Inside the Broken Circuit

An Awakening: Aikou's POV

Introduction:
It's the year 20XX, and a lot has happened in the course of several months. The city of Fushima has now become the major hotspot of zombie spawning outbreaks. I still remember to this day where I was when the first news of zombies came up on the television. I was sitting with my little sister, Ona, on our couch in our apartment.
  When we heard what was going on, we immediately planned how to survive. Part of planning was adding more people into our group. The more people to survive with, the better chances of living longer. We chose several people we knew from school to be in this group. One person in particular, Takayama, was not a person I favored adding, but he was the strongest and bravest individual I knew who could help in tough situations. We never got along with each other, and still do not, but the two of us found our ways of not committing murder. One of these days, I'm sure we will lose our sanity and actually attempt such things, but it will not be for a long time.
  The second person, who we had recently met, is Senko. He stands at a whopping height of five foot eleven, which makes him three inches taller than Takayama. Senko has a chill personality and rarely argues back. He keeps a low profile unlike the rest of us and likes to travel around on his purple skateboard. I often believe Ona has a crush on him because he always seems to go to her aid when she needs help, but I never like to admit this because things can become awkward amongst the group.

Chapter 1:
The time is now 10:37AM and the sun just started to peek through a heavy set of rain clouds overhead. Takayama and I recently split from the others to scout out the area in hopes to find some ammo or any survival tools left by what's left of our living civilization. In the last few hours of me and Takayama being on our own, we have come across several clusters of zombies. Most of these creatures have been found wandering the empty streets of our city, but sometimes they find a way into the abandoned buildings, which we much take extra precaution of. Takayama led me down an empty alleyway, which ends with a chain fence. We were surrounded by brick buildings and walls, which I thought could easily be climbed over; however, Takayama had other plans. He looked at the chain fence, and, with a grin, starts climbing it. I could hear the metal rattling behind me as I looked at the brick structures, so I turned around to see what he was up to. Having realized his ridiculous idea, I frowned and watched him hop over to the other side. He looked over to me and brushed the dirt off his pants, smiling.
   "You got to be kidding me?" I said with crossed arms, "I am not climbing a 15 foot fence."
  "Stop being a wuss and just do it." Replied Takayama. He looked up to the top of the fence and back at me, "It really is not that hard to climb. Are you scared of falling?"
  "Falling?" I asked, darting a glared in his direction. "Absolutely not! I just think this idea is stupid. The whole fence makes too much noise if you're on it. Don't you think the noise could distract zombies near by?" The rattling of the fence was, indeed, loud, and I found it hard to believe a zombie could not hear such noise if they were just a block away. We both fell into a pit of silence. Then, I came to a conclusion that Takayama was not going to answer me. He kept staring, not giving a response. I rolled my eyes and started to climb. The metal link wall started to shake. It made me very nervous. I continued upwards until I reached the top.
  "Oh for god's sake Aikou, get down! You're taking forever!" Yelled Takayama. I shot him a rude expression and carefully climbed down on the other side. I hop off after reaching several feet away from the ground.
  "That was the most painful thing to watch." He snarked.
  "Ok, would you rather me fall to my death?" I questioned, to which he shook his head and started walking away without me. After this, we had a long walk of quietness. We hadn't spoken a word to each other or made eye contact. We passed several broken down cars on side streets and hopped over some backyards with low fence lines. As we passed, we checked the inside of each home. Not much was found. We took a couple of kitchen ware we could use to eat with later, and if we were lucky, took some blankets, but that was it. Most of what we collected was shoved into an old camping bag I found in one of the untouched, abandoned suburban homes. The place was in rough shape. The ceilings were collapsing and the floorboards were beginning to rot from mold and ants. Most of the furniture inside had collected dust and mold too. I presumed the owner of the building had cats because much of the furniture had scratch marks all over the legs of every couch and chair.
  We were approaching a small, two story, perhaps twenty year old home that sat on the corner of a very hilly intersection. The windows were boarded up tightly and the lot was fenced up.
   "Great, another fence." I said, still climbing over it. Takayama followed and started to pull at one of the window boards on the first floor. He cuts his finger and lets out a curse, stepping away from the window and shaking his hand.
  "What happened?"
  "Stupid wood gave me a splinter."
"Is it bad?"
  With disbelief that I asked such a question, Takayama showed his hand. "What do you think? Of course I'm fine. A little blood won't kill me. I'll get over it. Now, instead of standing there helplessly, get your ass over here and help me find a way in."
"Ok, but geez. You can speak nicer."
The house was well secured. We had been trying to break in for over 30 minutes. After some time, we were not successful. We both collapsed against fence and sat in the grass, eyeing the house in exhaustion. Even though I had fallen into a deep stage of fatigue, I could not help but to keep scanning the front of the building. There had to be a way in. To my surprise, I soon saw an opening on the side door. The door was old oak and had a good dent on the frame. I quickly got up and made way to what I saw. I pick at the wood frame with a hand, then peeking into the small hole to see if I could see anything inside. Takayama had a questionable face as he watched me. Then, getting up, he came over and tried to help open the door. At last, part of the door frame split and Takayama was able to grab the split end and rip it off. More of the wood crumbled as he kept tearing at it with his bare hands, eventually creating a big enough hole for a hand to fit through.
  "See if you can feel for a door knob. It looks to me the door may have a handle with a lock that turns on it." He said, taking a step back for me to come forward. Sure enough, after some time of feeling my way around the side of the door, I touched the door knob. My fingers glide over to what seemed to be a deadbolt knob and I flicked the lock button to the right. We both heard a click.
"I think that did it." I said and pulled my hand out of the man made hole. Takayama reached for the doorknob and turned it. The old door creaked as it opened and particles of dust flew off the top. We started to cough and both covered our faces with a hand. The stench inside was horrific. The entirety of the houes smelled like rotting bodies.
"Something obviously died in here. It smells so bad in here I could gag."
I nodded in agreement and stepped over some rubble. The place was very dark. With no electricity or natural sunlight to come through, the house was in pitch blackness. Luckily for Takayama, he could see quite well with his amber eyes. His night vision was much stronger than anyone's in the survival group. He took a couple of paces ahead, in a direction I could not see. To some degree to my left, I could hear his footsteps come to a halt.
"There's satanic symbols in here. This house was used to summon creatures. Perhaps not daemons, such as myself— No, something else. There's blood on the ground over here." Though I did not know where he was, I followed his voice as he kept talking, "I see a pentagram on the ground and a sheep's head. This ritual was done not too long ago, which means this place had recently been secured with wood slabs. Check all the drawers in the living room and see if you can find something linked to this gruesome scene. I bet the cultist, or cultists, kept certain documents here when they visited."
"I can't see for shit Takayama."
"Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. Here, let me try to find some light."
A few minutes later I felt a hand touch my shoulder, then a little flame ignite in front of me. He was handing me a lighter.
"I found this upstairs." He said. I took the lighter from him and paraded my way to the side tables in the living room. I opened each table, deeply inspecting the pile of papers inside. Most of the documents I came across were old coupons or magazines, but in the last drawer I opened, I found an astonishing book artifact. I run my hand over the book. The cover was indeed pure, brown, leather. The binding was coming undone, which said much about how old the book was. There were odd symbols written on the cover that I could not make out. Instead of guessing, I brought the book over to Takayama with high hopes that perhaps he knew what the book was meant for. His dull expression changed to sudden extortion. He seemed rather puzzled by the book cover. I handed him the book and he looked through it for some time. His facial expression never changed until he closed the book shut. He appeared worried, now.
"Burn this book."
"Burn it?"
"Burn it now Aikou!"
A loud crash erupted from upstairs. Takayama and I looked at the ceiling. The floorboards were shaking.
"Shit. They are here."
"Who is?"
"They are Aikou."
"They?" He grabbed my hand and started to run for the door. A massive shadow glided in front of our only way out and we come to a sudden stop.
"What the hell is that Takayama?" I cussed, only making out a muscular silhouette in front of me.
"I can explain to you later. Right now we need to get the hell out of this fuck place!"
I felt him yank me backwards and I stumbled a couple of times into the darkness. He threw me in many directions, which he was not being careful of. Most of my time with him in this very moment, I was tripping and colliding with a lot of rubbish on the ground. Whatever was standing in front of the doorway was now chasing us. Though I could not see the monster, I sensed it following me and Takayama. If things were not more obvious, why would Takayama be aimlessly dragging me around in this dark house without stopping? The large shadow I saw at the doorway was a sly creature. It made no noise in the darkness, which was awfully terrifying for a person such as myself who cannot see a single speck of dust. Takayama led me up a flight of stairs and I felt his hand let go of me. My body grew frozen with fear as I heard him running about on the second floor. All I could do was look around in the blackness that surrounded me, eyes widen to get in as much light as possible.
"Takayama?" I called, eyes darting aimlessly in the dark, "Dude where did you go?" I felt an anxious flutter in my chest when I received no response. All I could hear was movement of feet travelling about down the hallway. The fear of being attacked by the unknown shadow creature got to me quick. I could not help but to start walking around with my hands out, feeling my surroundings, hopelessly looking for a doorway into a room where I could find Takayama. Maneuvering about on my own was quite the challenge, but eventually I found an opening into a room. Still unsure where I was, I took this chance to fumble the walls for a possible light switch. Perhaps the place did have electricity, just in certain square feet of the house. Sure enough I was right. My hand frantically hits a switch and an eerie, yellow light brightens over the dark room. I found myself standing at the doorway of a child's bedroom. There was a degrading wooden framed bed sitting at the corner of the space. A dingy blue blanket was left neatly over the mattress. Next to the bed was a night stand with white paint chipping off. Underneath the nightstand were a pair of slippers that looked to have been sitting there for some extent of time. I could not help to think what child lived here and how old they were. There was not much evidence in the room to answer the many questions I had about the family that once lived here, but I was in awe of what was left for me to see. I was very much in fact distracted by the saddened room that I almost forgot about the monster and Takayama somewhere lurking in the remain parts of this house. To no awareness, the monster was standing just outside the room, peering in with a huge grin. Its mouth was full of sharp teeth with many eyes on the head.