4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas (24 page)

Dog went from pacing the cell to sitting against the back wall and staring out into the night. It was nerve wracking to hear the screams of men and women. The air was heavy with a dread more terrible than if it had been thick with wood smoke and fire. Minoru’s crazy words about the world ending poisoned his thoughts.

Minoru finished his prayers and returned to his flute, wordlessly, as if he knew exactly what was going on outside and it didn’t concern him.

That was when the shambling figure came to stand before their cell.

They heard it first, the shuffling steps across the snowy ground. It was like the step of a tired man, without cadence or rhythm, more a stagger than a stride.

The thin, shadowed form crossed in front of them. Dog saw unkempt hair and long, ropy arms. But the most standout thing about the stranger was the angle of his head. It was bent sharply to the right, so that the right ear seemed to touch the right shoulder. Yet the man’s posture was not hunched. There was a snuffling sound, and the man emitted a low, almost plaintive moan and shuffled closer to the bars.

He stepped into the beam of moonlight.

That was when Dog saw the face of Koda Moan, the latrine boss. His neck was broken still, by all appearances, and yet he lived. His eyes were glazed with a white film, and the jaw hung loose. His mouth was splashed with black, like the ink on a woman’s teeth.

He was expressionless, and as Dog flattened himself against the wall, Koda Moan pawed at the grate as though he were unfamiliar with the concept of a door. His thin arms snaked in between the bars and his long fingered hands reached imploringly out to him. His head lolled about his shoulders, flopping between his chest and back without reason.

Minoru stopped playing his flute and stared silently. He slowly got to his feet.

“It’s Koda Moan!” Dog exclaimed.

“Oh. He’s
your
visitor, then,” Minoru said, sitting back down and picking up his flute. “I thought he had come to see me.”

“He’s dead!” Dog stammered. “I killed him!”

“Well,” said Minoru, “maybe you should appeal to the warden and see if he will agree to hear your case again in light of this new development.”

Koda Moan rattled the wooden grate and groaned again.

“He’s certainly anxious to see you,” Minoru went on. “Go and get the keys, if you want in,” he called to Moan.

Moan answered with an animal snarl and a disconcerting wobble of his broken neck.

Minoru cocked his head, and stood up again.

Dog trembled all over, his hairs straight on end. He hugged himself for fear that he might shake the soul loose from his body. He had killed this man with his hands. Heard his neck break, heard his last breath rattle out of him. He had heard prayers being said over his corpse. Hadn’t he?

Minoru approached Moan, stopping inches from his grasping hands. He watched his fingers clench and unclench, peering through the dimness at his face.

Dog forced himself to stand also, and stared over Minoru’s reeking shoulder.

Minoru’s hand snaked out suddenly and touched Moan’s face, eliciting an outburst of violent growling.

Minoru held his hand up to his own face and licked his palm.

Dog winced, imagining the flavor.

Minoru held out his hand to Dog. It glistened with the black substance all over Moan’s face.

“Blood,” said Minoru. “And he’s cold to the touch. I’m afraid there’ll be no appeal for you.” He chuckled.

“Blood! Is it his?”

“No no,” said Minoru, licking his hand again. “This is fresh. And look, there’s no mark about his face. Well, besides what you put there. No open wounds. He’s been drinking it. I think he wants more.”

Dog reeled and had to steady himself with one hand against the wall.

Moan snarled.

Minoru turned to him and spoke in mock sympathy, as if to a puppy or a child. “Yes, yes, I know,” he cooed. “But we don’t have the key, my friend. I’ll play you a tune. You’ll feel better about it.” He went to his corner and picked up his stained flute again.

Dog’s eyes bulged and he gripped his own arms till his knuckles were white. The
shakuhachi
played
Shika No Tone
again. He wished this was a nightmare. He wished that he would awake and find Minoru chewing on his ankle. Anything would be better than what stood before him. He never prayed, but he prayed now to awaken.

In almost immediate answer, Koda Moan suddenly straightened and pressed his narrow face against the grate, as if he were trying to force his head and somehow the rest of his body through one of the squares. There was a sickening crunch, and his body fell entirely away, while his head remained in the air, jaws working, milky eyes rolling.

Dog gasped aloud and bit his hand to stifle a shriek. As a boy in his village he had heard tales about
nukekubi
, monsters whose heads could float away from their bodies and hurtle through the air screaming, to suck the life from the living. The tale had terrified him as a child and now the old chest squeezing fear came back to him in a flood.

But then the head too fell to the ground, and there stood the samurai sword tester, Kumada Sadahiko, withdrawing a policeman’s U-bladed
sasumata
polearm
.
He had neatly separated Moan’s head from his body with one thrust.

Sadahiko came to the bars. His eyes were wild and his hair disheveled. He was not the collected gentleman who had come earlier to assure Dog of his own death.

“Are you both alive in there?”

“No,” said Minoru.

“Yes,” said Dog at the same time.

“We’re both alive,” Dog said, when Sadahiko hesitated.

“Ah! Young master Kumada!” exclaimed Minoru, sounding genuinely pleased.

“Yes.” He looked around fervently, then laid the bloody
sasumata
aside and drew out his sword. “Do you know this sword, monk?”

Minoru answered immediately. “It’s called
Tasogare
. Muramasa Murashige made it. You had the signature altered to avoid the shogun’s ban on Muramasa swords. It was the sword you cut off your father’s head with.”

“Then you are who you say you are,” said Sadahiko.

Minoru smiled faintly and nodded, closing his pop eyes. “Yes.”

“I know why you became a
kumoso
. When my father was ordered to commit
seppuku
, you were one of the ones who left us instead of following him in death as a loyal retainer.”

“When I was alive, I thought that to cut open my own belly for the petty crimes of a greedy accountant was absurd. And I thought I was more of a samurai than the young master.”

Sadahiko curled his lip at that.

“That is the sin of pride which I died with,” Minoru continued. “Now I am a
jikininki
,” said the monk, bowing low. Then he stared up at Sadahiko from beneath his downturned brow. “And I know something else too, young master Kumada. I know that at night that sword,
Tasogare,
calls out to you for blood, and nags like a dissatisfied woman when you put it away clean. Tonight it will get its fill.”

“What do you know about tonight?” Sadahiko said sharply.

“I know the world is ending, as it does each day and night for some man somewhere, as it did for the dying star I saw streak across the sky last night.”

“What
is
happening?” Dog broke in impatiently.

Sadahiko looked to the bandit. “I will show you.”

Sadahiko unlocked their cell and they stepped over the corpse of Koda Moan. Dog paused to toe the face skyward, still not wanting to believe. He glimpsed the bloodstained overbite on the dead, brushy face and looked away, pushing aside panic.

The snow in the yard was ankle deep. They navigated the dark avenues of the prison, clinging to the wall shadows like creeping rats. Dog was last in line, Minoru’s stink heavy in his nose.

Each section of the compound was divided into courtyards by high walls capped with rows of discouraging iron spikes about two
shaku
long. The prison was surrounded by a wide moat only passable by the main gate drawbridge, lending it an isolated, labyrinthine feel, particularly if one did not know one’s way around.

Dog had practically grown up here, fetching his father home to the
eta
village every afternoon. He’d had relatively free reign about the compound, and had explored it thoroughly as a boy. He had seen the crucified men outside the main gate almost everyday, marking when the corpses changed, but giving them little thought until the day he’d watched his father perform his duties. They’d been in the midst of removing the stiff, gray bodies from the crosses when Jinza brought him in this morning, the frozen blood shimmering like candy on the wood poles.

He shook these memories away. They left the gate that led to the execution grounds (which was ajar and unguarded—an unpardonable dereliction of duty) in the northeast corner and moved stealthily along the first wall towards the neighboring upper chamber jail, where the infrequent high ranking prisoners were incarcerated.

The shouts continued to come from the west, and glancing to the south as they neared the upper jailhouse, Dog could see the guardhouse adjoining the armory and interrogation chambers and the southeast gate leading to the warden’s office and residence. The door was broken in, the snow around it marred with scattered footprints. A barricade composed of an overturned cart and some firewood had been smashed to pieces.

They came to the upper jailhouse. Sadahiko produced his ring of keys (
whose
ring of keys? Not even the
doshin
guards were given
all
the keys to the prison … only the captain and the warden carried master sets) and tried them until he unlocked the door. They slipped inside. Dog noted that Sadahiko locked the door behind them.

The upper jailhouse was smaller than either the greater or the lesser jails, where the majority of prisoners were kept. Wishful thinking on the part of the architects, that the higher classes did not often wind up in jail, but true to some extent, for they often had the resources to hide their crimes. The upper jailhouse was unoccupied tonight, and the halls were dark, only the silver, broken moonlight filtering through the barred windows showed the way.

Sadahiko did not reach for one of the oil lamps. Dog didn’t ask why. Light could attract trouble.

They climbed the stair. This was the only two story building in the compound. They opened the empty jail room and Sadahiko held them back. He held the
sasumata
before him and called out; “Jinza!”

“Here,” came a weak voice from the corner, near the western window, which looked out over the spiked walls and building rooftops.

The man who had arrested and beaten Dog that morning sat in the corner, his leg bleeding through a tightly bound linen bandage. He looked pale.

Sadahiko propped the
sasumata
against the wall and knelt beside Jinza.

Dog stood over him. The red tasseled iron
jitte
the man had laid up against his head and shoulders was stuffed in his belt. So this was where the keys had come from.

“Jinza came to get me from the warden’s residence,” said Sadahiko. “Tell them what you told me, Captain. So they believe.”

Jinza gathered himself up and nodded.

“The warden led a couple of
doshin
into the lesser jail to fetch the four mad prisoners and the dozen who were hiding in there. The rest of the prisoners were separated. I took the wounded ones to the infirmary. We put the others in the greater jail with the rest of the population. I’d just finished sorting them out and was seeing to their wounds when we heard the warden scream. I took some guards and went into the lesser jail after him.” Jinza paused, shaking his head. His face was beaded with sweat. “We found more than a dozen of them in the back of the jailhouse. They had … they were
eating
them.”

Dog looked at Minoru. Minoru nodded and smiled.

“They’d made a circle on the floor and they were … tearing them to pieces. The warden and the four
doshin
. Just like ravenous dogs.”

Jinza coughed, and seemed to enter a paroxysm of some sort. Sadahiko steadied him, but when it had passed, he stood up, wary.

The captain went on; “The gunners I had left to guard the greater jail started firing, so we left two men outside the lesser jail and went back. We must have missed a wounded man or two … put them in with the other prisoners. They … the creatures were inside, and the prisoners were screaming. And the infirmary … some of the wounded had succumbed while we were gone … and they … they rose up again. Gorobei told me one of the men they’d thought was sleeping just rolled over and bit into another man lying beside him …”

“What are you saying?” Dog snapped, pacing in front of Jinza. “That the dead are eating the living?”

Jinza nodded coldly.

Dog laughed out loud, but he cut himself off, thinking of Koda Moan. He went to the window and looked out. The yard beyond the western gate was still lit up, and Dog could see crowds of figures milling about in the lantern light. The doors to the infirmary were open, and the snow covered roof of the greater jailhouse was sagging; one wall had fallen, the source of the crash Dog had heard earlier.

“Was there a riot?” Dog wondered aloud.

“There’s something else,” Jinza mumbled, ignoring him. “Something I didn’t tell you, Kumada-
sama
.”

Sadahiko took a step back.

“I told you I hurt my leg when they pushed the jailhouse wall down,” he said. He shook his head.

“Gorobei … Gorobei bit me. He only lost an ear,” Jinza muttered. “I didn’t think …”

Sadahiko drew his sword without a word and passed his blade through Jinza’s neck. The old captain’s head rolled across the room and bounced into one of the dark corners. The blood that erupted out of the stump left a red flare on the wall like a stylized candle flame.

Dog stared. Though the man had been friendly to him as a boy, he felt nothing at his death. Still, he had to admit the action had been swift and cold.

Sadahiko turned to them. “Do you understand now?”

“Yes. The world is ending for everyone tonight,” said Minoru.