by Ed Kurtz
Swords.
Irma bolted into the inferno, ducking falling debris and evading bursts of flame. A wooden rack affixed to the wall held a variety of swords and daggers, and she seized the longest, broadest one she could find. The sword was considerably heavier in her hands than she expected, but she heaved it up with a loud grunt and scrambled back out of the inferno to the pandemonium in the courtyard.
Initially her eyes lit upon Bruce, who was holding his own against two Chinese boxers. But close by she saw Zeke, too—delivering the Serpent’s Last Strike to one of his own Black Sun comrades. Hot rage burned deep inside Irma, and it came shrieking out of her as she lifted the sword until the steel gleamed in the firelight.
“Zeke!” she bellowed over the roar of the burning school and the plaintive screams of the teeming dead. He dropped his latest victim to the dust and turned to her with a wry grin.
“Come here and try not to die, you rotten son of a bitch,” she continued.
Zeke clapped the blood and sand from his hands and strode confidently through the battling throng.
“I didn’t want to have to kill you, baby,” he shouted as he drew near. “But the heart wants what the heart wants, right?”
A morbidly obese corpse flung itself at him, jiggling its own entrails out of a massive gash in its side, but Zeke jammed an elbow into the middle of the thing’s face and dropped it with a resounding thud. All the while, he never took his eyes off Irma.
“I did time for killing you,” Irma seethed. “They put me in that rathole for years, Zeke. Years!” She swung the sword wide, almost lost her balance. Zeke laughed. “I’m gonna earn that time today.”
His greasy hair hanging limp on either side of his face, Zeke stopped an arm’s length from Irma and bowed solemnly. Irma waited for him to finish the formality, but Zeke used it to drop into a sweeping kick that hooked her feet out from beneath her. Her lower half swung up as her head and shoulders collided with the ground, but Irma held fast to the sword. She moved rapidly, using the sword to get back to her feet as Zeke danced lightly in circles around her, chuckling low. Irma parried with the sword, but he was too fast, evading her easily.
“All that time you was in stir,” he taunted, “I was right here, training. There ain’t nothing you can do to me, bitch.”
A furious howl escaped her mouth as she heaved the sword high and brought it down like an axe, but all she hit was sand. Zeke was behind her long before the blade kicked up the cloud of dust that now stung her eyes.
“Stand still!” she hollered.
“You can’t beat me, baby. I’m like a fuckin’ ghost.”
She spun like a top then, slashing wildly as she went, and the blade’s edge sliced his tunic open like it was cutting butter. Zeke cried out, staggering back with shock written on his face. He touched his stomach and brought his fingers back wet with blood.
“That’s just what you’re about to be, Zeke—a ghost.”
Zeke stood stock-still for a full minute, his face twisted with hate. He then licked the blood from his fingertips and let loose a scream to rival any Irma had ever heard a walking corpse make. His arms spun in broad, windmilling circumlocutions and his feet kicked at the air until he was airborne and flying straight at her. When Irma saw his right hand shoot out with only a single index finger extended, she knew he was coming in for the killing strike.
“God help me,” she muttered as she hauled the heavy sword over her shoulder to meet his attack.
Zeke’s horrible scream seemed to double then, a stereoscopic screech that pricked at Irma’s eardrums. She was already swinging the enormous blade toward him when Killer Wu shot through the smoke, his paper-white face and creamy, opaque eyes belying his new status as one of the living dead. The dead sifu’s torn robes and blood-soaked beard flapped in the sucking wind of the fire and his jaws were clamped tightly to Zeke’s shoulder before he or Irma could so much as process what was happening. Bones crunched and blood sprayed as Zeke tumbled to his knees with his late master still attached and gnawing ravenously at his flesh.
“Sifu, no!” Zeke moaned, and they were the last words he ever spoke, for Irma took charge of the moment and drove her blade into one side of his neck and out the other. Zeke’s head turned rapidly in the air, his face registering a permanent expression of horror, and at last Wu released his meal to chase down the succulent brains hidden within.
Irma let go of the sword and slumped her shoulders. Hot tears boiled out of her eyes. Behind her, the Black Sun school collapsed on itself in a shower of sparks. In front of her, the courtyard was riddled with the dead and the dead again. Smoke obscured most of the world beyond a few yards, but she could tell that only a handful of fighters remained, and about half a dozen staggering, screaming, flesh-greedy corpses.
Her heart seemed to slow in her breast. She was exhausted, she wanted to sleep and never wake up. Everything that had kept her going from the moment she and Arkansas walked away from the Northfork Women’s Penitentiary was now over and done with—Zeke was dead, but the world was still overrun with hell and horror.
A crooked smile formed on her face and Irma laughed. It was a crazy laugh, but she wasn’t worried, she knew she hadn’t lost her mind. She’d lost damn near everything else, but she remained sane. Mostly.
The gray-white smoke drifted lazily all around her, and a face appeared from within. Bloodied and battered, the nose still canted to one side, Bruce never looked more handsome to her. His mouth hung open and his clothes were spattered with blood from top to bottom, but he came out of the smoke like a victorious general from some ancient battle.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay.”
“Zeke?”
“Dead.”
Bruce nodded.
“Good,” he said. “The last of the boxers ran for it. There were only a few left alive. I guess it’s over.”
Over, Irma thought. So now what?
“Arkansas,” she suddenly gasped. “Where’s Arkansas?”
Bruce half-shrugged. Irma grabbed his hand and dragged him into the choking smoke.
“Arkansas!” she shouted. “Arkansas, where are you, girl?”
“Arkansas!” Bruce joined in. “Are you all right? Talk to us!”
No response came forth. All they heard was the crackling flames and a few scattered screams, none of them from among the living.
“Oh, Bruce,” Irma said miserably.
“She’s here somewhere,” he said, squinting against the smoke. “She’s okay.”
Irma squeezed his hand. She wasn’t so sure he was right.
They cut through the smoke, finding only pools of blood in the sand and the odd sprawled out body. Many of them were beaten and torn apart beyond belief. Irma tried not to look at them, but as they crossed through the courtyard the body count only rose exponentially. Bruce hacked from the smoke, and Irma started to silently weep.
There did not seem to be anyone left alive, or even undead. There remained only quiet, still corpses.
Irma stopped, released Bruce’s hand. He went another few steps before halting and turning toward her, his eyebrows raised solicitously.
“She’s gone,” Irma said. “She’s gone.”
“We just can’t see her—all this goddamn smoke…”
“She’s gone, Bruce!”
“Damnit, Irma! You don’t kno—”
“Ir—Irma?”
A high squeak tore from Irma’s throat and she twisted around crazily, looking for the source of the voice. Arkansas’ voice.
She waved her arms frantically, sweeping the smoke away as she rushed over the bloody, corpse-strewn ground, until at last the sleek, towering form appeared in front of her. She was worse for wear: her face was bruised badly and her clothes torn and dirty, but as far as Irma was concerned she was the most astonishingly beautiful angel the heavens had ever produced. Arkansas heaved a sigh and smiled with one side of her mouth. Her hair was a mess and she came on lamely, barefoot.
&
nbsp; “Oh, Arkansas!” Irma cried, and she fell into a trot to embrace her friend.
Arkansas raised her trembling arms to receive the hug when a guttural shout sounded from the smoke. She had time enough to turn her head before a white blur swept her off her feet. She was gone in an instant; smoke filled the vacancy where she stood seconds before.
Irma might have thought it was the smoke itself that reached out and took Arkansas away, had she not clearly seen the flowing white beard.
“What was that?” Bruce called out behind her. “Did you find her?”
“Come on!” Irma hollered as she dove into the smoke.
A few steps in, she nearly tripped over something and realized right away that it was the sword with which she’d beheaded Zeke. She snatched it up and kept on.
She heard it moments before she saw it—growling, huffing, something snapping like a thick branch. A woman’s voice howled in agony. Called Irma’s name.
“Arkansas!”
And then there she was, broken and bloodied on the sand, and Killer Wu loomed over her with a handful of guts and a mouth dripping blood. Her top was torn clean off and her torso split open to reveal the glistening entrails upon which Wu so ravenously fed.
Irma wailed miserably when she saw what had become of her friend, and in response Killer Wu lifted his dripping face and screamed angrily at her. Arkansas’s eyes gradually slid shut and as tears spilled from their corners, she made a wet, rattling sound deep in her throat and went silent.
With a whimpering sob on her lips, Irma wrenched her arm back and launched the sword at Wu like a javelin. The sword sliced through the hot, smoke-thick air and passed through the dead sifu’s ribs until the hilt stopped it abruptly and pulled him down. Blood ran freely from the fresh wound. Wu struggled against the heavy steel, but it pinned him to the ground. His jaws never stopped working all the while, as though fresh, living meat was only just out of reach.
And while the reanimated corpse of Killer Wu thrashed and screamed, Irma dropped to her knees beside the eviscerated remains of her best—her only friend in the world.
“We were so close, goddamnit,” Irma sobbed, reaching for Arkansas’s hand. Her skin was already cool to the touch. “I got him, Arkansas. I got Zeke.”
A fat black fly whined past Irma’s ear and touched down on the periphery of Arkansas’s gaping trunk. Irma shooed it away. Wu kicked his feet and screamed on and on.
“Come on,” Bruce said softly, having padded up behind Irma. “There’s nothing more you can do now. We should go.”
“Wha—what about him?” Irma asked, gesturing vaguely toward the furious corpse of Killer Wu.
The corpse grabbed clumsily at the hilt, shifting it so that the blood gushed more freely from his back. Bruce sucked in a ragged breath.
“I’ll take care of him,” he said solemnly.
Before Irma could ask with what? Bruce spun his arms and bellowed, “Guillotine Fist!”
In the span of half a second he drove both hands at Wu’s throat and with a dizzying crunch his head separated from his body. The head spun, still shrieking, and Bruce rose into the air to meet it with flying kick that sent it rapidly at the surrounding wall. Wu’s head exploded like a watermelon against the unyielding stone and disappeared into the rolling smoke, leaving nothing but a greasy smear.
“My master is avenged,” he said soberly.
“And my friend,” Irma added, sniffing and wiping her eyes.
Bruce turned, looked down at Arkansas’s ravaged body.
“Oh, uh…her head…,” he stammered.
“What about it?”
“She’ll wake up. She’ll come back.”
He cracked his knuckles. Tensed his shoulders.
“No,” Irma softly pleaded. “Don’t.”
“We’ll have to.”
“No. Not to her.”
“It won’t be her.”
Irma dropped her face into her hands and cried quietly. Neither she nor Bruce said another word for a long time. The sky darkened to purple and the Black Sun School slowed to a low, crackling smolder. In the mid-distance, the dead shrieked, hungry and wrathful. Irma and Bruce listened attentively, waiting for them to draw near, but they stayed away for the time being. He reached for her hand, squeezed it in his own.
The air slowly cleared, and night came down like a heavy felt curtain.
But Arkansas never came back.
