Chaos herself's note:

Long, long, long time no read and glad to be back with yet another strange FF of mine! :-)

This time, I stumbled across the idea to type 'Made My Midnight!' while playing Rebuild, Dead Frontier, Coma and the likes, then got the thing pieced together rather quickly. Usually, I don't like writing I-narratives very much, but in this special case, I felt anything else would have spoilt the athmosphere.

So, I may very welcome all those brave readers to my little gloomy, post apocalyptic Naruto-AU, completely overrun with restless, hungry zombies! Let's see, if you survive the following night, shall we? ;-)

Enjoy,

Chaos

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Soundtrack suggestions:

Fatal Error (by Apocalyptica); Destined Twins (Vampire Knight OST); Haunted (by Evanescence); The Healing Process (by Le Grand Guignol); Taken by a Stranger (by Lena); The Animus 2.0 (Assassin's Creed II OST)

...

Disclaimer:

The appearing characters from 'Naruto' are not owned by me.

/

WARNING:

horror, angst, gore, splatter, carnivore... what else do you expect? They're ZOMBIES!

/

Made My Midnight!

03/'11, by Chaos

When I got up it was already dawning. The fading red light of the dying sun scarcely was creeping ceasingly through the gaps of the slightly ragged curtains, as I lazily crawled out of bed. I'd rather stayed beneath the sheets idling around and snoozing some more, but ravenous hunger still got the better of me.

Shuffling along downstairs eventually I rememberd, I intended to exchange the blown lightbulb at the pitch dark staircase the other day, but postponed the troublesome work to my bad luck: suddenly, I tripped over the splintered wooden step and tumbled down all the way to the kitchen, hitting the counter hard with a loud thud. Another thing I'd put off to repair...

Letting out a muffled groan and gritting my teeth, I heaved my bruised body up and got my shoulder joint back into position with a nastier crack than it felt. Man, I was longing for some coffee, then! By the way turning on the almost antique radio picking up a blurred mix of two lonesome broadcasting signals, I rummaged for a clean cup and the jar with the powder worth killing anything for, realizing there was hardly enough for even one pot in there.

'...-day 47 after the outbreak-...-still no cure for the highly infectuous carnivorous virus-...-to any brave survivors out there: don't loose faith in Jashin! Join us in blasting those damned bastards and-...'

I sighed deeply. For I had no other choice but to undergo the trouble of shopping early that night, or else I might not get anything at all. No way I'd stand a single day without coffee supply! Plus, I was still hungry as hell.

'...-is confirmed, the horde of infected's reached western downtown, the town hall's been overrun in a carnage. More breaking news-...-the location of our glorious last stand is-'

Slightly annoyed, I turned off the radio. There was hardly any other news than that repeated nonsense those days, anyways. My place was safe enough, though, and that was that. It was about time, either party won and they'd finally shut up, already, I figured. Grabbing everything necessary and slamming the door shut, I headed out on my most important scavanging mission.

Still sleepy, I inhaled the cool air and took a look around. The night was banefully calm and the abandonned suburban asphalt was moist with puddles of rain, mud and blood ever since the silded up remnants of corpses and litter had been clogging the drainages. Needless to say, the smell of decay was getting worse increasingly by the day. I made a face, then noticed an obscure figure shifting in the dark next to the smashed pillar-box over there, assumingly approaching as it'd already heard me.

"Yo, Lee! Didn't know, they're still clearing that letter-box, are they?", I called out straight. Maybe it was high time the service was finally run again, a tiny strife for a return to normal, at least. The fellow raked his bony head in my direction, staring droopy eyed at me, parting his swollen lips and showing two rows of bloody rotten yellow teeth letting out an eery moan, as he limped across the road towards me, inching closer and closer fast. "G'niiigh', Sh'maaooo! Go'ouuth?", the painfully distorted voice howled spiting huge drops of saliva.

Poor Lee! Since he got stuck in the raging mob some time ago, his jaw had been hanging awfully loose in his mouth, and the bullet wound at his shin bone was already stinking with pus. Yet, he wouldn't ever go see Doc Tsunade, stubborn as he was! I nodded smiling faintly. "Yup. My coffee supply just died, so I'm heading to town. Think, I'd grab you some painkillers, too, huh? Take care!", I said waving goodbye, then left quickly as the nightly alarm echoed. Least thing I wanted was running into them patrolling at the moment! I certainly wasn't in the mood for slaying those troublesome pests off my ass right then. So persistent, lately! Thus, I dove into the darkness of shady sideway alleys, uniting with the shadows, proceeding swiftly and only tripping over corpses twice.

By the time I'd reached the devastated appartment buildings close to the station, I heard the noises of yet another gory massacre: gunshots, crashing, howling, swearing, hacking, splattering sounds, you name it. They were rather close by, I figured, so I ducked behind one of those car wrecks, staying motionless for a while, waiting, listening and observing. Seemed, as if they hadn't noticed me, yet, I concluded. Thus, I crept on cautiously towards the plaza through the dirt and gore piling up to knee's height, hopping from one ragged shelter to the other, peered round the corner and, when I didn't sense anything living within eyesight, I briskly smashed the window of the corner shop. So much trouble for a bag of coffee! However, there was no turning back. For the shattering likely had been heard.

Huffing I hurried up, clawed for the window-sill, pulled myself up and plunged inside, just dropping my body heavily onto the floor. A little moan left my lips as I noticed the blood dripping from my lower lip. Other sharp slifers of glass had also penetrated my forearms and tighs during the climbing act, but I'd worry about that later. Too troublesome at present! Ever wondering why the place hadn't been looted so far, I started scrambling for food. Jackpot, I thought: there, indeed, were some packs of coffee left, which I hurried to stuff into my bagpack along with the meds and some bandaids, and I almost exclaimed a cry of joy, as I discovered a large supply of deep fried meat! I just felt as if I got the Christmas present, I wished for for so long. Greedily I grabbed as much as I could, feeling saliva gather in my mouth and my stomache growl in anticipation of a great meal.

That was, when a sudden noise startled me. Crap! I had let down my guard due to the unexpected discovery. Alerted, I dropped the bag and instantly swung around to face one of them staring right at me, a female one, dragging a wooden baseball bat behind her. I forthwith knew by the look of her eyes, she was not my kind. I gulped. For a moment that felt like decades neither of us moved, and I stood as if frozen still in the dim twilight hearing her heavy breath errupting from her nostrils, sensing blood oozing from several slicing wounds on her pale skin, watching her big wildly widened eyes flickering over my form. It was either kill or be killed right then... I leapt forward the same instant she bloody screamed.

Having my weapons left inside my bagpack, I was struggling damn hard for survival. Luckily, I managed to avoid her first strike for my head marginally, but got hit hard in the chest with the bat. I coughed some blood, but didn't want her to get another chance on me, and came at her with bare fists in return. So, before I knew it, we were wrestling on the ground, kicking and clawing and slashing at each other, trying to gain momentum for the finishing blow. Without thinking I dug my teeth hard into her flesh, felt her skin give way and a gush of fresh blood flow crucially into my mouth. As I instinctively swallowed, the warm iron taste lingered on and left me errupting a groan of comprehension, before the inevitable happened...

Feverishly, I bit harder, ripping morsels of raw flesh out of the helplessly struggling body of my prey, gorging the chunks down hungrily. It tasted so damn good! And the blood was still warm with life... I hardly noticed her last stiffled gargle when sucking the red ambrosia right from the carodid artery, then devoured as much of the lately rarely granted feast as I could take, even gnawing and crunching on the bare bones.

Sighing in satisfaction afterwards, I then hurried packing the remnants for laters, as long as they were still warm and good, and left the shop with my heavy load. Since I intended neither to share my precious loot with others nor to be shot in the head! The aproaching alarm told, it was really due time I got back home, before those drunk punksters of that 'Akatsuki' zombie-slayer gang started one of their shooting sessions again and I was still within range.

As soon as I reached my neighborhood by dawn surprisingly unmolested by the living, I pondered on how long that cataclysmatic situation would still be going on, how much more fine people like Lee would be crippled or brutally slaughtered like my best friend Chouji, until everything would get back to order? We couldn't even dare holding funerals for those never returning, their corpses still plastering the streets! Would there ever be a coexistence between zombies and the living or was the extinct of either form of mankind the only solution possible, I wondered blinking against the bloody red horizon, as I thought back to the living girl at the shop that night. Deep down inside, I think, I knew her from somewhere...

She'd been rather fine built, slender, with a healthy appearance, fair hair and blue eyes. If she'd been my kind, she probably would've been pretty cute. If so, then possibly I might have even asked her out on a date. Maybe, maybe not. However, I guess, it still would have been too troublesome for me to try, either way. The only thing I knew, though, was, her flesh indeed tasted incredibly delicious. And, ignoring my nature being a futile attempt ever since me having been irrevertibly infected, I had to admit, it had been really worth the trouble fighting for it.

Be as it may, the coincidential encounter there and then certainly made my midnight!