Let them come, I thought, and sighing, continued sharpening the edge of my sword. My eyes fell upon my work once again and the repetitive movement of the steel sliding along the stone calmed my heavy heart. I shall die today, I said to myself, and looking up, my hands not needing my attention to do their oft performed duties, I saw the mob shuffling up the hill. I glanced down at my blade; it was sharp enough, I reckoned. I wiped it clean with a rag and stood.
The makeshift armor I wore made no sound as I rose; the joints padded with thick cloth, let me move with steps as silent as the grave. Still, it felt heavy; heavy, but familiar, a second skin I had crafted over the last dozen years. I tested myself, swinging my sword in wide arcs; shoulders loose, I sat in a deep squat and jumped up into the air. My legs were not what they were, I sighed.
I could see the faces of the mob’s vanguard now, the gaping, mindless dead. I met the empty eyes of the nearest zombie whose bloated countenance betrayed nothing of the person he must once have been.
“Have you come out against a robber or a thief?” I asked him. He continued to grunt and moan as he had been doing, paying no mind to my words. I thought on the quote a moment. Here I was, and yes it was a garden, but this was not night, nor was I their savior. Just another man, a son of man. I remembered another quote, and stepped toward the oncoming zombie:
“Buy a sword!” I shouted, and, keeping with the theme of my meditation, cut off the monster’s ear. He seemed not to care overmuch, or really to notice at all. Might as well go out in style, I figured.
Like a pirouetting dancer, I spun round and lobbed off his head. “Dance like no one’s watching,” I whispered, and I danced. Leaping in and out of the ghoulish fray, I began my grand opus. If I am to die, I prayed, let me die well. If you exist, please let me live.
So I danced with the mindless, biting mob, their untiring hands grasping, their unending numbers flooding; I was music, my body given over wholly to the spirit of rhythm and time which these undead things had forgotten. Their heads flew from their shoulders, one by one, until I was fighting over a pile of snapping skulls and motionless corpses.
I felt tired, but would not think it. Today was the day of my death—I would shortly be at rest. So, I forced my aching frame to continue, to move, to explode, and my sword flashed in the light of the sun.
Tale Told 