- Turtle-chan
The piercing glint of a blade in the moonlight was made even
more sinister by the incessant screaming of the wind through the barren
trees. A dark, wraithlike figure floated
across the desolate landscape. The moon
loomed overhead, floating orange and bloated like a rotted pumpkin in the
starless night sky. The phantom stood,
waiting, as a low guttural moaning started up from within the sorry excuse for
a forest. Slowly, steadily, figures
began to stagger from the relative shelter of the trees. They came in the shapes of men, women, and
even children, but there was something that was not quite right about
them. Their posture drooped; they took
slow, stiff steps, and made sounds more animal than human, contrary to their
appearance. One drew close to the
shadow, close enough for it to see the creature’s cadaverous countenance.
Its
flesh was torn and falling away. Its
eyes were covered in a milky film. The
stench of rotting flesh hung heavy about the creature and the phantom was
repulsed. The flesh of its lips was
completely gone, leaving its moldering teeth exposed in a grotesque caricature
of a smile. Its stomach was greatly
distended and the shadow thought it had observed what appeared to be fresh
blood on the creature’s decaying body and long strands of pale blonde hair
protruded from the corners of what was left of its mouth and were trapped
beneath its filthy fingernails. In one
sudden movement, the wraith flicked its wrist and a blade was imbedded in the
creature’s left eyeball which was slowly oozing thick blood and strange clear
goo.
More of
the creatures began closing in on the shadow and it threw back its black
hood. Beneath the hood was a face. It was the face of a young woman with hard, almond-shaped
brown eyes rimmed with thick black liner.
Her elegant ebony eyebrows were drawn into a tight line of
concentration. Her hair fell over her
face, jet black with a single strip of neon orange in the front, cutting her
face in two. She had thin lips and was
clothed in black sneakers, jeans, and a black sweatshirt. Her breath came in short puffs, freezing in
the icy winter air and then floating away.
In her pale hands, a throwing knife with a wicked sharp blade glinted in
the moonlight. She stood in a defensive
crouch, prepared to do anything she needed to in order to survive the fight.
But as
the moaning reached a crescendo, the sound waves crashing upon the girl’s
eardrums, a symphony of terror began to consume her. Rotting fingers began to dig into the soft
flesh of her arms. The stench of decay
overwhelmed her. She felt cold, dead
lips near her ear and she could not contain a small shriek of terror which
added to the cacophony surrounding her, pulling her in. She felt the lips of the creature open and
then…It was gone.
The
cold fingers fell away and were replaced with warm ones, shoving her to the
side and away from the looming horde.
She landed hard on her backside and quickly looked up to see her
assailant or hero. Before her was a
young man whirling and swiping at the undead with a long wooden staff that was
at least as tall as he was. All she
could see of him was his back side, but from that she could tell that he was
probably a little over six feet tall with strong, broad shoulders and long,
flaming red hair that he had tied at the nape of his neck.
His movements were swift and sure,
but he was vastly outnumbered. The girl
got to her feet, picked up her last throwing knife, and shoved it into her
sleeve before pulling her short ninja sword and its sheath from their place
tucked into her belt. She slipped into a
fighting stance behind the man and in a voice rough from disuse said,” Got your
back.”
The man grunted in response but
never broke his pace with the staff. The
girl used a quick draw technique involving using the sheath for added speed as
she started hacking and slashing at the reaching limbs, littering the ground
with putrefying hands and arms and even heads when she got lucky. As sharp as her shinobigatana was, it was still hard work cutting through flesh and
bone, even if the flesh put up little to no resistance. The undead hordes seemed to be never-ending
and the girl could not help but wonder why there were so many of them gathered
in that particular area. The largest
pack she had seen up to that point was no larger than fifteen or twenty. This was something more like fifty of sixty
of them against two living warriors. The
likelihood of the two of them escaping alive was very low, even if the man’s
skill level matched or exceeded hers.
The girl had always liked a
challenge, though, and adrenaline was singing through her veins, making her
feel invincible and fearless, adding strength and speed to the swings and jabs
of her sword. She felt the reassuring
warmth and pressure of the man’s sturdy back pressed against hers and the movement
of his muscles as he too bashed skulls and shattered bones.
“Only about ten left over here. On the count of three, we switch,” the man
told her in a deep, rumbling voice.
The girl was a little rankled at
the demonstration of his belief in her weakness, but she also did not feel that
the heat of battle was a good time to argue over gender roles. “Osu,”
she responded in Japanese, forgetting for a moment that she was not speaking to
her sensei.
“One… Two… Three,” the man said and the girl
suspected he was counting heads.
They moved at the same time,
whirling around each other, the girl’s black hair getting caught up in the
boy’s red. The faced each other briefly
and the girl though that she had seen that the man had green eyes. The girl also noted with some satisfaction
that she had only left the young man two more zombies than he had left her.
As the new zombies came rushing
toward her with arms outstretched and mouths wide open, wailing, she added her
own noise to the mix.
“HAAAAIIIIIEEEEEE,” she shouted, using the battle cry to draw out the
strength within her.
A benefit of her ninja sword was
that it allowed her movements to be swifter than if she had used something more
bulky like a katana, and she could also use the sheath as a weapon. Her sword sliced through the air like a
gleaming ray of moonlight, cutting through the shadows and the zombies. The girl herself looked like a stray shred of
darkness, whipping and whirling about like a dervish. In what seemed like no time at all, the girl
was dispatching the last of her zombies.
With a self-satisfied air, she
turned around to see how the man was doing.
He was steadily working on the last zombie on his side—a large one that
had once been male. The girl watched him
fight with interest. The moonlight was
finally in such a position to allow her to see that the man was in fact using a
bo staff, and quite well at that. He was
in what the girl believed was known as the kokutsu
dachi, or back stance, withone foot planted firmly behind him, knee bent,
and the other foot extended in front of him, centering his weight over the back
foot. He waited with his staff held
horizontally at a little over shoulder height with his front hand supporting
the staff and his back hand loosely holding it, waiting until the zombie was
within five or so feet of him before attacking.
In a movement almost too fast to be
seen, the young man took a step forward and whipped the bo upward, sliding his
hands down the length of it to the end and slamming it down into the zombie’s
skull. The skull split under the hard
wood like a ripe melon and splattered brain matter and congealed blood. The zombie stumbled a few more steps forward
before falling to its knees and then to what was left of its face. The man’s expression never changed once and
he made no noise. Zombies did not need
to be intimidated.
He spun to face the girl and asked
her,” Did any of them bite or scratch you and did you come into contact with
any bodily fluids?”
“No bites or scratches. I got some blood on me, but I don’t have any
open cuts and it didn’t get into my mouth, nose, or eyes,” she responded with
every bit as much efficiency. “You?”
He shook his head. “No injuries; no contact with bodily
fluids. We got lucky.”
“Damn straight. How many do you think there were? Fifty?
Sixty,” the girl asked him, making small talk in her relief. The man did indeed have a green eye, but he
also had a blue one. It was an
interesting abnormality.
“Fifty at most. It could have been worse. There’s a large cemetery near here, as well
as what used to be a small town. All of
the rain recently has softened the ground and they’re popping up like daisies,”
he responded, still with that military efficiency.
“That makes more sense. I couldn’t figure out why there were so many
of them. I’m a wanderer, so I’m not
familiar with the area. The name’s Zillah,
by the way,” the girl responded, carrying on her chatter.
He nodded. “Kelly,” was his only response.
“Nice to meet you, Kelly,” Zillah
chirped, hoping he’d stop acting so withdrawn.
She had not had a decent conversation in weeks and did not know when she
would have another chance to have one again.
“So, are you from around here?”
“No. I’m a wanderer, too,” he told her.
“Really? There seem to be a lot more wanderers now than
there used to be. I guess it’s ‘cause
none of these towns wants to have to keep a warrior around. Scares the citizens, they say,” she mused.
“Yes,” Kelly said with little
enthusiasm.
A little annoyed, Zillah said,” You
have good form. Where’d you learn to
wield a bo staff like that?”
“I took martial arts lessons from
an elderly Japanese man as a child. Shinsho taught me the form and the
basics of fighting and the undead have done the rest,” he said with a
grimace. “What about you? If I’m not mistaken, your form comes from ninjutsu and you’re fighting with a shinobigatana.”
“Yep. I’m one of the last shinobi. My dad was from
Japan and he had trained his entire life, so he taught me too. I never thought I’d have to use it unless
some creep tried to pull something on me.
Can’t say I’ve ever been more upset that I was wrong,” she told him,
also grimacing after having made herself think about it.
“Aren’t we all,” Kelly said,
sounding bitter.
All the while, something was
slithering through the darkness, silently and stealthily. It made slow progress, but that was all the
better for it did not want to draw the attention of the two warriors. Not yet.
“Yeah, well, like they used to say,
‘shit happens,’” Zillah said, somewhat lamely.
“Guess we’ve just gotta deal with what we can and man up about the
rest.”
“I guess you’re right,” Kelly said,
a little uncertainly. He seemed
distracted and cocked his head as though he were listening for something.
Zillah did not know what it was,
but something was making her feel uneasy.
“Maybe we should get outta here,” she started to say, her hand moving
down to touch the hilt of her shinobigatana
unconsciously—a nervous habit.
“There’s another one out there,”
Kelly interrupted her, glaring toward the woods. “Prepare yourself, shinobi.”
“Osu,” Zillah responded, automatically grasping her sheath in her
left hand and placing her right hand on the hilt of the sword.
As Kelly had predicted, a zombie
came staggering out off the trees and stumbled toward the two warriors with its
arms outstretched, its fingers clawing at the air. Its mouth opened wide like a snake’s and it
unleashed one of those unearthly howls of the constant and unholy hunger that
consumed all of the undead. Zillah leapt
into action, literally, taking a running start and springing into the air. She performed a quick flip for flair as she
flew toward the zombie and she drew her sword just as she reached the point
over its head. Then, she swung the blade
downward and cracked through the bone, but did not manage to destroy the brain
completely or sever connection with the spinal cord. She landed almost silently directly behind
the creature and used that opportunity in which it was confused and trying to
find its prey to swing her sword once more and slice cleanly through its neck.
Kelly came up behind her and
smashed the skull for good measure. “Not
bad,” he told her, the slightest of smiles twitching at the corner of his
mouth.
“Well what did you expect,” Zillah
asked playfully, her face lighting up with pleasure at the compliment. “There’s a reason I get hired to take care of
these things.”
“I suppose s—AHHHHHHH,” Kelly
exclaimed, jerking his leg upward suddenly.
Zillah looked down and saw that
most of the flesh on his ankle was missing and his foot was dangling at an
awkward angle. The wound was gushing
blood all over the place and below the crimson fountain was a very
self-satisfied-looking zombie. She was
little more than a torso and had been a child at the time of her death. She still had a tattered, gore encrusted pink
ribbon in her brown hair and might have passed for a human if it were not for
the blood covering her mouth and the fact that she was cut in half and was
still able to function. Zillah flicked
her wrist and her throwing knife was buried up to the hilt in the child’s left
eyeball and the creature had gone still.
She turned her attention back to Kelly.
He had collapsed to the ground and
was already starting to look very pale.
He was reaching around inside his jacket, searching. Zillah saw a look of relief cross his face as
he grasped something, presumably what he was looking for.
“Shinobi,” he gasped. “I
request your aid.”
“Please, call me Zillah. I’ll do whatever you need me to,” she
responded, dropping to her knees in front of him.
He pulled out a dagger and said,” I
have been dishonored. The enemy defeated
me and I’m going die and become one of them.
I want to die upon my own terms and regain my honor. Will you be my kaishakunin?”
“Wait, what?! You mean to commit seppuku? And you want me to be your second,” Zillah exclaimed,
blanching at the thought of helping him kill himself. “Oh, no, no, no! Not gonna happen!”
“Please. It’s the only way I can regain my honor,” he
pleaded. “I don’t want to be one of
them.”
Zillah cleared her mind of all
thoughts and took a deep breath. Smooth
stone under still water. Smooth stone
under still water… “Alright. I will help you fulfill your dying wish. I will be your second,” she told him, setting
her jaw and gazing straight ahead with steely eyes.
“Domo arigato gozaimasu,” he said, bowing very deeply in the dogeza stance.
”No. Don’t thank me. Just tell me when you’re ready,” she said,
all seriousness now.
Kelly nodded and tightened his grip
on the dagger. He took off his jacket
and his shirt, revealing a rock-hard abdomen.
He turned the blade toward himself and closed his eyes, taking deep
breaths. Then, he opened his eyes and
plunged the dagger deep into his stomach and sliced horizontally. Blood and internal organs spilled out of the
opening and Kelly grimaced but made no sound as his life flowed out onto the
ground. He dropped the dagger and
doubled over, pushing his hair off of his neck.
“Now,” he choked out.
Zillah steeled herself and drew her
shinobigatana. “May you find peace in the afterlife, Kelly,”
she said as she swung the sword downward, hard and fast. She forced the blade down, between two
vertebrae, and sliced through sinew and flesh.
After what seemed like ages but in reality was only about a second, his
head disconnected from his body and rolled a foot or two away, coming to rest
with the face toward Zillah. There was a
look of peace in his multihued eyes.
Zillah walked over and closed the lids over the staring eyes and carried
the head back to its body. Blood was spraying from the stump of Kelly’s
neck, the last of the pressure built up by his heart being released. The blood fell down like rain over Zillah’s
head and shoulders and hands. She
ignored the warm liquid and slipped her arm around Kelly’s shoulders, gently
lowering his body to the ground. She
placed his head on his stomach and folded his hands around it. Blood ran down her face in little trickles,
like tears, dripping down to her mouth.
Slowly, she ran her tongue over her lips, tasting the iron and forcing
her mind to hold the memory of Kelly’s face.
“Goodbye, ronin,” she murmured, picking up his bo staff.
The sun was just beginning to rise
as she turned to walk away. The light
painted the world in shades of red and orange, just like the color of Kelly’s
hair. Zillah was nothing more than a
black stain on the blood-red world. The
wind rustled the dead branches of the trees and she almost thought she could
hear a whispering voice.
“Thank you,” it said.
No comments:
Post a Comment