But no, Takashi thought. Seppuku was not the way. He had a mission. He had sworn an oath. It was his duty to protect these helpless farmers.

Toshiro was not listening. They had reached the ridge overlooking the town. Down in the pit, the town served one final purpose. It would act as a signal fire to warn neighboring villages that the swarm was on its way. The houses were all aflame, the air was polluted with acrid black smoke, and countless mouja prowled the streets. Takashi couldn’t see any people. They must have been in the streets, among the mouja, driven only to feed on their families. Isao and Daisuke were nowhere to be found.

Looking down at the village, Takashi’s heart sank. He fell to his knees and drew his tantō. Slowly and carefully, Takashi untied the sash of his kimono and pulled it open. He tucked the sleeves beneath his knees. He wanted to be sure to fall forward. “I swore to protect these people, Toshiro, and I have failed. This is my fault.”

“This is no one’s fault,” Toshiro said.

“It was my decision to leave the village, and this is the result. Toshiro, you will have to be my kaishakunin. Once I make the cut, be very quick and careful. I do not want to return as one of those things. When I am gone, hurry to the next village. You are fast in the dark. Perhaps you can warn them before those creatures arrive.”

Toshiro sneered. He grabbed Takashi by the collar. “No. I will not allow you to do this. Better we go down fighting with steel in our hands. Besides, two samurai with katanas are more powerful than the tallest tsunami. We will take many of them with us. We may even find survivors.

Takashi’s eyes met Toshiro’s intense gaze. Where Seiji had skill, Toshiro had spirit. Takashi held out his hand; Toshiro grasped his arm and pulled him to his feet. They drew their swords, walking with deliberate steps down the ridge. Their eyes glowed with fire. They navigated around the fallen bodies, cutting down mouja whenever one came near. Takashi whispered, “These poor farmers. They never stood a chance.”

Toshiro spat. “It is their lot to suffer.”

At the center of town, a crowd of mouja had congregated. Their shadows danced on the sandy ground like demons in the firelight. One thousand cloudy eyes found the samurai at once. The mouja charged. Takashi and Toshiro swung hard.

Blood and fire glinted on their blades.

Category Five by Marc Paoletti

Marc Paoletti is the coauthor (with Patricia Rosemoor) of the novels The Last Vampire and The Vampire Agent. He is also the author of Scorch, a thriller that draws upon his experiences as a Hollywood pyrotechnician. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Young Blood, Book of Voices, Horror Library Vol. 2, The Best Underground Fiction, The Blackest Death Vol. 2, Cold Flesh, and Thou Shalt Not. Earlier this year, he had a story published in First Thrills, edited by Lee Child.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Almost 2,000 people died, both in the storm itself and in the severe flooding that followed. And bad as the storm was, the real horror was the human element-the engineers’ failure to maintain the levees, the incompetence of the federal response, and the disorder that ensued. People attempting to flee the storm-ravaged city of New Orleans were turned back at gunpoint by locals who feared looters. FEMA director Michael Brown, a political appointee whose most relevant prior experience had been managing horse shows, became a laughingstock after the president absurdly praised him for doing a “heck of a job.”

Most of us never imagined we’d see corpses lying unattended on the streets of an American city. The author of our next story writes, “I watched Hurricane Katrina decimate New Orleans live on CNN. Talk about horror. I was shocked by the devastation, and appalled that the most disadvantaged people were bearing the brunt of the disaster. I finished the first draft of this story in one sitting. Funny what happens when you’re fueled by outrage. Also my childhood home in Sacramento was almost flooded a few years back. I was in Los Angeles at the time. Believe me, it’s grim to get a call from your folks in the middle of the night and hear the fear in their voices as they tell you the levee-which is less than a mile away from them-is about to break.”

Remy listened to the wind beat the walls, listened to the rain whip the windows. Since the power was out and it was after sundown, he’d lit candles in the bedroom and rest of the house. He might have considered the thrashing beat a hip tempo if not for what he’d heard over the battery-powered radio crackling on the dresser.

Category five.

This hurricane was supposed to be the worst in a generation, like nothing they’d seen, yet the mayor had done little to get folks like him and Marta out. They were late seventies. Too poor to afford a car. Too old to venture far on their own. They were black. They didn’t matter.

Their home was ramshackle, single story, built long ago in a crumbling ward that sat below sea level and lacked the comfort of close neighbors. On the radio, he’d heard that the 17th Street Canal levee was under assault by storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain. If the levee failed, the ward didn’t stand a chance. Their home didn’t stand a chance.

He sat next to Marta who lay under thick covers, eyes closed, breathing fitfully. He placed a wrinkled palm on the wrinkled forehead of his love, her sweaty skin the color of coffee and sooty with age, but still beautiful to him after fifty years of marriage.

Remy touched her as he listened to the radio’s thick crackles, to the broken bits of news, to the random chatter. Other wards had been flooded, he’d made out that much. The water had carried away cars and trucks, had swept houses from their foundations, and had caved in crypts and mortuaries freeing the bodies within.

That’s where things got strange.

He thought he’d heard reports that said disinterred bodies were coming back to life. Witnesses on the radio had sworn it was true. Supposedly, dead bodies had writhed and flailed as floodwaters swept them along and when they’d washed against higher ground, they’d clambered to their feet and walked. Walked. He shook his head. Here people were spinning foolish tales about the walking dead when Marta couldn’t walk at all.

“We’ll get through this, you ’n’ me,” Remy whispered, taking his wife’s hand. “Like we got through so much else.”

She moaned softly. Marta had been sick for a long, long time. So long, in fact, that he’d nearly forgotten what their life had been like before the disease. Ovarian cancer. It didn’t make sense to him since she was far past childbearing age-not that they’d had children-but her ovaries had become polluted just the same, and the cancer had spread to her stomach and then her spine.

“We’ll get through this, hon,” he repeated, but didn’t know how to make good on the promise if the levee broke. How could he when most of the city had run off? When the police and fire fighters had run off as well?

Lightning flashed, casting the room bright white, and then thunder growled as fiercely as the apocalypse.

Taking the radio, Remy shuffled down a dark hallway into a kitchen lit by candles. He fetched more matches from a cupboard, and then counted cans. They had enough food for a week, which would have been fine if the morphine he’d dripped so carefully onto Marta’s tongue with a baby’s eyedropper hadn’t run out that very morning. He couldn’t call the hospital for more, either, because the landline was dead and he’d never been able to afford a cell phone. Of course that was assuming the hospital staff hadn’t left town, which they probably had.