Highschool of the Dead: Fanfiction Darkpenn

Chapter 5: Dead and the last snow

Takashi and his friends thought that they had left trouble behind. But trouble comes looking for them.

[Author's note: This story mainly takes place sixteen months after the story Kaga Base - 'Holding On', which should be read as a prelude to this story; and about two years after the Outbreak. It concludes the Chronicles of Takashi Komuro story cycle.]

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Saya walked up the hill to Saeko. She was standing like a statue, her hand on her sword, looking north. Looking towards the city that lay over the horizon. The sun was close to setting.

"The kids are being fed by their dads," said Saya, as she came up next to her friend. "And Grandmother, of course."

"That's good," said Saeko softly, without moving.

She drew her blade from its scabbard a little. Then she let it slide back.

"What is it?" said Saya. Instinctively, her hand went to her Luger.

"Something," Saeko murmured. "Something."

"The last time you said that, it meant trouble," said Saya.

Saeko was silent. Then she turned and started to walk back to the farmhouse, leaving Saya staring at the horizon.

Saeko stopped and said over her shoulder: "A storm is coming." Then she walked away.

"Well," said Saya to herself, "that can't be good."

Takashi readily admitted that he did not understand Saeko. At times, such as when she was playing with their son Rise - now nearly eight months old - she seemed very much like any other woman, if an extremely beautiful one. At other times - when she was deep in a kendo routine or bent over a page of calligraphy, for example - she seemed to exist in another world, an untouchable universe of the sword and the soul.

He sometimes wondered if she was happy here, growing vegetables and chasing chickens. She was, after all, a warrior, a perfect machine for doing what she did when she had a blade in her hand. Would she, he wondered, be happier if they were driving from one end of the country to the other, killing zombies as they went and not giving a thought to next season's crop? Did the cottage taking shape a hundred metres from the farmhouse, the house that would be a home for their family, really matter to her? Did he, Takashi? Did Rise? Or did her heart really belong only to bushido?

He looked around at the Maresato farm compound. Saya's windmill swished away, charging batteries for the farms and houses nearby. There were three similar windmills at Kaga Base: he smiled when he remembered that the people there referred to them as 'saya-mills'.

The garden around the Maresato farm - expanded from one to three fields - was filled with vegetables. Hirano's first crop of rice would be ready soon. The number of goats and chickens had become so large that they had begun to send animals to Kaga Base with boxes of vegetables and eggs.

And then there was Saya's schoolhouse - not much more than a large prefabricated shed, but she was immensely pleased with it and with her eleven students, including Alice. The building was a few hundred metres from the farmhouse, a distance that had worried Takashi at first. But Saya always had her Luger, and had installed a warning bell. Alice - now nearly ten years old but, like the rest of his friends, much older - was extremely capable, and was always armed.

He was proud of it all, and of his role in it. There was no other word. And he loved Saeko. So what did it matter if she did not love him in the same way he loved her? It was enough.

He heard the buzz of Tatagi's plane, which had Rei on board. It was coming in to land. He signalled Saeko, who was working at the other end of the garden. The two of them started towards the dirt road that doubled as a landing strip.