Zaria nearly collided with Yamashita as he poked his head fearfully from his own room.
"Stay inside and block your door!" She called as she raced past. "Don't come out!"
She did not wait to see if he would comply, rounding the topmost newel post and taking the stairs two at a time. The front door stood open, Ohno-san laying on the ground in front of it. A dark pool spread out from under her created by the blood pouring from her ravaged neck. Her eyes were already starting to glass over. Dark hair free from its chignon lay across the floor, floating in the red puddle.
Other faces overlapped, and Zaria was back in the Duke's mansion, looking down at the Duke's lifeless body, the curtain tie she used to strangle him resting serenely around his neck, the gold turning burgundy as the liquid absorbed into it. Just like Ohno-san's grey strands were beginning to take on a crimson sheen scattered against the deep black of the rest of her hair.
Zaria did not let herself think about her actions as she took a heavy statue from its pedestal and brought it down hard on the former woman's head. The statue slipped from her fingers as it broke through the hard layer and sank into the softness beyond. Unlike the man who had kept Zaria captive and hurt her, Ohno-san hadn't deserved what happened to her.
Another scream came from the dining area, drops of blood trailing along the floor toward it. The statue was too heavy to carry, adrenaline being the only thing that let her pick it up to begin with. It was discarded in hopes that there would be something else she could find along the way. Down the main hall, Saito-san stood frozen in the doorway to her little clinic room, and Zaria yelled at her to get inside and close the door. The older woman snapped out of her daze and shut the door. One less person to worry about.
Zaria picked up speed and raced down the hall. She had raced down long, plush halls before, but this time, she was running toward the danger instead of away from it. She wouldn't shy away from the danger. The last time she had, it had come back and found her, then drug her back to her cage. The only way to be safe was to get rid of the threat. She burst through the opened door to the dining room and skidded to a halt, eyes darting rapidly across the room.
The guard gentleman, whom she had not yet been able to remember the name of, was crouched over a small figure on the ground at the far end of the table. Squelching sounds and wet gurgles filled the room, and Zaria could see the limbs of what was once Adachi-chan laying still beneath the hunched form. A quick look around the room showed nothing that could be used to bash in the head.
It was too late to back out of the room, so she let instinct guide her to pick up a sturdy dining room chair and swing it down as hard on the dead man as she could. The legs broke off as she hoped they would. It was about time something happened like it did in the movies. Before it could right itself, she was driving the sharp, broken end down into its head, using the weight of her body to push the leg into its head. As soon as she was sure it was no longer moving, she scrambled over the bodies and used another leg to do the same to the dead girl below. Better to be safe. Nobody had said anything to her about how much damage a body had to take from an infected individual before it would no longer rise after death.
The room was quiet except for the heart that was racing in her chest. Blood pounded in her ears, and she crouched down next to the still forms and tried to listen for any other footsteps. When only silence greeted her, she gingerly rose up, balancing herself against the wall. A stop in the kitchen gave her a heavy bottomed skillet, which she hefted up two handed in front of her before checking the rest of the house. She wished she had the sword she stole from the first human she had ever beaten up. Better reach sounded more comforting than heavy bludgeoning.
The front door still stood open. A quick glance showed the gate outside was closed, and the flannel zombie was still pressed against it, arms waving through the bars. The gate was closed, and she did not worry about that one yet. From what she saw while looking out her window, she could tell that the guard had been bitten somehow by the thing outside the gate, not by something that had gotten in. Ohno-san seemed to have been the first one attacked when she opened the door to see why he had screamed, but Zaria couldn't be sure that Adachi-chan was the next. The front door was closed after the body was drug a little farther into the building and out of the way. There was a soft click as the latch caught. She continued on, slowly walking through the rooms on the first floor.
Doors were closed on everything but the dining room and the kitchen. Most rooms she had never been inside of. Why did the gentry insist on homes with so many rooms? Did the idea of so many doors make them feel like they controlled every aspect of their homes? Don't want to deal with this problem, close the door, and use another room.
The first two doors led to rooms full of dusty furniture, their original purposes lost with the owner's death unless Saito-san knew. The third room had a long table with an ornate and cushioned chair, but Zaria wondered if it had actually been a type of art studio at one point. The walls were covered in beautiful scrolls covered in bold calligraphy. The room provoked feelings of abandonment, and since there was nowhere for anyone to hide, she did not spend long there.
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Next to the little clinic was a room not much larger than her room in the servant's quarters, and Zaria felt a little wave of panic break over her. Same small bed, dresser, this was a servant's bedroom. Where had the servant gone? Had they died early on? Had they ended up elsewhere and wished they had died? She escaped as quickly as she could.
After each room, she paused and listened. The house had that eerie, not quite a sound, a slight ringing in the ears that all empty places had. Rather than scaring her, she felt grounded. The bad things were dead or soon to be. The silence told her that safety might be close.
The first floor was clear, and she lightly knocked on the door to the clinic. When there was no answer, she opened the door, and the skillet was raised and ready for battle. There was no attack, but Zaria gave it a moment to make sure. If Saito-san was bitten and got away, the sound of the door opening would summon her as surely as a "Come and get it, fresh girl meat!" called from the hall. There was nothing, though, and she tentatively stuck her head inside the room.
Saito Rika was curled up in the corner of the room, her glossy black hair pressed against the wall. A scalpel was held in two hands, one wrapped over the other, and the thin metal caught the light as the blade trembled along with the hands holding it.
"Saito-san? The first floor is clear. I need to know if you are hurt?"
The woman did not respond, but the tip of the blade dipped a little more toward the floor.
"Saito-san? Can you understand me? Did the infected touch you? Were you scratched or bitten?"
Finally, movement. The bob haircut swung around her face as she shook her head forcefully.
"Okay, that's great. I need to clear the second floor, and I need you to wait at the bottom of the stairs while I do so." A confused look, and Zaria tried to word it another way. "Please come with me. I will check upstairs, but I need you to check the survivors that I find."
The scalpel was laid on the floor, and the elegant figure of Saito Rika rose shakily, her knees hitting each other as she stood unsteadily. She bent to pick up the scalpel, but Zaria motioned for her to put it down. As badly as she was shaking, the nurse was more likely to hurt herself than anyone else. Besides, the scalpel was too small to get through the head without putting her hands far too close to a slathering mouth than was safe. The two women walked silently from the clinic, closing the door behind them with a soft catch of the latch.
With the gathering group gone, the only ones left in the house were the two guards, the young tech genius, and the four women. Three were dead, one was closed in his room, another was clutching the back of Zaria's shirt as they walked down the hall, and one was unaccounted for. The elderly man who always dressed so formally. She had no idea what room he stayed in.
At the top of the stairs, Zaria gestured for Saito-san to wait a few steps down. The closest rooms were her own and Yamashita-kun's. Her door still stood open, the way she left it when she flew out what seemed like an hour ago. A quick glance, nowhere to hide, and the door was shut. She skipped Yamashita-kun's room, not ready to have another person to look after. As long as he hadn't left at all, she knew he had not been injured. His room didn't need to be checked. He could wait. One by one, she checked each room, looking in closets and under beds. When she opened the fourth door after skipping Yamashita-kun's, she stepped aside less than a second before a bat came crashing down where she had just stood.
She dropped her skillet and grabbed the bat with both hands, twisting it from the elderly man's grip. Startled black eyes met hers, and she put one hand up in supplication. She pantomimed that he needed to go to the stairs and raised a single finger to her lips to warn him to be quiet. He scurried down the hall, his tabi socks soundless on the floor. Just in case, as unlikely as it was, she checked his room before finishing up her search of the second floor. There were no unanticipated people hiding out, no zombies who were Stair Masters. Holding her confiscated bat the ready, she went back to the only skipped room.
With fewer worries, Zaria tapped on the door to Yamashita-kun's room. "Yamashita-kun. It is me. You can come out now."
The door cracked open, and a single wavering eye looked her over through the opening.
"I'm not bitten or injured. Everything infected has been dealt with, but I would like Saito-san to check you out. Can you come out?"
The teenager opened the door the rest of the way, and Zaria glanced around his room to make sure, just as she did with the other guard's room after he left it. She stepped aside so that he could get past and walk to where the two adults were waiting on steps halfway between the landing and the second floor hall. Saito-san hugged the boy briefly, and he blushed like a fresh peach. A few questions in Japanese that Zaria could guess at were asked, and he answered with a voice that sounded far braver than she was sure he felt. When they were done, and the nurse had checked his limbs and torso through his clothes, the four people sat down on the stairs. Somehow, it felt safer than the level that contained the bodies of their companions.
"Yamashita-kun, can you translate for me?" The boy, almost man, nodded. "We should remove the bodies from the house and try to clean everything up and disinfect. Before we do that, I want to go outside and check to make sure that there is nothing lurking inside the walls. I think the first attack happened through the gate, but I'm not sure." She paused to let him catch up. " I need one person to come with me as far as the door. Please close the door after I leave, and don't open it again unless you hear me call out that it is okay. And...Ohno-san is at the bottom of the stairs, and it is not pretty."
To Zaria's surprise, Saito-san was the one who won the argument over who would go downstairs to guard the door. She accepted the skillet that Zaria rescued from the second floor hallway after she took over the baseball bat. It was not the first time that she saw the body of the older woman, but she let out a very faint whimper when they stepped around it to get the door open. Her shoulders were back, and despite the shaking, she stood tall. Zaria gave her a small smile as she opened the door and stepped outside.