by John Ringo
There were about thirty of the zombies, and Barb quickly determined that the most important thing was to keep them from grabbing her. The best way to stop that was also the ugliest; take off their arms.
Sword combat is poorly understood in modern times. Fencers dance around, touching each other for points. When the sword was the height of killing technology, nobody tried for “touches.” The point was to render your opponent incapable of further combat. The best way to do that wasn’t to hack at their body, but at their limbs. Casualty analysis of medieval combat showed that some sixty percent of the casualties were due to loss of arms or legs. Then all you had to do was let them bleed out screaming.
As one of the zombies reached for her, Barb came across in a picture-perfect Nanameburi, the razor-edged katana neatly taking off the zombie’s arm. Which didn’t even spurt blood. And equally didn’t slow the zombie one bit.
“Seriously?” she muttered, taking off arm after arm as the zombies swarmed her.
Acting on some instinct, she whipped the sword behind her and bounced away an incoming levin bolt.
“ Bitch! ” she shouted, dodging behind a tree to put some cover between herself and the apparently recovered Vartouhi. That just put her in line with a zombie. This time she didn’t aim for the arm, but took off its head.
That dropped one.
She dodged in and out among the trees in near darkness except for the firelight, playing tag with the zombies.
“Karol, now would be good!”
Dean pedaled furiously onto the Veterans Bridge. He wasn’t sure where this cat-he was pretty sure it was a cat-was heading, but it was firm in its intentions. It made clear when he needed to turn by pulling on one of his ears with its claws.
“I’m wearing out, okay?” Dean gasped. “I mean, can’t you grab a car or something?”
What with everything else that was going on in his life at the moment, the sight of a bunch of SWAT guys tying lines to the Veterans Bridge and apparently getting ready to go rappelling wasn’t anywhere near the top of the list of weird shit. But it was close.
“What the hell is going on?” he gasped.
The claws indicated he should pull in where the four vans were parked, and he hoped his misery was about at an end.
He pulled to a stop as one of the group of heavily armed troopers lifted a gun and pointed it at him. He didn’t know from guns, but the barrel looked as big as a cannon.
“Halt,” the masked man said in a thick accent.
“I want to!” Dean wailed. “But you’re going to need to kill this cat first!”
As he said that, he felt the cat leap off his shoulder. He got a quick flash of it running down the railing, then it launched itself into space.
“Hopefully it drowned,” Dean growled.
“Oh,” the cop said, pointing his gun at the ground. “I see. Very well. Go away now. And you probably shouldn’t talk about this. Nobody will believe you.”
“What the hell is going on?” Dean asked.
Dean found himself looking down the barrel of the gun again.
“Using foul language at this time and place is not a good thing,” the cop said. “Go away. Do not discuss what happened here.”
“Okay, okay,” Dean said, picking his bike up and turning around. “I’m out of here. Just don’t shoot me, please!”
“God speed your travels,” the cop said. “You have done God’s work this night though you knew it not.”
“What the fuck ever, dude,” Dean muttered as soon as he was pretty sure he was out of shooting range.
Barb had managed, by much dodging and hacking, to take out six of the zombies. But the bitch kept throwing power bolts her way, and dodging both was getting tiresome. She needed to take out Vartouhi. The problem being, the sorceress apparently knew the island much better than Barb and was proving decidedly hard to corner. And the zombies were getting so turned around, Barb kept running into them in every direction. Most of them appeared to be lost when she ran into them, but that didn’t make them less dangerous.
One of them finally managed to snag her, dragging her in and sinking its teeth into her arm. It couldn’t penetrate her tacticals but it hurt like fire.
“Cock sucker!” Barb swore. She managed to retain her sword with one hand and drew her tanto with the other. She jammed it up through the zombie’s jaw, driving it into the thing’s brain. As the now fully-dead zombie released its bite, another appeared out of the darkness, stumbling towards her.
She backhanded the katana and took off its head just as another levin bolt came in. This one scored, and she was slammed back into a tree, then slumped down, half paralyzed.
“Not…good,” Barb muttered. She reached over and wrenched the tanto out of the zombie’s skull and waited. She could hear the zombies thrashing around in the darkness, but at the moment they didn’t seem to know exactly where their quarry was.
She heard a stealthier movement and waited. This time she felt the gathering energy and caught the expected levin bolt on her katana. And in the flash of mystic light she spotted that bitch Vartouhi.
The tanto flew straight and true. But instead of it hitting center of mass, the bitch dodged, and it just caught her in the arm.
Barb surged up and charged forward, but Vartouhi vanished again into the darkness. And she apparently could call the zombies, because they started closing on Barb’s position.
“Fine,” Barb said, spinning in place and taking another zombie’s head off. “As long as it’s only whack-a-zombie, I’m good.”
“I hit her with three bolts,” Vartouhi gasped, wincing at the pain of the knife in her flesh. “Any of them should have killed her. She just shrugged them off. She deflected five more. And don’t try the Akasa ritual. Whatever she sent back at me nearly killed me.”
“She’s only one woman,” Reamer said, angrily. “Misty, Buffy, Ashley. Each of you take a group of the Osemala. Corner her and destroy her.”
“Yes, Master Kom,” Misty said. “ We’ll teach her the power of Osemi.”
“Just kill her and send her soul to hell,” Reamer said. “And get back here before the ritual is complete. You don’t want to be outside the pentacle.”
Barb went up the side of a tree then leapt off, flying over two zombies and taking off both their heads in a really elegant Swan Passes Over River Under Moon maneuver. Her landing, however, was based far more on Master Ti Kwan’s “action movie” techniques. It was a surprisingly useful form, she’d discovered, for fighting zombies in near darkness in a heavily forested island covered in logs and stumps.
“Thank you, Seigun Kwan,” Barb said, grabbing a sapling in one hand to swing around and take off the head of another zombie. “And now I’m pole dancing. Janea would love this.”
She scrambled up the sapling until she’d reached the leafy part, then leaned out. The tree bent under her weight and she slowly drifted down towards the ground. Hooking her legs onto the tree permitted her to reach down and take off the head of another zombie from just out of its reach.
“Interesting,” she said, flipping off of the tree and landing on the body of the zombie. “Clean-up on this is going to be a bitch.” She backhanded, hard, and cut all the way through the torso of the zombie stumbling up behind her. “And I’m going to have to spend some serious time sharpening.”
Two levin bolts came out of the darkness and she managed to deflect both. They were much lighter than Vartouhi’s, but two was a bit much.
“Oy vey,” she said, charging down the line of one of the bolts. She caught sight of one of the GPA girls running away and wasn’t about to let her get away. However, as she closed through the woods, a zombie reared up in her way.
There was not much technique to the body check she sent its way. The zombie, totally uncoordinated, fell backwards. She stabbed down, then had to wrench the sword out of its skull. Which wasn’t particularly easy.
As she was tugging and twisting, three levin bolts came in from various directions. She defle
cted two, but the third hit her square in the face like a punch from a professional boxer.
“OW!” Barb bellowed, ripping the sword out of the zombie’s head. “I am so going to kick your spoiled asses!”
“What does it take to kill her?” Ashley wailed. “I hit her in the face! She should be dead!”
“Bring in all the Osemala,” Misty said, nervously. “Go gather them up. We need to swarm her.”
“Okay,” Buffy said, then screamed as a cat attached itself to her face.
Lazarus didn’t have any special cat martial arts training. But he didn’t really need it. When twenty pounds of tom are trying to scratch your eyes out, you’re effectively out of the fight.
“Aaah!” Buffy screamed. “Get it off!”
Misty grabbed Lazarus, but he was tightly attached to Buffy’s face. Except for his teeth, which he managed to turn around and latch onto Misty’s hand.
“Get back!” Ashley yelled. “I’ll get it off!”
Misty let go of the cat, then went “Noooo!” just a bit late.
Ashley managed a perfectly placed levin bolt, again, which hit Lazarus in the back.
The cat let out a yowl and bounced off of Buffy. Who dropped stone dead.
“You idiot!” Misty screamed. “ You killed Buffy! ”
“No problem,” Barb said, taking off Ashley’s head. “She won’t make that mistake again.”
“Wait!” Misty said, holding up her hands. “Time out!”
“Time…out?” Barb said, wonderingly. She spun in place and took off another zombie’s head, then turned back to face the junior sorceress. “Seriously? Time… out?”
“I didn’t want to get involved with this,” Misty said, whimpering.
“I’d say tell it to the judge,” Barb said, taking the girl’s head off. “But it’s sort of a judge, jury, executioner thing.”
She looked over at Lazarus, who was licking the burned patch on his back.
“Would you try not to get yourself killed?”
“Kabala field,” Mills said, holding up a crystal. It was sparkling blue.
The team had rappelled down through the trees with some difficulty and were now in an assembly area just east of the ritual point.
“D…ash it,” Marquez muttered, slinging his M4 and drawing a machete. “Why the See can’t come up with a reliable counter I don’t know.”
“Cold steel, boyos,” Mills said, pulling out a basket-hilted claybeg. “Zombies, witches and cold steel. Feels like old times.”
“At least it will be quiet,” Marquez said, stepping forward. As he did, a zombie, completely lost, stumbled up through the woods. He hacked it in the neck, then, as it grabbed him by the harness and pulled him in, he sawed and hacked at it until he’d taken the head off. “Quietish.”
“And bloody bloody,” Mills said ferally. “Right, let’s go chop up some naughty schoolgirls.”
Barb bounced off of two trees, taking out three zombies in a combination of Floating Iris On Wind-Tossed Water and another Heron Over Mountain. She landed with a slight stumble and realized that the combination of repeated hits from levin bolts and just hacking up zombies was starting to wear her down.
“Gotta get more PT,” Barb muttered as she stepped into the clearing.
She wasn’t sure exactly what the ritual was supposed to do. From her perspective it was just one more cult trying to raise some ancient evil.
“I wish these groups would learn already,” she said.
She could see Reamer and Dr. Downing in the group. No surprise. The rest appeared to be of an age to be members of GPA, with a few older women. About half of them were continuing to move in a complex pavane while maintaining a high chant. The other half were turned to face Barb and, emerging from the woods on the other side, the Opus Dei team. Most of the girls were holding fencing swords, and they were not protectively tipped.
“You know,” Barb said, pointing at the nearest foil, “That’s a terrible safety violation.”
One of the older women raised her hands and began to chant in counterpoint to the group of ritualists, then made a casting gesture at the Opus Dei team.
“Won’t work,” Marquez said, flicking blood off of a machete. “We cannot be made your servants. We are protected by the hand of God. I hereby state, as a licensed contractor of the Federal Government authorized to use due force, that you are in violation of United States Federal Codes Eighteen Sixty-Three A, Use of Black Magic, General; B, Performance of Black Magic for the Purposes of Raising Demon, Demons, Demoness or Demonesses; L, Use of Black Magic for the Removal of Souls; R, Use of Black Magics for the Purposes of Control of Others; and T, Use of Black Magics for the Purposes of Casting of Spells of Unweal, as well as moral laws of most major religions. The penalty is twenty-five years to life in a Federal Corrections Facility for each separate violation. Failure to desist shall result in the use of deadly force.”
“You want deadly force,” Dr. Downing said, cackling. “ This is deadly force!”
He raised his hand and threw a levin bolt at Marquez. The former spec ops trooper raised something that looked like a small shield, and the levin bolt grounded on it.
“Thank you,” Marquez said, hefting his machete. “That allows us to open up the whole can of whoop-ass.”
Barb and the Opus Dei team charged forward at virtually the same moment, and the scene descended into a maelstrom.
Barb was in the unfortunate position of having seven of the Stepfords on her side of the ritual. Three were wielding epees, and the other four foils. She knew very well that a good “touch” from any of them would put her out of the fight, probably dead. Just because they looked like toys didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
“Laz, do not get near the swords,” Barb said, then stepped forward.
Barb danced around the seven for a bit, feeling them out. Fortunately, only one of the girls using an epee appeared to be well trained in fencing. She quickly concentrated on that one, blocking the others as she needed to keep alive. The girl was good, and more than willing to put the others to the front to retain her ability to dash in on Barb when there appeared to be an opening.
Barb brought her katana across, blocking a thrust from one of the foils, then up and across, taking off the Stepford’s arm. The girl shrieked and backed away, her stump spurting. However, the bleeding stopped almost immediately and the girl simply picked the foil back up.
Another slash took off an arm at the shoulder and had much the same result. Scream, stop bleeding, get back in the fight.
The expert epee wielder had circled to Barb’s left and rushed in, going for a thrust to the chest. Barb performed a desperate Sparrow Circling Flowers, taking the head off of one of the Stepfords and the hand from the epee wielder. Cutting off the Stepford’s head did not, however, have the effect she expected. The girl’s body began to stumble around until it could bend over and pick up the head. Then it set it back on.
“Oh, you did not,” Barb said.
“You cannot kill us,” the epee wielder panted. “That wound will heal in moments. We are made invincible by the power of our Goddess.”
“Really?” Barb said, blocking a foil. She rammed the katana into the mouth of the foil wielder and called upon the power of God. A surge of power went down the blade, and the girl twitched and dropped. “My master is the One True God, brat. And I’m here to explain to you, permanently, the error of your ways. Prepare to be spanked like your momma should have long ago.”
She dodged out of the forming ring and came in on the beheaded girl’s flank. The katana slid up through her ribs like butter. With another surge the Stepford dropped, fully dead.
Dodging again, she crashed directly through the group, blocking epees and foils on either side, then into the ritual.
“Nooo!” Reamer screamed, throwing a frantic levin bolt.
Barb blocked it and took two heads off of the ritualists in two quick slashes.
She turned back to the group of sword wielders, blocking
more thrusts and taking off arms with abandon, figuring if they didn’t have any arms, they couldn’t use swords.
She had seen, in her brief crossing maneuver, that Opus Dei was barely holding its ground. She wasn’t sure that they could call God’s power in an offensive manner. She’d been told that was, to say the least, unusual. Which meant killing these Stepford bitches was mostly up to her.
One of the foils finally managed to plink her in her left arm, which hurt like hell. She adjusted her chi to fight the pain and wondered if God was willing to send some healing her way. Or some energy since she was starting to flat wear out.
Levin bolts. Foils. Epees. One of the remaining zombies. At one point Barb ended up stumbling over a flopping and apparently still-alive arm. The hand latched onto her boot for a moment until Barb cut down, close to her body, and took it off at the fingers. She retained it as the oddest image of the really weird entire night: Clutching pink fingernails with yellow French tips. It was a horrible combination. Barb wanted to track down the manicurist and cut her head off.
Most of her blocks and cuts were hair-close. She was spinning and slashing so fast she was well beyond technique. It was just a dance of death, with the air so full of spraying arterial blood the whole clearing smelled of smoke and iron and roasting pork.
She had more cuts than just the plink on the arm at this point. Frankly, her tacticals were so cut up, she was starting to feel half naked.
She finished off the last of the sword wielders on her side and waded into the group continuing the ritual. She expected, given the amount of time they’d been at it, that whatever demon they were summoning would have appeared by now. Barb was, in fact, sort of looking forward to it. Generally, if you took out the demon, the acolytes ended up running or going mad. At the moment it looked as if she was going to have to kill them all. Which was just work, work, work.
The ritualists were unarmed, but that didn’t mean they went down easily. Some of them were, unbelievably, able to block the katana with their hands. Rhino. Tough. Skins. Barb had started to cut their heads off then kick them aside. That kept them out of the game for a while at least. She managed to punt one bottle-blonde all the way to the river.