The Romero Strain (Book 2): The Dead, The Damned & The Darkness

by Ts Alan

  She gave him a look of disappointment. She was sure that he was going to send her away. He saw the look on her face, but did not acknowledge it. He continued.

  “However if you think you are skilled enough to meet the challenge of being tested on the use of your pointy batons, so be it. But don’t think I will go easy on you. On the battlefield our enemy will give no quarter, and none should be expected. To pass you must prove yourself. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sifu,” she replied.

  “Take a moment and stretch, then we shall begin.”

  He turned away from her and went to a table in the far corner of the practice room. He paused momentarily to quench the needs of his dehydrated body by consuming an entire 32-fluid ounce bottle of Gatorade in several seconds. He took a bite of a chocolate bar, and then wiped the perspiration off his face with a small terry cloth hand towel.

  For a moment, he stood at the table sucking on the half chewed chocolate in his mouth. Chocolate was a difficult commodity to come by lately and he wanted to enjoy its texture and taste. When the sweet had melted off his tongue, he picked up his martial arts uniform shirt and accompanying belt and put them on. Katie was disappointed he got dressed, but she knew his body would only distract her—and this was not a time to be distracted.

  “Anytime you’re ready,” she told him, anxiously waiting to prove herself.

  He picked up his bastóns and turned back to her. “Just giving you the opportunity to warm up, but you chose not to.”

  “In combat, there will be no warm up,” Katie told him, and then bowed and took her fighting stance.

  “Very well,” J.D. replied. “I hope your ability exceeds your ambition.”

  “You doubt my ability, master?”

  “Only if one accepts his weaknesses can one achieve strength. But perhaps today will be different. Perhaps today the student will teach the master.”

  She was prideful in her boast. “Then let the lesson begin.”

  Katie was headstrong like he had once been. He saw a lot of himself in her, but he knew what was inside himself was dark and dangerous, and unpredictable. That was something he needed to beat out of her before her ego elevated, and he was about to give her the trashing of her life, like he once experienced as a teenager in an Eskrima match in the Philippines.

  J.D. said, “‘Pride goeth before the fall,’” he warned, as he approached her.

  J.D. bowed to Katie, and then took his fighting stance, displaying his Eskrima sticks.

  “Sifu, sticks?” she asked, believing he was going to test her using his bare hands.

  “Since you are using your little pig stickers, I thought it only fair if I used my bastóns. After all they’re just sticks,” J.D. told her, giving a sly smirk.

  However, these were not merely sticks. They were true Eskrima fighting sticks made from a dense hardwood called Kamagong—also known as Ironwood—that was only found in the Philippines. This was the most precious gift he had ever received, for it had come from the woman who had taught him the meaning of respect and humility, and taken his virginity.

  She had caught his knowing grin, and it concerned her. Perhaps this is what everyone earlier had been smiling about.

  J.D. saw the sudden trepidation in her face. “Very well, I do want you to feel that your test is fair, based on your current ability, so I will use only one.”

  J.D. stuck one of his bastóns in the belt of his uniform top, and then waved her on, indicating to begin, but before she had made a second step toward him, he took the offensive and came at her hard and fast. He was merciless in his attack. She tried to ward off his advance by using an inside sweep block, and then followed by a downward block to counter yet another offensive move, as she had learned from the book he had given her. Except he had lightning fast reflexes acquired from years of training and his transmute DNA. With every counter strike or defensive move, she made he was able to out maneuver her and land forceful blows. First, he struck her in her arms and torso, concentrating on her right side, pummeling her hard enough in the chest that she bent over trying to catch her breath.

  “Need a rest?” J.D. asked, but not in a taunting tone, as he spun around her left side and came up behind her. “Good. Because there is no rest on the battlefield,” he said, as he struck her hard against the back of her leg under her buttocks. The painful sting made her rise quickly. He then took his bastón and slammed it onto the back of her knees in one precise and painful sweeping motion, knocking her off her feet and sending her crashing backward onto the floor.

  She quickly stood up. Her stubbornness and his taunting innuendo would not allow her to give in. She assumed a left-foot-forward stance with the zai, meaning both weapons pointing toward her, gripping the right hand sai, a single weapon, by the blade. As J.D. attacked she attempted to execute a horizontal strike with the left-hand sai. She had assumed that when the sai blade contacted the bastón, it would cause him to lose his grip. However, J.D. knew the move she was attempting; after all, it had been his technical book she had studied.

  Indeed, Katie had thought wrong, he had not loosened his grip. As she reached forward with the right-hand sai, attempting to hook the inside prong around his knee and pull backward until he fell to the floor, J.D. came down with a quick and forceful snap with his unarmed hand and slapped it across her arm just above the wrist. She immediately dropped the sai. She anticipated he was about to execute another counter that would come to her head, but he had feigned the move and instead struck her repeatedly upon her thighs with a complement of swift stick strikes. Her leg gave out and she fell down, landing on her sore buttocks.

  J.D. gave her a glare of disappointment. “Now you are thinking,” he scolded her. “What did I teach you? Reflex!” He imparted words from Master Lee’s philosophy, “‘Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water.’”

  He had spent many hours teaching her Jeet Kune Do and Okinawan Shorin-Ryu Karate-Do, and she had been an apt pupil. Nonetheless in his mind the zai had made her stupid; she was relying too much on the weapon and not on the principles he had taught her. “If my stick were fangs,” J.D. told her, “your legs and arms would have torn from your body.”

  Katie rose again. She hobbled, and tried to go on the offensive. The pain in her leg was intense, but she was not going to give in. She wanted to be a team leader and the only way was to pass this challenge. However, her offense quickly turned to defense. She was able to block most of his leg strikes, but once again she found herself on the floor; this time her other thigh had taken a beating. There were no words from her master after this round, but she could see the disappointment in his eyes over her performance. He signaled her to rise, and instructed, “Hold your fangs and make them arms. Hold your arms and make them fangs.”

  Twice more she had found herself sitting on the mats having been struck down by her teacher’s relentless brutality. Every time she had fallen, he had stopped, stood in silence, and allowed her to get up. This infuriated her even more than his earlier taunting, for she had been so sure that it was her that was going to be doing some of the knocking down, not entirely the other way around.

  J.D. could see the pain and agony she suffered and was silently proud of her in her fortitude. She had sustained his attacks for nearly ten minutes, far longer than he had been able to the first time he had fought against an opponent more skilled than himself. He knew that her body would not be able to take much more punishment; she could barely stand. He tucked his weapon in his belt with the other. He would finish her lesson in bare hand combat.

  J.D. had trained in many different forms of martial arts, but he was most adept in three: Jeet Kune Do; Okinawan Shorin-Ryu Karate-Do in which he held a shodan, one who holds a beginners black belt; and the Filipino martial art of Pekiti-Tirsia Kali—Eskrima style from the southern Mindanao regions of the Philippines—in which he had achieved the rank of Instructor Guru. However, he
felt his greatest achievement had been earning the rank of Associate Instructor Level 1 in Jeet Kune Do/Jun Fan Gung Fu. Regrettably, he had suffered a neck injury while responding to a medical emergency call and was forced to reschedule his upcoming Associate Instructor Level 2 test, and then the end of the world happened. Though he knew he would have passed his test it still bothered him that he would never be given the opportunity to prove himself before his master.

  As Katie stepped forward, attempting to deliver a series of offensive straight punch moves with the point of the sai held outward, J.D. countered with a block. She then countered with a strike using her right non-weapon hand, and followed with a quick jab again using her weapon hand. J.D. sidestepped to the left. Taking control of her arm, he said, “Little Dragon seeks the path,” an alteration of a line from the Bruce Lee film, The Way of the Dragon, and then delivered two quick blows to the upper arm and neck, the first with his forearm followed by a quick closed hand strike to the nerve cluster in her exposed neck. The move was called Palamoot. It is one of the most dangerous moves he had learned while studying Pekiti-Tirsia. The close range of the move normally does not generate enough force to do permanent damage, only enough to stun one’s opponent, unless it is executed using a weapon.

  She faltered. She had been forced to release the last sai and had suffered a dizzying blow. J.D. had been easy on her. He had barely struck her neck, though it had felt to her like someone had hit her with a 10-pound hammer. The blow she suffered was delivered with the intent to disorient, not cause unconsciousness. Bewildered, she fought desperately to maintain her balance.

  The move had been precisely carried out and completely effective. However, he did not stop there. “Big Dragon snaps his tail,” he voiced, and then followed with a quick snap strike with his foot aimed at her inner thigh that connected with the femoral nerve. She dropped immediately to the floor. The inside low-leg karate kick he had executed was known as Gedan Mawashi Geri and he, too, had experienced the intense pain it could cause. The test was over.

  He extended his arm to help her from the floor. She stood up and then abruptly collapsed, unconscious. J.D. carried her to her room and laid her down upon her bed.

  Katie awoke to the blurry sight of fluorescent lighting that highlighted dull white painted ceiling and walls, which had become dirtied from time. For a moment, she was disoriented. As she looked around she realized she was lying on her mattress in her narrow room. She didn’t remember making it to her room. She must have been carried, she reasoned. And it must have been J.D., who had brought her and turned on the lights. An intense pain seared through her lower extremities and across her right breast. She realized that she must have passed out from the pain.

  J.D. entered her room unannounced through the open doorway with two cases in his hands. In the right was a long, thin, leather carrying case; in his other was a small black pouch. He was also fully dressed in his military uniform, and she wondered exactly how long she had been unconscious.

  J.D. set the larger down under the side of the bed before sitting next to her, and then informed her, “I need you to remove your karategi.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to examine you?”

  “Come to play doctor?” she asked, painfully. “Don’t think I’m up for that.”

  J.D. ignored her comment. He had not had a sense of humor in a very long time. “I’ve come to rub some Dit Da Jow liniment on you. It will help with the pain and swelling… Do you have underwear on?

  “Yes, why?”

  “I’m a paramedic, not a gynecologist,” he said frankly with a bit of snarky. “I only need to see the impact areas, then apply the liniment… Are you able to get undressed?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m—”

  “That’s okay. I understand. I’ve been where you are now,” he told her, and then untied the belt that held her uniform top closed.

  “You really are a paramedic? I thought it just another cock-and-bull story I hear whispered… like you drink the blood of rats and pigeons.”

  J.D. did not answer her paramedic question; instead, he began to tell her a story as he cautiously and gently disrobed her.

  “That first real Eskrima fight I was in, I was beaten so bad that I was carried from the ring unconscious and back to my hovel. The only medical care I was given was a bottle of Fighter’s Friend, and told to rub it on where it hurt. The only problem was there were places I couldn’t reach—like everywhere. I was so badly beaten that I lay in bed for over a day unable to move… I would have probably remained immobile for longer if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to urinate so badly—and I wasn’t going to piss myself.”

  “So how did you manage to get to the bathroom?” she asked, as he pulled off her pants.

  “Bathroom!” J.D. scoffed. “I didn’t get to any bathroom. I crawled out of my hut, managed to roll myself sideways and urinated. Thank the Creator above I was slightly uphill and it was nighttime.”

  Katie chuckled. The pain of which made her wince.

  “You find that amusing. Well, keep it to yourself. I’ve never told anyone that.”

  She was as undressed as he needed to her be. He had not completely disrobed her. He left the shirt of her tournament style karategi open, having removed the uniform belt, exposing her grey sports bra. She was also wearing white underwear with a violet, flowered pattern, which he pretended not to notice. His self-conscious behavior had not gone unnoticed. J.D. pulled out the knife that was strapped to his leg from its sheath and brought it toward her.

  “What’s that for?” she asked cautiously.

  “I need to cut off your top, so I can see the rest of the impact sights.”

  “No, you won’t—” she declared.

  “I need to—”

  “—why do doctors always want to cut off your clothes?”

  “—in order to put the ointment on. This is strictly professional,” J.D. tried to explain.

  “I’m not worried about you seeing my breasts. I just don’t want you to cut my clothes off. You think I can go to the store and just pick up another? Pull it off.”

  “It’s tight, it should be cut off. I don’t want to cause any undue discomfort.”

  “That’s sweet and very… professional of you. But I think I can handle a little undue discomfort.”

  He understood the clothing objection. The paramedics had cut away one of his favorite rock shirts on that fateful night he had found himself in the back of the ambulance heading to a trauma center after being shot in the chest. The recollection of this brought on thoughts, not of the tragic night, for his body would forever carry reminders of that night but of his friend David DiMinni. The shirt had been from the band The Dominion. The Dominion had been a band with blues, progressive rock, Indian and Middle Eastern influences, dubbed “Moroccan roll,” and had been fronted by David, or DD Dominion as he had been known in his rock star days before becoming a conEdison employee. J.D. had not known David then, nor had they ever met, until the fall of the world.

  He obliged her.

  After removing the uniform top he moved closer to her, leaned in, and gently took her arms and placed them around his neck. “Hold on,” he softly spoke, and then carefully pulled her upper body up enough to reach down to the hem of her sports bar to pull it up. When he had guided it up as far as her neck, exposing her fleshful bounty, he placed his left hand behind her back as support to remove the garment from around her neck. He could smell her musk. He fought the urge to sniff her, but he could not help be aroused. After placing the grey top down upon the bed next to her he took his free hand and placed it upon the soft warmth of her back and smoothly moved lower. He picked up her top and laid it across her breasts, hoping to avoid any further stimulation. Katie took his gesture as modesty and gentleman like-demeanor, which made him even more desirable to her. She could have flirted with him, but with his uneasiness at her na
ked chest she felt it was best for the moment to not say anything.

  He ran his hands gently over her legs, first the right—which had suffered the most damage—and then the left, moving slowly up her thighs over the purple and blue spectrum of colors that her contusions had now become, searching her injuries for any hematomas.

  Katie’s body was lean, strong and muscular. Her well-developed definition had become more toned than her dancer’s physique had once been. She had trained hard to increase her agility, stamina and muscular strength. Her body was trim and rock-hard but had not lost its femininity. She reminded him of the comic book character Elektra, a Greek ninja assassin who wields the zai as her trademark weapon.

  As he moved across Katie’s ribs, she grimaced more than she had when he had run his hands along her lower extremities. Her ribs and right breast were extremely tender. There was the possibility that he had hit her hard enough—though he had not used full force—to have fractured a couple of ribs. As a paramedic, he would have instructed his patient to go to the hospital for x-rays. Though the armory hospital was equipped was an x-ray machine, it would only confirm or deny the existence of the hairline fractures.

  Before he sent her to see Doctor France for x-rays, and not to unduly alarm her at the slight possibility he had done more injury than he intended, he asked her to breathe deeply and then to cough moderately. After which he requested she should cough as hard as possible. There was no sharp pain associated with these actions. He was satisfied that he had not fractured her ribs.

  He took the bottle of liniment out of its small pouch and opened it. The aroma quickly filled the air of the small room.

  Katie commented, “It’s very…”

  “Aromatic?” he responded.

  “No, pungent… So what is it, again?”

  “Dit Da Jow. That’s Cantonese. Its literal translation is ‘fall hit wine.’ It’s a bruise liniment to stop pain, reduce swelling and inflammation—and unblock blood stagnation and blood stasis. It’ll help increase your blood flow and tissue healing response.”