Highschool of the Dead: Fanfiction Darkpenn

Chapter 18: weapon

Weapon

The undead have evolved to a very dangerous stage.

Saya, Hirano, Rei and Benaro were clustered around the computer screen, scrutinising the latest aerial photographs taken by Benaro from the C2 plane - now called Ryukyu, with an image of the Serpent Eagle painted on the side - using the built-in digital camera. The photographs were of the city of Maebashi, which Saya had been in several months before.

"I know you said that there were some towers there but I couldn't see them," said Benaro.

"No, here they are," said Rei, pointing. "What's left of them, anyway."

The towers had been smashed, and were now little more than piles of rubble. They were surrounded by bodies - zombie bodies.

"From what I saw of them, they were pretty solid," said Saya. "What could have taken them down like this?"

"I don't think they were just pulled down by other zombies," said Hirano. "Look at how the wreckage spreads out over the ground. Like there was a big impact from one side. But as for what could have done that, I have no idea."

Saya enlarged one part of the image, focusing on one of the bodies. It was the zombie she had seen, the leader, still wearing the check jacket. Even with the roughness of the image, they could see that there was something protruding from his skull. It appeared to be a spear.

"Hmm," said Hirano.

There were several towers, or what was left of them, in one of the images. Saya began to draw lines, based on the spread of the rubble.

"Interesting," she said after a while. "They all lead back to the same point, more or less, a bit less than a kilometre away. There's a hill overlooking the town, from the east, about there."

"East," said Rei. "East of Maebashi is Tokyo."

Benaro was staring at the dead zombies. "So now they have started to kill each other," he said. "But ... how?"

"Let me see the most recent photos of Tokyo," said Hirano. Benaro brought them up on the screen, and Hirano studied them. "Look at this," he said. He pointed to several of the freeways, one leading west and one north. They were strangely empty of cars. On closer examination, it was possible to see why: the wrecks had been pushed over the side. By the zombies.

Hirano sat back, lost in thought. "I think," he said finally, "that the zombies have built a trebuchet."

"A what?" said Rei.

"A trebuchet," said Hirano. "Sort of a catapult, invented during the Middle Ages in Europe, designed to bring down castles and things. It uses a counterweight system to throw a boulder or something like it. The super-weapon of its time. The downside is that they're big things, and not easy to move. But then the zombies have got nothing but time and muscle."

"Fuck," said Saya. "At this rate, they'll be ahead of us within a decade, in technology and everything else."

"But why would one group of zombies kill another group?" said Benaro. "I could accept that they might have a dispute with the ones at Rest, but if the group that did this came from Tokyo, what would they have against the ones in Maebashi?"

"Maybe they're consolidating their territory," said Rei. "The ones in Tokyo. Taking out the competition. Establishing themselves as the baddest tribe on the block."

"That's as good a theory as any," said Hirano. "Tribes, eh? Yeah, that makes sense."

"So if they've taken to killing each other, that's good for us, isn't it?" said Benaro. "Fewer of them against us if we have to fight."

"Maybe," said Rei. "Saya said that she saw several hundred zombies in Maebashi, but there's only fifty or sixty bodies here. So maybe the survivors joined up with the Tokyo tribe."

"After an offer they couldn't refuse, probably," said Saya.

"Plenty of empires built that way," said Hirano. "It's a real worry. And so is the fact that they have worked out how to build a complex, long-range weapon."

"They've turned into a smart bunch," said Benaro.

"They don't need to all be smart," said Saya. "Just one."

"One way or another," said Rei, "we need to find out more about what is happening in Tokyo."

"That," said Saya, "is a bad idea whose time has come."