Warnings: VIOLENCE. Bone trauma, tacks to the face, nails in feet, blows to the head.


Lucky Child

Chapter 55:

"The Final Stand"


Tom used the heel of his hand to push up his bangs, that small motion he used to corral them in place, instinctual and habitual and perfectly him. Also perfectly futile considering the eighty percent humidity that made the night feel like a mélange of wet cotton and mosquitoes (and made his hair fall back down not two seconds later), but that was the summertime in Houston for you. He pushed his bangs up again and said, "What about that one?"

He pointed at "that one" with his free hand. The owners of the house weren't home, judging by the single light burning in the two-story foyer and the rest of the dark windows. The thing was a total McMansion, but the brick wall around it and the wrought iron gate looked like something from medieval Scotland.

"Too many windows on the ground floor," I said, eyeing the offending planes of glass. I glanced across the street. "Oh, that one there? That wall…"

A car passed, then, forcing us from the middle of the street to the sidewalk. Tom—not one for hand-holding, too self-conscious of his sweaty palms—brushed my shoulder blades with his fingers, following in my wake and out of the path of the Mercedes's blue-tinged halogen headlights. Rich neighborhood if a car like that lived here, not to mention the McMansions lining the quiet lane. Granted, not all of them were McMansions (this was too old and nice an area and had several historic homes, in fact) but there were just enough of those architectural monstrosities to draw my eternal ire.

Tom studied the colonial two-story with the white columns and shuttered windows with a frown. "But are those shutters big enough? I'd have to see the back, see how secure it is."

"True. Most of these we need to see the back."

"Think it even has a back yard?" He craned his neck. "Doesn't look like it has a side fence, and we'd need one for security."

"Yeah, we would." I pointed to the home's southern end. "I like the chimney, though. Hopefully it works."

"Fires in winter. That'd be handy when the power inevitably goes out."

"For real."

"I liked that one over on Maple, with the portcullis up the side."

"I mean, I do like it, but is it secure?" I asked, looping my arm through his (the pin in it panged with pain, but I was having too good a time to care). "Couldn't they climb up?"

His eyebrow rose. "We're talking zombies, though. They can't climb."

Some couples talked about their future homes in terms of kitchen size, rooms for new babies, or yards for dogs. Tom and I, though? We discussed our future home in terms of zombies, specifically zombie invasions—which we were both pretty certain would occur someday. Would certainly be more exciting than the current state of the world was shaping up to be. And hell, I'd enjoy a zombie invasion more than living in this world after the recent presidential election. A zombie outbreak would be a nice reprieve from all the emboldened racists and sexists popping up in my Facebook feed…

"I was talking about the people," I said. "People can climb trellises, and they're the most dangerous part of any zombie invasion."

He laughed. "Oh, right."

I waved at the houses, the lights in the too-big-to-board-up windows. "Have I mentioned lately that I love this?"

Another mild touch on my back, soft and understated. "Have I mentioned lately that I love you?"

He bent to kiss me, and I let him. He was too damn tall even though I wore boots with a heel, Tom 6'4 and as lanky as a corn stalk in June, stubble of his chin raking my skin like dry husk.

"Maybe." I pushed at his chest, nudging him back so I could look up at his blue eyes with a smile. "But seriously. This is great. Picking out our future home?"

"Our future, zombie-defensible home. Because that's what's important."

My eyes rolled. "Mom insists we'll need an extra bedroom for a kid—"

(Tom shuddered at the thought; that's why I loved him.)

"—but what's really important are the windows, and if they're too big to board up."

"Yeah," he said. "That and the number of exits."

"And the vantage point of the surrounding neighborhood."

"And a defense perimeter."

"And a wood-burning fireplace for when the EMP strike knocks out power and we're reduced to burning furniture for warmth as we scrounge expired canned goods for survival."

"We're just lucky we live in Houston," he said, "and we only have, like, two days of winter a year."

I giggled and started to walk forward, but he looped a single finger into my belt loop and tugged me to him. He wasn't one for PDA (neither was I, actually) but on that dark street so late at night, there was no one around to see. He said, "I'm serious, though. Have I told you lately that I love you?"

I put a hand on his chest, smiling at him from beneath my lashes. "Say it again."

He kissed me. "I love you because you won't buy a house for the curb appeal." He kissed me again. "Just for its ability to serve as a fortress against zombies."

And I kissed him. "I love you, too, for being so on board with my zombie paranoia."

We were the worst. Tom and I were the absolute worst. Especially in private, when the PDA-check came off and we turned into the gooshiest, grossest lovebirds anyone ever saw. In public we maintained a bit of distance so as not to make our friends barf, of course, but there on that dark street, liveoak trees swaying on a warm summer wind? Alone, we were the kind of couple we'd normally love to hate.

We would be together forever, if we got our way.

I pulled away from him, fingers tangling in his shirtsleeve, and nodded at a house down the block. "Now, how about this one?"

Tom frowned as we wandered over. It was a nice saltbox house in royal blue, very east-coast, with a white fence around it and appropriately-sized shutters at all of the lattice windows—of which there weren't too many, and they were all set pretty high off the ground. The solid front door, painted cherry red, would definitely keep out the zombies for a little while, as would that fence stretching all the way around the property. A huge metal gate emblazoned with a calligraphy B would keep out the cars of would-be marauders from our driveway, too, and that cupola on top? If it was accessible from the inside, we'd be able to see above the neighbors and onto the streets beyond. Damn near perfect, so far as I was concerned.

Tom stared at the perfect house. His head tilted to one side. He shoved his hands in his pockets and hummed, solemn-faced and quiet.

"I dunno," he said.

My brow furrowed. "What?" I pointed out the house's charming features one by one. "Wall, fence, small windows, cupola for sniping. Checks all the boxes. What's not to like?"

But Tom remained unconvinced. "Do you think it's too…I dunno…"

"Too what?"

"Too guilty-suburban-white-people-trying-hard-to-look-less-rich-than-they-actually-are?"

I blinked at him, blinked at the house, realized it was a literal sky-blue house with a white picket fence around it, and doubled over laughing. Tom somehow maintained a perfectly straight face, staring at the house without acknowledging that he'd reduced me to a puddle of giggles. Dammit, he'd roped me right into that one.

"Oh god," I said, feigning horror as I wiped at my streaming eyes. "Oh god, Tom, you're right."

"I dunno about you," he said, still keeping a straight face, "but if we were that obnoxious, I'm just sayin' I'd probably kill us before the zombies could."

"Put us out of our clichéd misery."

"We move in there, me and you, and we'd be the whitest white people to ever white." And it was so true—blue eyed with light brown hair, we'd been mistaken for siblings that one time we took my dad out for dinner, the very portrait of Nordic Anglo-Saxon milquetoast middle classers. Tom mournfully intoned (but with that devious glimmer in his eye that said he knew just how funny he was), "We wouldn't deserve to live in the post-zombie world, is what I'm saying. Not when if we're that cliché."

And I was laughing again, unable to keep quiet. "Fuck, Tom, you're so right!"

"Just add a golden retriever and we'd be the poster children for pretentious white suburbanites, even if we did buy a good zombie-fortress-house."

"Heaven forbid." I grabbed his arm, dragged him off, away from the house before his deadpan jokes killed me. "Let's go before I barf."

"Oh no, babe." He grabbed my hand and stared deep into my eyes, faux concern plastered across his face. "You want some organic, herbal, non-GMO, gluten-and-cruelty-free, vegan ginger tea I got at the farmer's market?"

"Careful. You're sounding like a WASP already."

Tom beamed. "I'm practicing for when we get the cliché house!"

Because words failed me, replaced by unending giggles, I kissed him again to shut him up, but I laughed against his mouth, and he laughed too, and we held onto one another to keep from falling down.

We would be together forever, if we got our way.

But we did not get our way, now did we?


Hamaguchi stared at Botan in silent, abject horror. Not that I blame him. I did the exact same, looking at Botan's giggling, three-eyed face with jaw dropped behind my gasmask. He pressed up against the wall as if he wanted to pass through it, turn from something resembling a zombie and into a full-on ghost. Me, though? I fet too numb to do anything but sit there, motionless, stunned into rigidity by the sight of Botan's face.

Three eyes. Three. Three of them, two like normal and the third on her forehead.

And she'd been cut by the Shadow Sword.

And she was still giggling, gazing at Hamaguchi with head lolling to one side, eyes livid scarlet against her pale skin. The man with the broken arm had fainted, I noticed, falling silent as soon as Botan revealed her new…feature. Appendage? Something like that.

No wonder Spirit World had kept her under lock and key. I hated to say it, but just then, I almost wished she hadn't escaped.

"Side effects," indeed.

The scissors in Hamaguchi's hand dropped to the floor with a clatter. "A third—a third eye," he stammered, pointing at Botan's forehead. "A third eye!"

Once again, Botan giggled—sounding for all the world like a little ghost child from a horror movie, creepy to an exaggerated extreme. I watched, unable to move, as she took two lilting steps toward Hamaguchi before the man gasped and dodged to the side. Mist swirled around their bodies, disturbed by their sudden movements. Botan's eyes followed Hamaguchi as he skirted near the windows, mouth stretched in a hideous, demented leer that put Hamaguchi's earlier smirk to shame.

That smirk—not a shade as intimidating as Botan's, not anymore—returned when he looked out the window. Botan frowned when Hamaguchi loosed a giggle of his own and pointed through the glass.

"Even with that thing, you're not match for so many at once," he said.

I'm not sure when I stood up, but somehow I managed to get my feet under me, head fuzzy and woozy as I swayed in place. From a standing position I could see out the window, down into the school's front courtyard, and over it to the school's front gate.

The gate through which half a dozen infected were running, pelting headlong for the door of Meiou High.

My blood ran cold—a feat I would have assumed impossible consider the ice already streaming through my veins.

Hamaguchi turned back to Botan, smile wide and horrible, face still embedded with tacks, blood oozing from around their metal posts. "I don't know what you are, or—"

He never got the chance to say whatever intimidating crap he'd intended.

In the space between breaths, Botan crossed the room and punched Hamaguchi in the face. The man staggered back without a sound, too stunned even to cry out, stumbling against the windows behind a spray of blood—of blood and teeth, four broken, bloody bones falling to the tile floor with a tinkle. Before he could hit the ground Botan clamped a hand around his throat, squeezing so tightly I saw the indent of her grip against his mottled skin. With strength belied by her slender limbs she lifted her arm, hoisting Hamaguchi by the neck in to the air, his feet kicking helplessly at Botan's shins. He grabbed her wrist, of course, tugging in vain at her iron arm, but his face purpled within seconds and his frantic struggling weakened like a kitten drowned in a burlap sack.

"Botan, no!"

I didn't intend to yell at her, nor to throw myself across the room at the two of them, body carving a trail amidst the mist just as Botan's had. That's what happened, though. I darted to her, stood between her body and Hamaguchi, and clasped onto her right elbow, trying in vain to pull Hamaguchi down, putting all my weight onto her joint in an effort to save my teacher—my teacher who had tried to kill me, sure, but the teacher who was infected, and therefore did not deserve to die. Not like this.

And not when Botan would surely be punished for it.

Too bad my efforts were for naught.

After favoring me with an annoyed look, Botan backhanded me with her left arm, knuckles grinding my mask with punishing force into my cheekbone.

There was no avoiding a pirouette, spinning on my feet like a ballerina in a gale before staggering away, concussed ears ringing all the louder. I slammed into a student's desk and doubled over it, hands splayed on the flat plane, breathing shallow through my mouth as a tidal wave of nausea swept up my clenching throat. Hit had nearly knocked my mask loose, but not quite, the suction-like force of its rubber seal clinging fast to my face.

Botan giggled.

I turned.

Botan stared up at Hamaguchi with that unending demented smile of hers. Hamaguchi's tongue lolled like a glutted slug from his gaping mouth, rivulets of saliva running down his cheeks, eyes bulging and red-rimmed above his swollen nose. Hands fell limp at his sides, chest shuddering as it tried in vain to draw in air.

I threw my arms around Botan' waist.

I'm not sure what made me hug her like that—what made me bury my face between her shoulder blades and hold on tight, breathing into the expanse of her back. She tried to pry my arms away with her left hand, growling unintelligibly all the while, but she couldn't shake me loose if she wanted to keep Hamaguchi suspended in the air. I squeezed her as my heart beat a frantic mambo against my ribs, eyes and throat stinging behind my gasmask—and not because sneezing gas had seeped in.

Out of nowhere, it had become very, very hard not to cry.

"Botan," I said, but even I barely heard me through my mask. I hugged her harder and yelled, "Botan, stop it, please!"

Botan did not stop. In fact, her arm flexed, and Hamaguchi made a terrible grizzled noise. Her left hand grasped one of my wrists and squeezed, fingernails sliding into my skin like feet into ill-fitting shoes—but I didn't let go. Not even when the firework of pain brightened as her grip went tighter still.

"He's infected," I pleaded. "This isn't him. You can't kill him, Botan, you just can't!"

Botan growled, low and deep in her throat like a rabid dog—but the nails digging hard into my skin eased back, pulled out of the gouges they'd dug the merest sliver of an inch.

It was hardly anything at all—but it had to be enough.

"I know you're in there Botan!" I said. "Stop it! This isn't him, but this most certainly isn't you!"

For a moment I wondered if my intervention had been effort wasted. If there was no stopping Botan now that she'd lost control, and if Hamaguchi's life would end thanks to the fallen dominoes of my poor decisions, starting with my decision to confront Hiei, which lead to Botan's injury, which lead to this horrible fate that would end Botan's life as surely as it would end Hamaguchi's—but Botan gasped, sound sharp and sweet somehow, and dropped Hamaguchi to the floor.

I caught her as she fell to her knees, propping her up as she wound a hand into the fabric of my shirt. Four crescent moons on my arm bled trickles of sullen blood, joined the blood already on Botan's hands, but I ignored the smarting pain as Botan panted, hands over her blood-smeared face. One large eye—magenta instead of red—peered at Hamaguchi with horror through her splayed fingers.

"Oh no," Botan said through her labored breath. "Oh—oh no!"

I shushed her, rubbing her back in comforting circles. "Botan, it's OK. It's all right. But we need—

She ignored me. "Keiko, Keiko, I'm sorry. I—I tried to tell you!"

"Hey, it's all right." The hat should've been a dead giveaway the minute Botan refused to take it off, but I'd been too distracted at the time to give it proper thought—which was my fault, not hers. With a glance at the unconscious (but still breathing, thank god) Hamaguchi, I said, "Let's get out of here. There are more coming. We need to—"

On cue, a shout rang out on a floor below, feet hitting the ground as a door slammed open. Botan's hand descended on my arm, fingernails easing back into my cuts again. I winced, but she appeared not to notice, dragging me to her with surprising strength. Her breathing evened out like a snapping rubber band, pants vanishing as if someone had hit the mute button.

"No, Keiko." She still covered her face with one hand, eyes still wide and bloodshot between her fingers—but her voice had flattened, level and chill. "You need to run."

"What?! Why? I'm not leaving you!"

"You have to. You must. You—" Her breathing picked up again, but instead of its earlier ragged tempo, it came in short, quick bursts like a revving engine. "You have to go, Keiko. Now."

"Botan, no!" My turn to grab her arm, teeth bared behind my growling lips. Feet slammed up the stairs, so loudly I felt them in the floor. "I'm not fucking leaving you behind!"

Botan yanked her hand from mine. She stumbled to her feet, staggering toward the classroom door with hand trailing behind, warding me off—but as I rose to my own feet to follow, Botan whirled. Her hand dropped from her face like the blade of a guillotine.

"You have to run!" she roared. "You have to leave me, Keiko!"

I started to argue.

I started to.

But the sight of Botan's eyes turning from magenta to crimson stopped me cold.

As the infected approached, running and gibbering up the stairs, Botan wheeled toward the door. Her hands dropped to her sides, chest still rising and falling like that revving engine, squaring up to confront our enemies. If she had the ability to aim herself at them instead of me, surely she had the control to just run, didn't she? I darted over and grabbed her arm, pleas for her to come with me at the ready on my tongue.

Botan placed a hand on my chest and shoved, not even looking as she threw me backward onto the floor.

"Get out, Keiko," she said in that voice of deathly calm. "I can't promise I won't attack—"

The words died. She made a strangled sound in her throat—and then she giggled.

She giggled that giggle that heralds the approach of Death.

A cough behind me revealed that Hamaguchi had regained consciousness. I turned and found him rolling onto his stomach, face still purple, one hand raising in a shaking point.

A point aimed straight at me—and a point the infected saw when they hurtled into view through the classroom doorway, climbing and clawing over each other in an effort to get inside. Six of them at least, maybe more, a tangle of limbs and lashing hands that made them seem bigger than perhaps they really were.

My stabbed shoulder snag with pain.

But I guess it didn't matter how many there were. Not when I was injured like this.

"Get her!" Hamaguchi croaked through his abused throat. "Get her!"

His words were a trigger to a gun—but this gun wasn't loaded with just the infected. Botan waited ready in the chamber, too. I watched with mouth agape as she threw back her head and roared, a wordless cry of rage and bloodthirst, uncaring as the infected swarmed her like a hoard of locusts on a flower. I needn't have worried, though, because with a thrust of her arms she sent them flying off of her, bodies like dolls made of straw as they hit the ceiling, the floor, and the walls.

Her name slipped from my mouth unbidden. "Botan!"

Botan rounded on me at once, eyes ablaze with crimson fury. For the most fleeting of moments I wondered if she'd say something witty, cock her head and smile her charming smile—but instead she advanced on me with bloody hands outstretched, walking past the infected (who climbed steadily to their feet around us) straight toward me.

To be honest, I think I owe my life to those infected people.

I froze in place at the sight of Botan's hungry eyes and reaching hands—but the infected got her before she could get to me, one on the floor latching onto Botan's leg as she passed him. Another tossed his arms around her neck, and another grabbed her hand, dragging her down to the floor with a chorus of inhuman screeches and another of Botan's feral roars.

It hit me like a bucket of cold water.

Botan was beyond my help.

Horrifying as it sounded, Botan—the feral reaper who could not tell friend from foe—had been right.

The only option left was to leave her behind.

I'm not proud of what I did next. I'm not proud that I snagged her baseball bat off the ground, went to the classroom window, and opened it. I'm not proud that I shimmied along the ledge to the class next door. I'm not proud that I climbed into the other window and ran headlong for the stairwell, leaving Botan to fight the infected all alone, their cries and hers following me like ghosts into the dark.

I had walked on a foot-wide ledge three stories in the air, but still.

I had never felt more like a coward in my life.


As Botan's murderous shrieks and the aggressive bellows of the infected waged war below, I booked it for the third floor of the fine arts wing, where I'd hidden my final Goodie Bag. The journey passed quicker than I thought it would, though perhaps my perception skewed under the persuasive influence of pain and panic, rooms passing at breakneck pace as I strode past them. I had enough presence of mind to walk, not run, lest the pound of my footfalls give away my position to the infected and the newly awakened Hamaguchi.

Hamaguchi.

He just wouldn't stay down, would he? Not that I knew what to do now that Botan had shown up and gone fucking nuts. Hell, I'd barely known what to do about Hamaguchi even before she'd arrived and thrown my plans into disarray. Sure, my traps had worked on him, but it was Yusuke who'd smash the Makai Whistle and end Hamaguchi's rampage. Most I could do was smack him upside the head and hope he passed the fuck out. Most I could do was run and run and smack and dodge and hide and hope Botan didn't get killed, or that she didn't kill Hamaguchi, or that she didn't kill me if I got too close, or that I didn't get myself killed some other bogus way—

My breath came sharp and hard and fast as I reached the end of the fine arts wing and ducked into the painting classroom, where pigment-stained tables surrounded a large desk where the teacher demonstrated proper brush techniques. I raided the A/C vent in the corner before hiding under this desk, clutching the Goodie Bag to my heaving chest, blocked from sight by the desk's metal front that extended all the way to the floor. The place reeked of acrylic and plaster once I took off my gasmask and took a gulp of clear air, but even through those aromas I tasted the acrid sting of sneezing gas on my clothes and hair. My eyes watered even from secondhand exposure.

Botan had withstood the gas like it was nothing.

What in the fucking hell had she become?

What in the fucking hell had my negligence turned sweet, loving Botan into?

What in the fucking goddamn hell had the Shadow Sword done to my adorable Botan?

Not that it really mattered. No one could answer my questions as I crouched under the desk, baseball bat tucked painfully between my ribs and knees, slowly and quietly unpacking the Goodie Bag that contained my final Big Gun. I couldn't even hear the fighting downstairs anymore, distance rendering the fray inaudible. There was no telling if Botan had beaten the infected, or if the infected had bested even her supernatural strength. My shoulder, still on fire from Hamaguchi's strike, throbbed only half as painfully as my temples, stress summoning a firestorm of a headache from what felt like the bowels of hell. God, how could I be so selfish, leaving Botan down there all alone? How could I be so awful? How could I—

I realized—in a dim, vague way—that I was hyperventilating, nearly on the verge of a panic attack…but just as that thought sank in, a voice cut through the school's eerie quiet.

"Yuki-mu-ra…"

The runaway breath stopped dead inside my neck, as painful as a hangman's tightened vice.

I knew that voice. I knew that sing-song voice, hoarse from abuse, but still recognizable in its manic glee—would that stupid motherfucker not stay down already?! And how the hell had he gotten away from Botan? But I couldn't ask questions for long because Hamaguchi sang my name like a funeral dirge, so far away he was barely audible, and yet he felt as close as the toll of my own heartbeat.

But it was OK, wasn't it? I'd run so far away so fast, taking a circuitous route through the halls. There was no way he could find me, right?

The thought steadied my breathing just a bit.

There was no way he could find me.

There was just no way.

But if that was the case, why did his voice draw inexorably closer, footsteps now distinct on the tile floor, the sound of my name growing clearer and clearer (even over the wild pound of my heart) until it sounded like he stood no more than a floor away, just below me, then coming up the stairs, my hands shaking around my Goodie Bag, mild whirling in disbelief, Yuki-mu-ra, Yuki-mu-RA

The stairwell door opened on a creak of rusted hinge.

I moaned, sound caught halfway between a gasp and a sob.

"Little mouse thinks she's so clever," Hamaguchi called down the hallway. His voice echoed loud even through the classroom door, filling my ears like water intent on downing. "But the little mouse forgets the cat has such keen eyes…and the little mouse left quite the trail behind her."

I held my breath.

Trail? What kind of trail did he—?

Even in the midst of panic, I put two and two together…especially when the wound on my back throbbed in time to my beating heart, a pulse of pain lodged like an ember above my shoulder blade. I'm sure my face paled both from blood loss and from fear when I reached over my shoulder to touch the sticky wound, rub the blood between my fingers in abject horror. A string of ichor strung between my thumb and forefinger when they parted, sticky and wet.

A single peek—all that I dared do—around the edge of the teacher's desk confirmed my worst fears.

Three single drops of blood lay between my hiding place and the door.

More, surely, led the way straight to me.

"Fe fi fo fum," Hamaguchi sang. "I smell the blood of a hiding rat."

He referenced one of the few fairy tales that had survived in this world as he opened the classroom door. Somehow the irony of that did not escape me, even as my chest rose and fell in harsh pants with every one of Hamaguchi's footfalls. He wandered around the room, not approaching the desk, the rattle of a cabinet here and a chair there telling me he searched.

He was only playing, though. There were so few hiding places here. He knew exactly where I'd tucked myself away.

He was toying with me.

He was toying with me, trying to scare me, trying to frighten me for no better reason than his own twisted amusement.

And that probably should've scared me. I mean, it would scare any rational person, right?

"Rational" being the keyword here.

Instead of scaring me, I felt my blood begin to boil, and a single thought carved through my haze of dread.

How fucking dare he?!

"Where oh where could she be, I wonder?" Hamaguchi wheedled. "Oh, Yukimura? Your friend was no match for us. Come on out and join her. Yukimura? Yuki-mu-ra!"

It was only a matter of time before he found me. That realization—cold in its logic, unforgiving in its truth—sliced through the pain of panic, piercing into my chest with a dose of chilly adrenaline, along with more than a little indignation. How dare he toy with me! I uncurled beneath the desk, crouching on my feet with the Goodie Bag slung over my shoulder, hefting my Big Gun high.

My heart still beat like it wanted to burst from my chest and run away—but Hideki-sensei's words rang in my ears, swimming from the depths of fright to quell my racing breath.

Do not heed the words of fear, he'd told me months ago.

The words of fear said I should run. Should cry. Should faint and scream and wait for someone to save me, despair of the situation and just give up.

But—screw that.

I was no fucking damsel.

I was no fucking toy for this lunatic.

I'd go out on my own terms, or I'd die trying.

Somehow I didn't flinch when Hamaguchi slapped a hand atop the teacher's desk, its hollow metal body ringing around me like a diving bell. Somehow I kept it together, teeth grit so hard they ached, as Hamaguchi rounded the desk, his bloody loafers sliding into view as he stepped behind the table. Ha paused there, probably staring down at my knees and feet, more than likely visible from his vantage points, savoring the moment he caught the mouse.

Too bad for him, this little mouse had teeth.

"Yukimura," he said—and he bent down, grinning so hard that what remained of his shattered teeth threatened to fall out, face still bristling with thumbtacks embedded in his bloody skin like the villain from Hellraiser. His eyes bugged when they met mine, triumph turning them fever bright. "I've got you now—"

I didn't let him finish.

I hefted my nail gun—my Big Gun, the one that could kill if I aimed it right—and put a spike straight through the top of his foot.

I don't think he realized what I'd done at first, the whump of compressed air cutting off his words as it drove the metal into his loafer, his foot, and the floor beyond. We held each other's gazes for a moment that stretched into infinity, before his mouth opened beyond the realm of realism, stretching so wide I thought he'd tear his cheeks as he released a horrible, mangled scream.

I drove the butt of the nail gun against his foot, grabbed my baseball bat, and bolted from my hiding place as he toppled to the floor. I didn't wait for his roars of pain to turn to coherent words, nor did I stay to taunt him. I just laughed, sound as deranged as Hamaguchi looked, and ran like hell for the stairs.

The infected were waiting for me.

I wrenched open the door, pelted down the stairs, then heard them at the bottom of the stairwell. Saw the barest tops of their heads on a lower landing before I ran right the fuck out of there and back the way I'd come, no thank you mister sir, past the art class to the stairs at the other end of the hall. Threw that door open, all but threw myself down the first few steps.

A cry went up at the bottom of the stairs.

More infected, waiting for me.

A pincer maneuver.

I must've hovered, I backpedaled so hard, flying back up the stairs instead of down. The goons had wised up since my attacks with Botan, trapping me on the top floor of the school. With them on both stairs, the only way to go was up. I clambered up the ladder at the very top of the stairwell, threw open the metal doors of the roof access hatch at its zenith without daring to look back (not even when fingers brushed my ankle, trying to pull me back down). I slammed the doors behind me and caught only the barest glimpses of the faces of the infected, most sporting running eyes and bruises and blood as they howled for me, hands reaching in vain for the shuttered doors. I sat on the hatch, which looked like a storm cellar's double doors, as the infected slammed it with their fists from below. I rummaged through my Goodie Bag until I found a coil of wire for a trip line. This is wound through the door's handles with shaking hands, fastening it shut from the outside, teeth chattering as the doors rattled beneath my tailbone.

I stumbled away after I attached the wire, wheeling and watching in numb horror as the doors buckled up from below, heaving as though some great eldritch beast sought to escape from the ocean's depths through that tiny hatch. My knees buckled just like the doors; I fell on my ass atop the gravel-strewn roof, baseball bat falling with a clatter beside me.

The moon above burned white and cold, like some great, watching eye.

No stars, of course. Too deep in the city for that.

Funny what you notice in moments like those—in those last, quiet moments before hell descends and shatters the stillness like a brick through stained glass.

I upended my Goodie Bag in front of me.

Nail gun. Only a handful of shots of compressed air in the cartridge. One down, four to go.

One smoke bomb, of the sneezing variety. Useless in this open-air environment.

A box of carpet nails.

Wire, which I'd used to hold the doors shut.

And…that was it, aside from my baseball bat.

Oh. And the taser I'm managed to put in my pocket before fleeing.

I couldn't even remember doing that.

Well. First thing's first. Movements mechanical, I scattered the carpet nails around the hatch (least I could do was give these fuckers sore feet before I bit the dust). Checked the components of the taser, made sure they were still aligned. Investigated my shoulder, tested its range, verified if the bleeding had stopped (answer: not completely, but enough that I knew I wouldn't die of blood loss). Wandered to the edges of the building as the wire started to come loose from the roof access hatch, looked down for anyplace to jump to, any soft spot I could land to escape.

Nothing.

And the nearest tree was at least thirty feet away, way over by the PE shed in the back corner of the schoolyard. Too far to jump. Certainly too far to land on.

A little voice at the back of my head volunteered that I could just jump off right now and end my life, spare the infected the trouble, just jump and fall for a bit and let it all be over—but I'd had enough intrusive thoughts for one lifetime, thank you very much, and told that voice to shut the fuck up. I turned away from the ledge and took a deep breath of bracing night air.

So this was it, then.

This was where I made my final stand.

A stillness settled over me—a stillness so profound that even the pound of the roof access hatch faded into quiet. All these little lead-ups, these skirmishes fought one by one. Each had felt like the final battle, until it wasn't, and until a new fight emerged.

But there really could be nothing more dire than this, now could there?

"You're probably wondering if I'll die here."

The words slipped from my mouth of their own accord. I stood in the center of the roof, a humming A/C unit to my left cutting the quiet air with its industrious hum. Taking a deep breath, I tilted my head toward the sky and the unfeeling moon hanging above.

To the untrained eye, I spoke to no one but myself.

But I knew someone was listening.

I knew this was my final chance to give a certain someone the push he needed to succeed.

I just prayed I could find the words for the job.

"You're probably wondering if I'll make it out the other side," I said, "when the odds are stacked so high against me."

A shriek from beyond the doors sounded like the cries of a hell-beast intent on blood—and in a distressingly real way, I suppose that was actually more literal than metaphor. I closed my eyes, dragging down a breath of cool, clean air. It smelled of dirt and plaster and metal, crisp and dry.

"The odds were stacked against you, too, Yusuke," I said. "You died. And you came back, more like a phoenix than Suzaku will ever be." A wry grin twisted my lips like the wind twists a ragged flag. "They named me 'lucky child', and if I can have just a tenth of your good luck, I'll finally live up to my name."

Another shriek, followed by a pound and a slam, the infected lifting the doors in their frame before they banged down again. I wheeled and hefted my baseball bat in one hand, the taser crackling with lightning in the other, head thrown back as I stared down the barrel of my weapon toward the lurching doors.

"So bring it on, assholes!" I said—but for Yusuke's eavesdropping benefit or for my own, I truly cannot say. "If you want me, come and get me—but I won't lose to you. I wouldn't fucking dare. I know what it's like to lose a best friend. I won't do that to Yusuke by dying here!" I pointed my bat up at the sky, straight up at the bright moon, teeth grit and bared as I glared through time and space and into the soul of my best friend. "You hear me, Yusuke? I've got too much pride to lose to these freaks! You'd better get on my level and do the fucking same!"

For a moment, only silence followed, like perhaps my bellowed words had scared the infected into a swift retreat.

But then the doors shook. They burst open. And the time for heroic speeches passed like a dying breath.

The infected poured from the access hatch like ants swarming a corpse.

A few stepped on the carpet tacks and fell off to the side, unable to walk on their bloodied feet, but still more surged forward (clambering right over their friends, in fact) toward me. The narrow hatch only allowed one through at a time, but by the time I sprinted forward and struck one of them across the head with a scream of "Batter up!" another two had come through the doors. I danced back as they reached for me, striking at them with the bat and taser but clearly at a disadvantage, especially when even more of them clambered up the ladder and onto the roof in their wake.

In no time at all, eight of them joined me on the roof, standing around me in a semi-circle. I backed away, brandishing my weapons until the yawning dark of the roof's ledge threatened to swallow me whole. I stopped only a few feet from the edge, eyes darting from infected to infected as they stood there, giggling, swaying when a three-story wind whipped by and sent my jagged bangs to flying.

Behind the wall of infected, Hamaguchi emerged from the roof access doors.

He practically oozed over the edge, flopping bonelessly over the lip of the hatch, rolling to his knees with a deranged laugh. He limped like a deer struck by a car, moonlight glinting against the nail still jutting from the top of his bloody foot. The pins—those damn tacks still driven into his face, still weeping blood—flashed in the moonlight, too, peppering his face with the glitter of fallen stars. The infected parted before his limping stride, watching with a chorus of manic giggles as Hamaguchi raised one bloody hand to point dramatically at me.

I almost rolled my eyes despite the terror. How many fucking times was he going to do that tonight?

"Yukimura," he said. Saliva flew from his mouth in ropes, glinting against his broken, jagged teeth. "Prepare to die!"

And how many times would he say that, too?

I had no time for a quip or a curse, though, nor a cutting comment about how stupid he sounded. He'd tried so many times to kill me already; this was getting old. Just get it over with, already!

The infected, at the very least, certainly aimed to please in that regard.

They leapt for me, fainting forward and back like a murder of cackling crows. I swung my bat and buzzed the taser at them, but step by step they inched closer, and if one of them didn't kill me with his bare hands, then surely another would push me off the ledge and into the dark below—the dark that was calling my name again, intrusive thoughts butting in once more, screaming with a sound like breaking glass, "Keiko, Keiko, turn around, Keiko, and jump!"

…wait.

That screaming sounded a lot like it came from outside my head, not inside.

I did as the voice said, and I turned.

She flew straight up through the darkened sky, oar a stripe of black beneath her, body silhouetted against the moon—looking more like a reaper than perhaps she ever had, a streak of vivid purple (her third eye, glowing and radiant) tracing the path of her flight through the dark. Unbound hair swirled around her head like the tentacles of a reaching octopus.

Against the moon like that, she looked every inch the angel of death I so often forgot she was.

"Keiko!" Botan screamed. "They knocked me out and that blow to the head brought me to my sense and—oh for goodness sake, there's no time for that, just jump!"

For a second I stared at her.

Then—without preamble, without second-guessing, without conscious thought or wondering how the bloody hell this was even happening—I dropped my bat and took a running leap into the void.

I didn't think about it, for once in my goddamn life. I didn't overthink and overanalyze and question and freeze up before I had time to act. I just saw Botan, heard her command, and fucking ran for it. I spun as I dove off the edge of the roof, catching sight of Hamaguchi's stunned expression just long enough to raise both my hands, middle fingers extended, and flip him the double bird as gravity pulled me with vicious eagerness into the dark.

And then the overthinking started as my body fell. A scream tore from my mouth like entrails on a sword-tip, hoarse and afraid and keening. Because I was going to die oh my god I was falling and I would hit the ground and I would go splat on the pavement and died and

But Botan caught me, of course. Of course she caught me. There was no version of reality in which she wouldn't catch me. She beat the pull of physics and flew beneath my plummeting form, arms around my shoulders like a vice—but the force of my fall made her stumble (if such a thing can happen in flight), oar bucking and spinning in place so fast the world blurred. Botan squealed, her cries joining mine, clinging to me just as hard as I clung to her as we hurtled through the air and—

We hit the tree by the PE shed in a crash of broken branches and falling leaves. They tangled in my hair and tore at my clothes, buffeting me as I fell like a pachinko chip through the thicket, bouncing from branch to branch so hard I feared I'd break to pieces.

And then I did break to pieces.

One second twigs threatened to poke out my eyes, and the next I plummeted out of them, free-falling toward the ground—which I hit feet-first, and with the sickening crack of a breaking bone.

I knew that sound, just as I knew the pain that shot up my leg like it had been flooded with warm, electric water. I didn't scream when I heard the crack. I just crumpled to the ground, breathing hard as the pain stayed local in my leg, but that nauseating warmth flooded upward over my hips, through my chest, suffusing my head and sending my thoughts scattering like discarded litter on a breeze.

"I broke my leg," I heard myself say, as if from far away. I didn't feel myself move when I listed to one side, landing on my shoulder in the grass beneath the tree, extending my feet away from my body as if to detach them. Here, take my feet, I don't want them anymore. I said, "Botan. Botan—I broke my leg, OK?"

Botan didn't respond.

I lifted my head.

Botan lay a few feet away on the grass, sprawled. Her eyes were closed (all three of them). She wasn't moving. Her oar lay just beyond her fingertips, inert upon the grass.

"Botan," I said. Some dim part of my brain realized I should get to her, but as I tried to pull myself along the ground, my ankle lit up like a bomb. That time I did yell, a harsh noise born more of surprise than pain.

I looked back.

I wore my left foot at an awkward angle.

Not that that fazed me. I'd seen my arm on backward before, with bones sticking out, so a foot like a badly-built marionette wasn't all that bad in comparison. Any awkward bulges of bone were covered by my pants and shoe. It could be worse. I'd gotten lucky, actually.

I took a deep breath.

My head spun, and I barely kept the vomit down.

Above me, way up on the roof, Hamaguchi shouted something. When I looked up I saw him blotting out the moon, terrible and lofty, assuming the mantle of death from Botan now that she had fallen. After a moment he disappeared, though. Doubtless running down the stairs to get me.

There would be no running from me, of course. Not with my leg like this.

Why was I so calm?

Shock, probably. I'd gone into deep shock when I shattered my arm in my past life. Hadn't even cried, just as I wasn't crying now. Instead that odd heat of hormones going wild, going wild to numb the pain, kept me quiet and serene. I rolled onto my back and sat up. I looked from Botan to the school to the PE shed, wondering what to do.

I'd left my weapons on the roof.

I couldn't run.

Botan had been rendered unconscious.

…and I'd thought I'd die on the roof. But here I was, back by the PE shed. Back where I'd started. There was a certain cyclical irony in that, coming back so close to my hideaway, yet being so exposed. It was like fate was toying with me, almost. Go fuck yourself, Cleo. And I'd wasted my best speech on the roof, too. Was there any way to encourage Yusuke to victory now? It certainly didn't seem like it, but—

"Keiko!"

For a moment I thought I was hallucinating, seeing Amagi running toward me across the dewy schoolyard, carrying a cricket bat in one hand—but when I blinked, she did not disappear. She ran to my side and skidded to her knees, hands waving ineffectually before her as she looked me over.

"Keiko!" she repeated.

"Amagi," I said. My voice echoed nearly mad in it serenity. "I broke my leg, I think."

She looked down and turned the color of milk. "Oh my god!"

"It's OK," I said, to comfort her. "It's OK. It's fine. But—you should probably go back to the shed."

Amagi shook her head, short black hair flying. "No. I'm not leaving you out here."

I pointed up at the school. "They're coming. You should hide. Please hide?"

"No." She grabbed my arm and pulled it over her shoulder, trying to get me to stand—which I managed, though only on one leg, and only because she held me up. "Keiko, I'm not leaving you."

"Then take Botan and—"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Better you two make it out than all three of us get killed," I said—and my hollow tone made Amagi gasp.

She had such a pretty face, Amagi. Those big dark eyes and those full lips. And y'know, her new haircut was a bit bowl-shaped, yeah, but it just made her look like a cute little nerd, and that was nice. Even though she looked so scared, she was pretty. If they beat her up, I hoped the infected avoided her face. I sighed and leaned my head on her shoulder, arm around her waist to support myself.

"I'm sorry," I murmured. "Go get Botan's oar."

We hobbled like we ran a three-legged race to Botan's side. Amagi bent her knees enough for me to swipe the oar off the ground, mostly to use as a crutch—but when I heard a shout ring up from the direction of the school, my hand on the oar tightened. I shoved away from Amagi and knelt over Botan's body, oar held tightly in both hands.

"They're coming," I said.

Amagi nodded, hefting her cricket bat. "We'll have to fight." She shot me a sidelong look, biting her lower lip. "I've…I've never fought anyone before."

"No time like the present to learn how." I gestured at her bat, still feeling a million miles away from my own self. "You swing, you mind your six, you run if it gets bad." Something about that line pulled me closer to reality, sharpened the haze falling over my shocked brain. I met Amagi's eyes and said, "You hear me, Amagi? You run."

But Amagi—who had never fought anyone in her life—just shook her head.

"Fat chance, Keiko," she said in the softest voice I'd ever heard. "I will not leave you behind. That much I can promise."

I believed her.

And when the infected erupted from the school's back door, sprinting across the lawn toward us, I wondered if that promise would see her dead.

I didn't wonder that for long, of course. Hamaguchi and company left me no time for extended pondering. They arrived in what felt like both seconds and hours, standing around myself, the girls, and the tree in a loose circle, laughing and grizzling and hungry for my blood.

Nowhere left to run now.

I'd been wrong before, in the sneezing gas classroom. I'd been wrong about the roof, too.

This was our final stand.

Hamaguchi, of course, acted as the general of his sordid army. He stepped forward, limping on the foot I'd mangled, and once again pointed at me like the Queen of Hearts calling for an execution. Manic glee lit his eyes like he'd been electrocuted, and perhaps he had.

He carried my taser at his side, lightning arcing between the metal prongs with a vicious snap.

"You've run long enough," he said. "Time to die, Yukimura."

"Bring it on, asshole," I said—and Hamaguchi threw back his head and laughed.

"For your insolence, we'll make it slow!" he said to me, and to his followers he commanded, "Kill them!"

Chomping at the bit as they were, they needed no persuasion. A cry went up, and as I hefted Botan's oar above my head, they leapt in our direction.

It's difficult to describe what happened next.

But let me give it a try, OK?

It was like they hit an invisible electric fence, sort of, their advance halted when they collided with an unseen barrier surround us—one that lit up with bright, merry gold when they touched it, a network of curling heart-shapes forging a chain-like fence around our bodies. The barrier crackled and snapped as the infected collided with its golden expanse, sending them hurtling backward to the grass like they'd been tossed by the hand of a giant. I watched with my mouth agape as the fence disappeared again, the infected groaning as they gathered themselves and tried to stand.

A voice rang through the still night air, echoing from on high.

"Adults like you ought to protect the children of the next generation," said the voice, "not send them to the afterlife before their schooling is complete. You are a shame to your profession and a disgrace to teachers everywhere!"

I looked up.

A figure stood on the school's distant roof, one foot poised on the ledge above, arms crossed over her chest. Blonde hair billowed in the moonlight, silken and long. With the moon at her back I couldn't see her face, nor the details of her dress. Hamaguchi stared up at her in fury, raising the crackling taser in her direction.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

"So glad you asked," she said—and she soared.

I almost screeched, afraid for this girl's life, but I needn't have worried. She hit the ground in the super-hero landing Deadpool loved to obsess over: a dip of her knee, one fist planted on the ground, crouched with one leg behind her. With a bounce she rose to her full height, threw back her head, and planted her hands on her slender hips.

Although her next words constituted an introduction, as soon as I saw the red domino mask adorning her delicate features, I knew exactly who had arrived to save me.

"The guardian of love and light and justice, Sailor V, has arrived!" said Sailor V, and with a toss of her riotous hair she struck a pose straight out of her anime series. "And in the name of love and justice, not to mention education standards, I am here to—"

She never got to finish.

She never got to finish because Hamaguchi's eyes rolled back in his head. He fell to his knees and collapsed. The rest of the infected followed suit, thudding to the ground until none were left standing.

A moment of silence followed.

Sailor V dropped her pose, blinking at the comatose infected. Her brow furrowed; her arms crossed over her chest; one foot in its bright red high heel commenced tap-tap-tapping at the ground.

Sailor V said, tone absolutely dripping with sarcasm, "And I'm here to give your unconscious bodies an ethics lecture, apparently."

I said nothing (because I was incapable of speech just then).

Amagi also said nothing (for reasons of her own).

Sailor V clicked her tongue, took a deep breath, and turned our way. She wore a bright and open smile, now, looking me up and down like a prizefighter sizing up the very sportsmanlike competition.

"Hello, Keiko. If that's even your name," she said—and with that, she winked. "Looks like Yusuke destroyed that whistle right in the nick of time, now didn't he?"

My jaw dropped.

Forgive me for not being more articulate.

At that point, I just wasn't capable of anything more.


NOTES:

Like Kagome, Sailor V won't take over the story or anything, so please don't get too mad that they're here. I'd like to think I've earned benefit of the doubt regarding the crossover bits, um, maybesorta, haha. V is likely to have an even smaller role in all of this than Kagome does, though I'm still excited for what they bring to the table.

SO UM. People have been making art for this story on Tumblr and it's AMAZING? I'm creating a post over there with all the names of people who drew stuff, with links, so please check for that in the next few days. I'm about to jump in the car and travel so I'm out of time to list them here, but once I compile all their names I'll give them a shout-out here next chapter. Sorry for the delayed recognition, those who drew such amazing pieces!

MANY THANKS to all of you who reviewed last week! Your support means the world, and you came out in force last week with concern for Botan. I love each of you to bits: Just 2 Dream of You, Saj te Gyuhyall, rickrossed, Kimimakku, Dark Rose Charm, EmmieSauce, Speckled One, Lady Rini, wennifer-lynn, ED99, zubhanwc3, SlytherclawQueen, tatewaki2000, Silverwing013, xenocanaan, Lola, Death Angel 457, MetroNeko, rikku92, Dreaming Traveler, Tay, rya-fire1, Chi-chan, Selias, MyMidnightShadow, MissIdeophobia, kuriboh1233, Kaiya Azure, Lady Ellesmere, Vyxen Hexgrim, KhaleesiRenee, Viviene001, WaYaADisi1, Thugs Bunny 009, ahyeon, general zargon, DiCuore Alissa, Marian, Dawn17, Uzu the Talented Uzumaki, WistfulSin, BeccaLittleBear, sousie, Miqila, shen0, Tsarashi, Vixeona, buzzk97, Kuesuno, Luki Dimension, hypergirl15, FreshToDeath, yofa, shisenxlll, Meno Melissa, and I think 5 guests! One guest reviewed the first 15 or so chapters; thank you so much for that, oh nameless one!