By the way, if you haven't read the manga, you won't know or appreciate some of the characters I introduce in this chapter. Though it's not neccessary for this fanfic, I highly reccomend you read the Elfen Lied Manga anyway (from about ch.65 onwards) as it's just so f*king awesome. Anyway enjoy the latest chapter!
Chapter 10
"The virus has spread faster than anticipated. Well done son, I could never have devised such a successful strain myself." The two Kakuzawa's tipped their glasses to each other as the crew shared a few drinks, hovering above the ruined city of Tokyo. The apocalypse had already struck the nations capital, fires and explosions brimming across the horizon. The ocean tainted red with the blood of the millions of dead. The roads swarming the millions more undead, their red eyes dotting the landscape like a hellish inferno of evil.
"What do you plan on doing now professor." Arakawa was sitting next to the scientist who created this destruction.
"We have the whole of Japan falling to it's knees, we can do whatever we want baby." Kakuzawa lifted his hand over to her thigh to which she flinched nervously. "Actually father, that reminds me, there are some things I'd like to pick up from the research facility."
"Of course." Director Kakuzawa gave an instruction to the pilot, a blonde man with thin shades, who nodded firmly and begun to change course. Kakuzawa smiled, shaping his fingers into a pyramid. "It would be nice to catch up with our dear friend Kuruma."
…
A thousand terrifying screams circled the Inn in a matter of seconds. The forest was ablaze with a thousand pairs of glaring red orbs. Now all that remained between the borders of life and death itself were six brave souls. Six souls who were ready for a fight.
"GAAGGHHH!" Bando was the first to charge into the wave of monsters. Ignoring the pain from his injuries, he punched clubbed and battered any creature unfortunate enough to meet this path. Lucy followed suit taking the left flank with Nana taking the right. The three that you could still qualify as the only real humans in the crowd stayed close together. Kouta guided the two females towards Lucy who was ripping into the heads of several beasts as once with telekinetic might.
"Trying to best me are ya Lucy?" Bando smirked as he continued pummelling zombies with his bare hands, laughing insanely as the rotted blood splashed across his dirty ragged face. This was all a game to the ex-marine.
"I'm merely creating a path for Kouta to pass through." Lucy paused and faced Bando. As the zombies cradled around her she barely blinked twice before a curtain of blood, flesh and bone raised itself around her. Bando would have been shitting bricks if he had eaten less than ten hours ago. Instead he hid his awestruck fear of the Queen Diclonius and resumed his own killing pleasures.
Nana was able to deal with her small front of zombies, she preferred to remove their heads as quickly and humanely as possible. Unlike Lucy and Bando, she preferred to think of these people as suffering a terrible, incurable disease. That way she could feel less guilty, using her vectors to kill, as she knew that this method was the only effective cure for their misery.
Kouta used a small knife he took from the kitchen earlier to stab into the eyes and throats of any zombies that swayed to close to himself and Yuka. Yuka preferred to keep a good distance between the undead and used a sharpened broom handle to spear a few zombie torsos. Mayu – the youngest of the zombie resistance, remained behind the others, trying to close her eyes and ears, shielding herself from the nightmare. Yet she was compelled to squint her eyes now and then to make sure the others were alright, and she herself was not about to enter the nightmare for good.
"Where the fuck did these bastards come from?" Bando cursed as he ripped the half eaten head off one of the infected creatures.
"The virus has spread so fast, the whole town must be infected." Kouta observed as he twisted his blade through a lady's nose, dragging out traces of brain as he pulled out the knife.
"But we could be facing millions of these things if that's true!" Yuka cried out as she drove her makeshift spear into two older zombies who stood behind one another.
"We just need to keep pushing forward, our break will come soon." Lucy encouraged the others as she made ten more creatures head's explode in a shower of blood and grey brain matter.
"You'll have to teach me that move later." Bando chuckled as he grabbed a businessman's head and slammed it into a nearby tree, crushing it's inner juices like a watermelon.
As the battle continued into the night, it seemed as if the group were making tiny progress through the forest. The Maple Inn was still visible behind them, from this distance it looked as if they had only advanced a hundred metres in the space of an hour.
Kouta was feeling the strain and was wearing fast. He had strayed a bit further away from Yuka and Mayu and was facing four more former humans. One was a young woman who wore an blood-splattered and tattered apron. Another was a short fat man in a grey jumpsuit; half of the right side of his belly had already been eaten by the other zombies, so at least the man reached his ideal weight loss. The final two appeared to be a set of twins, a boy and a girl with short blonde hair and tiny mouths. Their childish innocence gone in one day – now they were cannibalistic hounds just like the others.
Kouta didn't seem to have a problem dealing with the fat man. Even though he was the strongest, pinning Kouta's shoulders against a large tree, Kouta managed to slash his knife across his entire gut spilling out the rest of his fat riddled guts. As the man stumbled forward Kouta lifted the blade upwards driving the tip through the man's mouth and out the back of his head.
As the other three advanced slowly Kouta pushed the man into the two children and went for the woman – possibly a mother of the two children nearby. He tackled her into another tree, impaling her left breast against a prodding branch. She swung her arms around wildly as she tried to reach Kouta but her body was now skewered against the splintered wood.
With her out of the way Kouta was now left to face the two children. But children can't be killed like this according to Kouta. Killing what were once people was one thing – Kouta had accepted that now, but every time he looked into the beady, little red eyes of a zombie child Kouta saw his dead sister Kanae inside those children. The guilt he faced from letting Kanae die all ten years ago would inevitably lead to his own demise to this day, if he couldn't bring himself to shed the blood of another possessed child.
The boy saw his hesitation and leaped onto Kouta's right arm, knocking him backwards. The girl snarled excitedly and scurried across the ground before launching herself into the air with her tiny jaws gaping, revealing her tiny fangs. Kouta flinched and brought his other arm up defensively. He forgot that was the arm he held his knife in; he was surprised to find the savage girl had ran into the poking blade, impaling herself on the right cheek of her once sweet and chubby face. For a moment the girl almost looked human again as bloody tears ran down the corners of her eyes. Kouta almost wanted to cry too, hating himself for taking the life of another child, an innocent victim of man's bio-terrorism.
The boy had realised his sister had been killed and was now more ravenous than ever before. It's eyes glistening a burning hot red as he prepared his jaws to sink into the soft flesh of his sister's killer.
Goodbye Yuka...Goodbye Lucy...I guess I deserved this in the end...
But his punishment was not going to be delivered just yet it seemed as the boy's entire body seemed to explode spontaneously. At least the girl could still maintain her appearance in death – the boy's thousand's of pieces would warrant him unrecognisable to a morgue.
"Lucy!" Kouta stared into the melancholic eyes of the pink haired demon.
"What are you doing Kouta? You'll get yourself killed if you distract yourself like that again." Lucy offered one of her real hands and helped Kouta to his feet.
"I'm sorry it's just-" Then he realised he was about to explain his anxiety to the woman who took away his sister's life and created this internal guilt in the first place. "I'm exhausted...We've been fighting for hours."
Lucy shaped the corners of her face into what might have qualified as a smile. "Stay close to me and I'll protect you." Lucy guided Kouta through the forest of death carving her way through guts and limbs with her insubstantial machetes.
"We're gonna break through!" Nana beamed enthusiastically as she mowed down three more zombies.
"What so you mean? I'm just getting warmed up!" Bando drew his handgun and made an example out of several more monsters.
"Why are they attracted towards us? Are we the only ones left?" Yuka yelled out as she plugged the tip of her wooden spear into a schoolgirl's eye. She was probably once the prettiest and most popular in her class but now she was desperate for a makeover.
As they pressed further down the mountain the ground began to plateau and the forest became less dense. However just as they thought they had broken through the undead ranks, another wave of fiery eyes were lighting up the shadows.
"Why don't they give us a break?" Kouta sighed, holding his hips.
"Get ready Kouta!" Lucy offered him support.
Just as their rotting faces peered out of the darkness, the horde of undead suddenly changed direction and turned back. A loud crashing noise disrupted the forest as smoke and flames billowed out of the woods in the distance.
"Oh my God! An accident!" Yuka gasped as she held her weapon close to her chest.
"Perhaps..." Lucy answered. "This will give us a chance to escape down the other side of the mountains."
"No!" Kouta stepped in. "Their may be survivors, we can't let them be eaten by those creatures."
"It's futile." Lucy responded calmly. "They will have already reached them by now and will be ripping into their flesh as we speak."
"You might not think a human's life is worth saving but I do." Kouta retorted. He winced as a surge of pain struck his burned eye.
"Let me have a look at that for you." Lucy rushed over and flicked back strands of Kouta's soft black hair. Yuka watched on suspiciously. The Diclonius placed her hand gently onto the wounded area and focused. Kouta flinched as he could feel his body somehow stitching itself back up again. "Okay how does it feel now?" Lucy stood up.
"Fine!" Kouta was amazed that his eye had completely healed itself.
"How did you do that Lucy?" Nana bounced over, amused by her Queen's special handiwork.
"I simply used by vectors to piece together adjacent living skin cells over the dead cells." She explained it as if it really were that simple.
Bando rested over by a tree, his breathing was becoming heavier and slower. "Hey...you don't suppose you could try that out on my arms love?"
Lucy looked towards Kouta who nodded. She walked over to the iron man and took both his arms. "I can seal the wounds and stem the bleeding, but I'm afraid it won't be much longer until you become one of them."
Mayu cried. "No. Isn't there anyway to stop him from changing?"
"There is only one way, if he is willing to accept." Lucy stared into the commando's small brown eyes.
Bando was probably the closest to ever feeling sad, even if it was only for himself. But he hid his fear behind a smug grin. "No thanks! If I'm gonna die. Then I wanna die on the battlefield, killing as many more of those bastards before I go. I'd no sooner kill myself than give up now and say I'm through. We're all in this shit to the end right guys?"
Everyone shared an uneasy look but soon smiled. "Of course!"
With Lucy already taken care of his arms Bando raised his arms and roared to the heavens. "LET'S GIVE EM HELL!"
"YEAH!"
BANG. BANG The faint sounds of gunfire could be heard from the crash site. Everyone paused for a moment before Kouta whispered. "So we're not the only one's putting up a zombie resistance." He followed the sound of gunfire and so too did the now united group of humans, Diclonii and Bando.
"We must be close!" Kouta sprinted through the open forest, weaving and diving over a few small bushes along the way. He was running at an immense speed, driven by an optimistic desire to unite more survivors, anyone who was not already undead. Though he feared venturing back into the zombie territory he was spurred on by the thought of extra manpower for their journey to the coast. After all, they might have weapons and tools to aid their fight against a whole city of walking dead.
Kouta finally broke through the forest and entered a small clearing. A military helicopter wedged itself between some large rocks. It was beyond retrieval. However the people inside had survived the impact and were putting up a tough defence against a hundred or so hungry creatures. A blonde man in a thick leather jacket was firing some rounds into the zombies, whilst another man wearing a fedora hat and black trench-coat was shooting spiked balls projectiles from a modern crossbow.
Finally an explosion of zombie flesh erupted in the middle of the group as another blonde man wearing a casual outfit appeared. In front of him were four identical young girls, though it was hard to tell as their faces were concealed by strange helmets. They wore tight black clothing around their thin bodies.
"Diclonius!" Nana and the rest caught up. And noticed the unique band of zombie resistance fighters.
"Come on! Don't let them take all the glory!" Bando barged through and attacked from the rear of the zombie front. Lucy and the other soon followed, making easy work of the large number of monsters.
"We would have managed fine without your help." The Agent remarked.
"Well at least we know how much our effort was appreciated." Yuka said sarcastically.
"You look worse than the things we just slaughtered." The Man in the trench-coat commented about Bando's appearance.
Bando panted heavily. "Least I'm lookin' better than you ever will Mr Vampire."
"Well done Barbara, Cynthia, Alicia and Diana." The blonde man pats the helmet of one of the girls who nuzzles her head in response.
Kouta beamed. "I'm glad you're all alive! We need as many survivors as possible if we are to reach the island."
"The Island eh?" The voice of an older man emerged from the wreckage. His suit was surprisingly clean and his small head of silvery-grey hair remained slick as he lifted himself out of the metal. His eyes widened as he discovered Lucy among the group but he quickly reserved himself. "It just so happens that is where we are heading as well..."