So in my absence I've been working on school work as well as future and current stories. In the mix, my obsession over Highschool of the Dead came back from my mid teen years, so I figured why not write a story about it. That being said since I'm behind multiple stories, this is not gonna be a consistent updated story. Meaning, I will work on this story alongside the ones that I am working on right now, but expect chapters for this story to be uploaded along with other updates for other stories, if that makes sense. That being said, I hope you all enjoy
Fujimi Academy, Monday 11:30 A.M.
Staring outside the bus, Johnny sighed at the fact that instead of being back at home, messing around with his friends, he was halfway across the world on a school mandated trip for the photography elective he was a part of. Part of him was happy he was here, as it meant a inexpensive visit to Japan, and yet the other part of him wanted to be back home.
"Ok students..." The teacher said, getting up from the bus seat and walking towards the front of the entire group. "We're close to Fujimi Academy. Remember, we're their guests here, and we will show them the upmost respect possible." Everyone agreed in Unison and continued on with their individual conversations as Johnny continued to daydream. That was, until, his partner began to ask questions.
"Man, aren't you excited Johnny?! I mean, we, out of all highschools in America, were chosen to help publicize the next World news headline."
Johnny turned his attention back to his partner, Roger, who in his mind was way too excited for this trip.
"Sure, I guess. Would've been better if it was a choice for me rather than this, or repeating my senior year."
"Yeah well, going to Juvie for half the year and not keeping up with the school work will put you in that predicament." Roger rudely added. Johnny flipped him off, which got him a warning from the teacher to cut out his behavior. He sat back down in his seat, pissed off, looking out the window.
As the bus pulled into the school, Johnny noticed a man slowly walking up to the gate, although he was a good distance away from the main entrance. Still, something about the man was weird.
"Johnny! Let's go! The group is waiting on you." Johnny's teacher exclaimed. Johnny fixed himself and got his camera ready as he exited the bus, reuniting with his group mates and now seeing how Fujimi looked in person. He couldn't believe the size of a regular Japanese highschool, compared to his relatively plain industrial looking one back in Willamette.
"Ahh, you all must be the kids from Willamette High." A lady's voice arose. Everyone looked towards the source to see the principal of the school greeting them.
"I'm Kyoko Hayashi. Welcome to Fujimi Academy." Johnny's mind wandered as the lady droned on about why they were there. His attention shifted towards the staircase heading up to the roof, where he noticed a pair of students arguing on it. He decided if nothing else, he was going to milk the opportunity to take photos of this school, and pointed his camera at the pair and took a few pictures. He's only recourse to stop is when one of them with absurdly pink hair turned and saw him.
"Now, are we all ready to go inside?" Kyoko asked, which everyone responded in excitement. As the Willamette High kids started to enter the Academy, Johnny looked back and noticed the man was back in view and this time, at the front gate. Kyoko called for more staff to help deal with the stranger, but Johnny's group was moving too fast for him to see the outcome immediately.
Fujimi Academy, Main Floor. 12:30 A.M.
"Alright kids, listen up. I want some good pictures today, and I trust you all to be responsible young adults. So, instead of me overseeing each and everyone of you guys, I will give you all a hour and a half to explore the school and take some nice pictures. Don't worry, the teachers were notified beforehand about our arrival, so we won't be disrupting any classes." The teacher stated. He looked down at his watch and noticed half of the day was already up, and that they only had a few more hours at the school before they had to return to the hotel.
To make matters worse, one of the faculty that was outside came back, albeit with some blood on his hands. "Excuse me, Mr. Thompson?" Mr. Thompson nodded his head.
"We need your help, there's been a accident at the gate." All the kids were worried, but Thompson reassured them everything was fine and urged them to explore. Johnny was a bit suspicious, but was distracted by Roger and their friend Chrissy.
"Did you guys see that?" Chrissy asked.
"See what?" Roger followed up.
"The blood dumbass."
Roger looked annoyed. "Calm down Chrissy, because it sounded like you had a bit of bass in your voice and-"
"Would both of you shut up?" Johnny interjected. "Whatever's going outside is better kept outside. Nothing we should be worrying about."
"Oh, now we shouldn't be worried Mr. Paranoid? You get worried about the slightest mention of blood or death."
"And you don't? After what happened to our home?" Chrissy added. The three of them stood silent, remembering what happened in Willamette 4 years ago, when they were all just 13.
"All I'm saying is its been a long time Johnny. We all lost people close to us then. But that doesn't give you the right to hold it against everyone that you lost people."
Johnny looked intensely at Roger, as if he wanted to punch him. He curled his fist up, but took a breath and relaxed himself, opting not to do it. He put his left hand under his camera to hold it and his right on top of the trigger button and started to walk down the hallway, looking for something to take a picture of to take his mind off his anger.
"Johnny!" Roger yelled. "I'm sorry!" Roger's response from Johnny was a middle finger in the air. Chrissy sighed, upset at having to constantly play peacekeeper between the both of them.
"Great job dick."
Johnny was wandering the halls of Fujimi by himself. Despite the freedom given to him, the negative thoughts of not being able to get back home seeped into his mind. Still he pushed on and pushed the thought to the back of his mind, opting to worry about it later. He came up to a room that albeit had no sign or room number, he heard someone inside.
"Well...they did say they were expecting us." Johnny slightly opened the door to see a woman striking the air with what seemed to be a wooden stick. The more he watched her, the more obvious it was she was skilled at fighting with it, despite not seeing her in action. He raised his camera up to take a photo when she suddenly turned around and pointed the wooden stick at his face.
"Is there a reason why you're by the door, spying on my training?" The girl asked. Johnny was stumped for a legitimate answer, mostly because he didn't want to get hit with the katana.
"I was uhhh...gonna take your picture?"
"I don't remember asking for you to do so."
"Yeah well, you got me there. I'm with the Willamette High School newspaper. We were selected amongst other high-schools to take some photos and do a news article on schools around the world." The answer seemed to please the girl enough to where she dropped the katana from his face and holstered it. She then stuck out her hand.
"Saeko Busujima." Johnny followed suit by shaking her hand with his.
"Johnny Caldwell."
"So, I'm assuming that you're interested in Kendo."
Saeko looked back to see that Johnny was completely lost. "Uhh sure, let's go with that."
Saeko chuckled. "If you want to know what it is, you can ask. Besides, it might help your article look better."
"You make a fair point." Johnny said as he took out his small journal and pen. "So what is Kendo?"
Saeko smiled as she unsheathed her Wooden katana once again.
"Kendo is a form of martial arts, derived from kenjutsu. The purpose is to learn to discipline the human character through the principles of sword fighting. Once mastered, any sword like object can be considered deadly, be it blunt or sharp."
Johnny looked up from his notes to Saeko, who simply just had a smile on her face once she finished her explanation of Kendo. "Yeaaaa, maybe we leave out the deadly part-"
"You asked what Kendo is, and I gave it to you. To leave any part out would be a disservice to the practice. Plus, it makes bad journalism if you leave only controversial parts out."
"Jeez, ok I'll leave in the last part. Better than getting whacked with the stick anyways." Johnny mumbled under his breath. He finished up with his notes and put away the journal and pen and moved his attention on his camera.
"Is it alright if I take a few photos of you practicing Kendo?"
Saeko crossed her arms and looked at Johnny's camera with intrigue. "Depends, think you'd be able to catch my moves in time?"
Johnny smirked, albeit in a cocky fashion. "Trust me, I got a pretty fast trigger finger." Johnny raised his camera up as Saeko got into the first striking position. She unsheathed her wooden sword and began to strike the air in multiple attack patterns.
Johnny was instantly regretting his remark a few seconds ago, as he wasn't prepared for how fast and swift Saeko's strikes would be. The shoot went on for about 5 minutes, and he was only able to capture about 7 good quality photos of Saeko in action.
"Mind if I see them?" Saeko asked, resting her sword on her shoulder.
"Yeah, so about that fast trigger finger..." Johnny put the camera in front of Saeko and started to cycle through the photos. She saw both of the failed photos and the successful ones.
She looked back up at Johnny and smirked. "I suppose you were somewhat capable of keeping up." Johnny rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Well I wasn't exactly ready for-" Just then, both teams heard a pounding sound at the door. It wasn't forceful pounding, rather an inconsistent one. To add to the weirdness, they could faintly hear someone groaning or mumbling something.
"Expecting anyone?" Saeko asked. Johnny turned around to face her and she saw a look of worry on him.
"My teacher, but we weren't even here for a hour yet." Johnny checked the time on his watch. As suspected, not even an hour had passed. "He probably lost track of one of my classmates and is looking for them here."
Johnny walked towards the door and reached for the handle when he suddenly had a bad feeling in his gut. It wasn't one of nausea or anything like that, but he felt off about something. He shook it off and opened the door to be greeted to his teacher standing in front of him.
It took Johnny a spilt second to realize the blood pouring out of his teachers mouth and his lifeless eyes staring at him. The teacher lunged for Johnny, grabbing his shoulders and pushing him back into the room, attempting to bite him anywhere possible.
Johnny held his teacher back, putting his left hand under his jaw to try and limit the teacher from biting, and was trying to get his right hand in a angle to punch him off.
"Let go of me...asshole." Johnny's flashbacks of the Willamette incident were coming back to him. It wasn't his teacher in front of him anymore. It was the undead.
The undead teacher's strength was overwhelming Johnny, to the point it got him on the floor and was trying to grab a chunk out of his neck. Desperate to free himself, Johnny started punching him with his right hand. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to phase it.
"Johnny!" Saeko yelled. She took her sword and aimed to hit the teacher off of Johnny, but quickly had to block a zombie that had come past Johnny and his teacher. She turned her sword sideways and held it against the throat of her attacker, who was trying to push itself closer to bite her.
Johnny's constant punching was tiring him out, as well as holding his teacher back from killing him. His punches started to slow down and had less force behind them. This would prove to be a lethal mistake, as the teacher was able to bite down onto Johnny's hand, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Johnny screamed out in agony as he moved his left hand to try and pry the undead teacher off his hand.
Saeko, seeing what had just happened and hearing the scream, suddenly had a shift in her mentality as if she just woke up. She used some of her strength to let the zombie she was dealing with get close to push it off her with her sword, giving her some distance. She then proceeded to raise her sword overhead and bring it down onto the zombie's skull hard, killing it instantly. She then turned her attention to the teacher on Johnny.
She knew repeating the downward attack would make the bite worst, and possibly he'd lose a chunk of his hand. Thats when Johnny got his hand free and pushed the teacher's head as far up as he could for Saeko to get a clean hit.
"Hate to be that guy, but please get him off of me!" Johnny exclaimed. Saeko complied and swung her sword to the side of the teacher's head, knocking him of Johnny. Saeko helped him up and they both noticed that the teacher was still not dead, and tried to lunge for Saeko's ankle.
"Oh no you don't!" Johnny brought his foot up and stomped on the teacher's head, killing it for sure. The two teens stood in silence as they just came to the realization of what they did, and what just happened.
"Did we just-" Saeko started, desperately trying to catch her breath.
"Yeah...we did." Johnny finished. As the teens tried to wrap their heads around what was happening, an announcement came over the school's PA system.
"This announcement is for all the students...an emergency situation is taking place inside the school right now. All students must follow your teachers instructions and evacuate...I repeat, a violent incident is taking place inside the school right now..." Feedback from the mic rang out and there was a moment of silence until the announcer got back on the microphone, and the grunt of an unknown person was heard.
"Get away from me." The announcer stated. "Get back!" The announcer started to panic and yell into the microphone, as the unknown groaning got louder. "HELPPPPP, HELLPPPP, HELLLL-" The announcement ended, the last words everyone in the school heard was the sound of a teacher dying.
Johnny and Saeko could hear from both the same floor and the floor above and below that students were starting to panic and run out yelling and screaming. Both of them ran out of the Kendo room and saw the chaos unfolding before their eyes.
Johnny gripped onto his camera tightly as he saw his worst nightmare happening all over again. The undead were back, just like Willamette. And as cruel irony and fate would have it, he found himself in the same position as the first zombie outbreak, stuck in school.
Saeko looked at Johnny and saw he was stuck in both thought and horror as students were trampled and beaten by each other, and eaten and ripped apart by the undead.
"Johnny, what the hell is going on?" Saeko asked.
Johnny, not taking his eyes off the horror, answered.
"Hell on earth."