The Living Dead 2

Tameshigiri by Steven Gould

A Hugo and Nebula Award finalist, Steven Gould is the author of the novel Jumper, the basis for the recent film of the same name. Other novels include Reflex, Blind Waves, Helm, Greenwar, and Wildside. A new novel, 7^th Sigma, is scheduled for May 2011. Gould is currently working on another entry in the Jumper series. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and Tor.com. When not writing, Gould spends entirely too much time killing zombies on his Xbox 360.

Ninjas were spies, saboteurs, and assassins in ancient Japan. In Japan the equivalent term “shinobi” is more common, but Westerners prefer the sound of “ninja.” Ninja was an officially recognized job, and only those of a certain income were allowed to keep ninjas on the payroll. Ninjas commonly wielded swords (katanas), throwing stars (shuriken), and chain and sickle weapons called a kusarigama. While popular imagination pictures ninjas clad in black, in real life ninjas probably tried to blend into the local population by dressing as priests, entertainers, and merchants. Much of Japanese architecture was originally developed as a defense against ninjas, including the use of gravel courtyards and nightingale floors that made it difficult for intruders to move about silently.

Gould says that this story is all my fault: “I made the mistake of saying on Twitter something like ‘Ninjas awesome. Zombies awesome. Ninjas and Zombies? Double awesome!’ John Joseph Adams saw it and asked if I was writing such a thing. I wasn’t, but I said that I could.”

A student of Iaido-the Japanese sword as a martial art-for over twelve years, Gould didn’t need to do much research for the story, but he says he did stand out in the middle of his backyard with a bokken (wooden sword) for a while, working on some of the moves depicted in the story.

Why zombies? “The scary thing about zombies, slow or fast, is that there will always be more,” Gould says. “It doesn’t matter how many you kill, eventually more will arrive. Zombies are a palpable, biting representation of our own mortality. And mortality stinks. And it has rotting flesh.”

In medieval Japan there was a swordsmith who volunteered to execute a felon so he could perform tameshigiri-test cutting-on his latest blade. When the convicted man saw the sword maker he said, “If I had known it would be you, I would have swallowed stones to ruin your blade!”

Some days you’re the sword maker, slicing cleanly through flesh and bone, and some days you’re the poor bastard forcing rocks down your throat right before they put the steel to you. Sure you’re going to die, but you don’t have to go easy.

We walked twenty minutes through the kitchen gardens before we got to the southern wall. The gate wasn’t manned but we only had to wait a few minutes before the guard walking the parapet got there, slung his rifle, and came down the ladder, huffing and puffing.

He checked Sensei’s pass and then Richard pushed forward, like he does, to be next. The guard glanced at Richard’s pass and then up at his face. “Richard Torres? You look like your brother. Didn’t he go missing a few weeks back?”

“You think?” snapped Richard. “Why do you think-”

Sensei touched Richard on the arm. “No sign of Diego, I take it?” Sensei said to the guard.

“Not on my watch, no.” He gave Richard back his pass, took Lou’s, looked at her, and blinked. They all do when they see her. I mean she’s gorgeous most days but for some reason, today she glowed.

“Louise Patterson? I think I knew your sister in high school. How is she?”

“Dead,” said Lou.

Nine out of every ten died in the infestation. You’d think he’d know better.

He swallowed, gave her back the pass, and took mine. “Hello. I don’t think I’ve met you before. New to town?”

I laughed sourly. “You sat behind me in Algebra, Danny. You kept copying my work.”

He took a step back and stared down at my pass. His free hand touched the opposite elbow. “Wow, Rosa. You’ve, uh, filled out.”

“Yes,” I said. I was skinny back then but now I had curves. He was stocky before, and still was. Surprising, that, considering the rationing. I didn’t comment, though, about his weight or what had happened back in high school. We wanted to get through the gate after all.

He turned back to Sensei, as if I wasn’t there. “Weapons? Just the pig stickers, right?”

We held open our packs so he could see. Guns and ammo were reserved for the defense of the community. You could travel outside but ammo and guns stayed in unless it was the guards going out to watch the fields during planting, weeding, or harvest. There are other reasons, too.

“Just the swords,” said Sensei.

Danny undid the massive padlock holding down the hinged bar, then said, “Don’t open it until I’ve checked from above, right?”

Sensei nodded, his face impassive. “Understood.”

Of course Sensei understood. He’d been outside more than anyone else in town.

Danny went back up the ladder and unslung the rifle. “There’s some in the cornfield over there.” He pointed to the left of the gate. “Maybe six or so standing up, but there could be more lying down. The corn is getting pretty high.” He pointed to the right. “The soybeans are only knee-high and there’s one wandering around in there. The road-” He lifted his rifle and fired one shot. “There, the road is clear until it dips down toward the river.”

Sensei glared at Danny.

Lou frowned. “What’d he do that for? He’s going to draw them to the gate.”

Sensei sighed. “It’s not as if we’re trying to avoid them, Lou.” He gestured, and I went to the bar and lifted it. Richard drew his sword and held it hasso, pointed straight up near his right shoulder. I heard Sensei sigh slightly but he didn’t say anything. Sensei gestured again and I pushed. The left-hand door opened outward on well-oiled hinges until it was ninety degrees open. Richard sprang out, looking around wildly. Lou rolled her eyes, and I nodded.

The asphalt was cracked and weed-lined, but the field crews had cleared any sizable brush away twenty feet on either side. A hundred feet in front of the gate, a body sprawled across the faded median stripes-Danny’s target. Richard took several steps forward and stopped in the middle of the road, sword still raised on high.

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.”

“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.

“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.

The one in front reached out its left arm and I just cut it off above the elbow. It staggered in the other direction, suddenly heavier on its right side. It would probably have recovered its balance in another step but the gully was right there and it went over the edge. I split the other one down through the sinuses and turned back before it fell. On the other side of the gully the first of our pursuers had jumped down into the gully and was starting to claw its way up our side.

Sensei tilted his neck side to side, stretching. His voice was calm and low. “Lou, check his leg. If it’s a sprain, bind it. Rosa, you’re with me, on the edge.”

It was a good place to make a stand. They were clumsy and, even unopposed, it took them several tries to get up the bank to the rim. Mostly we just split their heads open, letting them dislodge others as they fell.

The problem was they were still coming. I didn’t really see an end to them, and some of them were being driven down the gully into the woods where I knew they’d be able to climb out easily.

We’d put twenty or so down for good when Lou said, “Bad sprain, I think. I duct taped it.”

“Then we should go,” said Sensei. “Start off. We’ll follow.”

We killed fifteen more.

Richard was moving okay, limping heavily, but he and Lou were working well as a team with Lou taking the legs and Richard finishing them. We went through a field of sugar beets, moving down the rows parallel to the wall.

“Go for the gate,” someone said, loudly.

I looked up. One of the guards-not Danny-was watching us from the wall but he kept his gun slung, thankfully.

“I’ll be waiting!” He headed down the parapet at a slow jog, light-footed. He’d still get there well ahead of us.

The next field was hay, cut short and harvested recently, for it felt like a stubbly lawn. Without Richard’s sprain, we could’ve sprinted across it, but at least we could see everything come at us.

I was expecting to see more ahead of us, for the wall and the gates draw them, but instead I started seeing bodies. Bodies in pieces.

“Sensei, Diego’s been here.”

There were sharp cuts, heads, arms, legs. Not a few were cleaved entirely through the chest from the shoulder down through the ribs.

He nodded and frowned. One of the bodies had not been infected for it had also been eaten. The infected don’t eat other infected, not after the first day or two. Something about the taste. But this body had been sliced first, several times. Including the neck.

“Sensei?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe the zombies had already killed or mortally wounded him, er, her, and Diego put her out of her misery.”

I was looking at the blood spray. “Definitely alive during the first cut.”

We pushed through to the apple orchard beyond the hay. The field hands had done a good job of keeping the underbrush down, but the trees were unpruned and many of the branches dipped down close to the ground, heavy with unripe fruit, obscuring the sight lines.

The crowd of zombies on our tail hadn’t entered the hayfield and it was clear that they were beginning to tail off as the ones in the rear got distracted and wandered away.

We moved carefully into the orchard, looking in all directions. The orchard predated the wall and the rows ran at an angle, making it hard to see too far ahead. We rounded one low-branched tree and saw him, two rows over.

Diego was sitting on a pile of bodies, his arms resting on his thighs, his head hanging. The sun was behind him, casting his figure in silhouette, but he was instantly recognizable by his size, posture, and especially his hair, which he wore in a top knot, like the samurai chonmage style.

Lou’s hand went to her mouth and froze but Richard saw him and cried out, “Diego!”

He turned then, and the light fell across his front.

In one hand he held his sword, in the other he held an arm. Someone else’s arm. His chin was covered with blood as was his shirt front.

“Oh, no.” Lou fell to her knees. One hand went to her stomach and the other covered her mouth.

“Rosa, take them around.” Sensei gestured at the side of the orchard closest to the wall. “Keep them moving to the gate.” He didn’t look at us as he said this. Instead, he walked forward, his hands resting on the scabbard and handle of his sword.

“Sensei, shouldn’t we take him together? He’s still holding his sword!”

As I said, the recently infected retained their physical skills and Diego had been studying with Sensei for twenty-five years. His physical skills were considerable.

“Could you cut him, Rosa? I’m not sure I can, but I must. Get Lou and Richard to the gate. My will is in the Kamiza at the dojo. I haven’t changed it but you are listed as my preferred successor, after Diego.” He finally looked around at me. The corners of his mouth were drawn down hard, but they twitched up briefly in an almost smile, and then he winked at me.

He stepped out briskly toward Diego.

Damn him!

I grabbed Lou by the arm and said, “Help me with Richard. We’ve got to run for it.”

She was sobbing, but she staggered to her feet and grabbed Richard’s other arm. We began running toward the wall.

Diego ignored Sensei and ran toward the wall, too, blocking our path. He raised his arms to hold the sword jodan, over his head, but realized he still held the arm in his hand. He shoved it down into his shirt where it hung, the fingers just sticking above his collar, then took the sword up high.

“MA-TE!” screamed Sensei, and Diego jerked back slightly and looked confused. Sensei had used that command thousands of times during Diego’s training. It meant stop or wait. Diego turned back toward Sensei who still hadn’t drawn his sword.

“See,” said Richard, reaching out. “He’s still in there! Diego, it’s okay!”

Diego turned and slashed at Richard’s extended arm. I pulled Richard back. The sword cut through Richard’s shirt sleeve.

Sensei drew then, and Diego turned and slashed, kesa, at Sensei’s neck.

Sensei blocked, absorbing the strike and drawing his elbows into his body, then slid his sword down Diego’s blade, going for the thumb. Diego drew back to cut kesa on the other side.

Sensei drove forward, letting Diego’s strike pass behind him and then turning away from Diego while very close, and bringing his blade around to cut Diego’s exposed side.

The arm, Diego’s snack, stuck down his shirtfront took the brunt of the cut, and, though Sensei sliced all the way through it, his sword only cut an inch or so into Diego’s abdomen.

Diego turned like a snake and cut at Sensei’s back but Sensei had kept going, putting him just out of range. Sensei pivoted and sliced up vertically, the move from the Suburi Happo, designed to cut from groin to chin, and Diego jerked backwards to avoid it.

I tried to get Richard and Lou moving again, and Diego saw or sensed the movement. He leaped back into our path, blocking the way.

“No, Diego!” Richard yelled.

Again, Diego hesitated, looked confused.

Sensei closed in again, and Diego faced him, moving away from us without unblocking our path. Diego struck, lightning fast, shomen, and Sensei slid off the line, guiding the sword away, to cut back shomen. Diego moved sideways, without blocking, and struck again, so fast, that Sensei barely had time to get his head out of the way. The sword bit hard into Sensei’s shoulder but Sensei’s rising block kept it from cutting all the way through the bone.

Sensei fell and Diego raised his sword again, to finish Sensei, but I drew and thrust quickly into Diego’s back.

It didn’t kill or disable but it got his attention.

He turned and cut viciously, kesa, but I’d stepped back. As his sword went by I tried to cut his wrist, but I hesitated and nicked his forearm instead. He came back horizontal and Lou’s sword blocked it. At the same time, tears streaming down his face, Richard thrust into Diego’s stomach.

Diego stepped back and put his hand to the wound, then held it, looking at the blood. He sniffed it and his nose wrinkled. He gripped the sword again, both hands, and I dropped to my knees and said loudly, “Da-TO!” When we bow out of class, the first thing we do is take our sword out of our obi and put it down on the floor before us. I set my bare sword down, not in its scabbard, like we’d normally do, but in the same position, edge toward me, handle to the right.

Diego almost did it, starting to lower the sword and bend his knees in reflex, but then he stopped and raised it again.

Lou lowered her sword and said, “Diego, love, come to me.”

Diego froze, his mouth opening and his face softening, and I snatched up my sword and, left hand flat on the mune, thrust it up through Diego’s jaw and all the way into his brain.

Diego fell to the side, his sword still gripped solidly in his hands.

Lou dropped back to her knees and threw up. Again.

We made Richard limp by himself as we carried Sensei to the gate. We kept him from bleeding to death but it was a close thing. Richard brought back his brother’s sword, and we’re saving it. Boy or girl, his child deserves something of her father’s.

All that throwing up wasn’t just something Lou had eaten.

“Sensei would never have allowed you to come along if he’d known you were pregnant.”

Lou nodded and kept crying.

Danny, the southern guard, was discharged from his post and set to garbage detail. He wasn’t at the gate because he was pilfering in the kitchen gardens. Had a nice business in black market tomatoes.

Sensei’s shoulder was never the same. He still lives at the dojo and he makes comments from the side of the mat, but mostly he leaves it to me, and he never went out of the gates again.

But I did.