Max Brooks - World War Z

It took me Three days to make it all The way down To rhe ground floor. This was partially due to my disgraceful physical stamina. A trained athlete would have found my makeshift rope antics a challenge so you can imagine what they were for me. In retrospect it’s a miracle I didn’t plunge to my death or succumb to infection with all the scrapes and scratches I endured. My body was held together with adrenaline and pain medication. I was exhausted, nervous, horribly sleep deprived. I couldn’t rest in the conventional sense. Once it got dark I would move everything I could against the door, then sit in a corner, crying, nursing my wounds, and cursing my frailty until the sky began to lighten. I did manage to close my eyes one night, even drift off to sleep for a few minutes, but then the banging of a siafu against the front door sent me scurrying out the window. I spent the remainder of that night huddled on the balcony of the next apartment. Its sliding glass door was locked and I just didn’t have the strength to kick it in.

My second delay was mental, not physical, specifically my otaku’s obsessive-compulsive drive to find just the right survival gear, no matter how long it took. My online searches had taught me all about the right weapons, clothing, food, and medicine. The problem was finding them in an apartment complex of urban salarymen.

[Laughs.]

I made quite a sight, shimmying down that sheet-rope in a businessman’s raincoat and Reiko’s bright, pink, vintage “Hello Kitty” schoolbag. It had taken a long time, but by the third day I had almost everything I needed, everything except a reliable weapon.

There wasn’t anything?

[Smiles.] This was not America, where there used to be more firearms than people. True fact-an otaku in Kobe hacked this information directly from your National Rifle Association.

I meant a hand tool, a hammer, a crowbar…

What salary man does his own home maintenance? I thought of a golf club-there were many of those-but I saw what the man across the way had tried to do. I did find an aluminum baseball bat, but it had seen so much action that it was too bent out of shape to be effective. I looked everywhere, believe me, but there was nothing hard or strong or sharp enough I could use to defend myself. I also reasoned that once I made it to the street, I might have better luck-a truncheon from a dead policeman or even a soldier’s firearm.

Those were the thoughts that almost got me killed. I was four floors from the ground, almost, literally, at the end of my rope. Each section I made extended for several floors, just enough length to allow me to gather more sheets. This time I knew would he the last. By now I had my entire escape plan worked out: land on the fourth-floor balcony, break into the apartment for a new set of sheets (I’d given up looking for a weapon by then), slide down to the sidewalk, steal the most convenient motorcycle (even though I had no idea how to ride one), streaking off like some old-timey bosozoku, and maybe even grab a girl or two along the way. [Laughs.] My mind was barely functional by that point. If even the first part of the plan had worked and I did manage to make it to the ground in that state… well, what matters is that I didn’t.

I landed on the fourth-floor balcony, reached for the sliding door, and looked up right into the face of a siafu. It was a young man, midtwenties, wearing a torn suit. His nose had been bitten off, and he dragged his bloody face across the glass. I jumped hack, grabbed on to my rope, and tried to climb back up. My arms wouldn’t respond, no pain, no burning-I mean they had just reached their limit. The siafu began howling and beating his fists against the glass. In desperation, I tried to swing myself from side to side, hoping to maybe rappel against the side of the building and land on the balcony next to me. The glass shattered and the siafu charged for my legs. I pushed off from the building, letting go of the rope and launching myself with all my might. . . and I missed.

The only reason we are speaking now is that my diagonal fall carried me onto the balcony below my target. I landed on my feet, stumbled forward, and almost went toppling off the other side. I stumbled into the apartment and immediately looked around for any siafu. The living room was empty, the only piece of furniture a small traditional table propped up against the door. The occupant must have committed suicide like the others. I didn’t smell anything foul so I guessed he must have thrown himself out of the window. I reasoned that I was alone, and just this small measure of relief was enough to cause my legs to give out from under me. I slumped against the living room wall, almost delirious with fatigue. I found myself looking at a collection of photographs decorating the opposite wall. The apartment’s owner had been an old man, and the photographs told of a very rich life. He’d had a large family, many friends, and had traveled to what seemed every exciting and exotic locale around the world. I’d never even imagined leaving my bedroom, let alone even leading that kind of life. I promised myself that if I ever made it out of this nightmare, I wouldn’t just survive, I would live!

My eyes fell on the only other item in the room, a Kami Dana, or traditional Shinto shrine. Something was on the floor beneath it, I guessed a suicide note. The wind must have blown it off when I entered. I didn’t feel right just leaving it there. I hobbled across the room and stooped to pick it up. Many Kami Dana have a small mirror in the center. My eye caught a reflection in that mirror of something shambling out of the bedroom.

The adrenaline kicked in just as I wheeled around. The old man was still there, the bandage on his face telling me that he must have reanimated not too long ago. He came at me; I ducked. My legs were still shaky and he managed to catch me by the hair. I twisted, trying to free myself. He pulled my face toward his. He was surprisingly fit for his age, muscle equal to, if not superior to, mine. His bones were brittle though, and I heard them crack as I grabbed the arm that caught me. I kicked him in the chest, he flew back, his broken arm was still clutching a tuft of my hair. He knocked against the wall, photographs falling and showering him with glass. He snarled and came at me again. I backed up, tensed, then grabbed him by his one good arm. I jammed it into his back, clamped my other hand around the back of his neck, and with a roaring sound I didn’t even know I could make, I shoved him, ran him, right onto the balcony and over the side. He landed face up on the pavement, his head still hissing up at me from his otherwise broken body.

Suddenly there was a pounding on the front door, more siafu that’d heard our scuffle. I was operating on full instinct now. I raced into the old man’s bedroom and began ripping the sheets off his bed. I figured it wouldn’t take too many, just three more stories and then… then I stopped, frozen, as motionless as a photograph. That’s what had caught my attention, one last photograph that was on the bare wall in his bedroom. It was black and white, grainy, and showed a traditional family. There was a mother, father, a little boy, and what I guessed had to be the old man as a teenager in uniform. Something was in his hand, something that almost stopped my heart. I bowed to the man in the photograph and said an almost tearful “Arigato.”

What was in his hand?

I found it at the bottom of a chest in his bedroom, underneath a collection of bound papers and the ragged remains of the uniform from the photo. The scabbard was green, chipped, army-issue aluminum and an improvised, leather grip had replaced the original sharkskin, but the steel. . . bright like silver, and folded, not machine stamped … a shallow, tort curvature with a long, straight point. Flat, wide ridge lines decorated with the kikusui, the Imperial chrysanthemum, and an authentic, not acid-stained, river bordering the tempered edge. Exquisite workmanship, and clearly forged for battle.