by Tristan Vick
Kevin ignored her words, took the whaling infant in his arms, then turned and walked away.
“Wait,” she whispered again. Distraught, Saeko fell to her knees and landed in the muck of blood and amniotic fluid that pooled around her. Her guts were strewn out before her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she watched Kevin vanish into the mist with her baby.
77
Just Another Nightmare
The Ritz-Carlton Building, Minato Region, Tokyo
Saeko woke herself with her own screaming and sat up in bed. Her heart pounded frantically in her chest. She was drenched from head to foot in her own sweat and her sheets were soaked through and through. It was just a nightmare, she reminded herself. The same nightmare that haunted her every single night. The same goddamn nightmare she awoke to every morning, only to find herself caught in an even worse nightmare.
Saeko had been having these terrible dreams consistently for over a year now. Grabbing her favorite pack of smokes and a lighter from the nightstand next to her bed, she kissed out a cigarette and lit it up. She slowly puffed out smoke rings which wafted through the warm morning light that filled her room.
After her defeat of Ijin Gen, the Yakuza were without a leader. She gave them a simple ultimatum. Swear allegiance to her or die. Needless to say, they chose the former option over the latter, and now she had the army she so desperately needed to take Tokyo back.
It hadn’t been an easy road to get to where she was. Saeko had lost everything that mattered to her just to survive and get to this place. First Kevin, then Mr. Tamagawa, and finally she had lost her newest friend, a woman she had come to love like a sister and whom she had genuinely looked up to, Rachael Ramirez.
With the recent memories of the dead dancing in her mind, Saeko walked up to the standing glass windows of her penthouse suite and gazed out at the pink sunrise. She peered out of the windows and looked down at the desolate, sprawling ruins of vast urban wasteland that stretched out below her as her smoke rings collided with the glass and then just as quickly dissipated.
She took a long drag on her cigarette and then finished it off. Putting it out on the glass window in front of her, she tapped the pack of cigarettes and fetched out a fresh one and lit it up. After a few puffs she tapped it between her fingers and let ash rain down onto the floor. That’s when she heard the faint noise in the distance. The noise she dreaded. The chopping sound of an approaching helicopter.
Suddenly, her room was flooded with a blinding white light and the deafening sound of the chopper that, like a monstrous mechanical dragonfly, buzzed noisily outside her window.
“Not again,” Saeko grumbled, upset by the rude wake up call.
Looking annoyed, Saeko tucked her carton of Mild Seven cigarettes into the leather garter on her silky smooth leg and cinched it tight. Standing back up, she brushed her skirt back down and turned toward the towering glass windows of her penthouse apartment to face the giant metal beast that buzzed noisily outside her apartment. Smiling curtly, she raised her fist and flipped them the middle finger.
Slowly, the chopper lifted out of view and headed for the landing pad on the roof.
Incensed by the sudden invasion of her privacy, Saeko mumbled obscenities under her breath and cursed her rotten luck. Without wasting any time, she quickly gathered up her things and turned to leave when Commander Daiichi Endo abruptly, and unexpectedly, burst into her bedroom.
“Commander Endo?” Saeko said, taken aback. Her face contorted with the stress of utmost confusion. Ever since their one night stand back in Aokigahara he had avoided her like the plague. It simply wasn’t like him to show up on her doorstep unannounced.
Commander Endo raised his hand to say wait a moment since he was desperately out of breath from his race down the stairs. “It’s a message. From America.”
78
Save Our Souls
The Ritz-Carlton Building, Minato Region, Tokyo
Unable to believe her ears, Saeko cocked her head and repeated, “A message from America?” Suddenly her mind raced with a thousand and one possibilities—all of them fixating on the one thing she wanted the most—for Kevin to be alive. Gathering her composure, she asked, “For me?”
“I felt it was necessary to deliver the message personally,” Commander Endo said, still panting to catch his breath.
“But what’s so important that my Father’s first-in-command rushes here in the middle of the night, in person, to relay a simple little message to me?”
Endo looked into Saeko’s eyes and said, “Because it’s the sort of message you’re not going to like.”
Saeko shot Endo a concerned look. She didn’t like the sound of that. First he gets her hopes up—then dashes them. Saeko’s voice grew stern. “What do you mean I’m not going to like it?”
“It’s a looped broadcast. An S.O.S., to be exact.”
“A distress call?”
Here, it’s better if I just play it for you.” Endo pulled out a military issue satellite radio and dialed in. Looking up at Saeko, Endo paused dramatically, then flicked the switch on.
“This is Doctor Patricia Hemingway. It is the fifth year of the Zombie Era, and I’ve been instructed to pass along a message to Tokyo…to a woman…a woman named Saeko Sakaguchi. The contents of the message are as follows: ‘Given enough time, even burns heal.’ He said you’d know who it’s from. He also wanted me to say, ‘I forgive you.’ He said you’d know what it all means.”
Suddenly there was a loud clanging noise and a banging, like someone was trying to bash in a metal door. Saeko looked at Endo with worried eyes.
“We’re in grave danger,” the doctor’s continued. “Please, you have to help us. Our very lives depend upon it.”
In the background, they could hear voices screaming to "get away from the radio,” then the message cut out and there was nothing but static for a few minutes. Automatically, the message repeated itself.
“This is Doctor Patricia Hemingway…”
Endo flicked the receiver off and looked over at Saeko.
She was still having a hard time grappling with it all. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe it—Kevin knew precisely what message to pass along—a message designed specifically get her to take notice. It was a long time before Saeko finally raised her head and looked up at Commander Endo with those penetrating brown eyes of hers. Her mouth hanging wide open in complete disbelief, she gasped, “I can’t believe it. He’s alive.”
Folding his arms across his chest, Endo asked, “How can you be sure it’s really a message from him?”
“It’s the way the message was phrased. The last thing Kevin ever said was that he got burned by me. And the Kevin in my dreams always makes it clear that he can never forgive me,” she replied. “But this? It can’t just be a coincidence. It has to be him. I know it sounds strange, but deep down inside, I just know it’s him. It’s Kevin.”
It had been weeks, maybe even months, since Kevin’s disappearance. Saeko had almost given up hope. For a while she figured he’d succumbed to the living dead. Even her nightmares reflected her worst fears. But now she had a real lead on his whereabouts and she knew that for the first time in a long time she had a solid chance at reconciliation.
Saeko walked up to the tall glass windows of her penthouse suite, which overlooked the sprawling city, a wretched, drab gray metropolis of once gleaming towers now blanketed by a ghostly darkness. She gazed out from her perch above it all in the direction of the sea. Although the Stygian darkness was too thick for her gaze to fully penetrate from her tower, she stared out anyway, into the black void beyond, and raised her hand to the glass. Gently, she pressed her fingers to the cold, smooth glass, her troubled gaze—weighted down with a thousand and one worries—reflected back at her like a specter.
Before she realized what she felt, a change occurred inside of her. The icy exterior of her heart melted away and a newfound fire burned bright inside her. All the things she had endured, the sorrows of a love lost, a
shattered heart, and an overwhelming hopelessness, seemed a million miles away. She felt; no, she knew, she could forgive him for leaving her.
She didn’t know if it was the right thing to feel. Honestly, Saeko didn’t know how she should feel. All she knew was that she was bound and determined to take back something of what the hungry undead world had stolen from her. She wanted Kevin. And she swore to herself, she was going to have him—no matter what it took. Hell, she’d tear the whole forsaken world apart to get him back, without fear for herself. There wasn’t anything or anyone who could stop her.
Epilogue
The Ancient of Dread Days
Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
Five Years After the Outbreak
Tying the dark dreadlocks back from her face, Edda Jones gazed out at the crowd from behind kohl-painted eyes. She took ahold of the sacramental skull chalice, an upturned cranium of stark white filled with crimson blood, and raised it high above her for all to see. The roar of the crowd rushed over her and energized her whole body. It sent tingles up and down her spine, caused her ebony skin to ripple with goosebumps; her purple nipples stood erect on her bare breasts.
Edda felt more alive than she ever. She knew that the stars had aligned themselves perfectly for the coronation of the new king.
Of course, her body had been specially painted for the ceremony with an elaborate red, white, and black design that made her up to look like a skeleton. To complete the effect, she wore a series of bone necklaces, the bones from human infants no less, which decorated her neck and suitably covered the more sensitive anatomical areas below her waist.
“You are The Lie!” Edda shouted above the din of the crowd in a ceremonious voice that carried up through the whole of the stadium.
The stadium seats were packed full with forty thousand energized Earthlanders, all anxiously waiting with baited breath the coronation of their new king. The forty thousand were lit by nearly as many torches, and everyone was dressed in their best post-apocalyptic desert garb, rags and chainmail, leather and steel, full of piercings and tattoos signifying they were part of a tribe—a tribe of powerful warriors who did not abide by any laws or rules and whose only desires were to instill fear into the weak and add the strong to their numbers.
Edda raised the chalice high into the air and the gathering of spectators, which more resembled the turnout of a gladiatorial match than a formal coronation, all shouted out in unison, “YOU ARE THE LIE!”
Edda turned, brought the skull to her lips, and drank from its contents. Crimson blood dappled her lips; she handed off the chalice to a barrel-chested man with albino white skin and fleece-like hair that fell to his shoulders.
The albino wore a kilt made from rough-spun wool with overlapping aprons, over which was draped a sporran, but instead of being made of traditional horse hair, it was of pelt of a great sable bear. Along with his bone-clad nomadic garb he wore leather, spiked, steel-toe boots and leather wristbands with pewter skulls fixed upon them.
Upon his face, he wore an ornate metal mask; the toothy jaw of a grinning skeleton complete with piping and tubing running from the back mandibles to an oxygen tank hanging by leather straps affixed to four giant suspension rings piercing through the muscles of his back. The horrific ensemble was completed by a waist chain belt hung with snake vertebrae and three small human skulls as pendants that fell across his beefy thigh.
“I am The Lie!” he said through the metal mask. The respirator garbled his voice, making it clunky and mechanical.
Edda spoke. “John Henry Cavil is The Lie. The Lie must submit to the will of the High Priestess. Do you submit?”
“I, John Henry Cavil, submit to your will.”
Edda smiled at him with her marvelously white teeth. “Submit to me, and cleanse yourself of your human name; be reborn as a God among men! Be purified.”
“Is this the will of the High Priestess?”
“It is,” Edda proclaimed.
Cheers erupted as he poured the remaining blood from the skull onto his head and let it drizzle down his mask and shoulders. Raising the emptied skull high into the air, he brought it down and smashed it onto the ground, shattering the white cranium. The shards of bone scattered everywhere.
The albino turned toward the crowd and raised his hefty arms high into the air, open palms facing up as if to bask in the adulation of his forty thousand loyal followers. This gesture incited an uproarious applause. John Henry Cavil turned his face upward and scanned the faces of the crowd. “I am The Purification!”
“PURIFY US!” the crowd beckoned together as one.
Edda tossed her dreads over her shoulder. She reached down into a leather bag lying at her feet and pulled out a jar of yellow kumkuma powder, of the kind used in the Hindu tradition of Holi, and abruptly threw it onto her master’s chest. A cloud of yellow engulfed him then settled back down and dissipated.
She repeated the same sacramental gesture with a red powder and then orange. After she had thoroughly coated the albino in a mess of colored triturate, she spat on his chest then clawed her fingernails down his pectoral muscles, leaving her mark on his skin. Edda mumbled a kind of incantation then turned back toward the audience and waved her hand across the skyline then slowly sank down as she brought her first to the ground and kneeled.
Nearby stood a large, four-foot high clay vase filled with goat’s milk. Edda clapped her hands above her head and then began to chant. She fell into a trance-like state; her ominous chanting continued and grew in intensity. Two muscle-bound freaks took up the vase and hoisted it high into the air, paraded it in a circle, and then turned toward their master. The albino knelt down before them and they poured the goat’s milk over him, washing away the colored powders and dyes.
Edda raised her arms and sang out, “You are purified! Rise, my Lord! Take your rightful place upon the throne as our supreme lord, the Lord Subjugator!”
“WE SUBMIT!” the forty thousand shouted out in cultic harmony. “WE SUBMIT TO THE LORD SUBJUGATOR!”
Edda touched her finger to her lips and the crowd fell deathly silent. Not a murmur was spoken. Then the Lord Subjugator rose and looked deep into Edda’s eyes—his blue eyes gazing at her from above his smiling metal mask of chrome teeth.
“Lord Subjugator,” the high priestess said, “in order for your coronation to be complete, we must consummate the sacred and profane. You must make the sacramental blood oath.”
The Lord Subjugator grabbed his high priestess by her throat and looked around the audience, which erupted into ovation as he slowly choked the life out of her. Just before she passed out, he threw her down onto the ground. Tearing off his kilt so that he was bare before all, the Subjugator crawled onto the high priestess who lay prostrate before him. He reached beneath the bear skin, grabbed his swollen erection, and mounted her.
Edda screamed out with rapturous joy as he entered her. Between the thrusts of his hips, she yelped out with gleeful pleasure, and said, “I submit to the Lord Subjugator!” Edda screamed out again and then orgasmed. Her dark dreadlocks sprawled about her like serpentine tresses of Medusa’s gorgon head as she lay on her back with the Lord Subjugator’s hands wrapped tightly around her throat as he ravished her. She screamed again, her body paint washing off in the steady flow of her sweat, and her legs trembled as pure ecstasy flooded every inch of her glistening body. Groaning, she fought it for as long as she could, trying to suppress the sensations building inside her, but eventually she had to give in. She had to submit to him, and with a salacious groan she arched her back and came once again.
Grunting, the Lord Subjugator climaxed and finished inside of her, but before Edda could bask in the glory of the honor of receiving his glorious seed, he drew forth a serrated claw-like knife from his boot, and instantly stabbed her through the chest with it. Edda gasped out in shock, then slowly everything faded to black as the life drained out of her.
The stadium erupted with thunderous roars of applause as forty thous
and fans cheered for the consecrated act. The Lord Subjugator ripped the knife back out of Edda’s chest, stood up, and raised the bloody blade high into the air—air which crackled and buzzed with the energy of the crowd. Then, bringing it down, he pierced his own chest with it, just at the spot where his shoulder and collar bone conjoined, and left it their lodged inside his body.
“I, the Lord Subjugator, through the spilling of my own blood make all those loyal to me immortal. For the faithful inherit eternal ecstasy in me! The unfaithful, oh, woe to them! For the unfaithful shall make themselves my enemies and shall prostrate themselves before me as they beg from mercy from the hundred thousand torments I shall inflict upon them. I say to you, the unfaithful shall quake and tremble with fear at the coming of my armies. And the unfaithful shall break beneath the heel of my steel boot and will submit to my might, for I am your lord, the Lord Subjugator!”
“WE SUBMIT! WE SUBMIT TO THE LORD SUBJUGATOR!!” the crowd repeated enthusiastically.
Suddenly Edda gasped and sat up, her eyes wide with the shock of her inevitable resurrection. Edda was high priestess for a reason. She could not die. Her wounds miraculously healed themselves before the Lord Subjugator’s eyes. Edda scrambled to her feet then, just as quickly, got down on her knees and kneeled before her Lord Subjugator.
“I submit to you, Lord Subjugator!”
“WE SUBMIT!” chanted the crowd.
The Lord Subjugator looked down at the kohl eyed priestess and placed his hand on her sable head, and then looked up at the roaring crowd. Raising his fist high, the metallic grinning mask concealed his own exultation.
Edda rose and took her rightful place at the side of her Lord Subjugator. “Silence!” she demanded. But the audience was too overwhelmed with the rapturous joy of the moment. “SILENCE!” she screamed.