CH25 - A hanging reunion

[Lyon's POV]

"So this is what a Type 54 looks like." I say to no one in particular as I held the gun. Taking note of the gun's black star engraving on its black checkered grip while my other hand held onto the gun's magazine. The gun was in surprisingly good condition, at least its exterior is, but the question of how they got their hands on one in the first place was a bit concerning.

I completely forgot about the fact that I told my companions to loot the shooter's body so I was only reminded of that information when Chisato told me about the gun and the extra clip in her pocket. Though I wouldn't have minded if she opted to keep it if she knew a thing or two about the gun, her lack of knowledge and technical know-how in using the gun was too big of a concern for me to let her keep it.

"I didn't know people could buy handguns, I thought they were limited to just shotguns and air rifles." Chisato adds in, voicing her curiosity over the matter. I observe the entire gun once more, taking note of the fact that it lacked the serial number meant to tell its owner about when the gun was made which meant it was either made through shady means or was manually scratched off by the seller.

"That's cause we actually can't, just buying any form of an actual gun is hard enough. Handguns aren't even sold on the market and the Type 54 isn't even one of the guns that our military nor police force use so that removes the possibility of them just looting it off of a dead soldier or policeman off the table." I tell them, earning curious looks from everyone after I told them the information I managed to deduce.

'Homemade guns fall into a specific category called "Ghost guns" but any gun that lacked a serial number fell inside that classification too. The gun was probably smuggled into Japan and sold through the underworld.' I think to myself, though it wasn't important, I did know a few tidbits of information about this gun.

It was a Chinese variant of an old Russian handgun, it also served with different names in various conflicts like the Vietnam war and other civil wars. The gun was quite old and its place in the Chinese military's loadout had mostly already been supplanted with more modern handguns but the production of Type 54 Chinese pistols has yet to be halted.

'7.62x25mm ammo huh, and it seems like we only have 11 more bullets if I were to include the extra clip we managed to loot from the body.' I think to myself after leaving the emptied gun beside me before I turned my attention to the clip I had. I'm pretty sure people can buy 8 bullet magazines for an added price but it seems that whoever bought it chose to go with the usual 7 bullet magazine instead.

"Hey Lyon, we haven't exactly asked you about it but how do you know so much about guns?" Ren asks me, the other two who weren't driving placed their gazes on me, curious about what my answer was going to be.

"Remember how I told you about my mother's habit of jumping from one hobby to another? It seems that her curiosity managed to influence me in a way, albeit a bit more on the extreme side considering how I ended up learning how to shoot guns." I lied to them; it was a believable lie that I thought had barely any holes to prod into but who knows? Maybe my words do have holes that I just don't notice.

"Damn, I was always curious about how shooting a gun felt. I think my grandfather used to own an air rifle but I'm pretty sure he sold it when my family fell into a bit of a crisis with our financial situation." Ren tells us, reminiscing over the past with a smile as he kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the steering wheel.

"Well, the utility belt you're wearing is meant for revolvers and not semi-automatic pistols so the pouches won't exactly be able to accommodate the extra clip. I'm guessing you have no experience with shooting any type of handgun?" I asked Ren, I already had the NAMBU M60 with me so I had no real reason to keep the Type 54 too.

"Nope, try asking Chisato and Alyssa." Ren quickly refuses, I asked Chisato afterward if she knew how to shoot the handgun but she just looked at me incredulously before refusing as well. That left only Alyssa who already carried a shotgun so I felt that giving her another firearm when the others didn't have one felt a bit of a waste.

"Alyssa, you'll hold onto the gun for now. I'll try to teach the others the basics of how to shoot a gun once we have free time. Be careful, it looks like they just swapped out the gun's usual trigger with a Glock's safe action trigger. It doesn't have the manual safety but it does have the half-cock notch at least which means you'll need to bring the hammer down completely to even fire the gun." I tell Alyssa as she takes the gun from my hands, feeling it around with her own as she tries to get acclimated to its weight.

I watched Alyssa fumble with the gun for a while, possibly taking mental notes as she checked every feature of the gun before loading it in with the magazine that still had all its bullets. She hides the one with 4 bullets in one of the small pockets of her fanny pack before storing the handgun away in one of her pockets.

"So, how far are we from your house Chisato?" I asked Chisato, I hadn't paid much attention during our deviation from the supposed roads we had to take to reach her home since we had opted to refuel instead.

"Hm, we should be able to reach my house by 2 PM at the latest. Lunchtime if we only have to make a few detours here and there." Chisato tells us while looking up at the ceiling of the car. Her answer surprised me since she supposedly only lived less than an hour away from me which meant we either had to make a large detour that I failed to notice earlier or she just really walks fast.

"We had to move around a few entire streets earlier, add to that the detours we made to reach the gas station and it pulled us farther away from the original distance." Chisato adds in after she noticed my surprised expression.

"Anyways, how did the convenience store mission go?" Ren asks without taking his eyes off the road. From there we just recounted the events of that short collaboration between the two groups, the others would sometimes voice out their opinions of the people they had just met too.

It seems that the short bit of interaction they managed to find by talking with people from someone outside of the group managed to raise their morale a bit. Their slightly rejuvenated voices managed to fill the car as I close my eyes just for a bit, it was more of an action brought upon by the sense of calm that filled the atmosphere rather than any form of fatigue.

"Anyway, what did Lyon do to somehow turn that glaring white-haired woman to suddenly kiss him in the cheeks?" Chisato asks, and with that the calm I felt suddenly disappeared which prompted me to open my eyes while I blankly stared at her. I turn to face Alyssa and find her staring back at Chisato as well before she turned her head to face mine.

"Look, she probably just felt a bit indebted to me for what I did back at the convenience store. You three already know what happened back there, I just helped her out of a tight situation." I tell them just to try and manipulate this sudden shift of conversational topic from me to something else.

The two just laugh at my expense while Alyssa seemed like she wasn't worried about anything which was a big difference compared to how she had acted earlier before we left the gas station. We spent the next few minutes in silence when Alyssa suddenly chose to break the silence in the car.

"They said that they were going to the academy where your parents are, right Lyon? Do you... think they're going to be fine?" Alyssa asks me, her voice tapering off after she hesitantly spoke out the final half of her questioning. Her question manages to catch everybody else's attention as well as Chisato turns to look back at us while Ren looks at the rearview mirror from the corner of his eye.

"I think they're going to be fine, they're a bit lacking in terms of weaponry though. Misako seems to be quite skilled with the bow, there shouldn't be any problems as long as they can coordinate well enough and avoid any hostile humans." I say to them as my mind wanders back to the dream I had last night.

'It was just a dream and yet, why does it feel as if it was also something else entirely...' I think to myself, a sense of unease managing to worm its way up. As the imaginary feeling of getting bit on both my neck and my ankle caused me to weakly scratch both areas.

"Yeah, we'll find them there eating tin cans of peaches in pitched tents." Ren jests, earning short chuckles and smiles from everyone but me. The presence of my focus having chosen to move far away from the conversation long before Ren could even pitch his joke.

I turn my gaze to the windows, losing myself into worries that seemed outlandish if anyone else were to know as to why I felt that way in the first place. It wouldn't be until the others began calling out my name that my attention to the happenings around me chose to return to its rightful place.

"Lyon, snap out of it." Alyssa tells me while shaking me from side to side as the others just watch. It was only by then did I notice that the car's engine had already died down back into silence as it came to a halt in a dark eerie alleyway, two dumpsters flanking both sides of the car which meant we were just barely managing to fit in.

"Sorry, I guess 6 hours of sleep wasn't enough for me today." I tell them before throwing away my dazed state. I look out the window and observe the surroundings more, clueless as to why we were stopping inside of an alleyway and not a house or something.

"Uhm, I'm not sure about you guys but I don't think Chisato and her family live in this alleyway." I ask them, causing all three of my companions to look at one another before sighing to themselves over a question that probably seemed stupid to their eyes. Not that they were wrong of course, it truly is quite a stupid question but they can at least humor my nonsensical ramblings sometimes...

"No, we're just stopping to have a quick lunch before continuing on our way, we should be able to reach my house in an hour or two as long as we don't run into major obstacles." Chisato explains which helps me realize our current situation, but now that only raises another question. Why can't we just eat while driving? We've done that before so Ren can just have himself be spoon-fed as he drives.

"I... kind of feel nervous, you know? We're somewhat close to my home now so I feel a bit scared about what we end up finding. We can keep going while eating lunch if you guys want though, I understand how choosing to do this just seems like a waste of time." Chisato tells us, a hesitant expression appearing on her face as she mutters out each word.

"I'm fine with it, I can understand why you're a bit scared of finding out for yourself. We can just eat lunch while talking about our plans before continuing on our way." I tell her while the other two just nod as well. I take out 6 sandwiches from my bag and handed out one each to my companions, leaving the other two for anyone hungry enough to eat more.

"So just a quick recap, we go to Chisato's house to find her family, then go to the academy to look for Lyon's parents before somehow crossing the river to look for Alyssa's father?" Ren confirms while slurping up a piece of ham from the sandwich he was eating.

"Pretty much, yes. We leave the city afterward though I will understand if Chisato's parents are to force her to remain with them. That'd be the logical choice after all since that would keep her from intentionally getting in danger." I finish up Ren's inquiry with the rest of my plan, there's a chance that my parents will try to convince me to stay behind with them in the evacuation center too but I care for Alyssa too much to just let her go all alone as she looks for her father.

"I'll do my best to convince them to come with us. My father owns a car too so it isn't like we'd have to pack ourselves tightly in this car alone like a can of sardines." Chisato states while looking at the floor of the car, probably contemplating how exactly she planned to accomplish such a feat.

"I'm pretty sure Misako plans to cross the river too since her mother is on the other side. Who knows? Maybe we can let her join us in crossing the river at least." I tell the others since I was the only person who knew of her plan. I mostly just planned on helping her as long as it didn't require us to go out of our way, after all, that sense of Deja vu wasn't enough to warrant asking my companions to put themselves in danger.

"Speaking of crossing the river, how exactly are we going to cross it? The river's bridges had already been destroyed and we can't exactly swim through it since we're carrying too many supplies." Chisato asks me, she raised a good point. We could probably just swim through the river but that might end up ruining the guns and supplies we have. It was also starting to get heavy too since our recent haul added quite a lot of supplies to our group's inventory.

"I had Ren carry one of the inflatable kayaks that my mom owns while I kept another one with me. Each one should be more than capable of carrying about two people, their bags, and a bunch of duffle bags so we have just the right amount. We'll need to make one return trip though if Misako ends up joining us for the trip across." I remind everyone as Ren concluded that the canoes were the reason that I was able to stay calm after Higashi told us about the bridges.

'Well, there isn't exactly a need to correct the misunderstanding I guess.' I think to myself while inwardly laughing at the possibility of Ren having an incorrect conclusion. It took us about 10 minutes to finish our quick lunch, we were done eating by 5 but we chose to spend 5 extra minutes just to calm Chisato's worried nerves. It took about an hour and a half before we reached the front of Chisato's house which was bigger than we originally thought it would've been.

The perimeter wall of her house had a few meters that rose made of stone with the rest being made of some type of wood. A few branches of trees could be seen rising over the tall perimeter wall which just showed how big the trees in her yard were. All those things didn't matter though as the beauty of the outermost exterior of the house couldn't match the worry that rose in everyone's chest at the sight of an entirely broken down brown metal gate.

The small door in the gate itself was torn off from its hinges, obvious signs of it having been forcefully opened from the outside as visible dents could be seen on its front without us even needing to move closer just to check. Chisato ran out of the car and into the lot of the house itself, ignoring the fully dead corpses of zombies outside of the gate. We follow her in pursuit with Ren being the last one to leave the car since he had to shut the engine down first.

We went inside the lot as well before stopping beside Chisato who was kneeling on the ground as her eyes stared widely open at the scene in front of her. What may have once been a house meant for her family was gone as all that remained were black ashes with some parts of the house and a few pieces of furniture badly burnt black to a crisp. The fact that some of them were still barely held together was a miracle already considering the state of their wellbeing.

While the house she grew up in may have been very important to her, the most obvious cause for her now lifeless stare were the equally lifeless bodies of both her mother and her six-year-old little brother who both hung with ropes around their necks onto the branches of what seemed to be the largest tree in their estate. The otherwise quiet lot had but a single source of noise, low growls coming from her father whose body was tied to the trunk of the very same tree.

She stood up, moving closer to the zombified body of what was once her father. He wore a navy blue kimono that managed to hide well the splotches of blood that most likely came from the numerous stab holes in various parts of his body. The most obvious damage came from the two large missing chunks on opposite sides of his shoulder with the fabric around it missing as well.

None of us spoke, or rather we felt that creating any sort of noise felt disrespectful to the sight that lay in front of us. Chisato, the person who would always carry a smile meant to cheer anyone she'd find sad had naught but the lifeless stare meant for the scene that lay in front of her.

The worst-case scenario had occurred, and what was meant to have been a heartwarming reunion turned into what everyone feared the most. I move my gaze away from Chisato's knelt form and turned to her father, all the vestiges of his former humanity gone as a white Venn diagram-like symbol was spray painted just below his neck which remained visible to us due to his erratic movement.

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AN: Not gonna lie, this chapter was more on the boring side compared to my recent chapters. I myself only found the latter half of this chapter to be quite interesting but I'm sorry I guess. I'm gonna go out on a whim and explain the reasoning behind Chisato's "stalling", it might seem unreasonable and stupid but that's just how abstract emotions work. I've written Chisato and Ren to be emotional, people like us who are viewing her current predicament in a third-person perspective can judge and recommend actions based on logic, such a position is not something that emotional characters in a book have access to so uhm, yeah.

The challenge is still ongoing and we currently need 13 more reviews before I can implement the one-chapter-a-day schedule.