I, Hell

by Ben Stevens

  Trouble’s head was the first thing to get cleaved in two. Miyuki could scarcely believe it. She’d lifted up the sword above her head – and then the weapon’s own weight had basically brought it singing back down, cutting through Trouble’s skull like a kitchen knife through a watermelon. Effortless. The two sides of the head flopping left and right, the squirming halves of the brain almost mathematically divided.

  Trouble – or the creature that had once been trouble – abruptly ceased his staggering and groaning. He stood as though rooted to the same spot for several long moments, swaying slightly. And then he fell forwards, face down (so to speak) onto the stone surface.

  Miyuki swiped at the thing that had once been a Buddhist monk; and with a facial expression that was almost surprised, the monk-thing’s head separated from its shoulders. The body below, also, now flopped onto the ground, lying quite still.

  It was so easy! Miyuki’s hands registered the fact that they held a weapon of superior craftsmanship and quality. Anyone holding such a weapon was instantly much better placed to deal with an attack – even if this attack came from a superior force. From four creatures that might just as well have escaped from hell itself.

  Miyuki misjudged her next swing – too low – and the solitary arm still belonging to one of the creatures detached with no loss of blood. Just fell on the floor, where it lay, the fingers twitching for a few moments. Still the armless creature lurched towards Miyuki, jaws gnashing, an almost mournful groaning coming from the throat.

  Miyuki swung the sword again – this time putting her own power into the move – and the sword split the armless thing from its left shoulder down to the opposite side of its chest. It detached, the two halves slopping onto the floor.

  This left only the creature that had once been a builder. One of those constructing the new tomb that was virtually next to this one, conjectured Miyuki. The thing showed no fear as it continued its advance towards her, although as it had been at the back it had surely noticed the way in which the other three snarling creatures had been eliminated…

  With a yell, disgust and horror combining to form a potent mixture, Miyuki raised up her sword before bringing it down exactly centre of the builder-thing’s head. Down went the blade, through bone, muscle and sinew, dividing the creature in two from the knave to the chops.

  The two sides fell opposite and didn’t even twitch. Miyuki stood, breathing deeply but no longer struggling with hyperventilation caused by panic, staring at the blade upon which there wasn’t so much blood – that was, considering that she’d just taken four ‘lives’.

  She was alone. A female samurai, no longer needing to fear whatever the hell was happening within Tokyo. Her grandfather had told her the truth – had virtually saved her life. Before she’d been scared, running and kicking and occasionally using heavy objects in order to try and smash the things’ skulls in.

  But now she had a real weapon. Something with which she was more than capable of defending herself – and others.

  Others – her mother. Time to get off this mountainside behind the temple, and to try and get to the hospital downtown.

  But before this, a phone call.

  In fact two phone calls. First to the hospital. No answer. The next to her mother’s mobile phone, which Miyuki had taken to her mother the first visit she’d made to the hospital.

  This time, the phone was answered. Miyuki heard her mother’s voice; quivery, scared – ‘Miyuki?’

  Then screaming nearby, that growling of the things; and as Miyuki said urgently: ‘Mom, mom!’ the line went dead.

  Grasping the sword tightly in her hand, the very feel of the weapon already somehow familiar, Miyuki began to move…

  …When she returned home from high-school that day, the small apartment Miyuki shared with her mother on the eleventh floor of the drab block that was just like all the other drab apartment blocks was ominously silent. And yet Miyuki knew that her mother was inside. Should have been at work in that factory where she frequently worked until eight or nine o’clock at night – getting all the overtime she could – but somehow Miyuki was just able to sense that her mother was in her room, lying on her bed…

  She entered and the scene was exactly as how Miyuki had imagined it. Her mother, fully-clothed, lying on her side with her long, graying hair spilling out across the pillow. And yet Miyuki hadn’t pictured the several small, empty plastic bottles lying alongside an empty glass on the bedside table next to the lamp. And a note, which Miyuki picked up with a trembling hand, feeling a scream beginning to bubble up from her chest –

  I can’t take anymore (read the note). My life is a total disappointment and I have failed even with my only daughter. I hope people will not judge me too harshly for ending my life this way. I believe that this is the best way. I leave everything to Miyuki, and ask that she at least try to remember me with some feeling of affection – something she clearly does not have for me in life.

  The note was signed with her mother’s name. Miyuki dropped it and instinctively put one hand on her mother’s forehead. She murmured ‘No… no…’, certain that her mother had already slipped out of this existence and into the next.

  But then – as though some distant, desperate prayer had just been answered by Buddha himself – Miyuki realized that her mother was still breathing.

  Just.

  Even Miyuki, with zero first-aid training, realized that whatever her mother had taken was very shortly due to shut down that too-thin, prematurely-aged and overworked woman’s body.

  And with this realization, Miyuki picked up the phone that was beside her mother’s bed. Starting to become hysterical upon dialing 110; the operator asking her to try and calm down; trying to get an address, then reassuring Miyuki that an ambulance was on its way…

  …Holding the sword in her right hand, Miyuki took her mobile out of her pocket with her left hand and accessed the television function.

  …Every channel in Japan was busy reporting the chaos breaking out across Tokyo. All normal programming had been suspended. Messages flashed across the bottom of the screen, as television crews and reporters protected by American soldiers and members of the Japanese Self-Defense Force showed the snarling, walking corpses and the screaming survivors running along roads and streets filled with abandoned (and sometimes overturned) vehicles, windows of shops and businesses smashed as a minority of those who lived in the oft-declared ‘safest country in the world’ still took the chance of doing a little looting…

  If you have a safe place to stay hidden – remain there declared one of the messages running across the bottom of the screen.

  Stated others: There are widespread reports of the dead returning to life and attacking the living… Government declares that all reasonable self-defense measures against those affected by this mystery disease are permitted… This possible ‘virus’ is now known to be transmitted via a bite… Those affected will not recognize even family members or close friends – do not attempt to treat them as such… Reports of this inexplicable outbreak of violence are now starting to come in from several areas outside of Tokyo… The root cause of this problem is as yet unknown… Emergency services in affected areas have been completely overwhelmed… Citizens are advised to stay away from all seemingly ‘safe’ places – town halls, community centers, police stations and hospitals…

  Miyuki replaced the mobile in her pocket. Safe or not, the hospital that was perhaps two or three miles away from here was exactly where she was heading now.

  At the foot of the mountainside now, leaving the sprawling tombs and the many trees. Trouble’s big white motorbike over to her left on the edge of the temple car-park…

  Miyuki’s eyes everywhere, like her ears ceaselessly scanning for any sign of a potential threat. For some reason her jaw was aching fiercely; it took her a few moments to realize the reason why. She was still chewing on that piece of gum she’d had in her mouth since that morning, when Ikeda-sensei had lurched into the classroom and tak
en a bite out of the teacher’s pet’s neck.

  Miyuki waited until she was by a drainage duct before spitting the gum out. Before she would almost have taken pleasure in just getting rid of her gum wherever she was stood – perhaps even spitting it onto a bench, so that someone might sit in it. Such an action would just feel very foolish, now. Futile, even.

  Walking down the steep slope and then finding herself in the quiet neighborhood that surrounded the temple, in the cemetery of which most of those living within a several mile radius had their family tomb.

  The walking dead were staggering around here and there. A scream came from inside one house and Miyuki almost went to investigate before getting hold of herself. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by anything other than a genuine emergency that was happening right in front of her eyes. Effectively blocking her progress, as it were. Otherwise, she’d never get to the hospital.

  As to what she’d find there… She refused even to consider such a thought. Whatever was waiting for her at the hospital, she’d be finding out soon enough.

  She walked quickly past the staggering corpses, wanting only to use her sword when it was strictly necessary. Perfectly prepared to cut these things in two – as she had already – yet only if this proved absolutely essential for her own survival. Otherwise – given space – it was just as easy (in fact far less labor-intensive) to skirt around them, and continue on her away.

  The general racket coming from ahead – sirens, screaming, yelling, crying – increased in volume the closer she got to the city area, quickly leaving this small suburb that was situated next to the temple.

  People living outside of Tokyo – particularly non-Japanese people – assumed that Japan’s capital city was all gleaming skyscrapers and luxury shops and far too many people per square-foot. Which was true, of course, in many parts and particularly in and around Tokyo’s centre. Yet there were also the quieter areas, lying some distance outside of the centre – the temples, suburbs, industrial quarters and such. It wasn’t all blinding neon signs and mirrored glass stretching up into the sky.

  Yes, the neatly-spaced houses almost Western in appearance, painted in bright colors – blues, oranges and reds – starting to transform now into apartment blocks all clustered together. Shops with names and signs displayed in Chinese characters, others using Western letters…

  Miyuki looked into a hairdresser’s and there was the male barber, dressed in his ‘tunic’-like uniform (ordinarily white, but now heavily blood-spattered), scissors and such tucked in the breast pocket. He stared glassily back at her through the large window, his mouth sagging open, half his face eaten on one side.

  The sign on the shop’s door declared that it was closed. That, presumably, meant it was still locked. The reason why, perhaps, the barber-creature was apparently trapped inside. His wife suddenly appeared behind him, coming through an entrance which Miyuki conjectured led into their living quarters behind the small business area with its counter, three chairs, long mirror and sink in one corner. She was stark naked, her aging breasts sagging. Something had gnawed at her belly to such an extent that several feet of intestine were also hanging down, dragging along the floor.

  Miyuki looked away. People running past her, some bleeding, their clothes torn. Miyuki guessed they hadn’t been bitten because whoever did get bitten changed into a thing pretty damn quickly. That much, at least, she knew for certain.

  Cars were everywhere. Abandoned in the road, driven up onto the sidewalk and then crashed into streetlamps or the fronts of shops. Survivors running over the bonnets and roofs of the vehicles in their desperate bid to get away from the glassy-eyed creatures that were everywhere.

  The news’ reports that Miyuki had briefly seen had shown American soldiers (usually stationed across Japan in a number of large bases), along with the Japanese Self-Defense Force (the Japanese constitution forbidding the country to have an actual army per se), resisting the creatures – shooting at them.

  But here, at least, there was no such military help. Those still alive were definitely on their own. Just one policewoman visible – or at least, what had once been a policewoman.

  Now, she was a thing, unconsciously dangling her pistol on one crooked finger as she lurched along, her blue regulation shirt soaked with blood…

  And there was the podgy otaku – the geek – from Miyuki’s high-school, running along beside the police-thing. He still had out his smartphone, which he was currently holding dangerously close to the thing’s upper body.

  ‘…We can see here that this walking corpse – a former member of Tokyo’s police service – was badly bitten on her left arm. Bleeding stops almost the exact same moment that a victim actually transforms into one of these walking things, as I have already shown…’

  The tubby male teenager’s voice abruptly cut off, as – with that surprising display of speed of which the stumbling creatures were sometimes capable – the police-thing snarled and turned on him, the jaws opening.

  But it was almost as though the otaku had been expecting this. He neatly stepped to one side, and the police-thing passed by him, heading in Miyuki’s direction.

  Again following the thing’s progress on his phone, the otaku then gave a sudden cry as he spotted his female classmate.

  ‘Hey! Miyuki!’ he greeted.

  Miyuki didn’t even know his name. She recalled calling him names, certainly; but that didn’t help now.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she asked incredulously. She stepped widely around the lurching police-thing, still reluctant to use her sword unless she absolutely had to.

  ‘This is it!’ exclaimed the otaku almost happily. ‘My very own movie! I got so much footage – of these things; of the survivors. Tokyo being basically overrun, the police and such having to retreat. And now there’s you, the girl who basically saved her entire math class – and you’ve got a sword! Is this a main character or what? My movie’s going to go viral when I upload it onto Youtube – I’ll be famous! A new leading director from Japan – Henmi Yamaguchi!’

  As the otaku who was presumably called Henmi Yamaguchi babbled away, he was still filming Miyuki, who shook her head and continued walking along the road. She felt as though she was rapidly entering into some grey area of insanity, where the dead came back to life and attacked people; where a man tried to rape her and then had half his face eaten before being cut down with a Second World War sword found in the ground underneath the tomb of a famous Japanese translator…

  And now here was this podgy teenager, filming this chaos – this screaming insanity.

  ‘Quit following me, you dumb little bastard,’ said Miyuki suddenly, viciously, turning on Henmi and almost lashing out at him with the weapon she had in her hand, so acute was her feeling of rage.

  ‘People are dying all around us; this city is in ruins and you’re treating this like it’s some kind of fucking opportunity for you to make a movie?’ she demanded, her voice wavering between severe indignation and utter incredulity.

  ‘I – ’ began Henmi; but Miyuki didn’t really want to hear him speak.

  ‘Your family – what about them? Have you tried contacting them, making sure they’re all right?’ she said.

  Again, Henmi made to speak; and again Miyuki made to cut him off, when they were both startled by a wild yell sounding from very nearby.

  They looked to see a young shop-worker – white shirt and grey apron still tied around his waist – poised precariously on an air-conditioning unit attached to a wall and to one side of a first-floor sliding window.

  This window was open – and leaning out of it were two creatures, one wearing the same type of shirt as the young man. Their arms were outstretched, the claw-like hands missing their intended prey by mere inches. The young man was balanced awkwardly on top of the white, boxlike unit, his fingers awkwardly gripping a section of concrete that jutted out very slightly from the wall.

  It seemed that at any moment he’d fall – straight down to
the several creatures gathered below him, their own arms reaching up in their earnest desire to rip apart his warm flesh with their teeth. The young man gave another wild yell, his tenuous grip on the ornamental concrete ‘lip’ obviously beginning to weaken.

  Followed by Henmi – filming once again – Miyuki moved towards the creatures gathered directly below the air-conditioning unit. With a cry, she lifted the sword with both hands, hoisting it up above her right shoulder and then bringing it around and down in a slashing arc that instantly cut one thing completely in two, just above the waistline.

  ‘Shittu-sayku,’ sighed Miyuki, as the thing’s upper torso continued to squirm, the arms flapping.

  ‘…As I have shown in other footage already recorded, these things can only be killed with some sort of severe blow – or, preferably, gunshot – to the head. What has just happened now proves this concisely: one of these creatures cut completely in two, the top half still living, still moving…’

  As Henmi continued his breathless commentary, all the while still filming, Miyuki spared him a venomous glance. But the things gathered below the air-con unit were now transferring their attention to her, rather than the young man balanced above. They seemed completely unmindful of the danger presented by the sword, even with one of their members cut clean in two parts which were now lying there by their feet…

  Miyuki knew that she couldn’t avoid killing now. The young man was set to fall and when he did he’d land right in the centre of those things. He’d be one of them within the space of a minute. Plus, she’d also now attracted their attention. So her intended actions weren’t entirely altruistic; there was also an element of self-preservation to what she was doing.

  The sword lifted and slashed. Lifted and slashed. Even as she slashed and cut, some distant, almost remote part of Miyuki’s mind was astounded at just how familiar this weapon felt in her hands. As though she’d used it before, in some previous existence…

  ‘…And there, cut clean in half straight down the middle… The student named Miyuki… I’m sorry, I forget her surname – this student of Aoyama high-school clearly an expert at using a sword,’ stammered Henmi, then demanding of Miyuki –