Chapter Three.

Before leaving, the three of them ate a large meal and used the facilities. Tsunade, using some herbs left in a pouch on her belt, cooked up a tea that obliterated the last remnants of Sakura's cold. Feeling much better physically, she felt as though she might be able to survive the day.

Following Shikamaru down the little tunnel in the ceiling, she wasn't sure a meal, some medicine, and a shower, was enough preparation for eventual necessity of putting a few of her dead friends out of their misery. Her main thought was of Ino. They'd recently begun to repair their friendship. To have all of that work get washed away in such a manner would be almost too much to bear.

She shook her head and chided herself inwardly. If she could put steel through her own dead parent's brains, there was no trauma she couldn't handle. In a strange way, which she didn't like to think about, she was proud of herself for doing it. Tsunade hadn't been able to kill Shizune and Shikamaru hadn't been able to kill his parents, but she, Sakura, had.

It really was a stupid, evil thing to be proud of and she imagined herself punching the thought senseless and locking it in a box deep within her mind. Her thoughts turned to Tsunade behind her as Shikamaru reached the exit of the secret passage. "Sensei," she said. "Could you let me and Shikamaru go down first? There's something we need to take care of."

"I need to see it," Tsunade said. "I need to see it, or I'll never accept it."

Shikamaru jumped down from the ceiling into the office after looking it over for threats. Sakura landed next to him, followed by Tsunade. Shizune was still on the floor next to Tonton. Shizune was purple and decayed to the point where, if you didn't know her, she wasn't immediately recognizable. Her clothes and hair made her more akin to the idea of Shizune, more than the woman herself.

Tsunade walked across the room to the window and ripped down a curtain. Sakura kicked herself inwardly for not thinking of it before. Laying the curtain over her dead friend, Tsunade wiped at her eyes.

"She deserved better than me," Tsunade said. She coughed and gave her eyes one last rub. "Let's go. Our duty is to the living."

Sakura followed Shikamaru and Tsunade out onto the balcony overlooking Konoha, or what was left of it. She supposed Tsunade was either suffering an overload of sorrow and had gone numb, or was just good at burying her emotions. Either way, now that Tsunade was with them, she felt much better about their chances of survival, even though they were all about to split up.

They had discussed their plan of action back in the Hokage Hideout. Konoha had been divided up into three sections: each to be searched thoroughly. Although they had no idea who was alive or where they were, the sections had been divided in such a way as to lesson the odds of one of them running into a close friend.

"Here's where we split," Tsunade said. "Shikamaru, take this." She handed him a small container filled with a green balm. "It's a generic medicine, good for just about any sort of wound there is. Even those with only basic medical training can use it. You're not a medical ninja, so I'm sending it with you."

Shikamaru took it and pocketed it. "I just thought of something," Shikamaru said. "If the survivors we find are either too wounded to move, or aren't shinobi, we might run into problems moving them."

Tsunade nodded and rubbed her chin. "If that happens, get them someplace safe, if they're not already, and mark where they are. We'll worry about consolidating survivors once we've found some."

"When and where should we meet?" Sakura asked.

"Back here," Tsunade said, "before dark. We'll spend the night in the hideout if we don't find any survivors we can take in with us."

Sakura looked down on the street. She had tuned out the wails and the stench of the dead bellow her long enough to feel reassured by Tsunade and Shikamaru's plans. Just seeing the Hokage alive had been a great relief. Aside from being a leader, she was a powerful ninja to boot. Without the element of surprise, Sakura didn't think the zombies would be much of a match for any of the surviving shinobi, much less Tsunade.

"Then let's go," Sakura said.

"Wait," Tsunade said, grabbing them both by the shoulders and pulling them in. "Under no circumstances are you to underestimate them. From what I was able to watch on the monitors, they're extremely aggressive and don't feel pain. The only way to kill one is a solid shot to the brain. There's a reason for the fact that it's just the three of us standing here. Do you understand?"

Sakura nodded, feeling a little ashamed at her prior assessment of the zombies' threat level. It was true what Tsunade said. Many powerful ninja were dead. Ninja who had her well outclassed had been taken by surprise; luck was the main reason she was still breathing and if she forgot that, she'd die.

"Good," Tsunade said. "Go. Be careful."

Without further delay, Sakura set off towards the rooftops adjacent to the building they were in. When she got down to the end, she leapt down from the roof and began making her way quickly across the street towards a house. The dozen or so undead milling about the area saw her when she hit the ground and were on her immediately. She darted around them and ducked their clumsy gropes.

One nearly had her as she twisted away from the grip of a fat man missing his forearm. It was an old woman wearing nothing but a bathrobe. Her blocking Sakura's path had been more out of luck than the thing's speed. Sakura ducked and hit the old woman low in the hips with her shoulder. She didn't need to apply much strength to lift the woman up and over her back, letting her hit the dirt with a wet thump.

Reaching the wall, she focused her chakra into her feet and scaled it easily, leaving the rotting ones bellow her to scratch at the wall like angry dogs that run a cat up a tree. She was in Shikamaru's section of Konoha still. She looked back and didn't see him. Assuming he had entered the building's connecting to the Hokage's, she continued on her way.

It took half an hour to reach the end of town she was to search. She only had a third of Konoha to search, but that was still a large area, and she suspected that this wasn't going to be a one-day affair.

She decided to start at the wall and work her way out. The Hyuga clan's compound was there and she figured if she was likely to find people alive, that was the place.

Reaching the wall that surrounded their compound was not difficult, neither was scaling it. Guards were the Hyuga's main line of defense. They didn't have much to fear from inside the village. Atop the wall, Sakura could see into the compound; a mini-neighborhood where the Hyuga's and their various relatives dwelled.

Her heart sunk when she saw that they hadn't fared any better than the rest of Konoha. Dead, purple and crimson stained Hyuga's were milling about the street. A few were chewing on corpses, keeping away the weaker zombies. Aggression seemed to be the determining factor for them, as Sakura watched a skinny, half-naked, woman shove a larger man backward after he attempted to take a bite from the severed foot she had found.

No matter how many times she saw it, it still made vomit well up in her throat. Forcing it down, she crouched and skirted the wall, keeping an eye out for any dead sentries that still might be up on the wall. As she moved, keeping an eye on the street bellow, she realized she had no idea how to go about looking for survivors.

Anyone in hiding was just that: in hiding. If she could see them, then the zombies could see them. She didn't see them congregating anyplace in particular, which made her think that all of the Hyuga's must be dead, or hiding inside in much the same manner as Tsunade had been.

She looked for the largest house in the compound and saw that it wasn't within leaping distance of the wall at any point. She'd have to make her way down to the street again and up onto the houses if she wanted to reach what she thought was the Hyuga main house.

Thinking back to the Chunin exam, where she had learned a little of how the Hyuga clan was structured, it seemed likely that the head family had retreated to the main house, if they hadn't been there already. The branch families would then have gone there to protect the head family. That meant that if Neji and Hinata were still alive, that's where she'd find them.

She drew two kunai and leapt from the wall, landing feet first on the shoulder's of a dead Hyuga, sending him sprawling forward. She hurled her blade into the eye socket of a zombie in front of her, retrieving it from the falling body as she ran past it at top speed.

A bit sad that no one was around to see such an impressive feat from her, she kicked another zombie nearby, one she didn't necessarily have to kick, and reached the wall of a house. Problem was, it was made from paper. All the chakra control in the world wouldn't keep it from ripping if she tried to climb it.

Cursing her carelessness, she kicked backward and caught the zombie coming up on her in the stomach, sending it backward into two others. Her attempt to retreat back to the wall was blocked by a large number of zombies. She didn't remember seeing them from the wall, and again chided herself for being careless.

Using her fine chakra control, she focused energy into her fist and arm and sent a punch into the ground with the idea of repeating the same trick she had employed earlier. She knew it was a bust the second she realized what she was standing on: sand.

A large ripple went through the earth, but nothing anywhere near what it would take to knock the crowd coming at her off balance. She thought of fighting her way back to the wall, but disregarded it as stupid. She'd risk getting bitten if she tried to fight her way through the crowd.

Instead, she tore through the paper wall of the house and hoped nothing was waiting for her on the inside. Nothing was, but there were other holes in the walls, something she should've noticed before jumping down off the wall.

She spotted a set of stairs and bolted for them as dozens of zombies tore in after her. Setting foot on the first step, she looked up and saw a man dressed as a shinobi with purple stained skin. He stretched out his arms and lost his balance coming down the stairs. Sakura leapt over him as she felt a hand brush across her thigh. The jumble of zombies behind her bought a few seconds, which she used to climb the stairs.

When she reached the top, she punched the stairwell with all of her might, focusing it downward and at an angle so as not to destroy the floor in front of her. Shielding her face from the storm of splinters, she felt her forearm crack and bleed as wooden shrapnel struck her.

Breathing heavily, he looked down at the mass of bodies now buried under what once the stairs. Limbs were flailing from between boards more out of frustration than pain, while zombies that hadn't been hit stumbled over the pile of rubble and moaned up at Sakura, heedless of their fallen counterparts.

Getting up quickly, determined not to make anymore stupid mistakes, she checked around to make sure there were no zombies on the second floor with her. All she could see was a hallway with sliding doors leading into what were most likely bedrooms. She took the fact that nothing had come rushing out to meet her as a good sign that she was safe.

Still, not wanting to make anymore errors and let Tsunade down, she methodically checked the doors to each of the rooms on the second floor. Most looked as though they hadn't seen any use, making Sakura think that all of the sick had been taken to some centralized location instead of up to their own beds. All of those people dying and coming back in one place at one time, but have made for a nightmare.

Confident that she was safe, she took a look through a hallway window towards the building she wanted. She had one more street to cross before reaching rooftops that would carry her to the large pagoda where she assumed any Hyuga survivors might be hiding.

There was a telephone wire running from the building she was in to the one across the street. She could get to it if she climbed up onto the roof. Biting her lip, she looked at the wire and remembered what had happened the last time. Shikamaru had likely been the one to weaken it, but the idea of ending up surrounded in the middle of the sandy street was not a pleasant one.

Not having much of a choice, she opened the window and climbed out onto the sill. Grabbing the lip of the roof above her, she hoisted herself out and up. Making her way to the wire and watching all of the zombies bellow gather beneath her, she kept one kunai handy.

The wire was the only way. If she fell, the blade she held in her right hand was her only way out. She'd use it on her own throat and hope the end came before she felt their teeth. Focusing chakra into her feet, she stepped out into the line. It bowed and swayed, but didn't make the horrible ripping noise signifying that it was being torn from the wall behind her.

Once she was over the center, she calmed down. Shaking, she stepped off the wire and onto the roof of the other house. Before her was a straight shot to the pagoda. She hoped sincerely that she found people alive there who would know a better way out of the Hyuga neighborhood. She didn't want to do another wire walk over zombies if she could help it.

The view of the pagoda was not exactly encouraging. The large doors in the front were wide open and the steps leading up were smeared with blood. Small picnics were taking place on the steps and from what Sakura could see, inside as well. She sat down and rested her head on her knees. Her thinking had been more wishful than she had realized. Her mind had only paid lip service to the idea that all of the Hyuga's were dead; she hadn't expected to actually see it.

A creak from the pagoda made her pick her head up. Standing in the window of the pagoda, only slightly higher up than where she was sitting, was Hinata Hyuga, waving. She looked as though she had been through some serious emotional distress, but considering who she was, Hinata looked like she was doing alright.

"Sakura!" she shouted in her high pitched voice. The sound drew the attention of the zombies bellow that hadn't been able to get a meal.

"Hinata!" Sakura shouted back, the damage already being done. "Are you alright?"

Hinata nodded, slowly. She held up a finger, signaling for Sakura to wait a moment. She returned to the window with a grappling hook. Swinging it around inside, she let it fly with precision through the open window, where it clattered behind Sakura.

She wasted no time in securing her end to the roof as Hinata did the same on her end. With the rope steady, Hinata walked across, using the same chakra technique Sakura had been employing with wires.

They embraced briefly once Hinata reached the rooftop. "I thought you were all dead," Sakura said, stepping back to make sure Hinata didn't have any bite marks on her.

Hinata's eyes fell, and the brief shine she had while greeting Sakura vanished. "I-I think I'm the only one. The rain took so many…there weren't many left to fight them when they came back; it was so unexpected…I…"

"I understand," Sakura said. "I was sick with a cold, so I didn't get rained on. Just about everyone else did though."

"Is it just you?" Hinata asked.

"No," Sakura said, looking back over Konoha. "Shikamaru and the Hokage are alive as well. They're searching Konoha separately."

"Have you seen Naruto?" she asked with a hint of pleading in her voice.

Naruto. Sakura was surprised that she hadn't thought much about him up until now. She wished she new more about the nature of the fox demon bound inside him. The fact that it wasn't loose and leveling what was left of Konoha might mean that he was still alive, or it might not; she didn't know.

"I haven't seen him," Sakura said. "Shikamaru is checking the part of town where he lives, but I don't know if he was in town or not when the rain hit."

Hinata hung her head and let out a short sigh. "I guess we have to hope he was off training, and that he won't be caught by surprise when he comes back."

"Right." Sakura looked out over the set of houses where the Hyuga's lived. Many zombies were beginning to gather in the streets bellow them; the ones in the immediate area that had been attracted by Hinata's trek across the rope were causing others to come over and investigate as well.

Even though she had succeeded in finding Hinata, the idea of looking through each and every building while simultaneously avoiding the hundreds of zombies now seemed overwhelming. Hinata seemed to be thinking along similar lines, considering the look on her face as she stared out over Konoha with a depressed, blank, look in her pupilless white eyes.

Sakura smacked her forehead. "Hinata, your Byakugan…it can see through walls and things, right?"

Her voice seemed to bring Hinata back to the present reality. "Huh, oh yes, it can," she said, seemingly realizing where Sakura was going with this. "I can help you search."

Sakura smiled and nodded, hoping they would find other Byakugan users. Simply looking down through the roof to tell if anyone inside was alive would be far better than sweeping each house.

Hinata's face darkened as veins began to protrude from the area around her eyes, turning her soft, round face into something far more menacing. Even though her gaze was piercing and terrible, Sakura could see the disappointment in it.

"No one in this building," she said. "Or the pagoda."

Sakura knew little about the Byakugan's range and wondered how far they would have to travel over the neighborhood to perform a thorough sweep. "What about over there?" Sakura asked, pointing to the far end of the block.

"No one on this end is alive," Hinata said, her voice soft and shaking. "We'll have to get to the top of that building over there before I'll know about the rest."

Sakura picked up the grappling hook and began shaking the rope, dislodging it from whatever Hinata had attached it to. With the grappling hook in hand, she looked to see just how they were going to cross the zombie infested street bellow and get to the houses on the other side.

As Sakura was winding up to throw the hook and try to latch it onto the next roof over, Hinata put her hand on her shoulder. "Wait," she said. Sakura let the hook fall and turned to see what Hinata wanted. Her Byakugan was still activated and it made looking into her eyes difficult. "I don't think the rooftops are the best way."

Sakura cocked an eyebrow and wondered what Hinata was talking about. "Well, we can't take the street; it's too dangerous."

"Why don't we take storm drains? You can use your strength to break into the basements and I can use Byakugan to see which way to go," Hinata said. Some strength had returned to her voice; the taking charge of the situation was working to dissuade her fear and despair.

"Are the storm drains clear?" Sakura asked, wondering how they would gain access to them. She would have to find a house that wasn't infested, unlike the one beneath their feet, and then find someway to break into the drainage system without leaving a path for the zombies to follow.

"All the ones I can see are clear," Hinata said. "We can't get in through the basement of this house, of course."

"Which one should we try, then?" Sakura asked.

Hinata looked around and stopped when she faced the house adjacent to theirs. "That one only has a few, and…" she stopped, her voice cracking.

"And what?" Sakura asked, vainly looking at the house as though she too would see it.

"Neji," she said. "He's one of them."

Sakura's heart sunk. She had never held the highest opinion of Neji, even though she had begun to see him as less of a jerk in recent years. Still, she had immense respect for his abilities as a ninja and had hoped he would be able to help. "I'm sorry," Sakura said. "We can try another house if…"

"No, it's the safest one," Hinata said, swallowing hard. "I think…I think I might have to do some things I don't want to do before the end of this."

Sakura nodded, walking over towards the house Hinata had pointed out. She hadn't expected such a statement to come from the timid Hyuga girl. While Hinata had grown since the Chunin exams, she was a far cry from someone like Neji or even Sasuke. Sakura wondered just how much horror Hinata had seen since the rain fell and she wondered how much it had changed the girl.

As she walked, she also thought of Sasuke. If the rain had only fallen over Konoha, he might very well be alright. Her thoughts then turned to Orochimaru. The man, if he could even be classified as such, had attempted to destroy Konoha once already. The rain might very well be his doing and if that was the case, she didn't know how she felt about Sasuke. Still, the nature of the attack heavily suggested that it was Hidden Rain's doing; she didn't know.

Chiding herself for losing focus due to unknowns, she looked for a spot to throw the hook onto the other house's rooftop. There was an open window only slightly lower than the rooftop they were on. "What's through that window?" Sakura asked.

"Three dead bodies covered in sheets," Hinata said. "Regular dead though."

Sakura suddenly felt a little bad for Hinata as she threw the hook through the window. Being able to see through walls at nearly 360 degrees likely opened up an entire world of awful sights. It might have explained why she hadn't been eager to use her gift in order to escape.

Getting across the street and into the house, while making Sakura nervous, went off without a problem. The sheets covering the bodies lying in the spare bedroom were stained with purple fluid and blood. The patterns suggested that the people had been wounded many times before being killed by a lethal shot to the head. Sakura wondered how many people they had managed to infect before being stopped.

They left the bodies in the room and headed out into the hallway. They must have made enough noise to attract the attention of what was down bellow. Loud, clumsy footsteps thudded over the floor and made their way up the stairs. Sakura drew two kunai and waited, standing back from the stairs with the rail between her and whatever was on its way up.

She heard Hinata made a small sound and turned to see her Byakugan deactivate. Turning back, she saw that it was Neji who had reached the top of the stairs, followed by two purple stained zombies, civilians by the look of their clothes.

Neji turned. His intelligent, observant face had now become a mask of frantic hunger. He bolted around the railing and ran towards Sakura with his arms outstretched and his mouth gaping.

Sakura sent her kunai deep into his forehead. He kept running forward and flopped into his face, nearly hitting Sakura's feet. Before she could to anything about the other two, two more kunai flew past her. One struck the nearest zombie through the eye, while the other went low and hit the remaining one in the neck. Sakura threw her other blade and killed the one Hinata hadn't.

A calm silence followed, broken only by Hinata's soft sobs. Sakura rolled Neji over and quickly pulled her kunai from his skull. She made haste to retrieve the others and head down the stairs, while Hinata followed.

"Are there anymore?" Sakura asked, handing back to Hinata her weapons. There were no tears streaming from her eyes, but her cousins death, his second one at least, had clearly upset her.

"N-no," she said. "That was it. If we go into the basement I can show you where to dig to get to the drainage tunnels."

Thankfully, they found the door to the basement before attracting attention from outside. Hinata went down first, and Sakura made sure the door to the basement was shut and locked behind them. The basement was cluttered and dim, the only light coming from a dirty window level with the ground outside.

Hinata had activated her Byakugan once again and was waling towards a wall past a pile of cardboard boxes. She shunted them aside and gestured to the lower part of the wall. "Through there, about four meters," Hinata said.

Sakura cracked her knuckles and began moving chakra around in her body. Two quick punches to the brick wall cracked it open, letting her get a grip on large slabs and pulling them away. She dug as fast as she could, mindful of the loose dirt above her head and wondering if it might collapse on her. Feeling like a gopher, she soon struck another layer of stone, breaking through into an open area that was the drainage tunnel. Sakura nearly gagged once air from the tunnel quaffed over her. It smelled rotten, worse than standing downwind from a mob of zombies.

The source of the smell was obvious; the drainage tunnel, built to funnel off excess rain, was filled with the purple substance that had drenched Konoha, causing the zombie plague.

Sakura stepped back out of the tunnel, coughing. She wanted to yell at Hinata for having the stupid idea, but knew full well she hadn't foreseen the situation either.

Holding her nose, Hinata looked in through the tunnel and moaned. "I didn't think of that," she said. "How could I have been so stupid?"

Waving the air in front of her face, Sakura shook her head. "I didn't think of it either."

A loud crash from the other side of the basement made her turn her head. Jutting through the small basement window, level with the ground, was the torso of one of the zombies. It had seen the two women and jumped through. As it slid to the floor, landing on its back, more came clamoring through.

Even though they were coming in one by one, Sakura knew full well she couldn't stand there and kill them all day; they needed to run. Sakura made for the stairs, while out of the corner of her eye, she watched Hinata bolt for the tunnel.

"Hinata, no!" she shouted, stopping long enough to watch Hinata's back disappear.

Fighting the urge to chase after her, Sakura headed up the stairs and through the basement door. Shutting it behind her, she headed upstairs and made her way up onto the roof.

Safe, and with the grappling hook by her side, she sat down and hung her head between her knees. She desperately wanted to cry, but no tears came. She had found Hinata and lost her in an entirely too short an amount of time. She didn't know if Hinata was dead or not, but judging by the amount of purple fluid in the tunnel and the fact that she was likely being chased by zombies with no way out, didn't give Sakura high hopes.

She picked her head up and wondered what to do next.

To be continued…