At first, her technique was more balls than brains. Then she got wise and applied some intellect to her retribution. She periodically allowed the UDs to come in real close and almost get their grip on her—too close in many trainers’ opinions—and then she’d lash out with everything but the kitchen sink. It was a fighting style that, although unorthodox, was completely practical and incredibly proficient.
Other fighters saw what she was up to and flocked to her and her cause. Hell, everyone loves a winner and if Chikara could offer these inexperienced men knowledge to help keep them alive a little bit longer than the initial five minutes of their first match, everyone had been up for it. Chikara had been smart about it, too. She wrapped whatever fighting technique she had to offer in a tattered veil of spirituality. If she could only free these men’s minds, then their asses would soon follow. She’d doled out nourishing little spoonfuls of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer with a liberal dose of Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, and some cool lines from old Bruce Lee movies.
Soon enough, she had forged for herself a formidable team.
Monk explained to Cleese how all of the Budo Warriors believed that they were already one of The Dead and that the UDs were just another task set before them on their way to enlightenment… or God, whichever. Chikara made little differentiation between gods: hers, theirs or anyone’s. Life was merely a test given to the faithful to prove their capacity to serve. God, Jehovah, Jesus, Buddha, Allah… none of these things made a bit of difference to Chikara. A person’s relationship with his or her god was something that remained between them and their chosen deity. Chikara’s only concern was whether or not you could pass the ordeal that was set before you.
On more than one lazy evening, Monk had shown Cleese a variety of the Warrior’s fight tapes and they were an eerie thing to watch. To a man, the Warriors all had the same creepy, calm approach to their fighting: sometimes standing perfectly still until the very last second, then reacting with a lethality that took your breath away. They were, in many of the fighter’s minds, combat personified.
All of the fighters—no matter how they saw their place in the world— did agree on one thing and it was that The League was all important. It was Life. It was Death. Fame… Prestige… Money… Horror… Pain… Fear… It was what defined many of them. For the fighters, there was only the Training ("The Way is in the Training") followed by the money and the glory of the live televised events. One always followed the other like clockwork; as regular as breathing—in—out—in—out. And soon, Cleese was told, he would catch on and come to understand.
After only a short while, Cleese discovered that he felt at home here and was growing to actually like this new routine. There’d never been anything even remotely resembling a regular schedule in Cleese’s life up ’til now. He’d pretty much done as he pleased since he left home as a kid, but this new discipline just felt right to him. Sure, he’d not had to face a live (or rather dead) opponent, but he knew in time that he would, well aware of the fact that he’d be sparring with the harnessed UDs and all of this mundane shit of lifting weights and going over reaction drills was going to fly right out the fucking window.
Cleese was also pleased to find, despite the inhospitable temper displayed at their initial meeting, Monk was growing on him and vice versa. Sure, he was a foul-mouthed, hard drinking son of a bitch who’d come to the Leagues when they’d first been formed but he was also a man who knew a thing or two about fighting. In the short time they’d been paired together, Monk demonstrated to Cleese dozens of new ways to kill a man. Some were clean. Some were just plain nasty. The bottom line was that they were all effective and would, no doubt, prove useful once Cleese found himself down on the sand in the pit.
As the time dragged on, both Cleese and Monk came to consider themselves lucky to be paired with one another. Some of the pairings were not as good. Some had friction built into them from the get-go as a result of competing personalities. Others had one person exerting more control over the other and both of the fighter’s styles suffered because of it. With Monk and Cleese, it was different. It became evident that they both loved the intellectual aspect of what some called the "sweet science;" that chess-like quality combat could sometimes possess. They also came to respect one another as fighters and it was that respect that made becoming friends all the more easy.
In Cleese’s opinion, most of the other fighters were nothing more than cannon fodder, at best. Monk though… Monk was different. Monk was cut from a different kind of cloth all together. He knew something. He knew something special, but he was only willing to dole it out in tiny bits and pieces. He was like a gardener carefully watering and feeding a fragile young plant until it was able to support itself and bloom on its own.
He’d give Cleese ideas and concepts and then give him enough time and enough space to put them all together for himself. He would let it all sink in—from the scribblings he made in the sand to the lengthy discussions they’d had over fight tapes played at slow motion—and allow Cleese to internalize it, ponder it, and then turn it into something lethal, something that the crowd would suck up like mother’s milk.
Yeah, training was good. Cleese felt better than he had in years, but he also knew that they’d be climbing down into The Pit with The Dead, putting both their lives and their asses on the line.
And when they did, it was going to be a wild ride.
The Squad
Before…
Cpl. Lance Johnson intently studied the field spread out before him. The air was still and birds could be heard singing hesitantly far off in the tree line. The weeds and brush carpeting the ground beneath his boots were only a couple of feet high, but he’d learned from past experience that death popped up where you least expected it. Since joining the squad, he’d seen more than a few men fall in fields exactly like this. They’d be walking along—running Point mostly—and then, suddenly, gone.
Dragged down into the brush.
Sometimes they’d go screaming, sometimes they’d go silently, but go they did. A subdued hiss would come up from the foliage and that sound would be the only thing to mark their passing. Well, that and their shrieking… By the time any of the squad could get there and shoot off the things that had swarmed all over the guy, he would be torn to shreds. Ripped to ribbons.
After awhile, when it happened the squad would just blast a hole wherever the man had been. With the stalks of green and brown moving and all of the commotion coming from the ground, it was usually safer to just put down whatever was there—friend or foe.
No one ever made it up intact after being swarmed over on the ground like that, anyway. The Dead were like sharks in that respect. Once they got their teeth in you, you were done.
Caught. Cleaned. Cooked.
The team had been on a House-to-House for the past few weeks, ever since their unit was called up and told that big shit was brewing over in Cress County. The Dead had come back to Life was the story they’d heard. None of them believed it, at first. After all, who would? Who’d ever heard of corpses getting up and eating the flesh of the Living outside of a goddamn horror movie?
Seriously… what the fuck was that all about?
The whole concept seemed fabricated by a combination of over-active imaginations, irrational fear and blatant stupidity. Any one of those things by itself was a dangerous thing. Add them all together and you had a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
Lance looked over toward Sgt. Masterson, the team’s leader, and saw the big man rattle off a series of commands by way of a combination of intricate hand signals. His movements were practiced, concise and instantly understood by the men. One by one, they all dutifully complied.
Masterson was from the old school. He was a burly man in his mid-thirties with a dark flattop you could cut paper with and when it came to things like family and friends, it seemed that he’d made his choice a long time ago. The Corps had been his life and his love for as long as he could remember. There never seemed to be a good enough reason to change that. He readily admitted to being what was often referred to as a "lifer" and he was proud of that, however now that The Dead had come a "callin’", it looked more and more as if that life might just be the death of him.
Masterson motioned for the big black man known as "Ray Dog" and the guy they’d picked up on the road who called himself "Slider" to take Point. The Dog waved the M-60 in his hands in front of him like a divining rod and made his way past where Lance was crouched.
"’scuse me, Brutha…" Ray Dog said in his deep baritone.
Slider rose up and fanned the Mossberg shotgun back and forth as he came up on the right. Slider came to be a member of the squad when they’d run into him at one of the bivouacs popping up on the roads along the way. He’d been traveling west from Jersey when the shit hit the fan. The fact that he happened to have the Mossberg and a shit-load of ammo in the trunk of his car pretty much bought him a place on the team. His ability to clear a room with the weapon and keep his head while doing it kept him there. His nickname, he said, came about as a result of his love for White Castle burgers. If all the food in the world disappeared overnight, it would be those greasy little hockey pucks that he’d miss the most.
The two men crab-walked past the group and crouched near a split-rail fence for a second to get their bearings. Then they ducked under the strut and made their way carefully across the field in a fast moving crouch. The barrels of their weapons swayed back and forth, following each soldier’s ever-wandering gaze. The rest of the squad dutifully followed along, each checking both the path in front of him and the one behind for even the slightest signs of movement.
Midway down the knoll, a dirt road cut across the field and angled down toward what looked like an old farmhouse. The building was still a good distance away, but its eaves could be made out over the tops of the trees. You could just see through the foliage that the structure was flanked by a small utility shed on the left and a large barn on the right, near the back. The barn looked to be set up for horses or cattle, maybe sheep. In another time, it would have been a place where folk could live out their entire lifetimes in peace. These days, it looked like a death trap.
Reaching the dirt road, the men stood up and let a little of their tension ease. Keeping their eyes moving and assessing their surroundings, they regrouped. Masterson made a few more quick hand signals and they turned as one and headed down the road in a two-by-three formation toward the house.
"Shit, Sarge, how many more of these Sweep and Clears are we going to do?" said the man they all called "A-Rab." He was one of those guys who was always complaining about how much work they all had to do, the conditions, the weather. It was always too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry for A-Rab. The Dog said once that A-Rab was the only guy he knew who could be getting laid and still find a way to complain about the pussy. All of it was whiny-assed bullshit, but carrying the M249 SAW as he was, he’d proven himself a valuable asset to the team. The gun could cut just about anything—living or dead—in half with a burst of its firepower. When you found yourself in shit as deep as this, that kind of weaponry made the difference between life or death; between being taken along or left behind.
"Can the chatter, Son. I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to your bullshit today," Masterson hissed in clipped tones.
A-Rab looked down, dejected; his diaper having been suitably spanked.
The six men continued to walk silently down the dirt road, each one carefully checking every shadow and shade for even a hint of motion. Once they’d seen to it that the area was clear, they began to relax and talk amongst themselves, albeit in low, hushed tones.
"Hey, Bruce," Lance said to the small, Asian man whose real name was William Takahashi, "did you get a quick one from that broad you were sweet talkin’ at that last compound?" Despite the fact that Takahashi was of Japanese heritage, the men had given him the nickname "Bruce" after Bruce Lee who, William theorized, was the only Asian guy they all knew.
Takahashi smiled broadly. "Let’s just say that she was very grateful at our having rescued her from the top of that water tower."
"Yeah," laughed Lance, "but did she show you her appreciation."
Bruce winked and grabbed at his crotch.
"The only thing was…" Ray Dog whispered back over his shoulder, "she was horny again an hour later."
The group laughed and for a moment it almost felt as if things weren’t so dire. For a second, they collectively forgot how bad things had gotten over the last few weeks, forgot about how most of the people they had known and loved were now dead. Dead or walking around with their faces torn off and trying to eat anything still left alive.
For a second, they were just a group of guys hangin’ out and shootin’ the shit.
Then, Masterson spoke and brought all of that to an end.
"Stow it, Ladies," he said in a whisper that to the men’s ears seemed louder than any scream. "We’ve got movement."
As one, the men dropped into a crouch and immediately broke off into the brush on whatever side of the road was closest.
"By the shed… on the right," hissed Masterson.
Lance directed his attention toward the small shack that looked like it was a combination utility shed and place for a gas-powered generator. The squat building had the same look as the larger ones far off across the homestead: colonial and just a step out of time.
For a moment, things looked pretty normal. The birds chirped in the trees, the grass swayed in the soft breeze and none of the dumbfucks could be seen. Things looked clear. Then, just below the rise of the hill where the shack stood, a small blur of color could be made out.
Then, another.
"Sarge, you amaze me sometimes," Bruce said quietly. "You sure you don’t have E.S.P? I mean, the way you track these fucks makes my head spin."