He slowed, casting around to see if that was the best way to go.
Should he risk it? Could he risk it?
The car was at the end of the block. He had the keys, but the streets were clogged with empty emergency vehicles. Even if he got his gear, could he find a way to drive out?
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
Houses were on fire one block over. Fire trucks and crashed cars were like a wall.
But the weapons.
His weapons.
They were right there in the trunk.
Benny screamed. The monsters shambled after him.
“Go!” Mom had said. “Take Benny . . . keep him safe. Go!”
Just . . . go.
He ran to the parked car. Benny was struggling in his arms, hitting him, fighting to try and get free.
Tom held him with one arm—an arm that already ached from carrying his brother—and fished in his pocket for the keys. Found them. Found the lock. Opened the door, popped the trunk.
Gun in the glove compartment. Ammunition in the trunk. Sword, too.
Shapes moved toward him. He could hear their moans. So close. So close.
Tom turned a wild eye toward one as it reached for the child he carried.
He lashed out with a savage kick, driving the thing back. It fell, but it was not hurt. Not in any real sense of being hurt. As soon as it crashed down, it began to crawl toward him.
And in his mind Tom realized that he had thought of it as an it. Not a him.Not a person.
He was already that far gone into this. That’s what this had come to.
He and Benny and them.
Each of them was an it now.
The world was that broken.
It was unreal. Tom understood that this thing was dead. He knew him, too. It was Mr. Harrison from three doors down and it was also a dead thing.
A monster.
An actual monster.
This was the real world, and there were monsters in it.
Benny kept screaming.
Tom lifted the trunk hood and shoved Benny inside. Then he grabbed his sword. There was no time to remove the trigger lock on the gun. They were coming.
They were here.
Tom slammed the hood, trapping the screaming Benny inside the trunk even as he ripped the sword from its sheath.
All those hands reached for him.
And for the second time, a part of Tom’s mind stepped out of the moment and struck a contemplative pose, studying himself, walking around him, observing and forming opinions.
Tom had studied jujutsu and karate since he was little. Kendo, too. He could fight with his hands and feet. He could grapple and wrestle.
He could use a sword.
Twice in his life he’d been in fights. Once in the seventh grade with a kid who was just being a punk. Once in twelfth grade when one of the kids on the hockey team mouthed off to a girl Tom liked. Both fights had been brief. Some shoves, a couple of punches. The other guy went down both times. Not down and out, just down. Nothing big. No real damage.
Never once in his twenty years had Tom Imura fought for his life. Never once had he done serious harm to another person. The drills in the police academy, even the live-fire exercises, were no different than the dojo. It was all a dance. All practice and simulation. No real blood, no genuine intent.
All those years, all those black belts, they in no way prepared him for this moment.
To use a sword on a person. To cut flesh. To draw blood.
To kill.
There is no greater taboo. Only a psychopath disregards it without flinching. Tom was not a psychopath. He was a twenty year old Japanese-American police academy cadet. A son. A stepson. A half-brother. He was barely a man. He couldn’t even legally buy a beer.
He stood in the middle of his own street with a sword in his hands as everyone he knew in his neighborhood came at him. To kill him.
Video games don’t prepare you for this.
Watching movies doesn’t prepare you.
No training prepares you.
Nothing does.
Nothing.
He said, “Please . . .”
The people with the dead eyes and the slack faces moaned in reply. And they fell on him like a cloud of locusts.
The sword seemed to move of its own accord.
Distantly, Tom could feel his arms lift and swing. He could feel his hands tighten and loosen as the handle shifted within his grip for different cuts. The rising cut. The scarf cut. The lateral cut.
He saw the silver of the blade move like flowing mercury, tracing fire against the night.
He felt the shudder and shock as the weapon hit and sliced and cleaved through bone.
He felt his feet shift and step and pivot; he felt his waist turn, his thighs flex, his heels lift to tilt his mass into the cuts or to allow his knees to wheel him around.
He felt all of this.
He did not understand how any of it could happen when his mind was going blank. None of it came from his will. None of it was directed.
It just happened.
The moaning things came at him.
And his sword devoured them.
Three terrible minutes later, Tom unlocked the trunk and opened it.
Benny was cowering in the back of the trunk, huddled against Tom’s gym bag. Tears and snot were pasted on his face. Benny opened his mouth to scream again, but he stopped. When he saw Tom, he stopped.
Tom stood there, the sword held loosely in one hand, the keys in the other. He was covered with blood. The sword was covered with blood.
The bodies around the car—more than a dozen of them—were covered with blood.
Benny screamed.
Not because he understood—he was far too young for that—but because the smell of blood reminded him of Dad. Of home. Benny wanted his mom.
He screamed and Tom stood there, trembling from head to toe. Tears broke from his eyes and fell in burning silver lines down his face.
“I’m sorry, Benny,” he said in a voice that was as broken as the world.
Tom tore off his blood-splattered shirt. The t-shirt he wore underneath was stained but not as badly. Tom shivered as he lifted Benny and held him close. Benny beat at him with tiny fists.
“I’m sorry,” Tom said again.
All around him it was as still and silent as a slaughterhouse.
And then it wasn’t.
From the sides streets, from open doors, more of them came.
More.
More.
Mr. Gaynor from down the block. Old Lady Milhonne from across the street, wearing the same ratty bathrobe she always wore. The Kang kids. Delia and Marie Swanson. Others he didn't know. Even two cops in torn uniforms.
“No more,” Tom said as he buried his head in the cleft between Benny’s neck and shoulder. As if there was any comfort there.
No more.
But there was more, and on some level Tom knew they were would always be more. This was how it was now. They hinted about it on the news. The street where he lived proved it to be true.
He kicked his way through them.
He kicked old Mr. Gaynor in the groin and watched the force of the kick bend him in half. It should have put him down. It should have left him in a purple-faced fetal ball.
It didn’t.
Gaynor staggered and went down to one knee. His face did not change expression at all. Nothing. Not even a curl of the lip.
Then Gaynor got heavily, awkwardly to his feet and came forward again. Reaching for Benny.
Tom kicked him again. Same spot, even harder.