I’m In A World Infested By Zombies… But I Have Special Perks As A Formerly Isekai’d Person!

Chapter 17: Hoses and Manual Pumps

As he stepped out through the torn shutter, the outside air was cold and slightly damp.

Under the cloudy sky, the sun was barely visible.

Hayato took a deep breath and inhaled the fresh air free of dust.

The air since the zombies had spread and car traffic had ceased was probably clearer than three years ago. Compared to the other world Hayato had been in, it didn’t seem that bad.

“Alright, let’s go to the next place.”

Hayato had just finished his business at the car supplies store, but he decided to go to the next destination to look for tools to obtain gasoline.

To recover the gasoline from the underground tank, he needed a hose and a manual pump.

The car supplies store didn’t have a hose long enough to reach the underground tank.

But the home center probably had one.

—

Hoses can’t be eaten, after all.

It was very easy to tell what had been recovered and what was left.

Hayato took out his bicycle and got on it.

He briefly remembered the tent he had thrown into the car supplies store and pushed the bicycle forward.

As he stepped on the pedals, the bicycle moved forward with a strong pull.

There might be zombies in the blind spots of abandoned vehicles. Hayato steered clear of them and headed for the home center he remembered.

The movement by bicycle was quiet, but the outskirts of the city were no less quiet.

It was eerie, and the phrase “a city where people have died out” suddenly came to mind.

However, there were still survivors.

There was Yui, the evacuees from Kirigaoka North Middle School who had expelled Yui, Kirigaoka Agricultural High School with whom Hayato was trading, and the people with whom Kirigaoka Agricultural High School was trading, as mentioned by Oomori.

“The only ones left are the politicians.”

Hayato, as he pedaled his bicycle, imagined the Japanese politicians who were probably still alive and well.

He imagined that the evacuation sites were randomly chosen from the islands, such as Izu Oshima, Hachijo Island, and the Ogasawara Islands.

Water, food, and safety were essential, and safety meant not being bitten by zombies.

If one was bitten, it wouldn’t matter how convenient it was to have electricity and gas.

Thus, it was necessary to escape to a place where zombies couldn’t reach, and escaping to an island where zombies couldn’t swim to was a reasonable judgment.

—I wonder if newly-turned zombies can operate ship engines.

If a drunk human can operate it, a newly-turned zombie can too.

However, even if one zombie headed for the island, it wouldn’t be a problem as long as it was with the Self-Defense Forces.

“I guess there’s no point in thinking about it.”

Hayato couldn’t go to the island, and he had no intention of being used there.

Currently, he thought that a place on the mainland where he could obtain spring water would be good, but he had no idea where that might be.

As he was thinking about which prefecture was famous for its spring water, the home center came into view.

Hayato stopped his bicycle in front of the store and checked the entrance.

The shutter was half-broken, and several products had fallen, leaving traces of someone having intruded.

After looking around and confirming that there were no people or zombies in sight, Hayato headed for the broken shutter.

The store was dimly lit, and the floor was uneven due to the fallen shelves.

Hayato took out an oil lamp that was already lit from his space storage.

The warm light of the lamp illuminated the store, bringing the dim interior into view.

“Where are they?”

Hayato held up the lamp and looked around for the hoses and manual pumps he was looking for.

On the floor were lighting and other products that required electricity, which were of no value.

Instead, batteries and flashlights, which were useful, had disappeared from the display shelves.

Hayato proceeded from the entrance to the back of the store.

—I don’t come here often, after all.

Ordinary high school boys didn’t frequent home centers.

He had hardly ever been there, and he hadn’t been in the past three years, so he couldn’t possibly know where everything was.

However, he was sure that there wouldn’t be any large items at the store entrance. As he looked around the corner where various stationery items were lined up, he gradually made his way to the back of the store.

Where could the hoses and pumps be?

Some home centers had gardening corners outside, but unfortunately, there were no hoses outside.

Instead, there were useless electrical appliances, garbage cans, tables, and chairs, which required assembly.

Realizing that he had come the wrong way, Hayato turned around and headed in the opposite direction.

“This is like a horror movie.”

The dimly lit store, with not a sound to be heard, was eerie.

Since there were tables and shelves but no one blocking the entrance, there were probably no survivors.

However, that didn’t mean there were no zombies.

If there had been a fight between survivors and zombies inside the store, and the survivors had knocked over the shelves, pinning the zombies underneath, and then escaped, the pinned zombies might still be there, unable to get out.

If Hayato walked by without noticing and they grabbed his ankles… It was indeed a horror scenario.

Hayato arrived at the opposite side of the store, thinking how silly it was to scare himself with his own imagination.

There, he found the tool corner he was looking for.

There were several rolled-up hoses, and many fuel hoses were left.

Next to them were fuel-use hand piston pumps and pump parts.

The items spread out before him were like a treasure trove for Hayato in his current situation.

In the tool corner, there were several types of hoses and pumps.

The first hose he saw was a fuel hose, and there were many varieties, including pressure-resistant hoses and oil pressure hoses.

These were not the familiar water hoses but hoses suitable for transferring lubricating oil and mixed oil.

The pressure-resistant hoses were highly transparent, allowing the fuel inside the hose to be seen, according to the description.

“They all seem usable, but I need the right length.”

According to Kobayashi, the depth of the underground tank at the gas station was about three meters.

Considering the work on the ground, five meters were needed, and the guideline for having some leeway was seven meters.

Fortunately, the hoses were longer than seven meters, giving Hayato some options.

However, he didn’t know which one was the most suitable.

As a first step, he decided to secure all types in various lengths.

—It’s a good thing I left the tent behind.

There was plenty of space in the storage space.

Next, he looked at the pumps, and there were also several types left.

The types of pumps included manual, siphon, and electric, but the electric ones were obviously unusable, and he had heard that the siphon type was also no good.

Hayato was considering inserting the hose into the underground tank at the gas station.

He had been told that the siphon effect couldn’t be used to draw gasoline from a high position on the ground, so he had given up on the siphon type and decided to focus on the manual pump.

The manual type included hand pumps and piston pumps.

The hand pump was a pump that drew by manually moving the handle.

The one Hayato found was a type that was operated by turning a drum, and it seemed to be usable for gasoline, kerosene, light oil, and heavy oil.

The piston pump was a type that drew by moving the piston up and down.

It seemed to work by drawing up and pushing out the liquid by moving it up and down, like a bicycle pump.

Hayato had been taught that when recovering gasoline from a high position, the hand pump wouldn’t have enough suction power, and the piston type would be better.

“Is Kobayashi-sensei a science teacher or something?”

Or perhaps, since it was an agricultural high school, he had knowledge about large agricultural machinery and the heavy oil used to supply it.

There was plenty of space in the storage space, and both the hoses and pumps were recovered in multiples.

It was a natural arrangement for the store, but since the related parts were placed together, Hayato also recovered the pump parts to connect the hose and pump.

Hayato, who was being greedy, held up the lamp to see if there was anything else.

However, there were no gasoline cans, of course.

When draining gasoline from abandoned vehicles, a gasoline can was necessary.

Some of the pumps were also missing, so perhaps someone who knew what they were doing had already recovered them.

But the hoses longer than seven meters were too long to use to drain gasoline from cars. Hayato wondered if that was why so many were left.