The Living Dead 2

by John Joseph Adams

  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.”

  “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.

  Richa
rd 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.

  “Sensei,” said Lou. “Maybe we could throw Rosa up onto the top of the wall, so she could open the gate.”

  Sensei drew his sword. “It’ll be padlocked, remember? And I don’t think she’d make it over the razor wire.”

  Another wave walked out of the corn.

  Sensei pointed back along the wall, in the other direction, through the soybeans. “At a jog, Lou, lead. Look ahead. Keep your eyes open. We’ll watch behind.”

  “Now, Sensei?”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  I left my sword undrawn and hung back with Sensei, letting Richard keep pace behind Lou. There was a recently infected, vigorous zombie further back in the cornfield and it got up a serious head of steam before it burst out of the stalks. It was across the road in seconds and ten more seconds saw it out in front of the others.

  I breathed out. It wasn’t Diego.

  “Sensei?” I said.

  “I see it. I’ll make the first cut, you finish it.” He kept jogging but slowed slightly, drifting further back.

  The zombie sped up and, just when I thought it would leap
on Sensei’s back, he sidestepped and turned, so fast, the sword coming across waist high, cutting deep across the zombies abdomen. It folded over, but didn’t fall, staggering.

  I pivoted and took the head.

  The zombie dropped. We kept moving.

  It’s three miles to the town’s west gate but there’s a deep culvert where the outflow from the city’s water treatment plant flows through a grate under the wall on its way to the river. If we went far enough away from the wall it became more shallow, but that was in the woods.

  “Sensei?” Lou asked.

  Sensei and I caught up to Richard and Lou, and looked down. It was steep, fifteen feet down, then back up the same on the other side. Also, there was a trio of zombies crouched in the shallow stream.

  “Follow,” Sensei said, and dropped over the edge with his sword drawn.

  The zombie Sensei landed on didn’t stand a chance. Neither did the one he cut as he dropped, but Sensei fell backwards into the stream, after landing, and the other zombie leaped at him.

  Richard jumped. He missed with his feet but he fell over and knocked the zombie sideways, away from Sensei. He swore sharply. Sensei got up and cut the zombie down.

  I looked behind. The crowd was fifty yards behind and coming steadily, some of them almost jogging if you could call a quick, step-drag, a jog.

  “Go,” I told Lou. “Carefully, though. I think Richard’s broken his foot.”

  She slid down the steep side in a shower of rocks and dirt, pulled Richard to his feet, and began climbing up the other side, supporting Richard. I waited until Sensei had joined them, supporting Richard from the other side, then slid down myself.

  I wanted to reach the far side before them. If anything came out of the woods, they’d be handicapped as they came over the edge. I ran ten feet down the gully and scrambled up to where I could grab a root sticking out of the bank. With it, I reached the top in time to see two zombies come out of the woods. Very old zombies, probably early infected. They hardly looked human. All their clothes had rotted off and with it lots of skin. I couldn’t even tell what sex they’d been, but thank goodness they were slow ones. I had time to pull Richard over the lip before they were even close.