“What do you mean we are leaving to mount Tate? Rei and I’s families are still here! WE NEED TO SEARCH FOR THEM!” Takashi is visibly upset and yelling at this point. Shaking in anger as he glares at me and the others behind me already helping load up the bus.

“Ah that’s the thing we will be leaving without you. After all you still need to search for your family. We will establish a safe space for once you find them. Feel free to come search for us once you do.” I almost let out a slight smile when the lack of reaction to his yelling seems to cause an even more violent of a reaction from him.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH YOU’RE ABANDONING US!” Rei is also upset understandably. Behind Takashi is also Miku and one of the other girls already. He works fast.

“No, we just have different interests. We want to survive and are planning for the long term. Besides you have Sayas’s parents and this base to support you still. I’m sure they will let you stay here and work with them.” Takashi attempts to punch me but I step out of the way. Repeatedly swiping as I step back more and more. He never trained so his wild swings have very little chance of actually hitting an athlete that is magically enhanced.

“BASTARD! STAND STILL!” he keeps attempting to attack with wild unpracticed swings.

Letting out a long sigh “Look it’s nothing personal besides it’s not like it’s goodbye forever just find your parents first and bring them out that way. We are going to clear the route of cars anyways and its only like a 50 minute drive once that’s done.” It is slightly personal, but I have no real reason to say that out loud. Afterall after saying that Rei seems to have calmed down and looks to be considering it.

“NO! YOU’RE JUST RUNNING AWAY!” Takashi is breathing hard now from missing his hits. It takes a lot more energy to miss then hitting.

“I mean yes, we want to have a life without zombies is that so much to ask for?” He doesn’t know how to respond to this and storms off. Taking his gaggle of girls with him.

We continue to pack stuff. Saya goes and talks to her parents they have a heart touching goodbye where her mother gives her a gun. They turn to me.

“We expect you to look after her. If we find out anything wrong happened out there, we will find you. We may only have a small community for now, but it will grow.” Honestly Sayas mother is scary sometimes. I’m a bit glad we arnt sticking around. Her support was nice but also kind of heavy handed sometimes.

“Yes, mother in law.” I bow. She insisted I call her that much to Saya and Aunties annoyance. She kept grumbling about how if anyone she was my mother. Which shes right. I just can’t call her that without remembering the mom that raised me. I love Auntie like a mother, but I don’t want to replace mom…

“We got most of the things on the list, the rest of it we can probably pick up in the small towns on the way there.” Saya pipes up. Holding up her notepad that’s mostly struck out.

We all wave our goodbyes as Takashi and Rei glare at our departure. We are taking the bus and the Humvee. We get onto the highway and start moving our way to mount Tate.

5 hours into the trip we are stopping at a small town of Awasuno for some gas. It taken much longer than expected due to the sheer number of cars that need to be pushed on the roads. They are completely covered in cars thankfully in some panic many of the cars have driven off the side destroying many of the concrete barriers, so we just put them in neutral and push them off.

We are most of the way to mount Tate by now we are stopping by a small town about halfway there. It normally would have only taken about 34 min to get to the mountain so 5 hours of pushing other cars out of the way only to be halfway this is going to be a long trip. In Awasuno the population at its best was around 3 thousand before the apocolypse. Its honestly not a bad place to maybe settle down if we didn’t have sights on the mountain side. To the north there is the Jōganji River so the city has its own water source rather than relying on a city system. It also has it’s own well system using an underground reservoir that gets water from the mountain so we can probably use the river for cleaning and excess water. Maybe even one day someone could make a waterwheel or something in it.

That’s when Shizuka randomly starts doing a little happy dance in the car.

“OH! THAT’S IT! UM UM Hirano! Can I have your phone? I just remembered my friends’ number!” She continues doing a little jig. It’s a good thing she remembered it since I doubt, they would be able to easily get back to their apartment for their note.

“Uh sure?” He tosses her the phone. Bored looking around. Most of the town is either dead or hiding in their homes. Turns out a lot of people panicked and fled the big city nearby. This meant many cars and extra people in a small community like this that normally wouldn’t have many strangers. If it was just the town then they might have made it. But because of the extra people that were already panicking things went to shit.

Shizuka lets out a high-pitched squeal after the phone starts ringing. Auntie is looking over with a bit of a worried look. She might be worried that Shizuka was in some sort of relationship with her friend. “HEY! RIKA! ITS ME SHIZUKA! OH THANK GOD YOUR ALIVE!”

I’m curious now and walk over to listen in.

“Let her know we are heading towards mount Tate! And that we are in Awasuno if she wants to join us!” I say from the side.

“mmm a lots happened for us too! We took your guns… sorry. Um no we arnt at the apartment we are in Awasuno. The apartment isnt safe anymore. How abou-“ the phone cut out.

“Huh? Hey Hirano your phone thingy isnt working?” shaking and smacking the phone a bit.

There is a bright light scorching the sky looking up we all see an explosion. Quickly looking away so I don’t scorch it into my eyes.

“GUYS DON’T LOOK AT IT! I HEARD LOOKING AT EXPLOSIONS CAN DAMAGE YOUR EYES!”

A low rumble settles over the town. But no car alarms or anything go off. Instead, the lights cut out from the bus and the gas station we are at. After the rumble stops people start checking in on each other.

“What was that?” Auntie is the first to check in on what happened.

“God damnit! STUPID STUPID PEOPLE! WHY IS THE WORLD FILLED WITH IDIOTS!” Saya calls from inside the bus.

“Its an Electromagnetic pulse! Electronics may not be responsive. Looks like we are staying in this town! We won’t be able to move cars anymore. SHIT!” I check my phone and it’s also dead throwing it on the ground.

“Whats an EMP?” Alice pulls lightly on the back of my shirt scaring the shit out of me. Going to have to put a freaking bell on her or something.

“It’s a big bomb in the sky that breaks all the electronics below it by shooting out these very little things that disrupt them. So we might need to rough it without anything electrical for a while.”

“I hope daddy and mom are okay…” Saya says

“I’m sure they are fine, even without electronics they have that metal gate and plenty of guns. I’m more worried about nights from now on.” Thinking about what I know about EMP’s it doesn’t always damage objects and the unstable partacles that are flying through the air that damage electronics will stop eventually. One of the methods to protect objects is by surrounding it in metal sometimes a large sheet of metal is enough to deflect most of it. Just in case we are lucky I tell everyone to stop what they are doing. “Everyone quickly get inside the bus and search for small electronics we need to wrap them with alluminum foil!” We all move inside and start wrapping them up in case they werent too far gone and can be recovered once the damage is stopped.

“It might be too late but its better to be careful in case we can use it! After all the bus might have shielded a lot of this from the initial spike.”

“Of all the places to be stranded this isnt the worst honestly.” I speak up. Looking around the town. Very little undead and plenty of farming space. We just need people which I’m sure there are a few hidden around town we just need to clear out the zombies to make them feel safe enough to come out of hiding. We brought along a few people Tanada and her family and most of the people from our original group with the exception of Miku, Rei and Takashi.

“Saeko lets go clear the area so we can camp for the night. We don’t want to move in the night now that we don’t have electronics.” She nods and we go out and clear about 30 from our immediate area. The population of this place is so small that we might be able to get rid of all of them in a couple of months of careful work. Turning in for the night was stressful. Without any lights we only had a fire on a roof top with a few barricades to avoid any straggling zombies.

“Before it gets completely dark check the other buildings for chimney smoke. We can get an idea of where others are from that!” We look outside its hard to see with the dark skies but there are a few chimneys letting out smoke in the night. Good we arnt alone.

“I think… I think we are going to be okay.” Letting out a sigh of relief. This is fine honestly all things considered this could be a whole lot worse.