and despite looking like a gyaru she made an excellent cup of tea. She was the only person at that school who'd ever talked to me normally.

Shirai Ruri.

Was she alright?

「...I should at least check on her.」

Going to the school was no guarantee I'd find her and I didn't know where she lived so the school was my only option. What happened to the rest of those insufferable brats was none of my concern and who knew how many of them had even made it to the school up in the hills.

「I hope she's alright.」

Preparations complete, I picked a four-wheel-drive vehicle from the cars I'd acquired, one that could handle mountain roads and rough terrain, topped off the gas and drove to Banryu High School.