I looked behind the door, before moving forward, but it was clear.
Sensei said, “Richard, put away your sword.”
Richard looked back at Sensei, his eyes wide.
Sensei said, “What do we study?”
“Batto-ho, Sensei. The art of drawing and cutting.”
“Yes. So, save your strength. Trust your training. We are out in the open. You will have lots of time to draw.”
“Yes, Sensei.” Richard did noto, the sheathing of the sword, in the Shindo Munen Ryu style, first lowering the tip forward, reversing the grip, and swinging the blade up so the mune, the back of the blade, rested on his shoulder, then bringing the saya, the wooden scabbard, forward until it touched the mune. He brought the tskua, the handle, forward until the sword’s tip crossed the opening of the saya, and then reversed, sliding it home. Done smoothly and quickly it is beautiful to see.
I winced. This was not beautiful. Richard nearly stabbed himself in the hand.
Sensei stepped forward, close to Richard, and said something quietly. Richard blushed, but he stepped back and said, “Yes, Sensei.”
From the wall, Danny said loudly, “Be back before dark, right?”
Lou held her finger to her lips and Danny laughed, making no effort to keep his voice down. Once an asshole, always an asshole.
We turned away and a minute later I heard the gate shut and the bar drop. Sensei led us on, sticking to the road first, going toward the zombie that Danny had shot from the wall. Ten feet short, Sensei stamped his foot hard on the ground.
The body twitched.
Sensei shook his head and stepped back.
Danny had made all that noise for nothing. The shot had grazed the side of the zombie’s head, tearing away an ear, but the central nervous system disconnect hadn’t happened. It pushed itself up on all fours and looked at us. It was bald and scabby but it had been a woman once. A pearl earring, still shiny in the sun, hung from the remaining ear. Once I saw that I couldn’t help looking for the other earring. Yep, there it was on the asphalt, six feet up the road, still attached to the other earlobe.
“Lou,” said Sensei.
“Hai.” Lou slid forward, feet brushing across the asphalt.
Richard gave her an angry glance but Lou’s attention was focused on the zombie. As she moved closer it shoved up with its arms, coming upright on its knees. Lou drew and cut with one motion, horizontal, her left arm pulling sharply back on the scabbard as the tip cleared.
The sword cut cleanly through the neck. The body dropped down and the head bounced off the payment and rolled to the side.
Sensei nodded.
Lou cleaned her blade with alcohol, put the sword back in its saya, and threw up in the ditch.
Richard opened his mouth to say something but I turned sharply so my saya struck his hip. When he turned, frowning, to look at me I said, “Oh. Sorry.”
Sensei glanced back at us, then pointed out across the soybeans to a figure shambling in our direction. “Yours, Rosa. Richard, you go along and observe.” He lifted two fingers up and pushed them toward his eyes.
“Yes, Sensei,” I said. “Eyes open.”
Richard walked directly toward the zombie but I said, “Walk in the rows. Come winter, we’ll be eating these beans if you leave any alive.” I didn’t look to see how he took that but set off briskly between two rows of plants at right angles to the road. My zombie swung its head toward me and changed course. It was one of the stupider ones, unable to predict an intercept point, so it walked in a constantly changing curve, always turning toward me.
When I was halfway there I saw a dark spot, two rows over. I held up my hand and looked back at Richard but he wasn’t watching me or the rows; his eyes were on the moving zombie. “Richard!” I hissed.
He jerked to a stop. Ten feet in front of him, the dark spot sat up. It was missing one arm from the elbow down, possibly shot off by one of the wall guards, but it got to its feet surprisingly quick. It had been a man, tall and thin, and it was closer to Richard than I was. When it lurched toward him, Richard, his face white as a sheet, took a step forward, drew, and cut.
Richard’s arm was clenched so tight that the cutting arc was abbreviated, slicing the air in front of the zombie.
I reached it, then, from the side, and hamstrung it, cutting the tendons behind the knees. It flopped down but kept crawling forward, toward Richard.
“Finish it!” I said quietly, and headed back toward my original target.
This one had been a soldier, combat fatigues still recognizable, but too stained to read the insignia. I took a stance ten feet before it, hasso, sword above my right shoulder. As it took one last step I went forward and cut, kesa, upper right to lower left. When I’d finished the stroke, its head and right arm lay to my left and the rest of it lay at my feet.
I turned back, to see how Richard was doing.
He’d managed to cut off the other arm and into the zombie’s spine, mid-back, which had at least stopped it shoving forward with its legs. At that point, finally, Richard had managed the head, though it had been high. He’d cut through even with the ears so the top of the head was on the ground but the lower jaw, tongue extending oddly upward, still hung on the neck.
“Lovely. Clean your sword,” I said, getting out my own baggie of alcohol-soaked rags.
We’d all had the vaccination but it was only seventy-five percent effective. Better to take all precautions.
Sensei and Lou joined us then. Sensei examined both kills quietly. When we’d sheathed our swords he said, “Right. This way.”
There were a lot more of them down in the river bottom. There were vacation homes on the high banks and a series of fishing camps, but mostly it was the water that drew them. They drink a lot if they can. The scientists aren’t sure if they need the water but the speculation is that they feel a burning and they try to quench it. It’s the same burning that drives them at the uninfected, drives them to consume something that they don’t have anymore, as if eating it will give it back.
Sensei took the next group, three zombies, giving a lecture first.
“When there are more than one, you can’t afford to wound. You must disable or kill. Wounded they just keep coming. So, sever the spine or split the brain or take a leg. Once they are down you can finish those that need to be finished.”
Then he showed us.
He took the first one with a shomen cut. Shomen means head, after all, but it refers to the vertical cut which, in this case, came down from the top of the skull right between the eyes, all the way into the throat before it stopped. Sensei stepped aside as the next one rushed through and he cut into the neck from behind, cleaving the spine but not the entire neck, for the head flopped forward and hung there as it made one more stumbling step before sprawling forward. He took the last zombie’s leg from the side, cutting through the femur right above the knee. While it was trying to struggle upright again, he decapitated it, like an executioner.
The next zombies came as a pair, moderately spaced. Sensei gestured. “Okay, Richard. Just relax. Remember that you’re cutting with the last four inches of the blade. Extend. Be aware of your environment.”
Richard moved forward with Sensei following a bit behind. Lou and I stood back to back, our eyes checking all around.
“You okay?” I asked. Since she’d thrown up, I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her.
“Yeah. Something I ate, I guess.”
“Well, it would’ve bothered me, too. I just couldn’t help thinking that she was a person once. Someone raised her, tucked her into bed, gave her those pearl earrings.”
“Yeah, someone did and it probably ate them.”
“Cynic,” I said.
“What was that with Danny boy back on the wall? When he remembered who you were, he backed away quick enough.”