Chapter Text
Death is a debt all men must pay
Euripides
Despite the promises of a smooth flight, there was still a lot of turbulence en route to Japan. It was bad enough that the only plane Rin could find was a rusty old piece of shit the Australian air force had scrapped, but the repurposed cargo plane had him strapped down into seats and belts that looked like they would barely hold if they hit a particularly rough patch of sky. He tried not to think about it too much. Truth be told, he knew he was lucky he even managed to find a ride. Islands were supposed to be safe; that was the general wisdom that everyone ate and spat out as they built crude boats and chartered illegal flights to islands, turning them into gathering points for the infected. Islands always ended up closing their borders.
Japan closed its borders three weeks ago.
It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t leave earlier. Rin had cleared out every single bank account he had, all the money he had stored away, all the cash prizes he had won from swimming, and poured everything into getting a flight to Iwatobi. Finding a willing pilot had taken longer than he had hoped. He hadn’t even begun considering what the Japanese Defence Force would do to vessels trying to enter the country illegally. He remembered the last go around, he’d heard about people getting shot down or sunk into the ocean, even if he was too young to have lived through the last epidemic. Either way, smuggling people was a lucrative business, and surely the pilot wouldn’t have agreed if he himself didn’t expect to make it out alive, right? Rin wasn’t the only one on the plane either. He’d recognised one of the passengers – a politician maybe? An actor? – and there was the fact that the pilot had promised he’d get him in. Considering the price Rin was paying, he had fucking better.
The engine was too loud, rattling the entire plane, and the whole vessel suddenly jolted, sending the lights flickering on and off.
“What’s going on up there?” Someone yelled nervously.
“Detour,” was yelled back, followed by a shouted curse, and, “Hold onto your seats, ladies!”
Without warning, the aircraft’s engines gunned into overdrive and pulled back so that they were almost completely vertical, shooting upwards through the sky. Rin clutched onto the straps holding him down by the shoulders, feeling himself fall towards his right side with gravity, and hoped to god that what he was hearing was thunder and not guns.
His blood ran cold. He wasn’t going to die here, was he? Not at this leg of the journey. Communications had been cut off and he hadn’t been able to contact anyone in Japan, much less Iwatobi. No one knew where he was. If he died, he’d be considered missing. He couldn’t imagine anything worse happening.
There was a loud boom and crack, the sound of ripping steel, and Rin and the other passengers watched in horror as the smoking hole in the cargo door forced out a rush of air like a cyclone that widened the gap as the metal sheets of the plane’s frame peeled off. Everything was shaking uncontrollably and he held on as tightly as he could, unable to tear his eyes away from the hole. In the distance, the sea was black and bright red tracers lit up the sky as bullets followed their path, sounding like fireworks against the overloud scream of the engines. The plane jerked to the side and began to nosedive. Someone screamed. Rin was trying to think, but everything was shaking, and surely they hadn’t been shot anywhere vital? They would have felt it. They weren’t going to die. They weren’t going to die. Even if the plane ended up crashing in the sea, Rin could swim back. If they were close enough to get shot at, surely they were near the islands.
Soon, the plane slowly righted itself.
“Shook off the anti-aircrafts,” the pilot’s voice crackled over the speakers – like the seats, they had been patchworked in – and he sounded almost gleeful, “Got your money’s worth, eh?”
“I am going to kill this guy when we land,” one of the passengers fumed shakily.
“Landing in five. Got driven off-course and ended up further inland, ‘bout two hundred-something kilometres away. Can’t head back to Wakayama or even Osaka, so we’ll be landing near the Hyogo-Tottori DMZ. Keep your noses covered ‘cause that place smells like shit.”
Rin felt himself relax into his seat, exhaling slowly.
They were landing near Tottori. He’d saved days, if not weeks, of travel.
This was good.
To say that the place smelled of shit would be to do it an injustice.
The entire area was blanketed in a thick yellowish-brown smog which sprawled across the land as far as the eye could see. He could barely make out the silhouettes of building and mountains; they were only a shadow against the thick of the atmosphere. The smell had reached his nose the moment they had landed, but now that he was right at the edge of the smoke, it was pungent enough to make his toes curl. He thought of sulphur and rotting food, and dug into his pockets until he shook out a handkerchief. He tied it over his nose and mouth and it seemed to help a little, which made Rin feel better about the situation. He’d taken out his compass and it had pointed north, through the smog. If this was what he had to brave to get to Iwatobi, then so be it.
He checked the straps of his backpack, made sure his gun was tucked securely in the back of his trousers and his machete could slide out easily from its holster at his hip. Rin pulled down his baseball cap so it shielded his eyes from the hot afternoon sun and took his first step into the Hyogo-Tottori DMZ.
His first impression was that it was quiet.
As far as he knew, De-militarised Zones meant that the army – calling it the Japanese Defence Force at this juncture would just be a joke, considering his near-death experience not a few hours ago – had given up on the area, no longer able to contain the rate of infection and allowing the infected to roam freely. Populations were evacuated, meaning the only ones left behind were the… calling them zombies sounded so fucking stupid, even in his own head, but calling them infected seemed incredibly condescending, as though they could heal from the plague. Basically, the place was crawling with zombies. He had to be on his toes at all times and get out as soon as possible.
As he walked further and further in, the dried grass under his feet crunched loudly. When he looked down, he saw pieces of metal and glass. He followed the trail until he came across the remnants of a crashed van that had broken through the barrier of what looked like a highway and into a tree. He walked towards it until he was on the asphalt. Cars littered the road, packed to the brim in a gridlock, and as he swiped a finger across the windshield of a sedan and considered the thick layer of dust, he wondered exactly how long the DMZ had been abandoned for.
Rin checked his compass again. The cars seemed to have been heading out of the area. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to follow the road until he came across some signs. Meanwhile, he took the handle of his machete, wrapped it quickly in the hoodie he’d tied around his waist, and slammed it through the driver’s seat window. Rin let himself into the car, going through the glove compartment and seat pockets until he dug out an unopened bottle of water, a flashlight and a map. Interestingly enough, he also found a portable radio, but it was too Silent Hill for his tastes so he chucked it (he did, for one serious moment, consider bringing it along because a worldwide zombie outbreak was also something out of a video game, but he was in a DMZ and static meant noise, and noise meant zombies, so practicality won out in the end). More or less satisfied, he decided against looting the other cars and began his trek down the highway.
The heat was unbearable. Rin was fully aware that the overcast sky was an illusion – the smog was thick and made everything seem dim and hazy, but the particles in the air also seemed to make the sun feel even hotter. Rin was tempted to cross back into the woods that ran alongside the road, but he also wanted to be on the lookout for useful items since visibility was awful.
He spotted a sign in the distance and jogged the final stretch towards it.
WELCOME TO IWATOBI