Fort of Apocalypse/アポカリプスの砦 1. Chapter 1

A/N: All dialogue comes from a direct translation of the manga.

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Of Scars, Teeth, and Blood (An Apocalypse no Toride Fanfic)

Shōran Juvenile Detention Center

Inmates: 124 - 97 dead

Guards: 20 - 19 dead

Others: 3 - 1 dead

Yamanoi had suspected for days that he'd fucked up royally. The sting in his shoulder told him something was wrong, but he didn't _feel_ different. He ignored it all and focused on the more immediate problems: the ravenous zombies, the delusional guy and his infected son, the Bokor vivisection, the whack-job cultists, the rest of the ape-like inmates, the rations… there was so many things to distract him.

_Stop thinking about it, dumbass_, he told himself. T_he Sea Firefly: was it even possible to get there in one piece. The distance, the obstacles, the… what the fuck?_ As they debated the doctor's proposition in Kiyoharu's office, he felt two of his loose teeth break free.

_When was the last time I had something to drink?_ he thought as he worked up moisture in his parched mouth and he spat them into his palm.

"You gonna run that broad's little errand for her or not?" Kiyoharu asked. Behind him, the dumb blonde hung off the back of his chair, her mind regressed back to that a little girl. She mumbled a nursery rhyme as they spoke.

_I guess she's pretty, if big boobs and fake blonde hair are your thing_, Yamanoi dismissed her.

"I want to go and help her make a cure," Maeda said, looking at his boots. Somehow he was still wearing the steel-toed ones they'd stolen on their way to the Self Defense Force compound.

Yamanoi, momentarily distracted by Maeda's unusual bravado and forgetting the grim artifacts in his hand, opened his balled fist and looked down expecting to see freshly bleeding welts to punish his failure.

Instead of bloody wounds, he saw the old scars that bisected his palms and the yellowed teeth, the roots crusted over with dark red flakes of blood, as if they'd fallen out days before, instead of moments ago.

_Yellowed teeth,_ Yamanoi sighed. _Mother would be so disappointed, but one does not always have time to practice good dental hygiene during the Zombie Apocalypse._

He searched his mouth with his tongue, interested to know if the socket was as dry as the teeth. Starting at the back upper right molar and running his tongue all the way around the top, he found no such hole. He continued the search along his lower jaw and again, found no place missing a tooth. Maeda had healed that fast when he'd fallen off the building, but he was infected…

Yamanoi stared at the teeth as his awareness of what was going on around him narrowed down to those two bits of enamel. He answered Yoshioka's questions, rattling off the story he'd heard on the phone, but he did it out of instinct alone. He heard the conversation around him, participated in it even, but as soon as the words were said, they were gone. His mind couldn't process all the information.

_Why me?_ he thought. He wasn't as pure and naïve as Maeda. He wasn't as pretty as Yoshioka. He wasn't as strong as Gou. But he was quiet, a deep thinker, and a messed up mother-fucker, waiting for the next crack of the whip. He was a fuck-up and this time he was going to pay for his lack of excellence with his life.

_I'm going to die, in this forsaken shithole without ever knowing how this happened. It is all my fault, mother. You're right, you were always right. I deserve this._

Sweat dripped down his forehead and slithered down his nose, collecting for a moment at the nosepiece of his glasses before the thick, wet drops splattered onto his hand, wetting the dried blood and turning it an anemic red.

With his other hand, he lifted his glasses momentarily, allowing the rest of the moisture on his face to flow unimpeded.

_"You must understand mother doesn't like to hit you with the whip Mitsuru-san."_ His mother's voice mocked from the deep, dark past. She always used the honorific –san even though she'd given birth to him. It was incredibly impersonal, yet at the same time, for her to call him anything else would have been disrespectful to the space between them.

"If she can do what she says, then there's a chance I can recover from this infection, right?" Maede said, finally looking up.

Yes, he wasn't the only one infected. Maede's moment of infection had been startlingly clear, but his had most likely occurred when the Bokor scratched him during that hellish chase.

_The bitch doctor said she could make a cure if she had blood from a person infected with the F-Virus. What could she do with two samples? Two samples had to be better than one, right?_

_But do I want a cure? There is something… exciting about the possibilities of being something new, something that feels no pain, something that recovers from even a mortal injury… something that does not scar._

"I think I should go too," Gou offered. Then Maeda turned to Yoshioka who after a ridiculous speech about heroism, agreed to come as well.

"What about you, professor?" Yoshioka asked him.

"Heh. I'm coming. Sounds like I'll have the chance to see a lot of interesting things," Yamanoi, answered, pushing his square institutional issued glasses up his long nose. Either way, cured or not, Yamanoi wouldn't miss the trip for the world.

Shōran Juvenile Detention Center

Inmates: 124 - 97 dead, 4 away on a suicide mission

Guards: 20 - 19 dead

Others: 3 - 1 dead

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My thanks to MissScorp, who beta read this story!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: All dialogue comes directly from the translated the manga.

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Lucky Hills Game Center

Players: 4 - 0 dead

Staff: 1 - ? dead

As the de-facto leader of the group, no one had argued with Yoshioka when he'd suggested the detour. They had places to go, weapons to steal, zombies to dismember, but the three of them followed his whim without question.

Lucky Hills Game Center was abandoned when they arrived. The doors left open, the video games and pinball machines noisily ran through demos with bells, whistles, and flashing lights, giving it the appearance of a carnival after hours. Where once children and teenagers played, now the only inhabitants were Yoshioka's ghostly memories.

It was hard to see, given that the beating had partially closed his right eye, but he knew where the keys were hidden, and after a second of feeling around behind the register, they slipped into his hands like they had a thousand times before.

Inviting the others to play as they saw fit, Yoshioka settled his hip bones on the top edge of the pinball machine, his fingers flexing on the flippers as he waited for the ball to drop.

"Yoshioka?" Iwakura asked Yoshioka's deceptively feminine back.

"Come on," he casually answered, "I said just one game."

"Bastard!" Iwakura's growl almost made him lose the bonus, but Maeda intervened, pointing out the English name of the center.

"Yoshi means lucky," Yamanoi told them. "Oka means hill."

_That dumb bitch had to go and name this place after me. What the hell was she thinking naming something so good and fun and pure after a complete asshole like me?_

"This was my mom's store," he confirmed, playing the angles and ringing the bell in the middle of the playing field. The ball sunk into one of the little recesses, and then shot across and bounced directly into the gap between his flippers.

Yoshioka leaned forward, resting his head on the table for just a second, before pulling back the plunger and starting again. The points racked up as he told the old story.

"Before I knew it, I found myself doing the same things as that worthless father of mine. But my mom didn't close down this old arcade and she just waited for me here," he said.

Ignoring the three sets of eyes that burned holes into his back, his inner vision shifted to the past, to the times when he had to stand on a stool just to reach the table, and the smell of his mother's warm perfume came back to him. He felt her standing there, just to his right, outside of the vision possible with the swollen eye.

_Any moment now she'll reach out and ruffle my hair like she'd done countless times before… but that's stupid. The doors are open, the money's in the register, and my mom… she wouldn't have left this place because of her promise to wait for my return._

The front window cracked, but Yoshioka didn't look up.

"But I guess I can't stand around here playing this forever," he said, turning, with a fleeting hope of seeing his mom alive one more time.

The glass gave way, and the horde shambled into the front of the arcade, suddenly bring the place to life once more. Moans drowned out the bells.

_You disgusting pieces of shit, how dare you bleed in my mother's place, he thought, _picking up the baseball bat he'd propped against the wall earlier.

"Yoshioka-kun, you can keep doing that for a bit longer," Maeda said, his chin tilted down, resolve mudding his child-like face. "This mess here… the three of us will deal with it somehow."

Iwakura chambered a round and Maeda held the golf club like he was swinging for the long game. Yoshioka's laughter was lost in the sound of Yamanoi firing up the chainsaw.

Yoshioka ignored the blast of the pump-action shotgun as Iwakura danced around the room. The backswing of Maeda's club lifted his hair and he shivered, thinking once again of his mother. The teeth of the chainsaw slowed down momentarily as it rent rotting flesh.

Blood splattered across the glass of the machine and Yoshioka let go of one flipper long enough to rub the offending matter clear. He played on, his score rising 46,772 and climbing…

He waited for his mother's voice to drift from the second story, nagging him that the dinner she worked so hard to prepare was getting cold.

_Those damn zombies, if they'd just shut the fuck up, maybe I could hear her voice one last time. I've never wanted to be screamed at so badly in my entire life._

But it didn't come. There was no need to beg for one more game. The ball dropped and playtime was over. He exhaled, and dropped his head back, stretching the muscles that hadn't been used in far too long.

"I'm done," he said, turning from the machine to see Yamanoi, his dripping chainsaw slung over his shoulder, leaning casually against the chair of a racing game his mother must have bought after he'd been locked up. "I got a new high score."

At Yamanoi's feet, stacked three deep, scores of bodies lay, unmoving.

"We've set a new high score here, too," Maeda said, his innocent face splattered with sweat and gore.

Lucky Hills Game Center

Players: 4 - 0 dead

Staff: 1 - 1 dead

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My thanks to MissScorp, my first reader and my inspiration to continue writing this demented tale.


End file.

Fort of Apocalypse/アポカリプスの砦, Drama, Horror