Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 55

"Alyxa..."

She doesn't have the air to cry out as the wire pulls her off of her feet, staring at me with baby eyes and kicking her legs. I see the c.o.c.kroach boys up in the ceiling, their minds as dead as the zombies behind those black goggles. They don't realize Alyxa is not one of the zombies as they reel her in, lift her up into the ceiling and stab her in the head with a lemon knife.

They bleed her like a cow, then fold her limp body under their arms and pull them with her deep into the crawls.p.a.ce.

I lay down in the puddle of Alyxa's blood and press my face against the floor to feel the last of her warmth, rubbing my arms in it like I'm making a snow angel.

Staggering through the halls like I'm one of the corpses, blood no longer gushing from the hole in my chest, looking for a way out. Hours pa.s.s. I can't find an exit anywhere. The hallways seem to go for miles in every direction. After a day, I camp out in an office, eat a spider and the contents of its web, then continue to search for a way into the street, to see the sun one more time before I die.

Days go by. Still nothing but corridors and empty rooms crowded with the living dead.

They look at me as if I'm one of their own. Just another walking corpse that refuses to die. And I'm beginning to look at myself in the same way.

30/ Terry Morgan Christopher.

Morgan Zaambi.

I: IN WHICH I BECOME A MAN.

YEAR OF OUR SORROWS 103.

I killed three zaambi today before my father returned from Honchu Village. My younger brother Kisai watched as I dispatched the vermin, his eyes very wide. After it was through and the bonfire was burning Kisai told me in an overloud voice that he had been standing as a second for me, should the battle get too pitched. I thanked my six-year-old brother for his a.s.sistance and had him clean my father's blade of the zaambi foulness. Upon returning home Kisai waited no more than five seconds to regale Mother and Hiroko with my adventure, the telling of which upset them no little amount. Mother cried and told me I was a foolish boy, but her tears, truly, were those of relief. Hiroko questioned Kisai about the details, trying not to seem too curious. I didn't mind all the fuss. Today I had proved myself a man. My father upon his return would have to recognize me as such when I handed him my kill bag with the three heads in it. It had been a very good day.

I had dreamed, as had all boys my age, of joining the Shinsei-Na-Senzo-Sentai (Holy Ancestor patrol) for Honchu Village. It was rare enough to see zaambi within the perimeter of Honchu; I had only seen eight in my fourteen years. It was not a sight you could forget. My first sighting of the Sonkei Shisha (Revered Dead) happened midday in a crowded marketplace. Hiroko and I were helping Mother to carry her shopping. The vendor was mistakenly trying to convince my mother that the meat he sold was of ancient Kobe stock and was receiving the whip-end of her tongue when we heard horrified screams from behind us in the crowd. I dropped my basket when I saw the three zaambi. Two of them were entirely black with the rot of long earthly internment, their bones shiny with mud. The third was more freshly possessed of demonic life and still wore the work clothes he had died in. A gash ran across his entire face where an axe perhaps had opened the flesh, his staring eyes separated by a gory chasm. I would have screamed but I was struck dumb at the awful sight. A boy I knew, Kimitake, had fallen before the hideous pair of zaambi. As my mother pulled Hiroko and me behind the vendor's stall I saw the boy torn in three pieces.

For years afterward I could not force that sound from my head, the popping and ripping and rending of sinew, not unlike the sound made when Father is enjoying his chicken. The fresher of the beasts was approaching our hiding place, and grown men were running rather than take their chances against it. In desperation my mother raised the vendor's meat cleaver before her, but it proved unnecessary as a detachment of the Holy Ancestor patrol arrived in the marketplace. The zaambi threatening us was knocked to the ground by a running man, who proceeded to quarter it with his long blade. Peeking around the corner of the stand I could see an arm feebly grabbing at the air, detached from its owner. I gaped at this sight until I was startled into a loud yell by a man's head peering over the edge of the stand. It was my father. The two other zaambi had been dealt with by other members of the patrol, and Honda, my father's second-in-command, was piling firewood for an immediate bonfire. The boy, Kimitake, was going into the fire as well. All was screams and smoke and chaos. I have never been prouder of my father.

Today as Mother and Hiroko are making a fuss over me, buying sweet rice cakes and pouring liberal amounts of sake for myself and the neighbors, my father is pulling me aside for the talk I knew would come. Outside, it is a spectacular sight as the sun dips into a violet sky and the air is cool and crisp. This is what it is like to be a man, I think. This clarity.

My father is not a man given to foolish overpraise. He wastes no time.

"You committed their souls to the air," he asks, brusquely, his mind elsewhere.

"I have the ash on my hands," I say, displaying my gray palms for his perusal. He doesn't look. He doesn't need to. From the time I could understand stories I had heard again and again of the proper treatment of the Revered Dead, of the respect that must be paid to the souls of our ancestors.

"The ceremonial bonfire on which we cremate the fallen zaambi serves both a practical and spiritual purpose," my father had begun countless times, on walks through Honchu Village, by the river, in front of the fire. "Practically, the excresence that is the corrupt body of a zaambi must be burned to prevent contagion. Spiritually, the demon that possessed the physical body of the Revered Dead upon the opening of the Gate of h.e.l.l must be exorcised in its own element. The evil spirit recognizes that its place is that of flame and not of flesh, and departs. The soul of the Revered Dead, no longer under siege, may rise into the afterlife untroubled and exalted, as it should do."

I know this advice better than I know my own name.

"Perhaps when we are back inside with the rest of the family you and I shall drink a toast together to your adventure," my father begins.

"It was nothing much," I interrupt.

I don't wish to make my father praise me more than he wishes. In all truth I did a clumsy and terrified job on the three zaambi, who came upon Kisai and myself unawares. What was humiliating was that, secretly, I was looking for zaambi to kill. I felt I was ready for the Holy Ancestor patrol, whether my father thought so or not. I was only looking for a lone zaambi, however, and being surprised by three of them was not in my plan. Only sheer bravado and the excellent sharpness of my father's blade allowed my victory over the pathetic creatures, but from small seeds grow great trees. This almost-accident would serve to allow me to tryout for the Holy Ancestor patrol.

"It was sacred and vital," my father returned, a note of reproof for my disrespect in his voice. "I would hope that one soon to seek entry to be a ronin in the Holy Ancestor patrol would have appropriate respect for the gravity of his duties."

"Yes, father," I said, chastened. He turned to look closely at me, his serious face scrutinizing my frivolous one.

"The test will be tomorrow morning at dawn. Are you ready?"

"Yes, father."

He clapped me on the back. "Then we drink to you. You'll need whatever spirits you can get to help you."

I followed him inside, my stomach in turmoil. The test. In less than twelve hours.

I saw Father twice before my testing in a period following the many toasts of my novitiate companions that carried our benevolent and merry prayers to the spirits on rivers of sake and sweet plum wine. The first meeting occurred when he brought me the kimono of the Holy Ancestor Guild in which I was to test, a silken affair the colors of tea rose and ochre with the ice blue insignia of the Patrol st.i.tched neatly onto its back. The second time he shook me heartily to bring me from the most sound sleep I had ever known. As I walked beside my father to the Yamato Temple I shook the fog of the bibulous from my head and took in the rich and heavy odor of hours-old vomit that stuck dried to the raiments of my compatriots, who were also to be tested.

I was the third of the boys to breach the temple. We entered into a large darkened anteroom that was almost entirely empty of furnishings, yet filled to overflowing with the imperious mingling of scents from the ginger root, vanilla bean, and anise incense sticks smoldering within. From here our group, who numbered ten, was ushered down a flight of dangerously narrow stairs and into a cavernous chamber so complete in its lack of light that, for a moment, I began to reconsider my desire to become ronin. Samurai. We ten sat in the pitch, some praying nervously, some joking obscenely, all wondering if this was part of the test.

Fire sprung to life in a hanging pot eight feet off the ground, and a stern voice guided us to the small circle of light in the middle of the room. The voice, one I was sure that I had heard before, ordered the initiates to kneel and recite the Obeisance for the Revered Bead. As I knelt, I felt a not so timid tap upon my left shoulder. When I turned to look, I was greeted by the face of Honda's son, my best friend, Kenji-Tango. Presently, he was aping the bloated face of Madame Mutsu, the fat and hateful matriarch of the Mutsu family. It was his best impression; I had to think of Kimitake being torn into thirds to keep from laughing.

We ten started the Obeisance at the same time.

"I am the arm of my brother who has none, I am his blood that has long been dust, I am his flesh that has gone to rot, I am his guide toward the Holy Separation."

The oath continued in this fashion for some time. Afterwards, we sat in silence in a circle of light bounded by darkness deeper than the raven's hue. We waited apprehensively, hoping for someone to come. When we heard the shuffling-shambling foot-slides nearing our circle of light, even Kenji-Tango, who is the bravest of my friends, looked at me mouth agape and eyebrows raised very high, mocking no longer. We two were at the edge where light met dark, right where the awkward thing, which a moment ago was far off to the right, was now heading. The walk was distinctive.

When the rotting, grinning corpse materialized into the light four feet in front of me, I held my steps. Most of the other boys, excepting Kenji-Tango and another I couldn't make out, were pulled by fear to the other side of the lit circle, afraid to commit themselves to the dark. The zaambi slavered and drooled. It's one good eye turned to look at us, oxblood-colored pustulence oozing from the socket. The beast lumbered toward us, the organic fetor rising off its putrifying body, making the low gutteral chokings of a wild dog retching from the too-rich garbage he had earlier scavenged.

The boy I could not recognize ran dry of his courage when the decaying creature dropped its black and sore-covered tongue onto the ground with as much notice as a horse gives to its newly fallen dung. He ran to join the fraternity of the other boys. With painful and spasmatic movements, the zaambi turned toward me. I too was readying my legs for flight, but I refused to move even the distance of an inchworm unless Kenji-Tango ran first. We had tarried longer than all others, but if I were to bolt first, it would be as if Nature were to say that Honda's son and Honda himself, as the flower arises from the seed, were more brave and more honor-worthy than myself and Father. No one is braver than Father, nor more n.o.ble. I stood.

The zaambi bellowed in my ear its satisfaction at finding a slow-moving meal. The creature craned its head around until our noses touched. The mon-ster grunted, and just as my traitorous feet were about to betray my vow, I smelled shaved ice mixed with liana syrup. The fiend drew back and looked on at me curiously as I sniffed the air about its face. Kenji-Tango, he later told me, thought I had gone mad, smelling a zaambi in such a way. Shaved ice and liana syrup put in a new silver bowl was favorite of Abbot and Abbess Yamato, and as far as I knew, they were the only two who ate the wretched, bitter substance. So, I knew that Abbot and Abbess Yamato had either just been eaten by this monstrosity, or...

I reached forward and pulled the zaambi mask from the startled face of Abbot Yamato. Kenji-Tango laughed quite unrestrainedly, and soon the other boys followed.

"Enough!" This from the lips of the presently enraged Abbot Yamato. "You in the corner dare not laugh! Laughter is the privilege of the courageous only! Fear is not a quality with which ronin regard zaambi. Ronin feel only anger and sorrow. Anger for the violation by the possessing demon, and sorrow for our brethren whose souls are being ravaged."

The Abbot paused, regarding us in turn. He then knelt and opened a panel in the floor. Inside this small storage area was a pile often escrima sticks, slender wooden swords to be used for fighting practice.

"You are now to undergo the examination for entrance into the Holy Ancestor Guild. The test is as follows: You are each allotted one escrima stick. Defend yourselves from the Guild members who will attack you by dealing them blows to areas that would be fatal to true zaambi. Do not hold back; they are well protected. They will attempt to drag you from the room. If they do, you are disqualified and you may test again next year. Use any means you must to stay in the room. You will be judged on technique as well as courage. That is all. Good luck."

With this, Abbot Yamato walked out of our circle of light and disappeared into the blackness.

We each picked up our allotted escrima, and began practice fighting with the other boys. Well before we were prepared, a bodiless voice from the shadows intoned: "Begin."

The first attacker came from the opposite side of the circle from where I was standing. Like the Abbot, it was another member of the Patrol dressed convincingly as a zaambi. The mask he wore was that of a man who had died from having his face flayed. It was all wet, red muscle with white rolling eyes. One of the boys, trying to regain his honor after running from the Abbot, stepped up to the beast and gave it a swift cut to the temple. The zaambi fell, defeated, and returned to the darkness. Two more appeared from the depths of the room. One zaambi wore the mask of a woman with nests of maggots for eyes, and the other was a lipless old man who shrieked loudly, without ceasing. Kenji-Tango dispatched the lipless fiend, while another boy named Shotoku thrust at the padded mask of the she-demon. They both fell and slid back into the shadows. Shotoku turned back toward us and cried, "This is easy!"

Fifty zaambi stepped into the light, completely surrounding the circle. By the time that Shotoku could turn and raise his sword, he had already been grabbed by four of the zaambi and was being carried, screaming, into the darkness. An icicle of fear slid securely into the meat of my heart. Even though we knew that the zaambi were just disguised members of our village, the trickery of the light and the horrific craftsmanship of the masks were enough to convince us otherwise. Some had rotted holes for noses. Others seeped black blood from the corners of their mouths. All looked hungry. The zaambi stumbled closer. We began to fight.

I sent three zaambi sprawling to the ground, though I swung at perhaps twice that number. All at once I was surrounded by a chaos of swords flying and bodies falling. When I had slain the last of the zaambi near me, I looked to my right and saw a boy named Little No pulled into the air by his head and carried off, praying to Amida for mercy. Hands clutched at my garments, and I batted them away with the flat of my escrima. Fifteen more zaambi stepped into the light. The fighting would not let up. As soon as so many were dispatched, more stepped in to take their place. Kenji-Tango and I stood together, defending a portion of the light-circle six zaambi in width.

Quickly, our circle of defense began to get smaller and smaller, due to novitiates being carried away and the ma.s.s of gore-covered zaambi bodies that pressed increasingly harder to reach us. The six of us who remained stood in a small circle, fighting for our lives. I was using such energy that twice I almost lost my sword from the sweat that coated both palms.

Kenji-Tango and I fought hard, side by side, neither of us willing to be outdone by the other. I had just decapitated a zaambi to my left, and was preparing to do the same to another who was feasting on its own bowels, when I was b.u.mped from behind. I had a.s.sumed that our defensive circle had just gotten smaller, until I turned and found my face less than a hair's breadth from the snapping teeth of the skinless zaambi who had been vanquished earlier.

"This is impossible! We kill them and they return to fight! Find an exit or we'll he slaughtered!"

The words came from the mouth of Dogen, perhaps the strongest boy of our group, who had cleared away a path through the zaambi big enough to escape the circle of light. Four boys, including Dogen, stood at the edge of the lit area and were preparing to make a dash into the darkness.

"Come you two," Dogen shouted. "There is safety in numbers!"

"Not in the darkness," I yelled back. "There could be a hundred just beyond the light, waiting to grab you after yelling so loud! Stay where we can see the enemy approach!"

"I'll not come back to save your foolish souls," said Dogen as he ran from the light. Two other boys followed him, but the third, Gen, looked back at us undecidedly and then turned to follow the others. It was too late. The pathway that Dogen had cleaved had been closed by new ranks of zaambi. Gen tried to run back toward us, but was grabbed by his leg. Gen dropped his escrima as he clawed at the ground, b.l.o.o.d.ying his fingers in a desperate attempt to keep from being dragged away. I picked up his sword as he was consumed by the dark.

Kenji-Tango and I positioned ourselves back to back, I double-sworded. The weapons grew heavy in my arms, as I swung at this zaambi and stabbed at that one. Every blow connected with leg, hand, or head of the groaning ma.s.s of bodies. The zaambi pressed closer against us until Kenji-Tango and myself were crushing into each other. As I brought my escrima down upon the head of a zaambi that was eating a lock of human hair, I heard the screams of Dogen and his two as they were carried away by zaambi like so many sacks of ground beef.

Startled by the screams, I had forgotten to continue striking with my blade. Two hands grabbed me firmly from behind, embracing me so that I could not escape. I tried to pull the hands away, and as I did, I noticed that the palms were entirely smoothed with puffy scar tissue.

My father's samurai blade is unique. He wraps the hilt in roughened shark skin, and circles the guard with snake fangs pointing downward toward his hands. He says he does this to keep the proper focus during fights. Often after a battle Father's hands will be b.l.o.o.d.y and raw. He then offers his hands to the East and says, "I have been cleansed."

The hands that dragged me from the circle of light were Father's. I did not resist, for it would not be right for a son to stand against the wishes of his father. I saw Kenji-Tango in the now far away circle of light become swarmed by zaambi. I watched as he was lifted into the air by many hands, and turned to yell at me.

"Fight! You are only being held by one! I am held by many! Fight! Fight!!"

I could not disobey the will of my father.

"May the G.o.ds d.a.m.n your soul if you do not fight that zaambi!! Save us! Fight you coward!!!"

I knew what Kenji-Tango had meant. If he called me a coward, then he in turn called my father a coward. I would rather take the punishment for disobedience than have Father suffer the extent of such an insult!

I stood and tried to break free of Father's firm grasp. He would not yield. So I had to fight dirty. The Abbot did instruct us to use any means possible for escape, so...

I reached up under Father's zaambi mask and performed the martial defense known as Monkey Paw Crushing Lotus Blossom upon his ear. Father yowled in pain, and I rushed to the aid of Kenji-Tango. Picking up a fallen escrima, I struck at the ma.s.s of zaambi carrying him, until he was freed.

"I knew that would get you," he said, picking up a sword.

All the zaambi in the room turned and rushed toward us, slow no longer. Kenji-Tango looked around desperately for some means of escape. As they closed in on us, I decided that we had only one option. When the zaambi got close, I struck the hanging brazier with my escrima and all my might. The pot that provided the room's only source of illumination fell to the ground, overturned, crushing out all light. I jumped up as high as I could and managed to grasp the chain that held the brazier. I climbed up until I was perhaps eight feet from the ground, and held on as the zaambi wandered below. I could hear them circling just below my feet, silent sharks looking for blood in a dark sea.

As I clung to the chain, I must admit that I began to get frightened. I was hanging in pitch blackness inches above a room full of men dressed as corpses whose only purpose was to search the darkness and grab me. I wondered where Kenji-Tango was. How could he stand this? I knew at any moment a decayed hand was going to grab my foot and pull me to the ground to be devoured. What if they weren't masks? What if they were real zaambi?

As I was pondering this last terrible thought, my hands, now slick with perspiration, slipped slowly down the length of the chain. I tried desperately to hold onto the last link, but the effort was in vain. My hands slipped from around the chain, and I fell to the ground.

Almost instantly, groping hands found my form and attempted to drag me away. I reached under the overturned brazier, grabbed a still red-hot coal, and forced it against the hands and feet of my attackers. I was released almost instantly amidst howls of pain. I did not mind the burning of my own flesh. It kept me focused.

I fended off the demons until the coal grew cold in my hand, and I was so weary from exhaustion that I could no longer resist. Many hands bore me upwards as I was carried from the room, heavy with the knowledge of failure.

When we entered the antechamber, a great roar filled my ears. I wrenched my body violently to escape my captors, but then I saw. The room was lit with many ceremonial candles, and I noticed Kenji-Tango smiling at me, his head shaved and with upright ponytail in the tradition of samurai. Father, now without mask, was one of the men who bore me. His ear was very red. He smiled.

"A single man cannot defeat the world," Father said. "The purpose of the test is to measure your endurance and fighting skills."

"Did I pa.s.s?" said I.

"We've been searching around for you in the dark for over an hour now," said Abbot Yamato. A red, blistering patch the exact size of a briquette of coal was burned neatly onto the backside of his hand.

Dogen and the others watched with jealous eyes as I was fed the congratulatory meal of spiny oysters and spicy fried noodles. Dogen's gaze told me that he might do more than just consider the n.o.bility of the act of seppuku this evening.

Father laid before me a fine sword sheathed in a white ashwood scabbard.

I grinned quite wide, forsaking the Virtue of Humbleness, as my head was shaved in the manner of the ronin, Banisher of Demons.

2: IN WHICH I BECOME A.

YEAR OF OUR SORROWS 108.

Mother was dead. Father cremated her himself. A large part of him died that day, I am certain. I was blessed in the presence of my wife, Ayako, during this tragedy; but for her I might have been tempted to kill myself. Sometime after Honchu was overrun by zaambi my att.i.tude concerning my own life had changed for the worse. If there was nothing to fight for, why resist? I hadn't succ.u.mbed to this depression, nor had I given it voice, but Ayako felt it there in my heart and did her best to replace this black misery with the light of love. Still, I was glad she was not with child.

One of the first things I learned after inclusion in the Holy Ancestor Guild was that my home was not my home, not as I knew it. As Kasuri, Kenji-Tango and I sat in the Guild's anteroom our world disappeared before Abbot Yamato's words. Nippon had long ago been infested with zaambi, he told us. Due to its small size it was indefensible and the few groups to survive the opening of the Gate of h.e.l.l centuries ago had escaped across the sea to the Chinese mainland. Our group was led by a man named Daimatsu Honchu, who started the village as well as the Holy Ancestor Guild, fortifying and drilling his men until the area for miles around was reasonably secure. Yamato had personally known Honchu's grandson, he told us, going into an anecdote, but I could not follow the story.

All of my life I believed that I lived in Nippon, that the land was my heritage and in my blood, that Nippon lived in me. I knew nothing of China other than vague stories and historical rumors of the inferiority of the Chinese people compared to pure j.a.panese stock. Now to find that I had been born and raised in the bosom of China... I felt profoundly betrayed. By my father, mother, the Abbot, everyone. Of course, now I know that only those in the Guild knew this fact, but at the time I first learned the truth I was blind with anger. I did nothing about this feeling, but the beginning of my present malaise, I believe, stems from this event.

There were 106 of us left from Honchu, and we were a mobile band as much as possible. The zaambi had grown exponentially in number during the past five years. This was a mystery to us all as we had grown used to infrequent sightings of the beasts. The Holy Ancestor patrol would dispatch ten to twenty stragglers a day without much effort and everything was manageable; when I began my perimeter watch for Honchu the number had risen to a pretty regular thirty a day. Six months later it was worse, and three months past that there was much distress in the Village. It was not uncommon to see the Revered Dead walking our streets. I got no sleep, and when I did, I dreamed of decay taking root in my own flesh, of my face sloughing off like the chrysalis of a b.u.t.terfly to reveal the blackened skull grinning underneath. The boy who had dreamed of honor and adventure had withered away into ash; in his place slumped an ancient nineteen-year-old warrior tired beyond his saddest imaginings.

It was determined that the growing population or the zaambi was due to the almost endless presence of the dead in the ground. It had taken them years to claw their way up through the soil, and they looked it. Most often I would be fending off mere skeletons from attacking our compounds. They didn't care about what they ate; their demon was that or prepossessing and fathomless hunger. At night I could not sleep without wondering what lay scrabbling beneath me in the unquiet earth. I cursed the wretchedness of the world in the night, and at the coming of dawn I became death so that I and mine might live another miserable frightened day longer.

Mother died because she was too brave. We were traveling inland on what long ago had been a paved road but now was little but stone blocks grown over with vegetation. The group of zaambi appeared before us suddenly as we crested a hill; they had been enjoying themselves on the burning remains of a small town. Many of the recently dead had joined their ancient brothers in the feasting; neighbor ate neighbor and parent ate child. When they saw, or more likely, smelled us, as one ma.s.s they groaned forward. We had no time to set up a line of defense.

The fighting was person to person and the zaambi had broken through into the very center of our group. Women screamed as they were bitten or as their children were ravaged; there were over 100 zaambi surrounding us. As fast as we could, the members of the Holy Ancestor Squad, forty-three of us, circled the women and children and fended off the vermin. At one point I impaled three zaambi with one thrust of my sword, and a fourth crawled over the bodies of the other three while my sword remained within its compatriots. We moved the group into the center of the burning village, hoping that the flame would scare off the beasts. It didn't.

I was crushing the skull of a zaambi with the hilt of my sword when I heard my sister Hiroko scream. I turned and saw instantly that she was unharmed. Before I could look away a severed head fell to Hiroko's feet, its teeth still chomping. Beside the head slumped the body of my Mother. Her face was a ma.s.s of blood, and a bone stuck out of her chest. The roar I heard then ripped through the fabric of my soul and I joined it, stepping forward into the ma.s.s of the dead, berserk with rage. I kept up my father's cry as I mowed down beast after beast, inhuman and unstoppable. Anything that got in my way was soon quartered at my feet, squashed under my boots. I tore the skin off of arms, faces, chests. I ripped a head straight off a zaambi's shoulders and flung it into the rampaging fire. I didn't stop until I couldn't find another victim. Ayako later told me I was covered head to toe in gore. There was rotting flesh in my teeth. As I stepped forward from the fallen village I saw my Mother's body begin to burn. I wept.

Mother had moved to a.s.sist a member of the patrol, Raichi, when his weapon was torn from his hands, Hiroko told me. She had been handing him a long knife when an arm shot out from the zaambi crowd and pulled her forward. Raichi chopped at the zaambi's arm but another beast had its teeth in his neck as soon as he'd looked away. Father was there in an instant, but it was too late. Mother died because she was brave and now Father too is dead, inside.

We have traveled many days through country wild and unknown, our group feeling less strong by the day. This was discouraging, for we had been followed by zaambi ever since we left the place of my mother's death. At first there were perhaps only twenty of the vermin that gave chase. Too weak to fight then, we walked on in hopes of evading them. We did not. Now others have joined their diseased confederacy, filing in from the forests, the small villages, and the cemeteries, raising their number from twenty to ten times that. They have tracked us as wolves to their prey. Even now, they are little more than a mile behind us, marching steadily, incessantly, without need for sleep, or food, or concern for health. We fast outdistance them by day, but at night, when we are stationary with sleep, the dead continue to shamble forward, hunger gnawing at their bellies. Old Man Yayoi says that the zaambi track us by our smell. He spends all of the day rubbing himself with the acrid leaves of the mulberry tree, hoping that the dead will find him unpleasant to the palate. We living find him unpleasant to the nose. He walks alone.