- Chapter 05 -

It's Late

Even if the light slipping through the filtered glass was little, it was enough to wake up Sakura. She had to admit it was the best sleep she had gotten ever since all of this had begun, yet her muscles felt tight and her body numb. It seemed like the whole psychological stress had finally gotten into her.

Konohamaru shifted besides her as if he had sensed her awakening from her slumber. He blinked a few times before feeling around. The moment he noticed Sakura, he jolted up and made a reach for his gun. Sakura's breath hitched in her throat and rose her hands besides her head; the boy relaxed when his eyes cleared out and saw that it was the friendly stranger.

"Hey, Konohamaru."

"Sorry," the boy mumbled and pulled the coat closer to him, burying his face in it as he did so.

Neither of them moved as the teenager tried to calm down himself, his hectic breathing coating Sakura's erratic heartbeat. The streams of sunlight that fell in the vehicle were calming. Sakura embraced their warmth and closed her eyes as she did so, her hands tracing her face as if she was bathing with them.

"You okay?"

Konohamaru rose his head from his previous position and nodded. He rubbed his tired eyes and peeked through the pieces of fabric that were hiding them from the view of the parking lot.

"It's clear. Shall we move out?"

Sakura eyed the space out of the sealed windows in the same way he did and nodded, "Quick, before they get back. I'll be waiting for you in the car. It's a red one."

She hopped off the car and let the sun fully bathe her with its heavenly light. Letting her eyes trace on the scenery, she concluded that it would be a pretty sight to look at if she wasn't holding a gun and the limping corpse in front of her wasn't growling lowly. Checking left and right for any other living corpses, she grabbed the gun from its cane and made her way around  it. 

It was slow; slow enough for her to hit it from behind and kick its skull open when it fell down. Sakura let her eyes wander on it before realizing how dehydrated she was. She made a mental note to drink later from the packed water she had found the previous day.

'It won't hurt to search for some more food.'

Sakura moved back into her car that seemed unscathed from the horde that had passed by the previous night and searched through her little belongings. She made a grab for her trusty kitchen knife, not failing to notice her communication device still sitting in the pouch the way she had left it.

The girl bit down her lip; would Sasuke reply this time? She didn't wait to find out.

Her shaky fingers pressed the green button. "Sasuke?"

Static filled the air but she didn't give up. She tried seven more times, yet no answer was received. 

Sakura didn't let the feeling of dread overcome her again, she shouldn't let it conquer her senses. She let the device fall roughly on the back seats and closed the door carefully, not letting herself slam it close out of frustration and disappointment. Instead, she focused on her task at hand which was to search for supplies. 

She made a run for the nearest car, an old vehicle with an open trunk. A rope was hanging out of it and she grabbed it, deciding that it could prove to be useful later on. As she moved to the front, her hands paused on the handle of the backseats. A particularly nasty-looking lurker was sitting in the car, its hands scratching on the closed window as it desperately tried to grab on the prey in front of it but to no avail, as it was held back by the seat belt.

Sakura sighed and moved to the next car. Thankfully, it was clear of any living dead and she was able to open the front seat, only to pull the trunk lever down. The trunk opened with a 'clunk' and she moved to the back. Her eyes were darting continuously back and forth, left and right and her senses were all heightened. She had to admit that she was scared to come face-to-face with the horde. 

"Holy hell."

The trunk was packed with a portable fridge and she wasted no time in opening it. The odor of rotten cheese hit her nose immediately and she tried to ignore it as she rummaged through it. Most things were rotten but she managed to find a bag of chips, a half-empty bottle of water and a can of juice. She felt a wave of relief washing over her and she opened the bag of chips, shoving some in her mouth.

The woman hadn't felt this euphoria in a long time, her stomach which had stopped rumbling long ago now taking in the food. She kept the other half of the bag for Konohamaru. 

She was about to scavenge from a few more cars before someone whistled from behind her. Konohamaru was besides the passenger's seat of her car, waving at her and pointing behind him. It seemed like the horde was coming for another run in the parking lot.

Gathering the few supplies in her hands, she made a run for the car. Sakura dropped the items in the back seats and hopped in as Konohamaru was tightening his seat belt. And like that, they were off.

Sakura panted even-so-lightly and smiled momentarily as she fixed the rear view mirror. The horde was getting smaller and smaller until they eventually lost sight of them once they took the turn for the main road.

"That was intense."

"Yeah, well . . ." Konohamaru trailed off as he let his eyes fall on the scenery they were passing by. "Haven't been this close to them before."

Sakura rose an eyebrow. "So you've never fought off one?"

A negative shake of the head.

Sakura focused on the road in front of her and didn't utter a word. She was glad the teenage boy wasn't forced to face such a traumatic experience but she knew that sooner or later, he would have to kill.

Kill.

The car slowed down and Konohamaru snapped out of his trance, only to shoot Sakura with a questioning look. The female was rummaging through the dusted CD collection of the car and she managed to fish out one that caught her fancy.

"Woah, well . . . Rock music? That person had some taste."

She took out the disk and inserted it in the radio panel. With a few hits to the side, the CD started playing.

"Oh, Iggy Pop!"

"Are you actually that old?"

Sakura gasped pretentiously, causing Konohamaru to chuckle. "Prepare to start calling me Sakura-senpai from now on."

"No way!"

  。。。＊ 。。。＊。。。＊。。。 

When he woke up, it was dark outside. He tried blinking a few times and he blindly patted the room around his laying body. He pulled his hand back when it made contact with the hard plastic.

21:36.

Sasuke let the battery-powered clock back where he presumed he had taken it from and rolled to his side. He was incredibly frustrated to the point he had fallen asleep in the morning and as it seemed, he had just woken up.

'Never again,' he voiced in his head as he sat up on the twin-size mattress. His bones rattled and he bit the inside of his cheek in order not to scream. 

It had been three days. Three days since he had last heard from Sakura. Three days since he had stopped waking up and decided to rely on his depression naps. He hadn't formed a special bond with the girl but deep inside, he wanted, needed, someone by his side. A friend, an acquaintance, a comrade. 

The man huffed and stood up, grabbing on the nearest furniture to his mattress. He shouldn't be asking the universe for someone in this kind of situation, where corpses were reanimated and tomorrow didn't exist for all. 

"No one's given a second chance in this goddamn world," Sasuke seethed under his breath, as if fearing someone would hear him.

But truth was that he was all alone in this big house. 

He slumped back on his makeshift bed and grabbed his walkie talkie. "Sakura?"

He waited. One. Two minutes passed. No response.

"It's lonely in here. I was really hoping you'd come. So I wouldn't be so - " Alone.

Sasuke's fingers twitched. "I don't know about you but I had a family. Father, mother, older brother. It was pretty nice here. I always failed to see that. Wish I had appreciated that more when they . . . we were a family."

Sasuke felt his eyes burning, burning with all the hatred and the pain, upon recalling those images that haunted him. Their holy ghosts were in him, touching his soul and hugging him when he was most cold. And at that moment, he didn't know if it would have been better for him to die at the spot. He wished that if he died, they would come back because they deserved a spot on Earth, in their little farm and their once normal life.

And he was just a bug that needed to be squashed.

God loves you, Sasuke. No, he doesn't.

There is no such thing as depression, Sasuke. God forbid. Depression is a sin, Sasuke. God forbid. Don't talk to Shisui anymore, Sasuke, homosexuality is a sin. God forbid.

God. God. God.

". . . u . . . ke . . ."

Sasuke hadn't even noticed his walkie talkie had fallen off his hands. His breath hitched in his throat and he shakily picked it up, heart racing. "Sakura?!"

"Sa . . . ke . . . elp . . ."

"W-Wait, I can't hear you w- "

"Help!" the screaming of the girl filled the silence of the room, the despair in her voice rattling the bones of the dead in the basement and the space in Sasuke's head.

And the space in his head grew heavily when he realized he could do nothing.

  。。。＊ 。。。＊。。。＊。。。  

All she could do was watch. Watch as the lights of the car fell on the first living dead in the pitch black night. And then as another one grazed the side of the car and another one almost fell on the hood.

Eventually, she had to stop. Not because of Konohamaru's frightened look and yelping, not because of her own stomach spinning around. 

She had to stop the car because a mile-long of lurkers was coming towards her and they didn't intend on stopping.