“He tried to grope me once. I’d been with Sensei for a year already. I dislocated his elbow.”
Richard and Sensei were closing on the two zombies, Richard in the lead.
“I don’t think I can look,” Lou said.
“Well,” I said. “He hasn’t stabbed himself yet.” I held up my left hand. There were three triangular scars on the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. “I got myself enough times at the dojo.”
“It would be better if he had. He’d have the respect he needs for the blade.”
There was truth in that. You shouldn’t be afraid of the blade but you should certainly be respectful of it.
Richard drew his sword ahead of time and held it behind him, low, in waki gamae the hidden stance. When the first zombie approached, he cut up from the side, trying to do a reverse kesa, but the blade stuck in the ribs, short of the spine. Richard threw himself to the side, wrenching hard, and the blade came free but he stumbled backwards and fell.
Sensei tensed but didn’t move.
Richard got up on his knees and stayed there. When the zombie with the slashed ribs approached, he cut horizontal, right below the zombie’s knee. The zombie, went down, forward, trying to step on a foot that was no longer there. Richard twisted to the side and decapitated it cleanly.
I heard Lou’s sigh of relief.
Richard kept it simple for the next one, a straight shomen cut to the forehead. He must’ve tensed for it was more of a chop, but the blade got deep enough into the brain to drop it.
We joined them. Sensei was saying, “…can’t throw everything you learned out the window now that it counts.” He held up his left hand and extended the pinky and ring fingers. “Squeeze. Relax. The blade is sharp enough to do the work if you let it. Speed and the correct angle matter far more than muscle.”
Richard nodded.
Sensei had Lou go next, a group of four clustered close together.
Lou ran toward them, then moved quickly to the side and away, so that when they turned to track her, they strung out in a line. She didn’t draw her blade until the first cut but took a leg with it, then danced past the falling zombie to kill one of the rear ones with a kesa cut to the neck. She sidestepped again, causing the last two to tangle with the fallen zombie, now struggling up on one knee. She stepped forward and killed one of the standing with a shomen cut, stepped back, and repeated the cut on the last standing zombie. The one missing a leg crawled forward and she pivoted and took the head.
Sensei nodded in satisfaction. “See how she separated them? Took them one at a time? Isolate them. Don’t let them surround you. Work around the edges. Turn and keep turning.”
We heard running feet then and Sensei said, “Rosa. Watch out, it’s recent.”
We all looked, fearful, but when it came out of the trees near the river, we saw it was a woman, almost normal looking, clothes still intact, not as pallid, but there was blood down its front and the eyes were insane. The recent ones, infected within a month, are much faster. Not supernaturally fast-just human fast and not as stupid. They retain more of their physical skills.
“Jesus,” said Richard. “It’s Mrs. Steckles.”
The Steckles had left three weeks before, traveling to the city, looking for family.
I walked out, putting myself well ahead of the others and it tracked on me. Excuse me if I still use “it”-all of these things were human once but no more.
I knelt, seiza, sitting back on my heels. It came on and its arms came up as it neared. I took both feet off slicing through the ankles, sliding off to the right to avoid the flailing, clawing hands. It thrashed as it fell but was up on knees and hands remarkably fast, coming back toward me. Standing, I cut down, aiming for the neck but it lurched forward and I ended up cutting through its spine lower down, below the shoulder blades. It lost control of it’s abdominal muscles and legs but it flopped down and pulled itself forward with its arms. It’s teeth snapped together within inches of my knee.
I jumped completely over it, turned, and cut its head off as it dragged itself back around. The rictus of the face relaxed and the eyes lost their focus. She looked like Mrs. Steckles again.
Now I felt like throwing up.
The others came up and Sensei was saying, “Imagine facing a large group and one of these faster ones charging into the mix.” He searched my face for a moment.
“I’m okay, Sensei,” I said, wiping the blade.
He gestured back toward the river. “Let’s see what we can find closer to the river.”
We dispatched over a hundred by mid-afternoon and still they marched out of the woods. We’d engage the larger groups in a line and, as we cut them down, we’d slowly move back to keep them from flanking us. The sheer monotony of it finally overcame Richard’s tenseness and he started looking more like he did in the dojo, relaxed and focused, spending his energy at the right instance to accelerate his blade instead of slowing it with excess tension.
We ran into two more from the Steckles’ party, or more specifically, they ran into us. One of them carried a baseball bat, his hands hadn’t lost their cunning. It came in and swung at Sensei, like a slugger going for a fast ball, and Sensei took one step back and cut the wrists, then finished it, kesa. Richard finished the other after Lou took off its leg mid-thigh.
It was so much worse, recognizing them. Fortunately the older ones are so changed-their hair falls out and their skin is scabbed, flaked, and swollen-that even if you knew them before, your chances of recognizing them are small.
That helps. Well, it helps a little.
Sensei led us back up the hill, to where an old soccer field gave a good view in all directions. “Rest,” he said. “Eat.”
I didn’t think I’d be able to eat but I washed carefully with my alcohol rags and waved my hands through the air to dry them. I served Sensei first, of course. It was tortillas with onions, eggs, and beans and my first bite showed me I could eat. That I was really hungry. Lou barely touched hers.
“Okay,” Sensei said. Let’s get back to the gate.”
Richard protested. “Sensei, we haven’t begun to look. Diego could be holed up somewhere, starving!”
Sensei shook his head. “Perhaps. But we need the light. It gets dark early down in the bottoms. We can try again, tomorrow.”
Lou looked miserable but she didn’t say anything. I was unhappy, too.
Diego had studied with Sensei longer than any of us, since before, when our sword study was just an adjunct to the aikido. Diego had brought his little brother, Richard, to learn the sword when it had become a practical matter, after ammo became scarcer and it became clear that noise would just bring more of them.
As far as I was concerned, Diego was like a brother to me and Lou, as if we’d shared parents. In a way, we did, in Sensei.
Danny wasn’t at the gate.
Sensei shrugged. “Walking the wall, perhaps.”
Lou asked, “Is he still on duty?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sensei. “Shifts change at eight, four, and midnight. He should be on for another hour easily.”
Richard went over and pounded on the gate, three times, hard.
“Stop it!” said Sensei, but it was too late.
There was a heavy rustling in the cornfield.
I wish I’d never read that book.
Lou was mad. “Are you insane? Why don’t you just put a cowbell on and run back to the river!”
Sensei shook his head. “Spilled milk. Keep your mind focused.”
The rustling got louder. I mean really loud. They must’ve been lying among the stocks like cordwood before the pounding roused them.
“Why didn’t they come out when Daniel fired that shot this morning?” I wondered aloud.
“Maybe they weren’t here yet,” Lou said. “Maybe it was the shot that drew them here.”
Twelve walked out of the corn at once, then five more. And then I lost count.