I reached it, then, from the side, and hamstrung it, cutting the tendons behind the knees. It flopped down but kept crawling forward, toward Richard.

“Finish it!” I said quietly, and headed back toward my original target.

This one had been a soldier, combat fatigues still recognizable, but too stained to read the insignia. I took a stance ten feet before it, hasso, sword above my right shoulder. As it took one last step I went forward and cut, kesa, upper right to lower left. When I’d finished the stroke, its head and right arm lay to my left and the rest of it lay at my feet.

I turned back, to see how Richard was doing.

He’d managed to cut off the other arm and into the zombie’s spine, mid-back, which had at least stopped it shoving forward with its legs. At that point, finally, Richard had managed the head, though it had been high. He’d cut through even with the ears so the top of the head was on the ground but the lower jaw, tongue extending oddly upward, still hung on the neck.

“Lovely. Clean your sword,” I said, getting out my own baggie of alcohol-soaked rags.

We’d all had the vaccination but it was only seventy-five percent effective. Better to take all precautions.

Sensei and Lou joined us then. Sensei examined both kills quietly. When we’d sheathed our swords he said, “Right. This way.”

There were a lot more of them down in the river bottom. There were vacation homes on the high banks and a series of fishing camps, but mostly it was the water that drew them. They drink a lot if they can. The scientists aren’t sure if they need the water but the speculation is that they feel a burning and they try to quench it. It’s the same burning that drives them at the uninfected, drives them to consume something that they don’t have anymore, as if eating it will give it back.

Sensei took the next group, three zombies, giving a lecture first.

“When there are more than one, you can’t afford to wound. You must disable or kill. Wounded they just keep coming. So, sever the spine or split the brain or take a leg. Once they are down you can finish those that need to be finished.”

Then he showed us.

He took the first one with a shomen cut. Shomen means head, after all, but it refers to the vertical cut which, in this case, came down from the top of the skull right between the eyes, all the way into the throat before it stopped. Sensei stepped aside as the next one rushed through and he cut into the neck from behind, cleaving the spine but not the entire neck, for the head flopped forward and hung there as it made one more stumbling step before sprawling forward. He took the last zombie’s leg from the side, cutting through the femur right above the knee. While it was trying to struggle upright again, he decapitated it, like an executioner.

The next zombies came as a pair, moderately spaced. Sensei gestured. “Okay, Richard. Just relax. Remember that you’re cutting with the last four inches of the blade. Extend. Be aware of your environment.”

Richard moved forward with Sensei following a bit behind. Lou and I stood back to back, our eyes checking all around.

“You okay?” I asked. Since she’d thrown up, I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her.

“Yeah. Something I ate, I guess.”

“Well, it would’ve bothered me, too. I just couldn’t help thinking that she was a person once. Someone raised her, tucked her into bed, gave her those pearl earrings.”

“Yeah, someone did and it probably ate them.”

“Cynic,” I said.

“What was that with Danny boy back on the wall? When he remembered who you were, he backed away quick enough.”

“He tried to grope me once. I’d been with Sensei for a year already. I dislocated his elbow.”

Richard and Sensei were closing on the two zombies, Richard in the lead.

“I don’t think I can look,” Lou said.

“Well,” I said. “He hasn’t stabbed himself yet.” I held up my left hand. There were three triangular scars on the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. “I got myself enough times at the dojo.”

“It would be better if he had. He’d have the respect he needs for the blade.”

There was truth in that. You shouldn’t be afraid of the blade but you should certainly be respectful of it.

Richard drew his sword ahead of time and held it behind him, low, in waki gamae the hidden stance. When the first zombie approached, he cut up from the side, trying to do a reverse kesa, but the blade stuck in the ribs, short of the spine. Richard threw himself to the side, wrenching hard, and the blade came free but he stumbled backwards and fell.

Sensei tensed but didn’t move.

Richard got up on his knees and stayed there. When the zombie with the slashed ribs approached, he cut horizontal, right below the zombie’s knee. The zombie, went down, forward, trying to step on a foot that was no longer there. Richard twisted to the side and decapitated it cleanly.

I heard Lou’s sigh of relief.

Richard kept it simple for the next one, a straight shomen cut to the forehead. He must’ve tensed for it was more of a chop, but the blade got deep enough into the brain to drop it.

We joined them. Sensei was saying, “…can’t throw everything you learned out the window now that it counts.” He held up his left hand and extended the pinky and ring fingers. “Squeeze. Relax. The blade is sharp enough to do the work if you let it. Speed and the correct angle matter far more than muscle.”

Richard nodded.

Sensei had Lou go next, a group of four clustered close together.

Lou ran toward them, then moved quickly to the side and away, so that when they turned to track her, they strung out in a line. She didn’t draw her blade until the first cut but took a leg with it, then danced past the falling zombie to kill one of the rear ones with a kesa cut to the neck. She sidestepped again, causing the last two to tangle with the fallen zombie, now struggling up on one knee. She stepped forward and killed one of the standing with a shomen cut, stepped back, and repeated the cut on the last standing zombie. The one missing a leg crawled forward and she pivoted and took the head.

Sensei nodded in satisfaction. “See how she separated them? Took them one at a time? Isolate them. Don’t let them surround you. Work around the edges. Turn and keep turning.”

We heard running feet then and Sensei said, “Rosa. Watch out, it’s recent.”

We all looked, fearful, but when it came out of the trees near the river, we saw it was a woman, almost normal looking, clothes still intact, not as pallid, but there was blood down its front and the eyes were insane. The recent ones, infected within a month, are much faster. Not supernaturally fast-just human fast and not as stupid. They retain more of their physical skills.

“Jesus,” said Richard. “It’s Mrs. Steckles.”

The Steckles had left three weeks before, traveling to the city, looking for family.

I walked out, putting myself well ahead of the others and it tracked on me. Excuse me if I still use “it”-all of these things were human once but no more.

I knelt, seiza, sitting back on my heels. It came on and its arms came up as it neared. I took both feet off slicing through the ankles, sliding off to the right to avoid the flailing, clawing hands. It thrashed as it fell but was up on knees and hands remarkably fast, coming back toward me. Standing, I cut down, aiming for the neck but it lurched forward and I ended up cutting through its spine lower down, below the shoulder blades. It lost control of it’s abdominal muscles and legs but it flopped down and pulled itself forward with its arms. It’s teeth snapped together within inches of my knee.

I jumped completely over it, turned, and cut its head off as it dragged itself back around. The rictus of the face relaxed and the eyes lost their focus. She looked like Mrs. Steckles again.

Now I felt like throwing up.