Maybe Stories

By: Stone Shield

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto or Highschool of the Dead

"Normal Speech"
"Demonic Speech"
"Thought"

Prologue

It wasn't exactly the cleanest of homes. Quite the opposite actually. Books, scattered or stacked, littered the small apartment. Textbooks, dictionaries, travel guides, and bushels of others that had shared no correlations between them.

CRSH!

The sudden assault of sound, a combination of screeching metal and glass, tore him from his thoughts. The book that he'd been reading, tented on his face, sliding off to fall to the ground, and the small exercise with which he'd let himself become distracted, a pair of swirling orbs of water dancing in the air over his hands, dispelled with his lessened concentration. Blinking, he looked around his small apartment, doing the best he could to discern the sounds that'd woken him from his near-comatose level focus. And trying to convince himself that he wasn't hearing what he thought he was hearing. Idle water exercise forgotten, droplets were flung across the floor as he slid off the couch and to his feet. Reflexively, he dried his hand on his jeans as he stepped lightly to the window.

Noticing all the shuffling corpses and screaming living people scrambling about, really, only one thing came to mind. "Oh…well would you look at that." Fingernails reflexively scraping across the ridge of his nose, he turned from the window. Stepping back to the couch, he sighed before leaning down and picking up the book that'd splayed itself open-faced on the floor.

Oh damn…he'd bent the spine.

The old lady would never let him live that down. She positively lived for her books.

Just…staring…at the book for several more breaths, he finally made up his mind.

…Breakfast burrito it was.

(Five Minutes Later)

Munching along, he opened the door to his small room. No point in locking the door. It was the second floor over a bookstore, owned by a wrinkled old lady who'd let him have the floor in exchange for working in her bookstore for her. She lived in a small house about a few blocks down, but had the space available above the store. About a year or so back, when he'd first drifted into town, not a whit to his name, she'd taken upon her grizzled old self to beat the literature into him. His internal clock was telling him that it was at least 9am, so she would doubtless be downstairs in the shop already. Down the hall, he shuffled down the narrow wood steps that would bottom-out in the back of the shop.

Nose wrinkling, he only hesitated for a moment before descending further.

Then he heard that rasping. A horrid sound that had nothing to do with breathing. Foot stopping on the last step, he took a better read on his surroundings. A few boxes had shifted or been upended, but the storeroom was still much the same.

His fist whipped out like a viper…yet striking with all the strength of a steel beam.

Through the wall itself.

Having met squishy wetness, he withdrew the limb. Eyes reflecting sadness, he stepped the rest of the way down into the first floor. Circling around the wall that lined the stairs, he looked down at the pulverized form of the old lady. Only recognizable from the neck down, her head had been pulped.

He felt sad.

Not for what he'd done though.

His nose told him well enough that she'd been dead for some time now. At least since early this morning. Even if she'd been walking around just moments ago. Apparently about to jump him if he had to guess.

"Sorry, old granny," he breathed. "Thanks, for everything, but I think it's time for me to go," giving a polite bow to what remained of the woman who'd shown him kindness.

CR-EK

Craning his neck, he looked back through the cracked doorway to the main area of the store.

There'd been two others in the shop. Its doors wide open, they'd wandered in from the street. It'd only taken him a moment to clear them out of the shop, locking the door in the end before heading back upstairs.

Griping to himself he reentered him room. "A year," he growled. "That's it?" A year of wonderfully boring peace? That was all?

It was a curse. It had to be. No way anyone else had this much shit fall on them.

Still…it'd been a pretty good year. Sleeping in on Saturdays ruled.

Having seen the situation from ground-level, he'd rightly assessed that things were way too bad for the police. Yeah, he'd had enough time observing the local law enforcement to know that they wouldn't know shit about how to handle the walking dead. Probably why they weren't around. Shaking his head, he reminded himself of what needed to be done. Sulking, he padded into the adjacent bedroom.

Stopping at the closet, he slid the door open. It'd been a while since he'd put his things away. Reaching up to the top shelf, he reached around. Now where… Fingers brushed a coarse-materialed lump.

Bingo.

A dull scraping and he dragged out a sturdy pouch. All that remained of his original stock. Flipping it open, he took a new count on his supplies. "Yeah, it's all there," he mused. He'd gotten so used to the relative peace that he'd stopped carrying around all his essentials, only a few pieces that he could hide in his everyday clothes. A kunai or two up his sleeves, and some wire either on his wrist or in his pocket. "Still, might need some more." Yeah, that would be easy enough. Even if he could find a source for his dwindling weapons, the quality would likely be substandard in this "modern age". Clipping it closed again, he threw it onto the bed. Reaching back in, this time to the base of the closet, he drew out a heavily reinforced pack.

"Time to skip town," he muttered grimly to himself, letting some gallows humor slip through his lips. "First it's zombies…then the property values drop." Changing into some more…sturdy clothing, losing the shorts in favor of some jeans, the cheap kind that were made strong over comfort and style, he got ready. Errant thoughts of the last year had his mind considering something else though.

"I wonder how Saeko's doing?" The interesting girl he'd met while working for old lady Haruka. She'd come in for a book on samurai, and he'd been the one to dig the book up, all the while maintaining small conversation with the bokken carrying young lady. He had, in a way, a fair bit of knowledge about the samurai given past experience. She came in every now and again. Browsing and talking.

Had all this reached her yet? There was a high school only a few miles down the road. So he guessed that would be a good place to start.

Okay, as far as plans went that was absolute shit, but it was still a plan. Lips pursed, his decision was made.

Clothes…Weapon pouch, albeit running low…some bare necessities…

He couldn't spare much room, but he threw in a book he'd borrowed from the bookstore below on his trip back upstairs. A collection of current maps.

The lightness of the pouch on his hip though bothered him almost immediately… Before he went looking for Saeko he needed to make a stop.