Zombie Ryu: Episode One

Keith Blount ePubTest

ZOMBIE RYU

Episode One

TORN ASUNDER

ZOMBIE RYU

Episode One: Torn Asunder

By Jon F. Merz

© 2012 All rights reserved

Cover art by Courtney Rose

© 2012 All rights reserved

Other Great EBooks by Jon F. Merz

The Lawson Vampire Series

THE FIXER

THE INVOKER

THE DESTRUCTOR

THE SYNDICATE

THE PRICE OF A GOOD DRINK

THE COURIER

THE KENSEI

ENEMY MINE

THE SHEPHERD

THE RIPPER

A FOG OF FURY

THE ENCHANTER

THE INFILTRATOR

MISSION: MALTA

FROSTY THE HITMAN

RED TIDE

INTERLUDE

RUDOLF THE RED NOSED ROGUE

OATHBREAKER

Standalone Thrillers

PARALLAX

VICARIOUS

SHADOW CHASER

DANGER-CLOSE

THIS TIME OF NIGHT

PREY

For Younger Readers

THE NINJA APPRENTICE

Chapter One

When darkness fell, the rumors always seemed more real.

Shigoko Hasegawa shifted on the threadbare futon listening to the cicadas buzz. Shafts of moonlight fell diffused through the shoji rice paper screen doors of the farmhouse she lived in with her father. The old wooden one-story structure was falling apart. Her father had promised that the harvest would bring them enough money to repair the leaky roof and some of the timbers that had seen better days. But the harvest was still weeks away and Shigoko wasn’t even sure it would earn them enough to last the winter.

At eighteen, she should have been married off by now. But she’d steadfastly refused to even entertain the last offer that had come from another farming family in the next village. Shigoko didn’t want to be married and confined to a life of waiting on her husband. She longed to roam the countryside in the service of the local daimyo Munetomo as one of his famed samurai warriors.

But she was just a girl.

And worse, she’d been born into a farming family.

Shigoko tucked her hands behind her head and stared up at the simple shelf across the room. On it, an old kabuto samurai helmet sat defying the passage of time. Shigoko dutifully dusted it each day so it never looked worse for wear. It had belonged to her father once. A long time ago. A long time before he’d retired and given up the ways of a warrior for the backbreaking work of a farmer.

Shigoko never understood why he had forsaken the path for the uncertainty of farming. After all, the path of a samurai was carved in stone: fight hard and die in service to your lord. What could be more honorable than that?

But Shigoko’s father disagreed with the politics that often resulted in the spilled blood of young men. Besides, he’d told her one evening after dinner. There is much honor to be gained from providing others with food so they may live and enjoy life.

Beneath the kabuto rested the katana sword that her father had once used. He never touched it these days. This blade, he’d said, has taken more lives than it has preserved. I want nothing more to do with it.

Sometimes, when her father would go into town to buy or sell or trade with others, Shigoko would unsheathe the nearly three-foot blade and practice swinging it outside in the fields furthest from the small road that led to their farm. After all, she was not a samurai, and even being seen with the sword in her possession could result in her death if another warrior spotted such an offense.

How was it, she so often wondered, that her own destiny had cruelly placed her in such a lowly position? Born a girl, first, and then also into farming of all things. They were both so far from what she wanted to achieve in her life.

And yet, it was the fate she’d been handed by the gods.

A gentle breeze blew in from the east and the tree branches seemed to shiver, rustling in the night. Shigoko pulled the blanket up closer to her chin. Night was when she felt most vulnerable. Lately, there had been rumors spreading throughout the countryside. Rumors of creatures that wandered the dark woods and preyed upon the isolated homes of villagers. The only evidence they left behind were smears of blood and ruined homes.

No bodies were ever found.

An undulating snore interrupted her thoughts. Her father sleeping in the next room had shifted on to his back. Shigoko smiled in spite of herself. She loved her father dearly. And he never pressured her to get married. He knew that she had dreams; that she wished for a life beyond what he’d been able to give her. Shigoko’s mother had died when she was but three. It had been her father and her ever since.

Someday, you’ll find your place in this world, her father had told her. Just be sure that it’s what you truly want. Sometimes, we can become so fixated on what we think we desire, that we miss the true path destiny sets before us.

Did you think you were destined to be a samurai all your life?

He’d smiled. I thought my role was to serve until an enemy cut me down. He’d paused as if reliving some old memory. Her father never wanted to talk about the days when he’d carried the daisho of a samurai. But then I learned humility. And I learned to respect…and even love the simple life of a farmer. That is what I was meant to do.

Shigoko turned on to her side and frowned. It was easy for her father. He’d already been a samurai. And he’d been respected enough at one time to be released from service to go into farming. She wondered how hard it had been to convince the daimyo he’d served to let him do that. But then again, she knew her father could be very convincing when he wanted to be.

How would she, though, find her true path? How would she manage to locate a destiny that seemed so far removed and hidden from where she was now? She was pretty enough, but the last thing she wanted was for her destiny to depend on her looks.

That would be a fate worse than death, she decided.

She heard the clucking of chickens in the hen house and frowned. What had them startled at this time of night? There was no danger from the foxes that prowled the woods nearby. Shigoko had seen to that by building an elaborate wooden pen that was virtually impenetrable.

But the clucking grew louder.

Shigoko sighed and tossed off the bedroll covers. Muttering to herself, she shuffled across the tatami mats toward the front door of their home, stepping down into the simple sandals she wore around the farm. How was she going to get any sleep with all that silly noise from the hen house?

She heard one final burst of clucking and then everything went silent.

Everything.

Shigoko frowned. Even the cicadas were quiet.

She reached out her hand and slid back the shoji door. The moonlight spilling across the farm lit everything nearly as well as if the sun had been up. Nothing seemed amiss as she stepped out onto the verandah and looked around. There was the hay cart, half-filled from when she’d stopped earlier for dinner. The stacks of firewood were undisturbed. And the hen house…

Shigoko squinted despite the moonlight.

Was that blood?

She sniffed the air and found it contained a curious scent she couldn’t quite place. Like the time a wolf had died and Shigoko had found its decomposing body littering one the fields, amid an unbearable stench and a black cloud of ravenous flies. By the time she’d found the corpse, it was heaving with maggots. But she’d never forgotten the stench.