How to live (2)

Since the ages of old, there have been tales of dogs, rats, fishes, birds, and snakes predicting terrible disasters such as an earthquake. Stories such as hearing howling all night, days before even an earthquake occurs, has spread throughout the whole world.

It is unknown how these animals do it and how they even know what to do with the warning that they pick up in the first place, but they do, and humanity still doesn't know how such a phenomenon could actually happen.

In a lot of these cases, the aforementioned animals leave their homes and migrate to another, safer location. Modern studies in fact do back up these claims, saying that dogs can predict up to 3 weeks of time before an earthquake even happens, way before humans can.

How they do it, we don't know, but Rando thinks that his dog can do the same and he feels as if his dog is warning him against a certain danger.

The golden retriever's brown eyes stared intently at Rando and continuously barked at him from a distance. It didn't growl nor did it show any signs of aggression, but instead only kept barking at Rando from far away, seemingly telling him that there is something wrong about him.

Suddenly, memories flashed by his mind.

"-be clear, the virus is very deadly. If you are infected, it is very likely that you'll"

*static*

Images of his brown radio on top of his table flashed in Rando's eyes.

"A few months. During th-"

*static*

Rando looked at his radio.

"-e request everyone to stay in their houses in order to avoi-"

*static static*

Alarms are going off in Rando's mind. Something feels off about him.

"-be safe."

That was when he thought that maybe, just maybe,

"Shit, am I infected?"

The scenes from before he entered his apartment began to play backwards in Rando's head. From when he was running across the street to arrive at his apartment building, to when he was finding his way through the broken and dilapidated buildings—even jumping and climbing over walls. From when he found a way to escape the slime collector and to when he was still devising a plan to deal with the existence.

Another scene flashed through Rando's mind.

"-has been reported throughout Davao City about the appearances of the strange zombie-like creatures that likes to-

*static*

-confirmed that a bite will slowly kill a-

*static*

-within two days of infection, the infected will show the following sig-

*static*

-is the last transmission, I hope you survive."

It was the last transmission before the station completely died, only delivering static and nothing else afterwards.

Thoughts became pieces and the pieces formed a puzzle.

"First, the radio said it was some sort of zombie-like creature that can kill with a bite. That thing did not in any way look like a zombie!"

It wasn't as Rando imagined. He thought it was bad enough already that a war occurred, killing almost everyone he knew. And then he hears about a deadly virus that apparently makes whoever were in contact with it either die or become a zombie. But what was worse is,

"Those creatures don't look like zombies at all!"

That was why Rando wasn't confident that he could kill the slime existence with just an axe.

"Good thing I hadn't thrown my axe the moment I saw it, I don't even know what it's weakness was at the time."

Rando thought about things differently.

One, the existence that chased after him looked like a slime from a video game, just in blood red color with a lot of body parts sticking out of it.

Two, the eyes of the existence slid through the blood. That scared Rando immediately, triggering his "RUN!" reflex.

Three, just like the eyes, the arms and the legs could probably slide down the slime's body and capture Rando the moment he goes near.

Fourth, he wasn't bitten.

"Fuck, does this mean that that thing was different?"

It meant that there must be a few more types of existences.

"That must be just one of them. How did it get those body parts sticking on its body? Damn it, it must have already killed people and collected their body parts... there were five heads... Damn it."

When Rando was staring at the slime existence earlier, back when he was still in the janitor's closet of the convenience store that he was in, he saw five broken—and almost destroyed to bits—heads.

It certainly wasn't a body from the war as the dead people from back then had already been buried long ago.

"It must have killed them and stuck their body parts to himself. Why did it do that? Does it need those for food? Or is it just collecting them?"

As Rando still hasn't seen what the existences that bite people look like, and as that slime existence didn't bite him, then he must have been infected some other way.

"What the fuck did it do that it managed to infect me?"

He grew frustrated.

The air felt chilly.

"It's col--wait, was that it?"

The big hole in his shirt and his tattered jacket, his left foot that is now barefoot because his shoe was taken away, and his enlightened face combined made Rando realize how he was infected.

"Shit, the disease can travel by air as long as it's close enough."

Rando grew angrier and angrier after every moment that passed by.

Thoughts became pieces, and the pieces became puzzles.

The solution showed the answer.

"The disease is in the blood, and the body parts are sticking outside that creature, that means all of the arms and legs are covered with the disease. That must be why it collects those body parts and how it kills people, by either ripping them apart with those strong as claws nails or with the disease that comes along with them."

Rando is sure now.

"That creature was not the zombie-like existence that the radio was talking about. The radio said a bite will slowly kill a person, but that thing didn't bite me. It seemed like it just wanted me to be part of his collection."

That was the first ever existence that Rando has ever encountered in his life, yet he has already gotten a whole lot of information out of it.

He has already made a mental note of what he saw.

'Those Collectors are dangerous, it can probably attach as many body parts as it can to it's slimy body.'

Rando also remembered how the slime collector was trying to run with the feet that were attached to the bottom of its body and how it tried to climb the window with its arms.

"The collectors can use the body parts in similar ways that humans can, it even tried to climb. But it looks like it didn't know how to climb. That can be a weakness. But that is if it can't learn how to use the arms more effectively."

'I hope they won't learn that though, I hope they don't learn anything at all.'

For a person who just saw an existence that almost killed him if it wasn't for luck, Rando was surprisingly able to handle the present and pressing situation calmly, as if he was used to strange things. He even started thinking about the existences' strengths and weaknesses, and also came up with the term collector.

It may be because he used to be part of the army, or maybe because of the many films and games that he used to watch and play before the war. Either way, it was good that he has maintained an open mind about what is currently happening.

That kind of mindset will be very very useful in the very near future.

But for now, there was one more problem.

"Am I infected? Can my dog sense if a person has contracted the disease? How do I even cure this?"

As he was thinking, a bark suddenly sounded out in the background.

"Woof! Woof!"

Rando immediately looked at his dog.

The golden fur of his dog's face drooped down. It's nose almost hitting the ground.

The dog was pointing at something.

Rando looked down to where his dog was pointing, and he found a box.

It was a box of soap.

There were traces of bite marks from one side.

Rando didn't notice, but when he was still trying to make sense of the fight just now and how he was infected with the disease, his dog left the living room, came back while biting a box of soap, before putting it on the ground.

"Is my dog telling me to use the soap?"