Blood Soaked and Invaded - 02

by James Crawford

  The zombie in front raised his weapon, and I moved. No sense in being there when the bullet arrives. Right?

  I felt a small pang of disappointment when his head and upper torso were reduced to a wet, red cone following the trajectory of an unseen bullet. Our local guards had arrived, and the noise outside our wall rapidly disappeared.

  The zombie who cannoned into me was one I hadn’t seen or been aware of. He was just not there, then there, and then we were both airborne. When we landed, on me, the Man Scythe was between us, flat against me, and I was pinned well enough that I couldn’t easily move any major body parts. His claws found my throat and I had a flashback to my father’s hitman ripping my larynx out after I’d been shot in the head. I didn’t particularly enjoy it the first time, and didn’t look forward to a second helping.

  Charlie Cooper, two-fisted Swordswoman of Arlington, saved me from an uncomfortable early afternoon by making decapitated zombie head kabob. I didn’t have to wipe the arterial blood out of my eyes to know there was another interloper coming from behind her. I decided to return the favor and experiment at the same time.

  The thesis of my science experiment sounded a little like this: When propelled with sufficient force, will the Man Scythe fly? Further, what trajectory will it follow if it flies?

  Answer: yes. A linear trajectory with a slight trend toward parabolic, except when impeded by an object in that path. The aforementioned object will not maintain structural integrity due to the impact. The Man Scythe itself will require a good cleaning at the end of an experiment of this nature.

  Even flat on my back, I felt a surge of pride. “Good girl,” I whispered to it. “Good, good girl!”

  My pleasant reverie was interrupted by the arrival of friends. More truncated screams of the twice-departed ripped back and forth in our little valley of carnage. The display in my head registered the Sharmas, Shawn, and blips that carried no identity at all. I reasoned that the blips were guards with deactivated camouflage, and got my gold star on the multiple-choice quiz when I wiped the mess off my face.

  The fight was going so well and so clearly in our favor that I very nearly didn’t get up. I could have quietly relaxed on the asphalt, watching the troops repel the revenge-fueled invaders, and my participation would not have been missed. Yet, I mused, I would miss my participation.

  I got to my feet, Man Scythe in hand, and looked for the nearest free opponent. Twenty or so yards away, Bajali, resplendent in his nightshirt, was locked into an unusual hand-to-hand contest with a one-armed zombie. Baj was beating the shit out of him with the wet end of his missing arm. Good show! Good show!

  What Baj didn’t see in the middle of his frenzy was the tight pack of undead coming around the corner of Building One. I saw them, and decided to take the opportunity I’d been given.

  “Cooee! Oh, cooee, my little invaders! Cooeee,” I squealed like a little Australian bush pig and rushed to meet them. Looking back on it, my glee probably unsettled them. People you’re trying to kill shouldn’t be happy to see you or run to greet you, even if they have a weapon in their hand.

  It’s okay. They made their feelings known with bullets. One took out my right eye, bounced off the inside of the socket and flew off into space. I can’t remember what it felt like when I was shot in the head, so I can’t compare losing an eye to that experience, but I will say that it was gut-wrenching agony. Although, the shot that took out my left knee ranked right up there next to the eye. Fortunately, they were within range of a leap, even in my damaged condition.

  The tight little pod of Eaters went to the ground with me on top and the scythe ripping through flesh and fabric. It was a gory mess of arms, legs, detached fingers and screams of pain. Most of the shots fired underneath me went into the ground or one of the other zombies.

  My eye repaired in the middle of the fracas, and I got to see their horrified faces in marvelous binocular vision. They were the very portrait of panic, pain and sure realization that they’d picked the wrong activity to plan their day around. It was nasty, and delightful. I hadn’t sustained enough damage for my tech to kick my brain into primal territory, and that gave me the opportunity to enjoy what I was doing.

  I enjoyed it. It was a fierce, burning kind of joy.

  Then I noticed one of my opponents crawling out from under the bloody pile, doing his best to move with a stump for a left arm and no fingers on his right hand. I smiled.

  “Not acceptable to leave before I’m done,” I yelled at him and cackled like the evil result of spliced gargoyle and howler monkey DNA.

  With a twist, my scythe arm was free and moving. The blade took my escapee in the ass, and through the pelvic opening, I think. It was easy to pull him back and finish what I’d started. He screamed a lot before I was done, and I screamed a lot after I was done.

  Nicely symmetrical.

  Before my head injury, every time I’d been this brutal the nano-buddies had isolated me from the experience by ejecting my conscious mind. This time was different. I was right there, feeling all the dark joys of killing my enemy, unhindered by any shred of morality or compassion. I’d reveled in it.

  As soon as the realization hit me, I lost my cool. I curled into the fetal position in a pile of blood, offal, and body parts, and froze there. What in the Hell was I becoming that killing was entertaining and satisfying?

  I don’t know how long I was on my side in the remains of my opponents, but the mess was coagulating and getting cold... to say nothing of the smell of sliced-open bowels. There were periodic noises suggesting violence around and about where I was glued to the ground by noxious goop, but I couldn’t even raise my face to find out where the noises came from. My brain spun around and around, propelled by unanswered questions and abject horror.

  The person I thought I was–a guy who does what he has to do when the chips are down–had been replaced by someone I didn’t know and it made me terribly afraid.

  “Frank.” Bajali’s voice came from behind me after a period of no screams, gunshots, epithets or scrambling feet. “Would you like me to help you get up?”

  “What have you done to us?” I asked him that because they were the only words I had.

  “I made us able to survive a world like this one.”

  “Did you think about what it would cost us?”

  “No, my friend, I only thought to keep everyone alive. I had no time to debate morality.”

  I could see him on the “screen” in my head, standing behind a blood and gore coated body that I knew to be my own. Just a tiny nudge, and I knew the color and shape of his feelings, if not the crippling weight of his thoughts. I learned that self-loathing has a color, a smell, and an awful gravity. He had some idea that his actions had created ripples, tsunamis, beyond making us able to survive, and it ate at him like cancer.

  My eyes opened and I saw the anatomical landscape I’d created. I couldn’t even manage throwing up, but I did lever myself off the remains of my excesses with a sound like tearing silk and suction cups. The Man Scythe was still in my hand, adhered to my flesh.

  “Do you see her, Baj?” I asked him, holding my arm out so he could see the implement of destruction, but not turning to look him in the eyes.

  “I see it.”

  “It wasn’t meant to look like this.”

  “I do not understand. Please, may I help?” He walked up behind me and put his hand on my outstretched arm. I flinched.

  “Where’s Charlie?”

  He moved his hand away, and told me. “She is with Shawn, about 20 meters away. An Eater cut his leg off at the knee, and she is waiting with him while the,” he paused and took a deep breath, “limb reattaches itself.”

  “Oh. Tell her I’ve gone back inside.”

  “I will do that for you. Are you sure there is nothing I can do?”

  When I turned to look at him, I saw myself through his eyes. I was covered from head to toe in drying fluids, looking like a cut-rate demon from a low-budget horror movie. There was
n’t any emotion in my eyes and my mobile features were slack, hanging off my cheekbones like silicone prosthetics. The word that floated across the surface of his thoughts was “shell-shocked.” Bajali was an excellent mirror.

  “No,” I said with a voice as flat as my facial expression. “There’s nothing to be done now.”

  I folded the blade of the Man Scythe back into the handle, and walked away. I felt the need to be clean and a piercing desire to forget everything I’d learned. Something told me (instinct, I guess) that I’d never be able to forget anything ever again. Only normal human beings had the blessing of imperfect memories.

  In a conscious daze I wandered back into the hardware store, all the way back to the “Spa.”

  My clothes came off with tearing noises that I registered and recorded, but paid little attention to. Garments didn’t matter the way getting clean mattered. I turned the hot water on, grabbed a plastic bristle brush from the shelf where I kept the cleaning supplies, and sat down on my little stool in front of the tap and bucket. I didn’t bother with soap, and I didn’t care that the water was hot enough to scald my skin.

  I hurt, but I was already hurting and extra didn’t seem to matter.

  With robotic fingers I opened the Man Scythe and scrubbed it. The blade cut into my fingers as if it was angry to be treated so roughly. I barely noticed the pain or the blood mixing with the water rolling across the floor to the drain hole. I don’t think I could have noticed the fresh blood with all the dried shit turning to liquid around me. Besides, the cuts healed almost as fast as they were made.

  Once it was clean too, I stood up, tucked it under my arm, and got into the ofuro. It didn’t matter that the water was old and cold. I just got in, sat down, and didn’t bother worrying about breathing under water.

  Did you know that memories don’t let you go, even under water?

  Chapter 12

  I don’t talk to anyone about the Man Scythe, or how I came to have it. It’s pretty simple, really: it is painful to remember. Yet, there in the ofuro, under water and not breathing, the memories returned. I don’t think they give a flying shit if you’re hurting or not.

  I had a friend, Scott Lewis, who was a bladesmith of astounding skills, a proud papa-to-be and a fine husband. With the help of a few other craftsmen, he was the artist who made my warped pipe dream a reality; Scott forged the blade.

  The blade, you see, is the soul of a weapon.

  It was a few weeks after the government rescinded martial law. (It wasn’t working and resources were stretched thin to begin with, so they gave it up.) I was hanging out with Scott and his wife Mara one night. Mara was about seven months pregnant at the time, and as radiant as the stars in the late summer Virginia sky.

  “The naginata are all right for taking heads at a short distance, but they suck for portability.” I was holding forth at length, and Scott was not least bit surprised.

  “What about katana or western style swords? Maybe a halberd?” He was smoking a funny-looking hand-rolled cigarette, as he always did when ideas were flying around. Mara was sitting a ways off to stay out of the smoke. “Then again, you don’t get much mobility with those either. A falcata or a kopis?”

  “Yeah, maybe a kopis or a kopesh. I just don’t have a feel for how to really USE that kind of blade.” I reclined on the hillside in his back yard, and Gordon, a housecat of surpassing puffiness, complained that my lap wasn’t comfy anymore and stalked off in search of attention. I chewed the inside of my cheek, tossing designs around in my head. “The thing is, a scythe would be fantastic. Mythology has it right. For cutting down ANYTHING, a scythe is the shit!”

  “Frank, that’s not going to work either,” Mara commented. “You have the same issue: it’s way too long for carrying on a motorcycle.”

  “Argh!” I rubbed my palms into my eyes, trying to clear my head.

  Scott and I shared a ton of things, not the least of which was a real affection for good single malt scotch. In fact, I’d brought them a few things when I returned from Scotland. We cracked open the Caol Ila 18 Year Old, and worked through nearly half the bottle.

  Mara wasn’t drinking. Baby and all.

  “So,” Scott said, finishing his ugly little cigarette, “what you need is a compact scythe. A kama on steroids.”

  “FUCK!” I leaned over, kissed him on the forehead, and snagged his sketchbook. “You are so brilliant it hurts!”

  Most arty people dislike it when you grab their sketchbooks and start doodling on your own. Scott was no exception, but I think he gave me a little leeway for being tipsy. Had I been sober I would never have contemplated doing what I did; a punch from a fellow who swings a six-pound sledgehammer for several hours a day is not a pleasant experience.

  I drew it out on his paper; a folding kama on steroids. When I turned the book to show Scott and Mara, they whistled.

  “It’s evil, but in a good way.” That was Scott’s comment.

  “That really is a man scythe,” Mara said, “and no mistake.”

  The name stuck.

  We sat around until sometime that must have been past Mara’s bedtime, because she ended up snoozing on the hill beside me.

  “We’re going to do what we always do, right?”

  “Try and take over the world,” I said, grinning back at him in the dark.

  “In that case, I want you to wake her up and ask her to go inside to sleep. She doesn’t need to be out here all night, and a hill doesn’t do a pregnant back any favors.”

  Nodding, I reached over and jostled her awake, gently. She batted my hand away with grouchy mumbles about husbands, friends, and wanting to watch what the crazy boys do. Mere moments later, my precise tickling enabled her to teleport into a standing position without all the silliness of physical effort.

  I got a substantial clout upside my head, and Scott got gently chided for not using his legs and “words” to do the job himself. I could see him nodding his head in the almost-night. He murmured back to her, but I couldn’t understand it.

  Mara nodded, mollified I guess, retired after giving me a hug and a kiss, and the same to her husband.

  Then my old friend and I got down to some serious business. In the end we stayed up until sunrise, debating design, construction and the aesthetic qualities of edged weapons.

  I fell flat against the hill and slept. The trees and shadow of his workshop kept me well covered from the morning sun.

  Somewhere in the muzzy space between awake and groggy I heard clanging noises. They had a very distinct rhythm: one, two, three, four, five, six, and a long pause. It repeated much the same way for a while, and I dreamed of a six-legged baby who wore big steel boots and was just learning to walk. It was pretty surreal, I tell you.

  The baby dream didn’t wake me, but the smell of coffee somewhere near my face made me root around on the ground like a truffle hound in search of delicate fungus.

  “Open your eyes, or you’ll knock the mug over,” Mara said from somewhere close by. “If you knock it over, you’ll have to wake all the way up and go get some more.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because knocking it over is your fault and I’m not going to reward you for being goofy.” She gave me a playful kick in the belly. “On top of that, my back is a little sore, and I really don’t want to go up and down this hill again right now.”

  My eyes creaked open and I saw a blurry mug shape right in front of my face. Had I been any closer, I would have felt its heat on the end of my nose. I rose into a sitting position, gripped the handle and brought the rim to my lips. The taste was probably as close to Nirvana as I will ever get.

  Mara roasted her own coffee. She was just as craft-prone as her husband in some ways.

  I sipped the nectar of the gods, sighed with bliss and wanted to roll all over the ground in worshipful joy. Such madness would have spilled the nectar, and I had enough wits (0.25 wit on a scale of 1-10 wits) to realize that doing so would have courted damnation.

  In
lieu of writhing I crooned wordlessly.

  “Frank, you are one strange man,” Mara said, shaking her head. Her eyes got huge for a moment and then she explained, “The baby kicked. That was a hard one. I think she’s going to be a world class soccer champ in her teens.”

  “Are you sure,” slurp, “that she won’t end up hammering,” slurp, “metal with her Daddy?”

  “If she’s as creative as Scott is then I won’t care what she does. I just pray she gets her looks from my side of the family, and brains from both sides.”

  “The last time we talked, you guys didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy. Did you find out somehow, or track down a blood lab that was willing to do the test?”

  “No. Our midwife thinks the baby is a girl, and I’m willing to go on her intuition. You don’t spend 20 years calming expectant parents and delivering babies without learning a thing or two.”

  I nodded. My experience in the realm of childbirth extended to watching my little sister get born, mostly because my dad thought it was a great family bonding experience. Stewart, my younger brother, needed sedation. I ran out of the delivery room and barfed into a laundry bin. It was the closest thing, and I didn’t want to get the floor dirty.

  I’ve no idea what Dad felt.

  During our conversation I realized that the repetitive noise I’d heard was Scott in the forge. I looked up at Mara and eloquently pointed in that direction.

  “He woke up after about 3 hours of sleep and told me he ‘got it’ and wanted to start forging the blade before the inspiration fled.” She shrugged. It was a very “Scott” thing to do.

  “Did he mention what kind of steel he was going to use?” I asked because I’m always curious about what a craftsman chooses to work with and why.

  “He said something about a billet of ‘something-gane” that Mack Lee smelted and forge-welded,” she reported, swinging her coffee cup in a vague back and forth motion.

  I nearly wet myself.

  Scott was one of the finest bladesmiths I’d ever met, and I admired him greatly. Mack Lee was on a level about five steps above Scott, and metal that came out of Mack’s shop was... I can’t explain it... It was like God came down and provided dough to a master baker who, in turn, was making me an amazing loaf of bread. The sense of being granted an honor beyond speaking sat on my head like an obese car salesman.