Samurai Zombie Hunter

by Cristian YoungMiller

  “It’s up. It’s live.” Kofi looked up at Van with excitement. Kofi was hoping that Van would return his excitement. He didn’t. “Now we just have to wait for someone to give us a call.”

  Van headed to the kitchen where he looked for something to drink. “Well, while we wait, let’s hit the bars.”

  Van lifted a bottle of orange juice to his lips when Kofi’s phone rang.

  “Van!”

  Van swung back around. Van looked at Kofi who stared at his phone with his mouth hanging open.

  “I don’t know this number,” Kofi said feeling a rush of terror.

  Van felt his heart beat faster. He didn’t want Kofi to answer it.

  “Should I get it?” Kofi asked Van.

  “No, let it go to voicemail.”

  “I’m gonna answer it.” Kofi hit the button and placed the phone next to his ear. “Samurai Zombie Hunters, how can I help you?”

  Van watched as Kofi’s eyes darted around the room.

  “Yes, that is what we do.”

  Van watched as Kofi shifted around trying to take in every word that he could.

  “It’s a thousand dollars a head. Uh huh. Well you can interrupt it anyway you want. But we get paid up front. Uh huh. Then you estimate, but don’t hire us if you can’t pay the fee. Don’t forget, we will be carrying swords.”

  Van felt a knot develop in his stomach. He didn’t like how much detail Kofi was offering. The detail made Van think that Kofi’s crazy idea could become real. And if Kofi’s idea was real, Van could end the night with another dead person on his conscience.

  “What’s your address?” Kofi asked while the blood rushed out of Van’s face. “Uh huh, I know where that is. And where are you? Uh huh. I could see why that could be a problem. How about in 30 minutes? OK, I’ll see you then.”

  Kofi hung up the phone and looked up at Van with an excited, stunned look on his face. Van looked back in terror.

  “We have a job,” Kofi confirmed.

  “Was there more than one zombie?” Van asked trying not to pee his pants.

  “There might be two or three.”

  “Two or three?”

  “What?” Kofi asked sensing his friend’s hesitation. “There are two of us. And you’re so good you count as two. So that makes three. It’s an even fight, except we will have the element of surprise. We got this,” Kofi said, trying to transfer his confidence to Van.

  “30 minutes?”

  “It’s really close by. It’s in Echo Park. And really, the fewer zombies there are in the world, the better, right? It’s just a fuckin’ zombie skid row anyway, right? The woman told me that there’s a zombie who’s renting the attached duplex. Imagine living next door to that shit? We’re doing a real service. And we’re gonna make three grand for it.”

  Van couldn’t get himself to speak. Instead he looked down at what he was wearing. It had been a long time since he had dressed up like this, like a Russian club hound, and it felt good. It felt frivolous. But the clothes were too tight and restrictive for what he would actually be doing tonight.

  Without a word Van walked to his bedroom thinking about what a person that brings death should wear. Again standing in front of his closet the answer was clear. Van slowly removed his incandescent light-olive green shirt and then his dark dress pants. He removed his shoes and socks and then dropped his underwear. If Van was going to kill someone tonight, he wanted to offer them the respect they deserved. He wanted his victims to know theirs wasn’t a random killing. Van wanted them to know that they were killed by a samurai.

  Kofi, curious by Van’s silence, stood at the bedroom doorway watching his naked friend. Van had everything that Kofi wished he had. Van was lean but extremely cut. His ass and legs were like that of a sprinter’s. And Van’s soft dick hung generously past his balls. Kofi couldn’t think of a way that he didn’t want to be Van. Staring at his naked friend, he considered if it would be possible to kill Van and climb inside of him. ‘Maybe,’ Kofi mused. Maybe.

  Unaware of anything but the task at hand, Van reached into the back of his closet and pulled out his fundoshi. Van’s fundoshi was a long black cloth that when wrapped around him would resemble a samurai loincloth.

  Van took his time creating the banana hammock that started the wrap. Once his balls were cradled within the cloth, he pulled the twisted material between his butt cheeks. Wrapping the remaining cloth around his waist, he tucked the end within. Kofi admired his friend. Van looked magnificent.

  Van returned to his closet and pulled out his keiko-gi. He put on the hip lengthened robe and tied it off. Next he retrieved his hakama. The hakama was the dress-like pants that gave a samurai his freedom of movement. And once all of the strings and ties were attached, Van looked in the mirror. He felt ready.

  Van turned toward the door and found Kofi staring back. The excitement was gone from Kofi’s face. Kofi now shared Van’s heavy demeanor. Van was glad that Kofi had watched him get dressed. Getting ready for battle was a samurai tradition. Dressing was used to ready a samurai’s mind for battle. Van felt that Kofi wasn’t taking the act of killing another living creature seriously enough. Van knew his dressing had changed that.

  Van was deathly serious when he looked into Kofi’s eyes. Van held his gaze for a few seconds and then headed back toward the living room. In the living room, Van moved toward his samurai shrine and stared at his sword.

  “Did you bring your sword?” Van asked.

  “Yeah, it’s in the car.”

  Van slowly reached down for his sword and felt the weight of the steel once it was in his hand. It was a balanced work of art. The blade was engraved with Japanese characters. Van was told that the characters meant ‘To thine enemies be true.’ It was a call to make any death by that sword a swift one. To be killed by a sword could be a brutal death. Blood was sometimes said to have covered battlefields like paint. And the dying could lie for days as their body gave out. ‘To thine enemies be true’ was a reminder of compassion.

  With the steel in his hand Van turned to Kofi. Kofi looked with awe at the midnight blue cloaked samurai in front of him. Dressed as he was, Kofi now felt like a joke. For the first time, he considered that he could be killed tonight. And after a second of thought Kofi decided, ‘Bring it on.’

  “Are you ready?” Kofi asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  It took 15 minutes to arrive at the address on Echo Park Avenue. They parked next to the lake and quickly crossed the street to the Chinese styled beige house with brown painted wood.

  There were three doors for entry. Two doors led to the first floor apartments. The third door opened up to a balcony which could have attached to one of the apartments below. Kofi carefully discerned which door his client was behind, because he knew that the other door held the zombies they would be paid to kill.

  As Van and Kofi stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the address, a small woman quickly opened the door on the left and waved the two toward her. Each, with a tight grip on his sword, jogged up the five stairs that led to the wooden porch. Once ushered inside, the woman quickly locked the door behind them.

  “I assume that you are the people from the ad?” the woman asked frazzled by what she was about to do.

  “That’s us,” Kofi said taking a quick look around. “Where are the zombies?”

  The woman gestured for Kofi to speak softer. “They’re next door. I rented the place to them a year ago and they seemed perfectly fine. But my daughter, she’s only 14, watched one of them drag someone from the park across the street into their place. She shouldn’t have had to watch something like that. She’s just a child. And now I’m scared to evict them because what stops them from doing the same to me?

  “I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared to leave my house. I’m scared for my children. My daughter can’t sleep without the lights on now and she cries at night. What else could I do? I don’t know what else to do!” “There is nothing else to do,
” Kofi said reassuringly. “If you call the cops, they can’t do anything without a body. So they won’t come until they find you dead in the streets. No, you were right to call us. Now, do you have the money?”

  “Yes, I have it right here,” the woman said going into her freezer. “I tried to keep a watch out and I think there might be someone else in there.”

  “So that would make it four?” Van asked.

  “Yes, I think four. Is that too much?” the woman asked turning to face the man in the samurai outfit.

  “No, that’s fine,” Kofi reassured the woman. “That just means that you will have to pay us $4000.”

  “That’s fine. Just get rid of them. Do what you have to do, but just get rid of them.”

  The woman handed the money to Kofi who counted it and put it into his pocket. Becoming uneasy about how calm Kofi seemed, the woman spoke up again.

  “So tell me, what happens if you guys, you know… fail?”

  “Then you are entitled to a refund. And since we’ll be dead you can feel free to take the money out of my pocket. It will be in here.” Kofi tapped his pocket with the money and gave the woman a pissed look. “Now is there anything else that we should know before we go in?”

  “No,” the woman said without thinking.

  “Do they have any guns or anything that we should know about?”

  “They seemed like such good kids when I rented them the place. They don’t seem like the type to have guns.”

  Van dropped his samurai focus for a piece of reassurance. “And you’re sure their zombies?”

  “Oh yes. Their eyes have changed. They have those circles now. And my daughter saw them with her own eyes. They’re zombies and I don’t want my family to be next.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Kofi said, turning to Van.

  “Yeah, that’s good enough for me too,” Van decided. “Are you ready to do this?”

  “I’ll follow your lead.”

  Van turned to the woman. “Do you have a key for next door?”

  “Yes, I do. Let me get it.”

  The woman headed to the back of the room and turned up the stairs.

  “Are you sure that this is legit?” Van asked Kofi in a hushed voice. “I don’t want to get in there and find some kids who are just late on rent or something. I’m not some sort of fuckin’ assassin, you hear me.”

  “I’m sure she’s telling the truth. Why would she lie? That would be a pretty big fuckin’ lie.”

  “My mother’s not lying.”

  Van and Kofi looked up the stairwell at a girl who was no more than 14.

  “How do you know she’s not lying?” Kofi asked..

  “Because I saw the man eat someone in the park,” the girl said with sad eyes.

  “Your mommy said that you saw him grab someone and drag them into their apartment,” Kofi pointed out.

  “That’s because I didn’t tell her. I didn’t wanna worry her. She gets scared easily. But I was at the window and I saw him hide behind a tree and wait for someone to walk by. He was there for an hour. And when a woman walked by with a stroller he jumped out and threw her to the ground. She struggled, but he bit her head until she stopped moving.

  “After he stopped biting he looked around like he felt guilty. I don’t think he felt that guilty because after he looked at the woman again, he moved over to the stroller. He stared at the baby for a little while, and then looked around again. I think he didn’t see anyone ‘cause he grabbed the baby and ran into the apartment next door.”

  The girl silently cried. “I didn’t know what to do. So I told my mom but I couldn’t tell her about the baby.” Snot ran down onto the girl’s lip. She sniffed. “I never saw him bring the baby back out. I think they ate it.” The girl sniffed again. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  The woman ran back down the stairs to find the girl crying.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay in your room?” the woman scolded.

  “Yes mom.”

  “Now go to your room. You don’t need to hear any of this.”

  “Yes mom.”

  The girl looked down at Kofi and Van. Her sadness moved Van in a way that he had never felt before. There was something instinctual in him that was awaking and all he wanted to do was protect her. He found the feeling strange and overpowering. And he felt off balance as he stared up at the girl that disappeared down the upstairs hallway.

  “Here is the key,” the woman said pressing it into Kofi’s hand. “Please, for my family’s sake, do what you have to do. Just get rid of them, please.”

  “We’ll get them,” Van assured, feeling the uncontrollable fire build inside of him. “You won’t have to be afraid of them again.”

  Van turned toward the door and the woman ran ahead to unlock it.

  “Once we leave, lock the door,” Van added. “And don’t let anyone back in unless it’s one of us. And if we don’t come back in an hour then call the police. At least you’ll have our dead bodies to point to. But no matter how it happens, I promise you, you won’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”

  The woman looked into Van’s eyes with unspoken gratitude. She then unlocked the door and Van and Kofi slipped out. Still on the porch, Kofi acknowledged with a look when the woman’s door latched.

  “I don’t know about this anymore,” Kofi whispered. “This is feeling very real.”

  “Yeah it is. And I’m not gonna let those fuckin’ zombies hurt anyone anymore.”

  “We could still back out if we want. We have the money. All we would have to do is hop in our car and go.”

  “You can go if you want, but I’m goin’ in.” Van was unwavering.

  Kofi tried to change one of his shallow breaths to a deep one. It almost worked. “Ok, then I’ll unlock the door and follow you in.”

  “When I get in, I’m gonna find the one that I can kill first and go for the quick strike. You have to make sure that there’s no one behind me. You got that?”

  “Yeah I got it,” Kofi said. “Are you ready?”

  “Unlock the door.”

  Kofi quickly crossed in front of the zombies’ window and Van followed. Placing the key next to the lock Kofi leaned in placing his ear next to the door. After a second Kofi leaned back and whispered to Van. “They’re watching TV.”

  Van shook his head in reply. Van then unsheathed his sword and placed the sheath onto the ground. Van watched as Kofi took a last deep breath, inserted the key, turned and pushed open the door.

  Van rushed in past Kofi. The room was dark except for the flickering light of the television. As planned, Van scanned the room for the closest zombie. The nearest one was sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

  In the scuffle Van made eye contact with the creature. It was a boy that couldn’t have been any older than 24. He was pale and dainty looking. He didn’t even look like he was capable of growing facial hair.

  In any other situation this was a kid that no one would have reason to fear, but when Van saw the dark circles around his eyes, Van knew reality to be different. Van stepped towards the boy and removed his head from his shoulders. The head fell onto the couch and was followed by an overflow of dimly lit red blood.

  Sitting next to the headless kid was a girl. She couldn’t be more than 20 years old. She was small and thin. She looked like a starving emo kid that railed against the rules of society and the restraints that her parents put on her. The only difference between her and every waitress in Hollywood were the dark eye circles. So with another strike, Van filled her shirt with blood and opened her neck like a pez dispenser. It wasn’t a clean strike.

  Unable to clean up his work Van scanned the room behind him. There was no one there. He then looked ahead to the kitchen. There was another boy standing in it and he was holding a slice of peanut buttered bread. Staring in shock the boy dropped the butter knife onto the ground. Van rushed towards him.

  “No wait. Stop!” the kitchen boy yelled.

  Van didn’t stop. And when th
e waif kid reached for a butcher knife from the block Van knew he had to act fast. As the kid pulled the knife out of the block Van swung around and disconnected the kid’s hand from his arm. The kid screamed.

  In the dark Van couldn’t check his eyes, but he could only imagine the zombies traveled together. So as the kid hopped around bemoaning the loss of his hand, Van swung his sword and added the boy’s head to the list of items on the floor. The boy’s body was the next.

  Van looked around the room again. Where was the fourth? He checked in the dark corners and the shadowed spaces of the kitchen. There was no one there. He looked back at Kofi who looked like he was about to pee himself. There was no one in the living room either.

  Van then scanned the floor for the bedroom door. One door was slightly open. Having expended the element of surprise, he proceeded cautiously.

  He pushed the door open with the tip of his sword. There was no light within but there was a sound. There was whimpering and it sounded like it was coming from the other side of the room.

  With his body in he quickly rubbed the wall for a switch. The overhead light illuminated a skinny 22 year old with no chest hair. He was hiding behind the sheets in the corner of his bed. Van focused on his eyes. His eyes said it all. The boy was scared. He had a good reason to be.

  “Please don’t,” the zombie said.

  Without hesitation Van ran toward the bed and took aim.