[1028] Act II, Scene I
Because obviously I should be writing zombie fic instead of going to bed. A little short on action, though I hope it's more than adequate for tension. Also unbeta'd like all the rest because I'm still telling myself this is something I'll get over.
Original drabble by askerian
Act IAct II
Scene I, Sasuke
Scene I, Naruto
Scene II, Shikamaru
Scene II, Sasuke
Scene III, Neji
Scene III, Tenten
Scene IV, Tenten
Scene IV, Sakura
Scene V, Lee
Sasuke’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “There they are.”
Naruto squinted down the road. There, just rounding a bend, he could make out some familiar--and one unfamiliar--figures. Neji was there, on the shoulder, though he kept swiping at the left side of his head every couple seconds and then brushing his hand against his nasty baseball pants. Beside him was Lee, who apparently had decided to give Shikamaru a piggy-back ride.
And while Lee happened to be pretty damn happy-go-lucky, he didn’t run about hoisting people onto his back on a whim. Which meant Shikamaru needed to be carried. How long had Lee been carting him around? How did they end up with some girl in tow? And where the hell was Neji’s car?
All in all, Naruto decided, that meant some serious shit must’ve gone down at the school while they were busy chasing after Sakura. This wasn’t how Shikamaru’s plan was supposed to work--it was supposed to end with Neji driving everyone away. They’d only decided to come back to make sure no one was there waiting on them to come back.
Apparently waiting at the school wasn’t an option anymore anyway.
Naruto smothered the flicker of guilt he felt at that thought. He and Sasuke, they’d done what they thought was right, and they had found Sakura.
He turned his head slightly, just enough so he could see Sakura sitting in the back seat, behind Sasuke. She was still quiet, had been ever since they’d found her on the Sarutobis’ front porch. Still hanging on to that monster axe, the head of it in her lap and the rest slunk off onto the rest of a bench like a sleepy lioness.
It was creepy, how she’d run her fingers over it. If he wasn’t careful, he found himself doing the exact same thing to his baseball bat.
Sasuke slowed the car when they got close, and Naruto manually rolled down the window--it was an older car, too cheap to have automatics--and stuck his head out, making sure to pull his lips into a smile. “Need a ride?”
This close, he could see just what was wrong with Neji’s head. The older boy was sporting a nasty cut over his eyebrow and down to his temple. If the bleeding wasn’t bad enough, the skin was purpling all around it, and Naruto knew that the other boy would have a pretty wicked bruise come sundown.
“Yes.” If Neji had noticed his weak attempt at humor, he ignored it. “Shikamaru hurt his knee. And there are dozens of those creatures coming this way, from Fairfield.”
Naruto’s stomach turned at the thought. Especially when he remembered that that was where Shikamaru, Lee, and Raidon lived. They were supposed to be Neji’s last stop--
And Raidon wasn’t with them.
Naruto decided he didn’t really want to know the details on that one and tried not to tell himself it wasn’t his fault for not being there.
Lee stepped up beside Neji, ducking down to peer inside the car. “You found Sakura!” He sounded genuinely relieved, which made up for the pained expression on Shikamaru’s face. “Are you three all right?”
“We’re fine.” That was Sasuke, finally speaking up. He was frowning at the group outside. After a moment he shook his head. “Naruto, get in the back.”
“Hey, wait a minute!”
Sasuke glared at him. “The front has the most leg room, and you’re not injured.”
There wasn’t any way he could object to that, but Naruto still grumbled about it under his breath, because he wasn’t about to let Sasuke think he could just give him and order and he’d hop to. He pried open the car door and got out, taking his baseball bat with him.
Shikamaru muttered a thanks and, with Lee’s help, managed to slide into the passenger seat. He leaned back, stretching his right leg out in front of him. His face was pale, but he still took his bat from Lee before leaning back against the headrest and shutting his eyes.
Lee shut the passenger door, and it was then that Naruto realized they still had four people to fit into two empty back seats. “Er--”
The girl with the crowbar sighed. “There’s no time to worry about personal space.” She opened the back door and poked her head inside. “Hey, you’re Sakura, right?”
For a moment there was silence. Finally, Naruto heard Sakura stir, the handle of the axe scraping against the worn seat. “Yeah.”
There was a pause, and then the girl spoke again. “I’m Tenten.” Her voice was even, but there was a thread of caution woven in the words.
Naruto tried to see inside the car, but he couldn’t see Sakura’s face. Just her hand stroking the axe’s wooden handle.
“There’s four of us that need to get into the back seat,” Tenten continued. “Me and your friend here, and two other guys. The guys are bigger than us, so I figure it would be easier all around if the guys were on the bottom and we sat in their laps.”
Wisely, Naruto managed to not voice his enthusiastic support of that plan. But by the way Lee’s face reddened, he wasn’t the only one who was having similar thoughts.
“That’s fine.” The axe handle moved, and a second later the back left door opened as Sakura exited.
Before Naruto could graciously volunteer to be sat on, he was beaten to the punch. “Get in the middle, Naruto,” Neji said. “Lee, take the other side.”
“Why do I have to be in the middle?”
Neji gave him a pointed look. “You’re the shortest.”
By that point Lee was already at Sakura’s door, and Naruto decided that further argument was pointless. He did give Neji a glare before he got inside, though, for all the good it did him. The guy had an amazing poker face, or maybe he just lacked a sense of humor. They hadn’t interacted much, as they’d never been on the same baseball team and were in different grades. But Naruto had the impression that he’d probably be just as entertaining to mess with as Sasuke was.
The middle was never a comfortable seat, and less so with four other people around you and three baseball bats at your feet. Sakura for one didn’t seem to care that the butt of her axe was digging into his knee as Sasuke turned the car around and away from Fairfield.
Naruto was slightly appeased that Lee was sitting stiffly, clearly too anxious to really enjoy having a girl in his lap. On the edges of his vision, he saw Lee’s hands twitch, moving first as if to get a grip on Sakura’s waist, then to brace her legs. It wasn’t until they took a corner and Sakura started to slide--elbow in the face, not the kind of contact he wanted with her--that Lee finally made up his mind and clamped his hands on her hips to keep her in place. Neji and Tenten apparently didn’t care about their positioning.
“Where are you planning on going?” That was Shikamaru, and sounding like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t in any pain.
“National Forest.”
Lee frowned. “Why?”
Sasuke’s hands shifted on the steering wheel. “My brother left a message at home. He said to head into the forest and away from people for the next couple days. I’m supposed wait for him to call early Thursday morning.”
“Your brother sounds like he was unusually prepared,” Neji’s voice was flat, “for something no one could have expected.”
Sasuke’s knuckles went white on the wheel, but he said nothing. Neji reached up to wipe at some blood trickling down his temple.
“That’s not true,” Naruto found himself volunteering. “My dad used to have a zombie plan.”
“What?”
Everyone in the back seat was staring at him now, and Sasuke was even honoring him with a look via the rearview mirror. He felt his face start to heat up and tried to make his embarrassment with a grin. “He was a strange guy, that’s for sure.”
The resulting silence was finally broken when Shikamaru let out a short bark of laughter. “Chouji had one.” He paused. “Has one. I don’t know. But that’s what they are. Zombies. Shit.”
“What was his plan?”
Sakura’s voice startled him. Naruto looked at her and was surprised to see that her eyes were no longer dull. She leaned forward, reaching out to grab the back of Sasuke’s headrest to stabilize herself.
Shikamaru twisted in his seat as much as his hurt knee would allow so he could address her directly. “I don’t know about the specifics. The gist was to hole up somewhere safe, with supplies, until the military had gotten everything under control.” His lips twitched in something not quite a smile. “Because if they couldn’t get things under control in a few days, everyone still caught out in the middle of it was pretty much screwed.”
That wasn’t exactly what Naruto wanted to hear right now. Sakura leaned back against Lee’s chest and resumed stroking the handle of her axe.
“I think that first part sounds like a good plan.” Tenten spoke up from Neji’s lap. “On the way over to the school, we heard the Emergency Alert System--”
“We heard the announcement,” Sasuke said. “I’m going to do what Itachi told me to do.”
Naruto knew that tone. That was his I’m-going-to-be-a-bastard-screw-you tone.
“What makes you think your brother knows better--” Neji pressed the heel of his hand against the side of his head “--than the federal government?”
“My brother’s not the one that’s still sitting on his ass.” Sasuke took the s-curve a bit too fast, and Naruto found Sakura’s elbow in his face again.
“And what has he done, exactly?”
“Neji!”
But the older boy ignored the girl in his lap, even as she twisted around and kicked Naruto in the shins to see his face. “If you hadn’t noticed by now--” He shook his head and tried again. “Running hasn’t done us any good. Died, you know who we--how many we lost on the way.”
“And how well did staying put work for you at the school?”
In the front seat, Shikamaru flinched.
“That,” Lee said very quietly, “is not fair.”
The silence that settled over them was stifling. He itched to say something. Anything to make Sasuke listen, to make Neji let go of his suspicion, to make Sakura stop petting the damn axe like it was a cat.
“Stop. Stop the car.”
Naruto looked over to Neji. His face was pale and a fine beading of sweat graced his upper lip.
“Neji? Are you okay?” Tenten had noticed, too. She twisted more, reaching up to press her fingertips against his oozing head wound.
He didn’t answer, just shook his head and pressed a hand to his mouth. His face was rapidly going from pale to corpse-like.
Naruto turned back toward the front; his eyes met Sasuke’s in the rear-view mirror. For a second, he thought he saw a flicker of fear in those dark eyes.
Then Sasuke was hitting the breaks and pulling over onto the shoulder.
Tenten had the door halfway open before the car was in a complete stop. She launched herself out of the vehicle--with her crowbar still in one hand--and spun around to face them.
Neji flung himself after her like a desperate man. She stepped out of his way easily.
He took a few drunken steps, the gravel crunching beneath his shoes. Then he fell to his knees and very messily started puking up his guts.
Naruto’s stomach curdled at the sight, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away. “Shit.”
No one disagreed.
Comments, keyboard smashing, constructive criticism, etc. are all welcome. Hope you enjoy! ♥
Act II, Scene II with Sasuke
Original drabble by askerian
Act IAct II
Scene I, Sasuke
Scene I, Naruto
Scene II, Shikamaru
Scene II, Sasuke
Scene III, Neji
Scene III, Tenten
Scene IV, Tenten
Scene IV, Sakura
Scene V, Lee
Sasuke’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “There they are.”
Naruto squinted down the road. There, just rounding a bend, he could make out some familiar--and one unfamiliar--figures. Neji was there, on the shoulder, though he kept swiping at the left side of his head every couple seconds and then brushing his hand against his nasty baseball pants. Beside him was Lee, who apparently had decided to give Shikamaru a piggy-back ride.
And while Lee happened to be pretty damn happy-go-lucky, he didn’t run about hoisting people onto his back on a whim. Which meant Shikamaru needed to be carried. How long had Lee been carting him around? How did they end up with some girl in tow? And where the hell was Neji’s car?
All in all, Naruto decided, that meant some serious shit must’ve gone down at the school while they were busy chasing after Sakura. This wasn’t how Shikamaru’s plan was supposed to work--it was supposed to end with Neji driving everyone away. They’d only decided to come back to make sure no one was there waiting on them to come back.
Apparently waiting at the school wasn’t an option anymore anyway.
Naruto smothered the flicker of guilt he felt at that thought. He and Sasuke, they’d done what they thought was right, and they had found Sakura.
He turned his head slightly, just enough so he could see Sakura sitting in the back seat, behind Sasuke. She was still quiet, had been ever since they’d found her on the Sarutobis’ front porch. Still hanging on to that monster axe, the head of it in her lap and the rest slunk off onto the rest of a bench like a sleepy lioness.
It was creepy, how she’d run her fingers over it. If he wasn’t careful, he found himself doing the exact same thing to his baseball bat.
Sasuke slowed the car when they got close, and Naruto manually rolled down the window--it was an older car, too cheap to have automatics--and stuck his head out, making sure to pull his lips into a smile. “Need a ride?”
This close, he could see just what was wrong with Neji’s head. The older boy was sporting a nasty cut over his eyebrow and down to his temple. If the bleeding wasn’t bad enough, the skin was purpling all around it, and Naruto knew that the other boy would have a pretty wicked bruise come sundown.
“Yes.” If Neji had noticed his weak attempt at humor, he ignored it. “Shikamaru hurt his knee. And there are dozens of those creatures coming this way, from Fairfield.”
Naruto’s stomach turned at the thought. Especially when he remembered that that was where Shikamaru, Lee, and Raidon lived. They were supposed to be Neji’s last stop--
And Raidon wasn’t with them.
Naruto decided he didn’t really want to know the details on that one and tried not to tell himself it wasn’t his fault for not being there.
Lee stepped up beside Neji, ducking down to peer inside the car. “You found Sakura!” He sounded genuinely relieved, which made up for the pained expression on Shikamaru’s face. “Are you three all right?”
“We’re fine.” That was Sasuke, finally speaking up. He was frowning at the group outside. After a moment he shook his head. “Naruto, get in the back.”
“Hey, wait a minute!”
Sasuke glared at him. “The front has the most leg room, and you’re not injured.”
There wasn’t any way he could object to that, but Naruto still grumbled about it under his breath, because he wasn’t about to let Sasuke think he could just give him and order and he’d hop to. He pried open the car door and got out, taking his baseball bat with him.
Shikamaru muttered a thanks and, with Lee’s help, managed to slide into the passenger seat. He leaned back, stretching his right leg out in front of him. His face was pale, but he still took his bat from Lee before leaning back against the headrest and shutting his eyes.
Lee shut the passenger door, and it was then that Naruto realized they still had four people to fit into two empty back seats. “Er--”
The girl with the crowbar sighed. “There’s no time to worry about personal space.” She opened the back door and poked her head inside. “Hey, you’re Sakura, right?”
For a moment there was silence. Finally, Naruto heard Sakura stir, the handle of the axe scraping against the worn seat. “Yeah.”
There was a pause, and then the girl spoke again. “I’m Tenten.” Her voice was even, but there was a thread of caution woven in the words.
Naruto tried to see inside the car, but he couldn’t see Sakura’s face. Just her hand stroking the axe’s wooden handle.
“There’s four of us that need to get into the back seat,” Tenten continued. “Me and your friend here, and two other guys. The guys are bigger than us, so I figure it would be easier all around if the guys were on the bottom and we sat in their laps.”
Wisely, Naruto managed to not voice his enthusiastic support of that plan. But by the way Lee’s face reddened, he wasn’t the only one who was having similar thoughts.
“That’s fine.” The axe handle moved, and a second later the back left door opened as Sakura exited.
Before Naruto could graciously volunteer to be sat on, he was beaten to the punch. “Get in the middle, Naruto,” Neji said. “Lee, take the other side.”
“Why do I have to be in the middle?”
Neji gave him a pointed look. “You’re the shortest.”
By that point Lee was already at Sakura’s door, and Naruto decided that further argument was pointless. He did give Neji a glare before he got inside, though, for all the good it did him. The guy had an amazing poker face, or maybe he just lacked a sense of humor. They hadn’t interacted much, as they’d never been on the same baseball team and were in different grades. But Naruto had the impression that he’d probably be just as entertaining to mess with as Sasuke was.
The middle was never a comfortable seat, and less so with four other people around you and three baseball bats at your feet. Sakura for one didn’t seem to care that the butt of her axe was digging into his knee as Sasuke turned the car around and away from Fairfield.
Naruto was slightly appeased that Lee was sitting stiffly, clearly too anxious to really enjoy having a girl in his lap. On the edges of his vision, he saw Lee’s hands twitch, moving first as if to get a grip on Sakura’s waist, then to brace her legs. It wasn’t until they took a corner and Sakura started to slide--elbow in the face, not the kind of contact he wanted with her--that Lee finally made up his mind and clamped his hands on her hips to keep her in place. Neji and Tenten apparently didn’t care about their positioning.
“Where are you planning on going?” That was Shikamaru, and sounding like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t in any pain.
“National Forest.”
Lee frowned. “Why?”
Sasuke’s hands shifted on the steering wheel. “My brother left a message at home. He said to head into the forest and away from people for the next couple days. I’m supposed wait for him to call early Thursday morning.”
“Your brother sounds like he was unusually prepared,” Neji’s voice was flat, “for something no one could have expected.”
Sasuke’s knuckles went white on the wheel, but he said nothing. Neji reached up to wipe at some blood trickling down his temple.
“That’s not true,” Naruto found himself volunteering. “My dad used to have a zombie plan.”
“What?”
Everyone in the back seat was staring at him now, and Sasuke was even honoring him with a look via the rearview mirror. He felt his face start to heat up and tried to make his embarrassment with a grin. “He was a strange guy, that’s for sure.”
The resulting silence was finally broken when Shikamaru let out a short bark of laughter. “Chouji had one.” He paused. “Has one. I don’t know. But that’s what they are. Zombies. Shit.”
“What was his plan?”
Sakura’s voice startled him. Naruto looked at her and was surprised to see that her eyes were no longer dull. She leaned forward, reaching out to grab the back of Sasuke’s headrest to stabilize herself.
Shikamaru twisted in his seat as much as his hurt knee would allow so he could address her directly. “I don’t know about the specifics. The gist was to hole up somewhere safe, with supplies, until the military had gotten everything under control.” His lips twitched in something not quite a smile. “Because if they couldn’t get things under control in a few days, everyone still caught out in the middle of it was pretty much screwed.”
That wasn’t exactly what Naruto wanted to hear right now. Sakura leaned back against Lee’s chest and resumed stroking the handle of her axe.
“I think that first part sounds like a good plan.” Tenten spoke up from Neji’s lap. “On the way over to the school, we heard the Emergency Alert System--”
“We heard the announcement,” Sasuke said. “I’m going to do what Itachi told me to do.”
Naruto knew that tone. That was his I’m-going-to-be-a-bastard-screw-you tone.
“What makes you think your brother knows better--” Neji pressed the heel of his hand against the side of his head “--than the federal government?”
“My brother’s not the one that’s still sitting on his ass.” Sasuke took the s-curve a bit too fast, and Naruto found Sakura’s elbow in his face again.
“And what has he done, exactly?”
“Neji!”
But the older boy ignored the girl in his lap, even as she twisted around and kicked Naruto in the shins to see his face. “If you hadn’t noticed by now--” He shook his head and tried again. “Running hasn’t done us any good. Died, you know who we--how many we lost on the way.”
“And how well did staying put work for you at the school?”
In the front seat, Shikamaru flinched.
“That,” Lee said very quietly, “is not fair.”
The silence that settled over them was stifling. He itched to say something. Anything to make Sasuke listen, to make Neji let go of his suspicion, to make Sakura stop petting the damn axe like it was a cat.
“Stop. Stop the car.”
Naruto looked over to Neji. His face was pale and a fine beading of sweat graced his upper lip.
“Neji? Are you okay?” Tenten had noticed, too. She twisted more, reaching up to press her fingertips against his oozing head wound.
He didn’t answer, just shook his head and pressed a hand to his mouth. His face was rapidly going from pale to corpse-like.
Naruto turned back toward the front; his eyes met Sasuke’s in the rear-view mirror. For a second, he thought he saw a flicker of fear in those dark eyes.
Then Sasuke was hitting the breaks and pulling over onto the shoulder.
Tenten had the door halfway open before the car was in a complete stop. She launched herself out of the vehicle--with her crowbar still in one hand--and spun around to face them.
Neji flung himself after her like a desperate man. She stepped out of his way easily.
He took a few drunken steps, the gravel crunching beneath his shoes. Then he fell to his knees and very messily started puking up his guts.
Naruto’s stomach curdled at the sight, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away. “Shit.”
No one disagreed.
Comments, keyboard smashing, constructive criticism, etc. are all welcome. Hope you enjoy! ♥
Act II, Scene II with Sasuke