4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas (21 page)

So he’d held out.

But then, had it ended? No. Once put stumbling on dead feet among his fellow prisoners in the crowded lesser jail he’d found more of the same goddamned system. The prisoners themselves, led by the fat bastard of a
dairyo
and his eleven trustee officers had laid into him as soon as he arrived, shaking him down for money. They’d stretched him out and beat his ass black and blue with a hard plank bearing the prison rules when they’d found not so much as a brass
mon
tucked into his jaw or clenched between his buttocks.

He’d crawled off to one of the corners, every part of him tenderized by the rough morning’s treatment. All he’d wanted to do was curl up on the hard floor and sleep. He didn’t even care about finding himself a goddamned
tatami
mat.

Then, as shadows inched further along the floor, he’d begun to drift off, and he heard the latrine boss whisper to his assistant to ladle some piss into his
miso
and be sure the
honyaku
served it to him later on. He’d pretended not to hear, but he turned on his side and watched the man through slitted eyelids from then on.

Koda Moan, his name was, a lanky, wiry haired pickpocket with a foolish overbite, a brushy beard, and a sagging bag of a belly. He whispered too loud and laughed too long, and the droopy, fleshy wattle under his chin danced when he did either.

After hours of listening to the man’s grating laugh, Dog just hadn’t been able to stand it anymore. He’d surreptitiously unfastened his loincloth, limped up, and whipped it fast around Moan’s chicken neck from behind. He’d brought him face down onto the floor and driven both his shaky knees into the man’s back. Before anybody could raise the alarm or beat him away, he’d jerked Moan’s head back with a harsh crackle.

The other prisoners might’ve killed him if the
doshin
hadn’t heard the commotion, rushed in and pulled him out. Maybe it would’ve been better if they had.

Dog shrugged in answer to the young warden’s question. He breathed through his mouth. The fog of heat rose in the chilly air, backlit like a lightning cloud against the deepening shadows by the lantern light on the warden’s porch.

Just get it over with.

The warden frowned and sighed as though he had tried to help, as though any answer Dog might’ve given him would’ve made the slightest difference in his living or dying.

“Very well. Then you are sentenced to
shizai
. In the morning you will be beheaded, and your body will be used for
o-tameshi
.” Then, to the
doshin
guards, he said offhandedly, “Take him away.”

The policeman to Dog’s left cleared his throat.

“Pardon me, sir. Shall we place him in the death row cell, then?”

The warden looked aghast at being questioned.

“Of course! Where else?”

“Well sir, it’s just that … Minoru’s in there still, and he’s made a mess of the place.”

The warden seemed to recall something that vexed him.

“That damned monk … ! Well, we can’t put him back in the lesser jail with the other prisoners. They’d tear him to pieces. He’s only going to be there one night.”

The policeman bowed.

“Yes sir.”

Dog was hoisted to his feet as the warden rose, groaning and remarking about the cold, and retired to his warm office.

They led him shuffling across the twilight yard. He could hear someone chanting a
Nembutsu
over Moan’s body. Apparently he’d been popular with the other inmates, though Dog couldn’t see why. It sounded like it was coming from the lesser jail itself. The
eta
burial detail had probably left for the night.

Pray all you want over that scrawny son of a bitch,
thought Dog. He knew how the
eta
disposed of prisoner corpses. Tossed them in the river, or by the side of the road as soon as they were out of sight of the prison. Let Great King Enma look for him in the muck. Dog’s only regret was that he hadn’t stuffed the fool headfirst down the latrine.

“Who is Minoru?” said one of Dog’s guards, when they were well on their way.

“That’s right, Gorobei’s been sick,” said another. “You’d better tell him, Kinpachi.”

“Jinza brought him in,” said Kinpachi. “He’s a
kumoso
monk. The
eta
villagers down on the river complained that their brats were disappearing. Three of ’em in all. Well, they started going missing around the same time Minoru started staying in a hut out in the woods. Turns out he’d been luring ’em in with his flute playing and snatching ’em.”

“What for?” said Gorobei.

“He was eating them.”

“What!” exclaimed Gorobei.

“Yeah. He’s completely crazy. He says he was a samurai but he died and came back as a
jikininki
and now he has to eat people.”

“Then why does he eat
eta
?” quipped one of the other guards.

They all thought this was worth a laugh.

The guard holding Dog’s rope gave his bonds a tug.

“That’s some cellmate you’ve got, Red Dog. Ready to meet him?”

“That’s not the worst of it,” said Kinpachi. “I kinda feel sorry for this one. That Minoru’s really made a mess of the cell.”

“How?” said Gorobei.

“He sits there all day playing his flute and sculpting little
Jiz
ō
figures out of his own shit.”

Gorobei made a disgusted sound.

“Why the hell is he still here?”

“The warden doesn’t know what to do with him. He’s a monk, so he can’t be condemned to
shizai
, and his victims are all
eta
, so they might have to ship him off to Danzaemon for judgment. He’s waiting for word back from the
bakufu
in Edo.”

As they walked, they began to take note of the low, trilling sound of a flute.

“What in hell’s that?”

“That’s him! Minoru, playing his
shakuhachi
.”

“He’s allowed to keep it?”

“Take it from him if you want, Gorobei. It’s as filthy as he is.”

They turned a bend and came to the eastern corner of the compound, looking out on the white sand execution grounds and the low mound that had been used in the day’s
o-tameshi
demonstration. The ground seemed to glow eerily in the fading light, as though it had soaked up the blood of ghosts.

They drew up before the dark cell adjoining the grounds, and the flute cut off in the midst of its playing. The effect was like the cessation of a chorus of crickets in a foreboding wood.

Gorobei’s breath hissed.

“Creepy bastard,” he muttered.

As Gorobei stepped forward to let Dog in, the
doshin’s
face grimaced. Dog could smell it too. Rank and overpowering as an open trench, the heavy smell of excrement emanated from within.

As Gorobei swung the door open, a dark, hunched shadow shuffled and stirred inside.

“Look!” said Kinpachi, giggling and reaching up toward the lamp to shine it inside.

“No, no,” Gorobei insisted, but too late, his grinning partner cast a spot of light into the cell, briefly illuminating a yellow skinned, bug-eyed figure with a bald pate and dark, shabby robes. The monk held up one thin arm against the sudden intrusion of light. That hand and arm were splotched with dried, muddy stains that matched the finger marks smeared on the walls in the corner in which the monk sat. Dark little figurines, half a dozen in all, were neatly ordered against one wall.

Gorobei pushed aside Kinpachi’s lantern and the scene was doused again in shadow.

“Gah!” exclaimed Gorobei, retching. “I feel for the poor
eta
that has to scrub that out.”

The others laughed at Gorobei’s reaction. Kinpachi roughly undid Dog’s ropes and shoved him inside.

“Enjoy your last night on earth, Red Dog!” he offered.

Gorobei slammed the cell door with a clatter, and the
doshin
shambled off across the yard, talking of
sake
and women as their voices faded away.

Dog limped to the far side of the cell and put his back in the opposite corner, pulling his sleeve across his face to hamper the stench.

The only sound for some time was the unhurried breathing of the two men. The cell would have been black but for the white ground visible through the crossed cell bars and a single shaft of moonlight that slid through the tiny window high up on the back wall and pooled on the floor between the two men. As it was, Dog could just make out the thin form seated in the filthy corner, pop eyes shining like the unblinking gaze of an old
koi
fish. Each man’s breath hung like fog and intermingled high in the moonlit space between them.

He did not know how long they sat in silence before the monk produced his
shakuhachi
and began to play again, a meandering tune that seemed to wend in and out between the wood bars of their cell.

Abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.

“The world is ending tonight,” said Minoru in a plaintive voice, deep and gravelly, halfway between a moan and a growl.

Dog said nothing.

“They say,” Minoru went on, “no masters of the arts will appear when the world is coming to its end. So tell me, have you seen any great works of art lately? Even the flowers are gone in this season of death. Some would say there is art before our eyes, out there on the killing sand. But those so-called artists …
feh
! They do not call the
eta
butchers artists. If there is no art in butchering an animal, tell me then. What art in butchering men? No. The world is at its end.”

Dog only stared at the floor and rubbed life into his deadened feet, thankful for the abundance of space. He could stretch out for his last night of sleep if nothing else.

“Everything in the world is but a sham, and death is the only certainty,” said Minoru.

Dog paused, considering. The danger of lunatics was that they sometimes made sense.

“Would you like to know about my
Jiz
ō
?” said Minoru, gesturing in the dark to the little excrement sculptures flanking him.

Dog shut his eyes and lay his head back. Maybe there would be no sleep on his last night after all.

“No,” he said. “Shut up.”

Dog could tell by Minoru’s voice that a grin had split his ghostly face.

“Ah! I thought maybe you were deaf and dumb. The
doshin
told you what I am, didn’t they?”

Dog shifted on his side, resting his ear on his palm.

“Yeah,” said Dog. “They told me.”

“As a
jikininki
, I am cursed to go digging for corpses in graveyards at night and to eat the dead. I eat every part. Their tongues, noses, their genitals … I eat their assholes. In life I was a samurai, proud and vain. These
Jiz
ō
,” he said, as he again gestured to the invisible figurines. “They are both my curse and my salvation.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” said Dog. “Shut up.”

But Minoru went on as if he were deaf himself.

“You know how children who die before their parents are doomed to pile stones at the banks of the River Sanzu because they have not lived long enough to purify themselves with good karma? It came to me, while I was chewing on the leg of a nun I had dug up near Hiroshima that although the blessed divinity Ojizō-sama hides these children from demons beneath his robes when they are prayed for, there were still some children who might never make it across due to the unfortunate circumstances of their birth. I mean
eta
children. Who is more defiled spiritually from the womb to the grave than these poor, filthy creatures?
Eta
are a living blight, surely, but their little children … who prays for them, that blessed Ojizō-sama would deign to hear?”

Dog stared across the cell now, his blood beginning to simmer.

“And so I thought, what better savior for these muddy little souls, than a poor, damned
jikininki
? You see, I serve these unfortunates in two ways. Firstly, in cutting their lives short, I spare them a pitiful existence of uncleanness and spiritual debasement. Secondly, when I consume them, my body transmutes them, breaks down their impurities, and what I at last eliminate is their refined selves. I fashion these into little
Jiz
ō
, to honor Ojizō-sama, so he may then take these neglected souls at last across the River Sanzu. Do you see how fine and loving a
jikininki
I am? In all of human history there has never been a
jikininki
like me. I am a savior to the
eta
. At night I hear their little voices calling to me from the banks of the River Sanzu, calling my name and thanking me. Thank you, Uncle Minoru! (they say) Bless you,
jikininki
! Bless you!”

Dog watched him splutter and shout in his excitement, watched the tears spill from his fish eyes. In the end, the monk was so overcome that he sobbed into his filthy sleeve.

Dog wanted to tell the fool he was
eta.
But why die at the disgusting hands of this monster, or dirty himself killing him? He was going to die anyway. Why not die as no
eta
ever had? By the
shizai,
like a legitimate person
.
Let him take that joke with him to the next world.

Minoru returned to his flute, and played haltingly for some time.

After a while, snow began to fall, and Dog heard a pair of wooden
geta
crunching across the grounds. In a few moments a samurai in dark clothes flaked with white came to stand before the cell. He was very pale, and meticulously groomed, obviously a person of worth and not any prison official he’d seen about. Surely he was no
doshin
.

Minoru continued to play, and the stranger listened. Then he moved and lit the lamp outside, shining light into the cell and becoming a featureless shadow.

Minoru lowered his stained flute and bowed respectfully to the stranger.

“’Evening, samurai,” he said, smiling a gap-toothed grin.

Dog could barely stand to look at him.

“You are the monk, Minoru,” said the stranger, in a cultured tone.

“I am he.”