Episode 43 Country Elevator

The engine of the newly acquired vehicle hummed softly.

It felt quieter than the previous vehicle—perhaps a sign of better storage conditions.

"Um, Mid-span Country Elevator."

Hayato entered the destination into the Car Navigation System. The map displayed the location.

Pressing start navigation initiated guidance. The vehicle moved forward smoothly.

Even on unfamiliar terrain, the Car Navigation System allowed travel to any desired location.

The vehicle’s map data functioned offline. As long as the artificial satellites were operational, the car’s GPS received signals from the satellites and determined position.

The satellites operated by converting sunlight into electrical energy while in orbit.

Multiple satellites were in use, not just one.

"Keep it up, government—your tax money’s worth!"

Hayato spoke the government version of "Fight on, Japan," the one he had heard as a child.

Of course, Hayato intended to fight on himself. He had been taught by the government: "self-help, mutual help, public help." Self-help came first.

After sending a warm message of support to the government, Hayato drove the vehicle toward his destination.

Inside Chukann City, broken storefronts and homes with shattered windows stood out.

Citizens searched for food and supplies. The New Order Coalition sought women. Zombies sought people to destroy.

A three-way stalemate, like rock-paper-scissors—but the zombies held overwhelming advantage.

They had nothing to lose. Bite and win. Hide and strike without warning. Some had weapons and intelligence. Some could run.

If difficulty levels were easy, normal, hard, very hard, nightmare, which one matched the current state of Earth?

For an ordinary person, gathering supplies would be nightmare.

For the New Order Coalition, it would be very hard—stealing from ordinary people.

From Hayato’s perspective, it was barely hard—somewhere between normal and hard. Not normal, because even newly turned zombies could fire guns.

—Seed Island was easy.

Occasionally, cars abandoned by the roadside caught his eye.

Perhaps they had fled from food-scarce urban zones to farmland in the countryside.

As Hayato turned the corner at an intersection, he caught movement at the edge of his vision.

Glancing toward the passenger side, he saw several zombies approaching from the roadside.

The zombies reached out, hands extended, fingers twitching.

“Sorry, changing.”

Changing would not matter—his opponent was likely a zombie.

Hayato pressed the accelerator and fled from the daylight street corner, escaping the open solicitation.

The zombie appeared in the rearview mirror, but was left behind by the vehicle’s speed, eventually shrinking and vanishing.

As the car progressed, it entered a route through the residential district.

Gradually, rural scenery spread out.

The street vendors concentrated in crowded areas; few were present here.

Soon, the destination, the Country Elevator, came into view.

The objective this time was not evasion from zombies, but acquiring rice.

“Final destination is roughly Nagano Prefecture, Yamanashi Prefecture, Shizuoka Prefecture, Mie Prefecture….”

Hayato thought he would prefer a region without extreme heat or cold if he settled permanently.

There, he would establish a base near a drinkable spring, plant crops, stabilize food supply, and attempt a slow life.

The vehicle for transport, the firearms for Yui and Natsuki’s self-defense, and seeds for crops had all been secured.

Only need to move forward while replenishing supplies and acquiring fruit saplings.

The item desired for replenishment is rice.

"Japanese people, rice, that’s the thing."

If able to eat rice, one would want to eat it.

Hayato was raised as a Japanese person, having eaten rice since childhood.

Rice was highly likely to be found in the Country Elevator.

The source of this information was Natsuki, formerly a high school student in agriculture.

"Country Elevator begins accepting pine nuts around the time of the Obon festival. Prices aren’t set yet, but farmers without dryers have no choice but to deliver."

"Why is that?"

"Rapid drying causes surface dehydration to progress too quickly. The moisture difference between the surface and core leads to splitting. Splitting reduces market value and causes complaints, so dryers are necessary."

"Huh."

"Drying temperature is around forty-five to fifty degrees."

"That’s impossible under natural conditions."

Without a cedar dryer, farmers could only gather their rice at the country elevator after harvest.

"Inspection fees are about one hundred yen per koku in private markets, but the agricultural cooperative charges six hundred fifty yen, plus storage and transport fees totaling around two thousand yen. If you sell at ten thousand yen per koku, they take twenty percent."

"...Huh?"

"Machine costs, fertilizer, fuel—everything adds up. Farmers are always in the red."

Natsuki spoke as if recounting the old complaints of Edo-period farmers, forced to surrender their harvest to corrupt tax collectors.

The rice warehouse, filled with rice gathered from farmers, resembled a country elevator.

With that thought, Hayato drove forward, hoping the tax official might be hoarding mountains of rice.

After some time, a massive structure came into view at the center of the rice fields.

The facility consisted of pine cone unloading hoppers, rough sorters, dryers, silos, and other equipment arranged in sequence.

Among them, the most prominent was the largest silo. It stood taller than a five-story building, with multiple tanks aligned side by side.

"Considerable size."

One silo alone was as large as the dragon Hayato had once defeated with a unit.

The silo bore a depiction of a rice 'soft character.'

A smiling figure of rice holding a bowl and chopsticks evoked a subtle dissonance in Hayato.

— Smiling while preparing to consume me?

It resembled a kind of anpan-like alien, yet the soft character was not a face but the entire body of a single grain of rice. Exchanging only the face seemed impossible.

Would another grain appear after it was destroyed?

Hayato advanced toward the parking lot, thoughts still lingering on the absurdity of it all. He stopped the vehicle and slid it into the storage space.

He had had enough of being destroyed. Truly enough.

"Ah, the shutter is thoroughly ruined."

The shutter of the warehouse ahead—presumably the loading bay of the Country Elevator—was completely shattered.

It looked as though a large truck had backed into it, or a shovel from a loader had rammed it forcefully.

Stepping through the broken shutter, he found a space larger than a school gymnasium, empty and clean.

One after another, he pulled out lamps, placing each at his feet as he illuminated the interior.

From the ceiling, massive pipes extended downward.

The pipe opening had a rice sack positioned to receive polished rice flowing after the hulling process.

Along the wall, rice sacks for thirty-kilogram shipments were stacked in piles of thousands. Additional sacks for smaller quantities—ten-kilogram and five-kilogram—were present in dozens.

Beside them, a forklift for moving rice sacks stood in place.

Brown rice grains scattered across the floor, likely spilled during removal. This confirmed the space had served as a shipping warehouse.

Yet the polished rice that had been stacked inside the warehouse had been completely removed.

The piping system was complex, entangled, and no clear section indicated the location of the rice tank.

At the very least, breaking the pipe opening did not appear to result in rice falling out.

"Recovery of the rice stored in the shipping warehouse was expected."

A place unfamiliar to most, yet farmers knew where the rice was stored.

Using working trucks and heavy machinery to ram the shutters, recovering the brown rice, and distributing it among themselves and nearby communities was entirely plausible.

After all, it had originally been their own rice.

With that rice, national reserve stocks, and emergency food supplies, civilization had lasted about one year after collapse.

— One year’s worth could be covered by newly harvested rice.

Since last autumn, when fresh rice became unavailable, they had only been consuming stockpiles.

Now, genuine food shortages would become severe.

Yet Hayato was now certain that Tanegashima was safe.

Hayato began walking through the country elevator.

The pipes stretching inside the facility were far too numerous.

He could not understand why they had to be so long and complex.

"Not because construction workers wanted to profit, surely."

The floor plating was designed like grates set into gutters, leaving no room for debris.

He walked across it with a light, clattering step.

The facility was not fully sealed. Windows allowed faint daylight to enter.

He passed through the space lined with large machinery and pipes, guided by that dim light and the glow of lamps.

Occasionally, he pressed switches. Nothing responded.

Suddenly, a part of a rice-hulling machine worth who knew how many millions of yen caught his eye.

The machine was enclosed in transparent acrylic panels. Shards of broken panel lay scattered beneath his feet. Peering inside, he saw rice husks packed into the gaps.

"Collected as far as this, then."

Hayato extended his toes and leaned in to look deeper.

The husks were wedged into the machinery's crevices. He could not reach them with his fingers.

Could he recover a few grains by jamming in cellophane tape?

The thoroughness of the collection effort revealed the severity of food shortages in Chukann City.

A pipe ran across the top of the rice huller, carrying the grains not from above but from the side.

If any section failed, the grains would not pour down in large quantities. Breaking the pipe would yield little grain.

A design built for safety and reliability.

— Such careful work.

Hayato lowered his shoulders and moved forward.

He climbed the stairs, passed through a maze of unfamiliar machinery, and entered a facility too vast for comfort.

He had entered from the shipping warehouse, but had bypassed the rice huller, grain separator, stone remover, and color sorter.

At last, Hayato reached the silo where the grains were stored.

— Even with grizzly strength, this iron storage tank won’t break.

Hayato glanced at the silo with a resentful expression.

On the upper third floor, numbers labeled with letters and digits—D3, for example—were marked. Below each number, a small acrylic viewing window was installed, likely for visual inspection of the pine cone storage status.

Hayato peered through the acrylic panel. The silo was packed full of pine cones.