by James Somers
Garth is quiet. He spends many late hours in one of the pub’s dark corners. He watches the street through the barest slits in one of the shades there, like a lion peering through the tall grass, waiting for a young gazelle to wander by.
His katana rests upon his lap, the illumination from street lamps gleaming off the blade. Garth keeps it razor sharp, yet the blade bears no mark of the stone. He arrived at the Tombs with the weapon.
Dr. Albert went personally to Garth to recruit him for the program. The boy was not forced into the matter like Cassie, or Jonathan. In many ways, Garth founded the program with Dr. Albert. Both of them wanted to know why the boy could do the things he can. They became fast friends and were mutually respectful of one another.
Even days later, Garth does not mention Dr. Albert. They know he must be dead, or infected, like all the rest of the Tomb’s employees they left behind. Dr. Albert was good to Holly, a kind mentor. She does not like to think of him as one of these ravenous creatures. Instead, she hopes he died quickly.
Garth tenses every time a zombie lumbers down the street before the pub and every time a noise of indeterminate origin sounds. Holly knows he must be afraid like her and Cassie, but he will never show it. Truth be told, he’s fearsome in his own right. Holly has seen what he can do with his blade.
Garth is an orphan. The program gave him a place to live. Dr. Albert found him in Thailand after research and much rumor. The boy was fighting for the sport of others. By the tender age of six, Garth could kill a grown man with his bare hands.
He was not born in Thailand. He’s not even Asian. His origin remains unclear to this day. Garth would have told Dr. Albert where he came from, if he could. He just doesn’t know.
The katana is the only possession left to him by whoever abandoned him in Thailand. The mafia triad family who owned the boy kept the sword until he could handle it in combat. Then they set him loose in the ring for higher stakes.
Holly shuddered, when she first heard from Garth the kinds of things he did for them, the kind of men he faced while he was still only a small child. Yet, he beat them all. Those fights were to the death. None of his opponents survived.
Instinctively, Holly closes the slide out keyboard on her phone as Cassie approaches. The girl is a somewhat different story. Dr. Albert rescued her from a psychiatric facility in the states where her family left her when they couldn’t handle the problems any longer. The mother had a nervous breakdown before they gave up on her. Timid people, they couldn’t cope with their daughter’s odd outbursts.
It didn’t take Dr. Albert much pleading to convince the Monroes their daughter would be better off in a state financed program he was leading in the UK. They were apprehensive at first. However, once he explained the better care she would receive and the fact Her Majesty’s government would pick up the tab, they consented right away.
“What are you up to?” Cassie asks, sitting on a bar stool next to Holly.
Holly smiles, putting the phone into her pocket. “Nothing much, kiddo. How about you?”
“It’s getting late, after midnight already. I was thinking about a snack before turning in.”
Their eyes move to the dark corner of the pub.
“He’s hardly moved in hours,” Holly says.
“That’s Garth,” Cassie replies. “Sometimes, I’ll lose track of him in Sector Four. Eventually, he makes a noise to catch my attention. When I finally find him, he’s grinning.”
Holly nods. “I wonder if they could catch him.”
Cassie smiles. “Only, if he wanted them to. He really is a good guy, once you get to know him. He wouldn’t want anyone to know it, but he isn’t as hard-hearted as he acts.”
Holly grins. “Really? Well, he does put on a good front. He probably just shows his tender side to you because he likes you.”
Cassie starts to laugh, but holds it in.
“What?” Holly asks.
“Garth doesn’t like me that way,” she says. “I’m like an annoying little sister to him. Besides, I think an older woman caught his eye a while back.”
Cassie arches an eyebrow at her, and Holly’s eyes go wide.
Cassie’s smile widens, and she tries to hold back a giggle, nodding her head.
Holly slaps her on the shoulder playfully. “Stop it.”
“What?” Cassie says, trying to keep her voice down. “You’re only twenty-two. He’s eighteen. You’re both adults.”
Holly tries to keep from smiling. “You, young lady, are terrible. I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”
Cassie is about to burst out laughing.
Holly walks away, tapping her on the shoulder again playfully with her knuckles. “I’m going to get that snack. Why don’t you check on Garth, and see if he wants us to fix him anything.”
“He would rather you checked on him than me,” Cassie says, grinning.
Holly points her finger at Cassie, pretending she’s really going to get her, if she doesn’t stop.
“All right, I’ll ask him,” Cassie relents, getting up from her seat to walk across the restaurant into ever increasing darkness.
Cassie winds her way through pub tables, approaching a statuesque Garth seated cross-legged on a table before the window. His gaze remains fixed unblinking upon the street outside. Even when she comes up beside him with her metal flashlight in hand, he doesn’t look her way.
“So, do you?” Cassie asks.
Garth waits a moment before replying. “Do I what?”
“Don’t act like you couldn’t hear everything Holly and I were just saying,” Cassie chides him. “I know you better, Garth. You could probably hear us even if we were standing across the street.”
“You two prattle on like fishwives,” he says. “It’s a wonder your giggling hasn’t brought the entire lot of those things crashing through here.”
Cassie becomes serious when Garth mentions the infected. “Are there any out there?” she asks, looking through the blind.
Garth has the blind open just enough to allow him a view, but not enough that he can be seen from the street. “There are a few roaming about rather aimlessly,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Anyway, you talk too much.”
Cassie grins again. “You’re just mad because I told Holly you like her.”
Garth shoots her a sidelong glance. “You’re mad in the head.”
“Am I?” she asks playfully. “I see how you look at Holly.”
He doesn’t answer.
“She’s pretty,” Cassie says, continuing despite Garth’s obstinacy. “She knows how to handle herself, too. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice in the Tombs.”
Garth sighs. “Well, you are right about one thing, little sister,” he says finally.
“What’s that?”
Garth grins. “You are annoying.”
Cassie turns away, pouting playfully. “Just for that, you’ll have to come get your own snack.
Garth smiles as Cassie walks away from him, winding her way back through the tables. The lights burning in the restaurant go out. Cassie stops in her tracks.
Garth stiffens, his eyes glancing around.
“What happened?” Cassie asks, whispering loudly as she turns back to Garth. “What happened?”
Garth holds a hand up to her for quiet, listening to the sounds from the street outside. Cassie can’t see him now. With the window shades all closed and the streetlamps gone out, almost total darkness envelops them.
A torch comes on suddenly, waving around in the darkness with frantic motion. Cassie is practically hyperventilating, panicking. Only her torchlight can be seen.
“Put it out!” Garth hisses.
“What?” Cassie answers, the beam of her torch finding him crouched upon the table now with his sword in hand.
Framed by the light, Garth waves it away with harsh gestures. “Turn out the light,” he says urgently, trying to keep his voice down for fear of the infected in the street outside hearing him.
Cassie fumb
les with the light. Hands grab her in the darkness—one over her mouth, the other on her wrist, stilling the movement of the flashlight. Cassie attempts a muffled scream. Holly’s voice speaks urgently in her ear.
“It’s me. Stop moving,” she says quickly.
Cassie freezes with Holly holding her. Garth becomes still on the other side of the pub, listening. The torch beam remains aimed at the floor, unmoving. They all wait. They all listen. Holly pulls one hand away from Cassie’s mouth slowly, leaving her other on the girl’s wrist to keep the light from moving and attracting unwanted attention.
Twenty seconds pass.
Nothing moves. They hear no sound, except the distant noise of helicopters. With the power off, even the air conditioning system has stopped moving air.
Holly sighs. When the power went off, it felt like the whole city took a deep breath and held it. Then the glass window behind her and Cassie explodes. A figure tangled in the wooden slats of the window blind plows into them, sending the torch light spinning through the air.
Cassie screams as the zombie forces her to the ground, dashing her through wooden chair backs. Her breath chokes as the air is driven from her lungs by the impact with the floor and the creature’s weight coming down on top of her. Holly is knocked away by the haphazard tackle, crashing onto and over the nearest table top.
A flash of steel cuts the air like a whisper just above Cassie. Warm wetness sprays her face. The oppressive weight of the creature is knocked away, and Garth is there. He takes her hand, pulling her off of the floor.
“Are you all right?” he asks
Cassie is too terrified to reply. She shakes so hard it almost appears she is nodding to him. Garth knows the difference, and simply nods to her. She can barely see him in the ambience of the fallen torch.
Garth leaves her momentarily, helping Holly off of the ground. The throaty moans and cries of the infected resound outside the pub. The street is the epitome of pitch blackness. Forms move in the dark, coming toward the restaurant, searching for prey.
“I’m all right,” Holly whispers. “We have to move, get to the car.”
Garth grabs the flashlight off of the floor.
“Can you two get to the car without me?” he asks Holly.
She nods. “I think so, but we’ll have to be quick.”
“We can’t go out there right now,” Cassie says. “More of them are coming this way. I can hear them.”
Garth looks at the girls. “The night is my place,” he says with a wicked grin crossing his face. “Get to the car and get at least a block away before you stop. I’ll be right behind you.”
Without waiting for Holly’s dissenting opinion on the matter, Garth turns and leaps out the window. He holds the torch in one hand and his katana in the other. He waves the light around in every direction, like a beacon calling the infected to come to dinner.
Growling calls and screeches follow the light down the road. Multiplied footfalls beat the pavement in pursuit. Garth yells and hollers, without regard for his own safety. He entices them, like a wiggling worm on a hook, and many of the infected follow.
They want to taste him. Some even desire to devour his flesh, after so many hours without food. Not everyone they attack is left to become another rampaging zombie. Many victims are consumed down to the bone—more now because there are so many new mouths to feed.
Garth sees very well in the dark. Even the blackness, present because of the power outage, doesn’t hinder him. An owl would envy his ability to see and hear in the night. This time belongs to him.
Coming upon a particularly dark space behind a car, Garth sends the torch skittering down the street across the pavement. The bar of white light spins and jerks, leading the infected mob past him. Garth emerges like a shadow, following behind with his katana held out like a reaper’s scythe.
The group running ahead consists of nearly twenty individuals. Garth sees them clearly; better than any night vision had by military personnel. He does not know why he can see so well in the night. He does not even know where he comes from. Yet, he is grateful for this gift and many others bestowed upon him by his unknown parentage.
Garth pads along the ground on bare feet. This is the only way to hunt. His feet are accustomed to treading environments like pavement and earth. The occasional gravel in the road doesn’t dissuade his progress and, compared with his lumbering prey, his footfalls are feather light. He makes only the barest whisper of sound as his katana cuts the air.
One zombie dies out of eighteen chasing the skittering flashlight.
By the time the light stops moving on the pavement, the infected catch up to it. They are confused by what they supposed to be a man running away from their pursuit. In seconds, their mob of eighteen is culled by more than half, without them noticing the reaper in their midst.
There comes only the song of steel against flesh. Garth moves wraith-like among their group standing around the torch in the road. The zombies sniff at the air, trying to pick up some scent of their prey. Perhaps, they might realize he’s among them, if Garth was like other men. However, he is not and cannot be sought out so easily—another gift of his birth.
His katana whirls and cleaves zombie forms. Several attempt attacks, but they find themselves grasping empty air. Garth is already gone, his blade whispering its song of death.
When he stands still, at last, the tip of his katana sits at the base of a man’s skull, piercing the brainstem. Garth holds the weight on his arms through the blade. His arms support one hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight, but they do not tremble. As he withdraws his weapon, the body falls to the ground like a sack of bricks.
The moon is only a sliver of itself tonight in an overcast sky. Garth observes his handiwork momentarily. All eighteen are accounted for. He kneels, wiping the blade on the cleanest piece of clothing he can find on one of the bodies.
Blood does not stain this sword. This metal is unlike any other sword. This weapon is his inheritance. Whoever left him in Thailand did not leave him without the one item necessary to keep his life. The sword is faithful to him. Since the time he could hold it, Garth has not parted from it.
He often wonders about his heritage; about who his parents were. Garth wonders why they would leave him in the care of a man like Soo Ki. However, in hindsight, he recognizes a subtle wisdom in the matter. Soo Ki exploited young boys and girls in the fighting bouts endorsed by the triads. Garth was left to the one man who would give him no pity—a man who would put him in terrible danger on a daily basis.
Under those circumstances, he grew strong, agile, and quick, developing the secret abilities lying dormant in his young body. If he was going to be left by his parents, then what better place to train him to face the challenges he required? What better place to mold him into a young man who could not be killed by the world of men?
Garth stands among the slain. Lying dead here in the streets, they seem mortal again. These may have become monsters in their minds, but they are still frail in body. He can only guess at the reason why the military fail to stop the tide of this outbreak.
“Because they are weak also,” he tells himself.
Garth hears the girls a half a block away. Holly fires her gun several times. Cassie screams, and the infected pursue. A window shatters. Garth turns on his heels, sheathing his katana in the scabbard resting snug between his back and backpack.
He managed to find a basic black single strap shoulder bag in the back of the pub inside a locker. Now, it contains several bottled waters, a roll of duct tape and three yellow delicious apples he found in the pub’s kitchen. Just a few essential items he might need over the next few days.
He runs back toward the Ship Pub, where Holly and Cassie are attempting to get away. Since Garth diverted the attention of so many zombies, they should have an easy time of it. However, as he draws near, he finds a horde of the creatures in the street.
Holly and Cassie barely make it into the car unscathed. Garth shouts at the zombie
s as loudly as he can. The nearest to him take notice, forcing him to retreat. There are too many now. When he first looked over the crowd, he saw hundreds. His initial estimate is grossly understated.
This is why military units with machine guns cannot stand against these creatures. This is the reason why helicopters with snipers and armored troop carriers remain ineffective. Thousands of these viral zombies swarm the streets around the pub. Their numbers make them virtually unstoppable.
The Honda takes off through the crowd. Bodies slam into the vehicle by the dozens, trying to get to the girls inside. Garth cannot help them from here. Zombies pursue him, while others charge after the moving car.
He dashes across the street to a coffee house with a wrought iron trellis going up one side of the outdoor café. From there, an awning covers the entrance. The zombies are fast on their feet, giving it all they’ve got to get to their prey.
Garth draws his sword and cuts down nearly a dozen on his way to the café. The creatures surge after him, relentless as a wave. He leaps over a wrought iron fence and shrubbery framing the patio area. Garth hops up to the wrought iron trellis, climbing fast. He bypasses the awning, knowing it might not hold his weight. A jump to a pipe running up to the rain gutters gives him a means of reaching the roof. Garth climbs as nimbly as a chimp, never pausing.
Thousands of zombies rush the building, reaching for him, longing for him to fall into their waiting hands. They cannot climb after him. None of them possesses the agility to pursue Garth up the building. They couldn’t do it before their transformation and certainly not after.
He reaches the roof, never bothering to stop and look back at the zombies below. Instead, Garth runs along the roof top, trying to keep up with the car. It is surrounded by the infected. Windows shatter as they drive through the throng. Leaping bodies bounce away as Holly careens through the masses, her accelerator pedal laid on the floor.
Desperately, Holly throws the car into a spin on the slick blacktop. Bodies are pummeled and cast aside, only to be replaced by more leaping at the vehicle. Even those she knocks aside with her car get back up again a moment later to continue their pursuit. With so many creatures going after the girls, Garth doubts they’ll come away with only becoming infected. This swarm of zombies with tear them limb from limb to feed as many starving bellies as possible.