Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

The Long Run	By : Sasunarufan13 Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1939 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor make profit of it. Kishimoto owns it.

Chapter List
- 24
- 25
- 26
Author's note: So we've reached another rather gory part in the story, guys! Prepare yourselves for the gory shit that is about to go down in this chapter and the next one!
Warnings: Gory shit, like reaching The Walking Dead levels of gory shit
Prepare yourself, guys!
Chapter 25
They arrived at their destination two days later. The town was one off the grid, which was surprising considering it had a hospital, but they had to take a side road in order to reach it. They had almost missed the turn; it had been that unnoticeable. Naruto parked the car between some abandoned ones and they got out, looking in the direction of the town. They didn't dare to park too close just in case so they would have to continue on foot.
The hospital was the focal point of the town, looming over the place; the white building standing out starkly against the overcast sky. The town itself wasn't that large with only a couple of streets, giving off the impression that the town had built itself around the hospital. The couple of cars which littered the sides of the road were nothing but bare carcasses, steel frames left behind with the tires slashes and the engines ruined. Old bloodstains coloured the streets and the walls a rusty brown. Some were in the form of handprints haphazardly smashed alongside the doors as if the ones who'd left them behind had been desperate to enter the buildings. Some were nothing but long smears as if bodies had been dragged across the road. That was very likely, but that didn't make it less of a morbid sight.
"It's quiet," Karin remarked as they walked further down the street, keeping to one side of the road.
The silence was almost stifling in fact. There wasn't even the noise of zombies lumbering around; only the soft noise of the wind could be heard.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Naruto asked and while he sounded neutral, his eyes were narrowed and his lips thinned; his hands tense around his crossbow.
Sasuke followed his gaze and noticed he was looking at the window of a grocery store – or what should have been the window, but it was no longer there; the opening looking like a gaping jaw. In fact, none of the buildings had windows, Sasuke noticed and he frowned. Even the glass doors had been shattered.
"No windows," Karin realised as well, looking around her. "None of the buildings here seem to still have them. I guess shattered windows aren't that weird considering all the looting that must have happened, but …"
But this many shattered windows was rather unheard of. Especially when the sound could attract the undead. Unless this had all happened in the beginning of the apocalypse when they hadn't known yet what would attract the zombies? Even so, this was very odd.
They crossed the road quickly, keeping a careful eye out for any zombie that might try to surprise them. Walking into the grocery store, Sasuke's attention was immediately captured by how bare it looked. There was literally nothing left. All the shelves were empty, there was nothing stacked behind the counters, nothing abandoned in the storage rooms. There wasn't even a can lost underneath the shelves. It was completely empty.
The two houses on either side of the grocery store yielded nothing either. No cans, no bottles of water or even soda, not even the remains of food long gone. This far into the apocalypse it made sense, of course, that people had looted this town already, but in all the previous places there had still been something left at least, a can or a box.
"Nothing," Naruto murmured when they paused in the street.
"Buildings being looted isn't that uncommon," Karin remarked, but she was frowning as well and she was clutching a knife. "I mean, that's what we've been doing as well. Guess the people before us were just more thorough?"
"Looted, sure, I guess, but everything?" Naruto asked sceptically and glanced around. "This place is rather off the grid as well, how high are the chances that enough people managed to find this place and literally loot everything? We almost missed the turn and we had baa-chan's directions to help us."
"You think this might be some kind of trap?" Sasuke frowned.
Naruto gnawed on his lower lip, looking frustrated. "Look, haven't you noticed that even though all the windows are gone, there's no shattered glass? Like none whatsoever."
There wasn't any, Sasuke agreed after a quick look around. Not even some shards left behind even though literally every window had been smashed.
"I don't know about you, but I wouldn't take the time to clean up shattered glass when I'm looting a store," Naruto continued and cocked his head to the left. "For that matter I wouldn't knock out every glass pane either, because that's a guaranteed way to attract zombies."
"I can't explain the missing glass, but they could have knocked them out during the start of this when people were panicking too much," Karin suggested, but the doubtful look in her eyes said she didn't put much stock in what she was saying.
"Maybe," Naruto allowed and sighed heavily through his nose, resting one hand on his hip. "Okay, maybe I'm paranoid, but take a look at these cars: all the tires are slashed and the engines are completely destroyed. Why would anyone go through the trouble of slashing tires and destroying engines when essentially all you would need is the petrol inside? And even though there's blood all around this place, I haven't seen a single dead zombie yet. I suppose the blood could have been from when they were still alive and the zombies just wandered off, but …"
It wasn't paranoia if they were truly out to get you and Sasuke believed Naruto was one of the least paranoid people. Every time so far his suspicions had turned out to be correct and quite frankly, Sasuke was getting a weird vibe of this town as well. There was the silence, of course, uncommon when zombies liked to linger around towns, but there was also the missing glass, the completely empty buildings, the destroyed cars …
Why would someone go through all the trouble of setting up a trap here, though? As Naruto had said before, this place was rather off the grid. How high were the chances that this town would have regular visitors?
"You want to turn back then?" Karin asked. There was no accusation in her voice, no taunting. She simply wanted to know their next course of action.
"We've been travelling for so long, it would suck if we just decided to turn around now, but …" Naruto trailed off frustrated and shook his head. "I don't know. I just don't have a good feeling about this town, but Deidara needs a prosthetic. If that hospital still has them …"
Sasuke understood his struggle. Every cell in his body was on high alert, near the point of screaming danger, but after travelling for so long, were they really going to give up a chance to make life easier for Deidara? On the other hand they would be stupid to just walk straight into a trap, especially when they had warnings beforehand.
"Should we go back to the car and just do a quick drive around here?" Karin asked, nibbling on her lip. "If there is a trap, a car would help us escape quicker."
"Maybe, but given how these cars look like … That might be part of a trap," Sasuke murmured, staring at the rusting vehicles.
If their car ended up like these ones, they would be in deep shit because none of the cars out on the highway had any petrol left. They had checked those, just in case, and their search had yielded nothing. Without a car, they would be fucked.
"Let's just go to the hospital and see if we can find the prosthetics," Naruto sighed and adjusted his crossbow. "Hell, maybe I am just being really paranoid at the moment; it's been a while since I last was on the road for this long, it might be fucking with my head."
"Is it really paranoid if your instinct is going to keep us alive?" Karin smiled wryly and unsheathed a second knife. "Come on, let's go. The quicker we've searched the hospital, the quicker we can leave this creepy town."
Cautiously they walked further into the town, casting quick looks in the abandoned cars and buildings out of habit by now. But no matter in which vehicle or building they looked, everything remained empty. If it had been truly just some innocent looting, then these people had been very thorough.
"Hey, guys."
Sasuke and Karin turned around at once, spotting Naruto standing right next to a red car, abandoned right before a crossing.
"You found something after all?" Karin asked curiously.
"Yeah, though I'm not sure whether it's something to be happy about," Naruto said apprehensively, reaching through the opened window.
When he pulled his arm back out, he was holding a backpack. Squatting down, he lowered his crossbow on the ground and Sasuke and Karin automatically covered him on each side. The unzipping of the bag seemed rather loud in the tense silence, making all three of them wince a bit. The first thing Naruto took from the bag was a framed picture of a smiling couple who had their hands resting on the shoulders of a very young, dark haired boy who was grinning even wider. A family of three. The next item to leave the bag was an unfinished water bottle, followed by a Tupperware box of all things. When Naruto removed the lid, the stench of rotting tomatoes greeted them, the sour scent wafting from the box. A half rolled up tube of toothpaste was next with a box of hard sweets being the last item.
"Guess they forgot to loot these," Karin muttered bemused.
Naruto, however, was frowning deeply; his shoulders incredibly tense as he put everything back in the bag.
"What are you thinking?" Sasuke asked quietly, though he had a feeling he already knew what was bothering Naruto.
He was right. "These tomatoes haven't started rotting that long ago yet," Naruto remarked and stared into the open bag. "If this bag had been here for a while, there should have been nothing left of the tomatoes."
Karin tensed up. "You think the owners are still around?" she whispered, casting a furtive glance around them.
"If they are, why would they slash their tires?" Naruto asked, gesturing at the puncture holes in the tires. "I bet if we lift up the hood, we'll see the engine has been thrashed as well."
"And if they are still around, why would they leave their bag behind?" Sasuke questioned aloud.
Nothing about this situation made sense. There was no reason for the owners to destroy their own car, so that meant someone else had done that. Why? The tomatoes had only just started rotting, which meant that the owners of this car had arrived here fairly recently still. So where were they now? Who had destroyed their car and for what reason?
Unwillingly his gaze was drawn towards the hospital looming at the back of the town. Could it be that they would find more than just prosthetics there? Sasuke glanced away, his stomach twisting uncomfortably. As he did so, his attention was caught by a sign stuck to the wall of a former post office.
"Hey, look at that," he said, pointing at the sign.
"Safe zone," Karin read, following the arrow with her eyes which seemed to point straight at the hospital.
They were quiet for a moment.
"You think people really made a safe zone out of that hospital?" she questioned tentatively; her thumb rubbing around the hilt of her knife.
"I want to believe that," Naruto said dryly and stood up, dropping the bag back in the car. "But I have seen enough shit to know that we shouldn't immediately trust it."
"And if it's a safe zone, why would they need to slash tires of cars?" Sasuke remarked. "That could be the work of yet another group, I guess, but …"
How high were the chances that there were two random groups operating from the same town without getting into fights with each other? He wasn't inclined to think that this could be a coincidence.
"So," Karin broke the silence with a sigh, "we're going to visit the creepy hospital which might or might not lead to our deaths?"
"Well, we're already here," Naruto said lightly, but his face was sombre. "As long as we're careful, we might actually make it out alive."
"I appreciate your optimism," she snorted. "All right, let's go visit the 'safe zone'."
"You know," Naruto remarked as they sat there, hiding between the bushes, "I am fully aware of how ironic this is going to sound considering there are literally zombies walking around, but that shit looks like it could be part of a horror movie."
He wasn't wrong. With how overcast the sky was and how tall the building, the hospital really looked like it was part of some horror movie. The wide road leading up to the entrance had been gated off with rows of spikes which had a couple of zombies stuck to them, moaning quietly. The road and the building itself appeared to be free from zombies, not even a spot of blood to be seen.
After they had discovered the sign, they had found more arrows indicating SAFE ZONE. All of them pointed straight towards the hospital and as Sasuke watched, the banner nailed right above the entrance doors fluttered in the breeze, making the words SAFE ZONE dance as if they were part of a wave. The banner was written in an odd rusty brown colour and some of the letters were running as if the ink hadn't dried quickly enough. Sasuke didn't want to think too much about what this ink had actually been.
"I find it weird how we go through the entire town without finding a single zombie, but here they are nailed to the spikes," Karin muttered, wrinkling her nose. "God damn it, I really don't like this. I just wanted an easy run for once, is that too much to ask?"
"Maybe I bring bad luck," Naruto mused, sounding only half joking.
"Impossible," Sasuke instantly refuted. "If you did, I wouldn't still be alive, so if anything you bring good luck."
"Aw," Naruto cooed and squeezed his thigh. "That's so sweet of you!"
"You know, as nice as it would be to see you two make out, this is so not the time for that," Karin said dryly.
Naruto turned to her with an incredulous look. "You'd want to see us make out?" He sounded almost scandalised and involuntarily Sasuke smiled amused.
"Sure, two hot guys making out, what's there not to like?" she said flippantly. "But again, not the time or place here."
"You really need to find yourself a guy," Naruto said gravely.
Before she could react, Sasuke tapped their shoulders. "Look, there's light in the far left window on the second floor," he pointed out quietly.
It was faint, the light, definitely not from a ceiling lamp. From the way it moved and its thin beam, Sasuke guessed it had to be a flashlight. The presence of light in the hospital wasn't exactly reassuring. Maybe he had grown too suspicious, but the banner with SAFE ZONE wasn't exactly instilling safety in him. He kept thinking back to the car with the backpack and the missing family. Had they come to the hospital? Had they followed the signs? Was it perhaps one of them with a flashlight there? Or was it someone else? The one who had put up the signs?
"There are cameras in the front," Naruto observed.
There were at least four visible ones with two of them aimed at the entrance and one at each corner, facing the woods. Sasuke wondered if they had already been part of the hospital before this whole shit started or whether they had been added later.
"They might not work," Karin murmured, gnawing down on her thumbnail.
"They might if they have a generator," Naruto rebuked, furrowing his eyebrows. "I'm honestly not willing to test whether those work as long as we don't know who we're dealing with."
"So the front is out," Sasuke decided. To be honest he hadn't been really eager to just stroll through the entrance, not with how the road leading up to the doors was surrounded on all sides with sharp spikes.
Because the spikes weren't only facing the woods from which zombies might come, but they were also facing the road, yet all the zombies trapped against the spikes were on the side of the woods. The spikes facing the road on each side didn't make any sense, because zombies were more liable to just wander straight through into the hospital instead of walking to the sides. The sight of them did little to put Sasuke more at ease.
"We could try going through the back," he suggested, glancing at the woods. Perhaps if they circled around the building, leaving a wide enough range between them and the cameras, they might be able to reach the back without being spotted.
"Where did baa-chan say the prosthetics should be?" Naruto asked.
"The third floor," Karin replied. "At the back of the hallway, unless they moved it of course."
"Of course it has to be the third floor," Naruto sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Because the ground floor would have been too easy."
"We can circle through the woods and reach the back of the hospital that way," Sasuke said. "That way we stay out of the cameras' range if they do still work."
"What if they have cameras at the back as well, though?" Karin asked worriedly.
"If they have, we can try finding the blind spot," Naruto answered, but his tone suggested he didn't feel very confident about that.
"We can worry about that when we get there," Sasuke stated. "Let's first reach the back."
The town had been completely devoid of zombies, but that wasn't the case for the woods. In their attempt to keep the distance between them and the cameras large enough, they were forced to go relatively deeply into the woods where they encountered several zombies. The amount of zombies wasn't as bad as the group had been of a few days ago, but it was quite noticeable when they had managed to walk through the town without encountering them even once.
"Am I the only one who thinks there's something off with the lack of zombies in the town while they obviously roam around here?" Naruto grumbled, retrieving his bolt from the skull of a middle-aged woman.
"You think they set up something around the town to keep them away?" Karin suggested, frowning. "Like a gate perhaps? It might explain why they are here but nowhere in the town."
"Could be," Sasuke agreed, looking around them carefully. "But the perimeter has to be large then, because I didn't see any when we arrived."
There were no discernible paths to be found in these woods. No grass knacked to form a path, no signs of erosion anywhere. Did whoever occupied the hospital only leave the place through the town? The silence, normally welcome, was rather discomforting now when he considered what might be awaiting them in the hospital. He didn't want to assume the worst immediately, but the presence of the spikes and the sight of the demolished cars and the missing windows … He wasn't going to lie: he was going to be immensely glad once they were back at their car and could go home.
Their detour took a little while, cautious as they were not to get too close to the hospital. They managed to circle all the way to the back of the building and once there, they hunched down in the bushes, studying the place.
"Doesn't seem like there are any visible cameras," Naruto mumbled; his eyes roaming from one side of the building to the other.
"It's blocked on both sides with vans," Karin pointed out, jerking her head at the two empty vans parked on each side of the hospital. "I doubt they expect much traffic on this side."
Sasuke glanced at them. "So, we're going to risk it?"
Naruto heaved a sigh, rubbing his forehead. "We've got all the way here already … Might as well do what we came for. Best if we don't separate, though." He eyed the hospital warily. "I don't want to doom-monger, but this whole situation feels shady as hell and I'd rather not lose either of you in there."
"Ready?" Sasuke tightened his grip around his katana.
"Yep, let's go, we've got a prosthetic to find," Karin muttered.
Taking care not to make any noise, they used the cover of the trees to get as close to the hospital as possible before they walked out in the open. They passed the van on the left and a quick look inside showed there was nothing in there. The vines slowly twisting around the tires indicated that the van might have been here for quite a while already. So definitely used as a way to block and not simply parked here until they needed it again. The logo on the side was so faded, Sasuke couldn't even make out what it had originally said.
They paused in front of the faded red door and Naruto carefully tested the doorknob. It gave away relatively easily underneath his hold and slowly he pushed it open. The hinges creaked only very lightly, proving that this door was regularly used. Sasuke cast a look behind him and wondered why this door was used that often when the woods had shown no signs of being traversed.
The stench of blood and death hit them straight in the face like a baseball bat the second they set foot inside. Karin paled visibly, managing to cover her retching noise just in time by smothering her face into her sleeve. Sasuke had to swallow a couple of times himself and bring a sleeve up to his nose in an attempt to muffle the stench somewhat. Even Naruto looked unsettled, grimacing as he looked around the small corridor.
With how much the place reeked like blood, Sasuke had expected the walls and the floor to be covered with the substance, but instead the hall was completely white. Perhaps not as pristine anymore as it had once been, but there was no sign of blood anywhere. It was as if the hall had been recently cleaned, but so much blood had been spilt that the odour clung to the air.
"I've been surrounded by zombies so often, but never has it smelt as bad as it does now," Naruto rasped out. "It's like a goddamn waterfall of blood went through this place, what the fuck happened?"
"I feel like I want to throw up," Karin whispered. "Fuck, what is this?"
Sasuke shook his head. Not even the town with that crazy priestess had smelt this horrifying and that place had been stuffed to the brim with dead people. Just what on earth had happened in this hospital for it to smell this strongly like blood and death when there was no sign of blood anywhere?
"Come on, standing here won't do anything," he whispered, leading them to the only door that would bring them further into the hospital.
The glass was still present in this door, he noticed immediately and he raised an eyebrow. He peeked through it, spotting an empty vending machine right across from the door. This door seemed to lead into another corridor and he braced himself when he pushed it open. The entire corridor – just as narrow as the one they had just left behind – was empty as well, not even a lonely bed left behind like Sasuke had encountered before in some of the other hospitals he had visited. In those hospitals most of the beds and chairs had often been randomly scattered around the corridors and the rooms, sometimes making it impossible to reach certain areas if a bed happened to be blocking a door.
Here, however, this corridor was empty as well. The stench of blood grew even stronger here, if that was possible, yet again there was no blood to be seen. Where was that smell coming from? Was there a group of zombies locked up in a room around here? That would be the only way to explain why death clung so heavily to the stale air.
"There might be zombies locked up in a room nearby," he whispered. "That might explain why it reeks so much here."
"Maybe," Naruto said quietly, but he was frowning, looking like he didn't really believe in that option.
This corridor had five rooms with the sixth door ending in another corridor. All the doors were closed here, but the windows in the middle allowed for a quick look inside. The first room yielded nothing; it was completely empty, not even a chair or stool to be seen. The second room was just as empty, but the third one …
Bile rose up, burning his throat, when he realised what he was looking at. The third room wasn't empty like the others had been. Two large grey tubs stood in the middle of the room and above them –
"What in the motherfucking hell," Naruto whispered horrified.
Two bodies hung upside down, their throats slashed through; the tubs filled with their blood.
AN2: I feel like the upcoming part might be the most gory one in the story so far? Anyways, just prepare yourself for quite a bit of gore!
Please leave your thoughts behind in a review; should you spot any mistakes, please point them out to me.
I hope to see you all back in the next chapter! Please stay safe and take care of yourselves!
Cuddles
Melissa
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The Long Run