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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 Da
“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 begi
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 ru
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.