All the items she collected went in the bag; now that the Swordswoman wasn't busy with searching she could change her focus to her surroundings. In the time that Saeko had been gathering food, the sound downstairs had increased. At the moment it sounded closer to floor that Saeko was on, but it could have also come from the floor above.
Standing in the gloom, the satchel slung over her left shoulder Saeko raised the weapon felling the hilt grip into the well-developed calluses on her hands. It would be foolish to run into a fight without knowing where or what was going on. So she moved to the shadows and stood there closing her eyes, opened her mouth a little and cocked her head slightly. Listened to the noises focusing in to try and pin point their location.
Now the noises came with an echo and most likely form the hallway outside. Saeko hadn't locked the door behind her in case she needed an escape. But she had closed it; this left her with no exact exit. Any attempt at jumping out of them window would lead to an injury that she wasn't willing to take. Whatever it was that was making the noises didn't have any idea as to where her exact location was and she wasn't willing to give that position away for the moment so she stood still the sound of her own heart beat sounding like thunder in her ears as she willed it to calm down.
There was the sound of a window being opened. At least that was what it felt like; this place was so old that you would get a creek from almost every window or floorboard. The creak of a floorboard or window would sound uncomfortably the same, Saeko wasn't exactly sure on the sound. There was noise on the stairs, but it sounded distant and it didn't need her attention as much. All of a sudden there were the sounds of feet on the floorboards, possibly two or more people out there. Silently Saeko walked towards the door leading into the apartment readying herself as she placed away any fear and began to feel that tingle in anticipation of a kill.
She was only halfway across the apartment when the sound of something heavy dropped onto the floor outside. She walked slightly faster towards the door. Her katana now in one hand behind her and the other on the door handle, she opened the door suddenly placing her hand back onto her weapon as a shadow moved.
"Rei?"
Rei was standing over the dead corpse of a zombie, looking proud and happy to have killed the zombie.
"Well, you've finally made your appearance and it was rather loud at that." Saeko nodded to the body on the floor as she put her weapon back into its saya.
Rei walked over to stand above it and bent down to search its pockets. Silently Saeko walked over to look down the bottom of the stairs in case any more of 'Them' were coming to investigate the noise.
"Don't worry, this one was just a wonderer attracted by the smell of blood." Rei pulled out another room key from its jean pocket, satisfied with the find she tucked it in her side. "I can tell from the bag that you had some lucky finds." Saeko nodded to the bag and pulled out the two keys that she found.
"I just took a trip back to Takashi and told him where we were going to be. I didn't bother calling you since you had already gone into the building, plus it was your life at risk and not mine. A couple of the corpses outside had keys. And by the look of that bag this place is a goldmine." Rei walked to Saeko's opened hand and looked at the keys. "My next key belongs to an apartment on the next floor." Saeko said as she walked towards the stairs, Rei's keys didn't belong to this floor so she didn't have a reason to stay here.
Saeko continued "If what you said is true, then more than just one might pay this place a visit." Saeko took out her key and checked the number; it was the last one in the hallway. All of Rei's keys belonged to this floor, apart from one which belonged to the top floor.
"Here, I'll search these 2 and you'll search the other one." Rei tossed a key to Saeko as she took out the other two keys from her pocket. Saeko was already into one of the apartments, so Rei was behind, again. The room she walked into had belonged to a young boy, and she instantly regretted it. The room was filled with porn and other stuff related to that topic.
"This is going to be a long search" Rei sighed and picked up a bag and walked towards the cupboards. The apartment looked like it had already been searched through but it didn't look thorough, the kitchen was ransacked but there were a couple of cans lying around. She quickly picked them up, then Rei realised that she didn't have a bag, and that she forgot to pick one up from their camp. "Idiot!" muttering to herself as she walked back to the living room, videogames, comics, dirty laundry, but no bag.
The only other place was the bedroom, which Rei had been hopeful that she wouldn't have to enter. Walking to the door she braced herself, and opened the door. The sight that she saw made her cringe, a typical nerd's room stashed to the brim with erotic books, posters and figures. At least something good was coming out of it she noted, a bag was hanging on one of the bed posts across the room. Trying to shield her gaze from the perverted surroundings she crossed to the bed and picked it up; doing that something caught her eye.
It was a small manga lying on the bed spread, naturally she wouldn't dare touch it but on the cover coincidently was a bold picture of teens and zombies. Of course it was perverted but it was the whole zombie topic that had her reading bits and flicking through the book. Soon Rei became so interested in the book that she didn't hear Saeko come strolling into the apartment and smiling.
"Oh wow Rei I really didn't think you were that type of person." This made Rei jump and turn around to see Saeko posing underneath the door frame, there was a small hint of sarcasm in her voice that Rei despised. Saeko continued, "You can take it back I'll understand, but just don't let it distract you too much" Smiling to herself Saeko started walking towards her "perverted" friend while Rei tossed the manga across the room.
"Be quiet! More importantly why are you here? You can't have finished that quickly!" Rei yelled her face blushing slightly, when did Saeko even talk like that? Saeko put a finger to her lips which were still formed in a smile and when she spoke there was still some tease in her tone.
"Lower your voice, I'm here because you gave me the key to the top floor and not this floor" Having said her point Saeko opened her other hand which contained the "wrong" key and holding it up for Rei to see. Studying the object Rei wanted to slap herself for being so ignorant, grunting she tossed the correct key into her comrade's hands before turning her back on her.
"There you go your precious key, now make yourself useful and go make up for the wasted time" Rei smirked picking up the satchel and walking back into the kitchen where she knelt and began picking up the cans. As Saeko walked out the door she smirked "Try not to get distracted this time" and left for her apartment.
Honestly she couldn't lower her guard that much when around Saeko, one little thing will set her off and it would take a lot to make Saeko drop it. Sighing to herself in the empty room she mumbled, "Dam you." After this one she had another one to search, this was going to be tiring.
Rei left her last apartment with two bags over her shoulders, Saeko was standing by the window looking out, weapon at hand.
"Get ready; we have a couple of ones attracted by the fresh smell and noise. I can see five coming into the building but there are already more downstairs." Saeko whispered to Rei who was walking over to check the stairs.
"I don't see us fighting well in this cramped hallway with 2 big bags." Rei remarked quietly, then lifted her gun to her chest and placed a finger on the trigger.
"The key that you have is to the big apartment upstairs, this building is pretty close to the one next to it. Let's escape from there."
Saeko skimmed across to the stairs and Rei followed right behind her with the key in her hand. Rei might have not been as quiet and silent as Saeko when they were searching for supplies. And she would have hated to admit that she was the one making some of the noise. This would explain why a couple of them were heading up the stairs their way.
Saeko was in no condition to swing her katana around without hurting herself or Rei, and noise from the gun would draw the attention of more. So if it did go wrong all they could do is kick a couple of them back or stab them with the bayonet on the rifle and continue up the stairs.
One was especially quick and made a lunge at the brunette only managing to grab one of the bags staining it with a dark red. Tugging at the bag only made it crawl up; she made a stab to its head and pushed it off. It landed on top of another one and just like dominos the rest behind it fell back. This small move gained them some time, looking up towards the stairs Rei realised that Saeko was calmly standing at the top looking down at her.
There was a slight smile on her face; sure the corpses were kind of stupid to look at. But it was moments like this in a fight when Saeko would show some emotion that creeped Rei out and she wouldn't know why. Just like that Saeko dropped it and walked away from the stairs while Rei was left to awkwardly dash after her. Looking down the hall she found the correct door and inserted the key into the lock, like always Saeko was by her side looking out for both of them, two of the attackers had climbed their way up the stairs and were limping towards them.
Opening the apartment door, Rei rushed in while Saeko killed off the attacking ones. They could possibly defeat this crowd but with the lack of space and increasing number of them their chance at that was getting smaller by the second. As well as having the obvious escape; by now the building seemed to be shaking due to the pure strength of "them". They kept coming; Rei pulled Saeko in and slammed the door shut. She was holding the door back and waiting for Saeko to move a big cabinet over it. Some hands were sticking out, the solution to that was to simply stab them out of the way. It worked, though one hand completely broke off from the rest of the body and landed on Saeko.
"The sooner the better" she muttered as she tackled the cabinet over.
"Anytime would be good!" Rei was shouting over the chorus of groans and moans of them.
Finally Saeko managed to slide the furniture over the door. "That won't hold for long… go look for a window or door!"
Saeko pushed back at the cabinet. "Don't you think that I haven't already figured that out?!" Rei sassed Saeko back, but she was right the cabinet was already creaking under the weight on the other side. They didn't have much time, if they didn't find an exit soon they would be trapped in here with "them".
Rei looked around at all the windows but none proved too successful; it all came down to it they could risk a jump to the balcony on the other side. But if they missed...
There came a crash from behind her, she didn't need to look back to know that the cabinet had been tipped over. Saeko would be able to hold some of them back but not for long. The current time that they had was now fewer, at least 30 seconds at the max. But anything could happen and it wouldn't take that much time. That's when she remembered that they were on the top floor; there must be some sort of balcony or at least a little ledge that would provide ground outside the apartment. Across the room to her there was a curtained part, running over she took a glance at Saeko who was succeeding at keeping them back but the wall around the door way was starting to shake as well. This whole place could collapse and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it. They both still had their bags on them so that limited the number of fighting possibilities for them.
Running over to the curtains she pulled them out of the way to reveal a locked glass door. Great just what I needed, she noted to herself. Hopefully the key that unlocked the apartment would work on it; she still had it on her. Pulling it out and slotting it into the key hole she turned it. But it didn't turn.