The Necrotomiton Incident – by Savo

The Necrotomiton Incident

 

WORLD WAR 2.1

 

Kevin Savage

 

A near-future military experiment thrusts a multinational armada back to 1942, right into the middle of the U.S. naval task force speeding towards Midway Atoll – and what was to be the most spectacular Allied triumph of World War 2.

 

In John Birmingham’s AXIS of TIME Universe.

 

 

 

 

It was the flickering of the television screen that attracted it.

 

 

Keiko heard the small noise.  Not an unusual noise in this far away mountain village but unusual at this time of night and coming from the front door. It was a small choked off sound, almost whimper.  She paused the laserdisc at the spot where the protagonists were trialling vinyl records and cricket bats as weapons and went to investigate the sound by the light of the television.  She stood there, not afraid, but curious waiting for the sound again.  After a few seconds she took hold of the door knob as she did, she felt it turn in her grip.  Keiko had time to take in one quick surprised breath as the door burst in on her.  She didn’t even recognise the rank earthen smell, as she was thrown backwards into the one room of the rustic house.  The human shape in the doorway took one unsteady step towards Keiko, arms outstretched.  It made the choked mewling noise again, coughed soil from its throat and attacked. 

 

Hard broken fingernails clawed at Keiko’s head and neck, as green, broken teeth bit into her exposed throat. The last Keiko saw was the white clouded eyes of it, looking into hers as darkness descended.

 

“Hudeki!” yelled Igor as he kicked at the withered rump of the beast.  “You failure!  You delinquent!”  His next kick dislodged the dead but living man off the fresh corpse.  Igor bent to look at the body of Keiko.  The ragged torn flesh at the side of the woman’s throat wasn’t even starting to turn green yet.  Igor heard a low growl rumbling in the throat of the nonliving reanimated man squatting near the body.  Igor swung the burning torch he was holding and shook it into its face.  “Bad akumu!  Bad akumu!  Now pick it up and take it home,” pointing to Keiko’s body.

 

It scuttled back to the body and hefted it onto its shoulder.   Igor could see the single roomed building only housed the one person.  He left quickly, leading the gruesome caravan.

 

Clouds scurried across the face of the full moon, shadows chased each other across the landscape as Igor and the un-dead, carrying the poor Keiko, climbed the steep, dirt road to Castle Akagi deep in Gunma Province, central Japan.  Igor nervously looked behind him every few steps.  In the failing moonlight he could see very little, it was going to storm soon.  He hoped no one else in the village had been disturbed by the necrotomiton’s presence but all seemed quiet.

 

The huge cast iron door of the castle boomed shut.  The necrotomiton shuffled off into the darkness with the young woman over one shoulder.  It knew its way home.

 

“Sensei!  Sensei!” called out Igor.  “Success, I found the missing one.”  The clanking and grinding of the ancient elevator echoed through the reception hall.  Igor ambled over to await the it and pulled aside the metal gate when it arrived.  Before him stood Lieutenant General Ishii Fu, the leader and mastermind behind the Oka Extermination Unit 9420.  His lab coat: starched and white.  His hair: black and slick.  His glasses: thick and rimless.

 

“Well done, Igor.” He said without inflection.  He turned his head and stared at his unkempt assistant until Igor dropped his gaze and hunched further down.  “Will the villagers be bothering us because of this?” 

“N… no, Master, there was but the one incident, she was alone in her house.  No one saw.”  Stammered Igor.  “We now have a fresh subject.”

 

“Very well.  Return to the Necroratory,” a flash of lightening cut though the gloom of the castle as the lights dimmed, seconds later the crack and rumble of the coming storm sounded.  Fu looked to the windows high above him, “It is nearly time again.”

“Yes Sensei,” said Igor as he bowed lower and scuttled away to the Necroratory.

 

The smell was really something you can never get used to, that, and the reanimated dead flesh.  Igor remembered that day in 1944 just before the Unit had to evacuate Singapore, how the great Doctor had discovered the secret.  A combination of plague bacillus and the malarial parasite massaged deeply into the dead tissue.  Then subjecting it to a frighteningly high electrical discharge.  The subject’s heart no longer beat in her breast, she drew no breath and only the most sensitive apparatus could detect any rhythmic sinusoidal EEG activity.  But she moved and she would do as she was bid.  The master would order her to undertake the most base of behaviours and she complied.  Willingly? Who knew.  She eventually died, no, Igor thought, she was already dead, she eventually stopped working after a few days.  She had eaten and drunk her fill but she wasted away.  It was a master stroke that the Doctor conceived what the subjects needed to eat and drink.  They needed to replace their flesh with more flesh but not just any flesh, the flesh of a living, breathing, human being.

 

After the end of open warfare, the Doctor insisted that the war was not over until the last warrior died, the Doctor had secreted them both in this redoubt on Mount Akagi.  Before the inevitable downfall, Ishii Fu, had contacted all of his cronies and built up a sizable fortune.  They had all agree that he had the best chance of surviving the occupation because he wasn’t known by the gaijin.

 

And over the years, Igor had conducted a discrete campaign of bodysnatching and kidnapping from the surrounding villages.  The recently dead flesh was able to supplement the rare live specimens that he took, that kept the necrotomitons working.  And a really fresh one, like young Keiko would become another conscript in Doctor Fu’s Army of the Damned.  Yes thought Igor, they were damned, damned by the occupation and damned by their culpable government for surrendering but they were still blessed by the Emperor: as these warriors coul not die in battle.

 

—–

 

As Igor set about calibrating the Sensei’s instruments and apparatus for the coming conversion, and as the storm built up to its crescendo, a crack team of soldiers pulled into Keiko’s small village seeking local food, and shelter from the storm.

 

“I say, Commander Fleming, I think there is someone here,” piped up the ever cheerful Subaltern Stuart.  Lightening flickered about the sky and thunder grumble from peak to peak.  The satellite dishes on the roofs of most of the houses in the little village showed the community stayed up after dark and were not going to be too disturbed by the arrival of the half dozen soldiers and two officers.  After all it was 1956 not the middle ages. 

 

They had parked their two hybrid powered troop carriers outside the largest of the hovels.  Marvellous bit of kit, the new Woods Motor Company Troop Carrier.  Almost silent and it could run on nearly anything, the hydrogen fuel being the only necessary component, but some ‘designer’ had left the seating compartment open to the elements.  Things were progressing with the uptimer’s technology but something’s were still stuck in the 1930’s.

 

The door eased open a fraction letting out soft, warm light and the smell of a baked dinner.  It revealed an ancient, grey hair Japanese gentleman carrying an equally ancient single barrel shot gun. 

“Ah, good evening sir, I am …” started Fleming, the squad’s interpreter Lance Corporal Lohberger began translating when,

“Ai yi yi yi yi!” The old man screamed in delight as he threw the door open shaking his arms above his head and dancing.  He reached out with his free hand and dragged the Commander into the warm comfortable hall, where he was met by the 20 odd occupants of the little village.  The rest of the squad followed the Commander inside.  

 

The squaddies were welcomed and sat down by the villagers at a long table loaded with food and drink.  There hadn’t been rationing in Japan since just after the cessation of hostilities in ’46 and they were bid to eat and drink.

 

“Right, Lohberger,” said Commander Fleming, “Find out what is going on, this is all very nice but it’s just a little too nice.”

 

Lohberger began a conversation with the village elder, whilst the rest were loaded up with food and drink.  There were lots of long meaningful pauses and plenty of head shaking of the part of the Corporal eventually Lohberger turned to Fleming.

“It seems sir, they have been having  a lot of bother here with the owner of the castle a few miles from here.  A Professor Fu.  It might be that a young woman was kidnapped and taken away to there, just a little while ago.  The old man here, wants our help.”

 

“Fu?” queried Fleming.

“It means ‘negative’ in Kanji, no,” shrugged Lohberger.

 

The British Commonwealth Occupation Force of Japan had been tasked with not only crushing any armed uprising by the Japanese population and keeping an eye on the Russians occupying the north, but they also acted as a surrogate police force when the locals were unavailable. And in this case there were none for 50 miles.

 

“Bangar, get on the blower and inform HQ we’ll be conducting some nighttime policing ops in the area.”

“Righty Oh, sir,” Bangar said as he snapped to attention and saluted.  He executed a precision parade ground ‘about face’ and marched out to the waiting troop carrier.

 

“Bloody Australians” mumbled Fleming, “You never know when they’re taking the piss.”

 

The two American servicemen, Murphy and Crist, acted as the War Crimes investigators for the squad.  They were taken to the missing woman’s house by a villager, there they gathered forensic evidence and photographed the obvious crime scene.

 

Back at the communal hall Fleming said “Lohberger get mister, what’s his name here to draw a plan of this castle.”

“He calls himself The Darkman, sir,” said Lohberger

“Whatever, but be nice, Murphy thinks it could be a murder,” said the Commander, “Mister Stuart, do a weapon’s check and please make sure Private Bangar hasn’t gotten lost between here and the car.” 

 

Fleming sat back and crossed his legs.  He watched his troops go to work as he carefully packed and lit his pipe before drawing deeply on the ‘no-tar’ tobacco.  They were a cohesive, although mixed, bunch, this squad of Occupation Forces of his.  Fleming and Stuart, the officers, were naturally British. Sergeant Murphy and Private Crist were there to look after the American cousin’s interests, Lohberger, Banger, Hawke and Denny were Australians or some such and were the squads blunt instrument.  They were an organic special forces unit able to win hearts and minds or, as in this case, storm a Japanese castle in the dead of night.  They were armed to the teeth with the latest electronic warfare, communications and surveillance equipment, firepower that would have worried even the legendary General Lonesome Jones and some of the best chocolate and candies available to the free world.  All very different from his shattered career in His Majesty’s Secret Service.  Bugger the uptimers he thought ruefully.

 

Before long, Stuart and the rest had put together a very neat plan of attack.  Entry shouldn’t be too hard, like all castles in Japan, any defensive earthworks had long ago been flattened by Allied bombers, if for nothing else, just because they were there.

 

The storm was building, and rain lashed the vehicles and the troopers as they approached the Castle.  Conditions were marginal for the launch of the Surveillance Craft, Un-Manned but Hawke got it aloft and in a few minutes they had a detailed map of their target worked out.  The craft beamed high quality black and white images directly to the receiver in the second Woods Troop Carrier along with other telemetry and acted as a wireless relay.

 

Lt Stuart and Sgt Murphy fine tuned the plan and submitted it to Commander Fleming for approval.  It was really simple, although there were no standing fortifications, the only way in was through the front door.  The Castle wasn’t like a European Norman Castle: all drawbridges, turrets and murder-holes, it was in reality, simply a large solid mansion on the top of a hill.

 

The vehicles drove up to the only entrance and stopped, the troops dismounted and Fleming walked briskly with Stuart through the rain to the relative comfort of the covered doorway.  He flicked on the infrared lamp in his integrated helmet Combat goggles and a quick inspection of the door showed the large knocker in the centre.  He moved the goggles back over his helmet as they wouldn’t be able to compensate for any sudden increase in light if the door was opened unexpectedly or the outside light turned on.  Stuart was immediately behind Fleming and the rest of the troops were out of sight around the corner of the portico.

 

BOOM BOOM BOOM.  The door knocker made the great iron door resound like a huge, temple bell.

 

“That’s a bit impressive,” said Stuart

“Quite,” replied Fleming.

 

After a few minutes wait, they heard the rattling of keys and the door cracked open a fraction.   In the doorway was a solid, hunched over northern Japanese man dressed in black and holding a burning torch above his head.  He froze for an instant, wide eyed, staring at the soldiers, before he dropped the torch and turned screaming, running back into the darkened Castle.

 

“Go, go, go,” Fleming said, standing back to let his troops through the doorway.

“Oh yes,” Fleming said, as much to himself as to anyone else as he walked into the Castle, “Under the Occupational Forces Act 1946 I am obliged to inform you I intend searching your house in relation to a crime or action taken against occupation forces.  You are not allowed to resist etcetera etcetera.’  He could still hear the doorman’s screaming in the darkness.

 

—–

 

Igor had not been expecting to find a couple of the gaijin invaders standing at the door when he answered it and it quite took him by surprise.  He dropped his torch and ran back to the laboratory screaming a warning to his master.  He entered the necroratory in time to hear the doctor issuing orders to his un-dead army. 

 

Igor, at that moment, saw with clarity, the utter futility of having an Army composed solely of what amounted to nothing more than a bunch of zombies.  The Doctor had ordered them to line up.  Those able to stand or at least those with legs, were sort of, if you squinted your eyes enough, lined up, a bit, but it was like herding cats, they weren’t all going to go in the same direction, it just wasn’t going to happen.

 

“My Army, my Army,” cried the Doctor standing there in his white coat, his arms raised, imploring.  He turned to Igor, a look of desperation on his face, tears welling up even a tremor in his bottom lip.  He too had recognised his error.  It was then that the first and only flash of brilliance to ever enter Igor’s frontal lobes, rattle around various ganglion and sub-structures and connect successfully with his speech centre, happened.  “Food!” he yelled, swinging his whole body to point back towards the incoming squad of Occupation Forces, “Food!”

 

The necrotomitons immediately recognised the word, a couple, straight away, walked forward, arms outstretched saliva welling up in their dead mouths.  Several more sniffed the air before shuffling off, the rest were pushed, poked and prodded by Igor.  One, who used to be a big salesman from down south, turned and raged at the Doctor’s assistant, swinging his arms and roaring.  He advanced on Igor, who carefully backed away until he could reach a heavy wooden shovel used to clean out the necroratory.  The Necroratory was his own Augean stables, a never ending job each day mucking it out after the zombies.  He dearly wished they could be taught how to use the new flush toilets.  

 

He grabbed the haft of the shovel and swung it high over his head, bringing it down with a resounding crash onto the middle of the zombie’s forehead.  The compression caused by the impact crushed the big salesman’s skull and blew bits of rotted grey matter out of his mouth and ears.  He staggered and was hit again.  The top part of his head was driven a good way down his neck, his eyeballs had both popped out and were rolling on the floor.  Igor stepped back, as the now blinded zombie, moaning and gurgling slipped on his own eyeballs and fell to the ground.  The other zombies had stopped to see what was happening but quickly lost interest and went looking for the promised food, as Igor tapped and prodded them with the shovel.

 

—-

 

The squad fanned out as they entered the Castle.  All the men were in wireless contact with each other and all had the very latest integrated helmet and infra red illuminated night vision combat goggles.

 

The first two zombies came at the lead pair at a shuffling run, moaning and sniffing the air.  The two men, Murphy and Crist were both on the one side of the broad hall way, Crist behind and to the right of Murphy.  Both were armed with Colt A12’s, a bull pup configured assault rifle.  A short, rapid firing, large bore, gun with a 30 round magazine. 

 

Acting in the police role, Murphy called on them to ‘stop’, they kept coming, “STOP” Murphy yelled and raised his gun to his shoulder.  He never got to call another warning as the two zombies were almost on top of him.  He fired, double tap into the first abomination’s chest, it staggered back enough so that the other took the lead.  Murphy switched targets and fired at the new lead zombie, hitting it in the throat and taking its head clean off.  No spray of blood, no gore.  The head hit the floor and rolled away.  The rest of the zombie just stood there, as if it had misplaced something.  The second horror paused and sniffed at the neck wound.  Both soldiers had a bead on the second zombie, “Commander,” said Murphy into the microphone, “we got a situation here.”

 

The headless zombie sat down crossed legged on the floor.  The second one turned to Crist, screamed and leapt.  The movement was so quick Murphy missed completely and Crist only got the one shot off before he was hit by the flying apparition.  They tumbled to the floor.  It clawed desperately at his face and bit savagely at his neck but the Combat goggles shielded his eyes and the ballistic vest protected his neck.

“Get it off, get it off,” screamed Crist who had lost his rifle in the melee. 

“I can’t get a shot, I can’t get a shot,” yelled Murphy.

 

“Kill it! Don’t shoot me! Kill it!” screamed Crist.  The smell of the dead body and the closeness of the attack was starting to unhinge him.

 

It was then four of them hit Murphy from behind, their weight and speed slammed him across the pair on the ground and into the wall.  Only excellent training stopped him loosing off a shot into Crist.  The monsters ripped at his helmet, pulling it and choking him at the same time.  One bit deeply into his arm, severing muscles, nerves and blood vessels.  The scream came unbidden from Murphy’s throat as his arm spasmed and he dropped the assault rifle. Another zombie leaned over and bit into his windpipe, cutting off the scream with a snap of gristle and tendon, followed by a gurgle as Murphy struggled to breathe and remain conscious.  The weight of the four bodies pressed him against the wall.  He reached down fighting against the pain and weight for the combat knife strapped to his boot.  He drew it, then slashed it against the eyes and face of the monster crushing his throat.  Its hands came up to its face and it fell away silently.  But too late for Murphy.

 

Crist could hear boots pounding on the stone floor, he was only just holding this inhumanly strong fiend away from his neck.  Battling against it, his arms shaking from the strain, they were at a stalemate.  The first shot hit the zombie’s chest blowing bits out the other side but the bullet continued through too and hit Crist’s thigh, the shock and sudden pain made him loose his grip and the monster lunged for his neck ripping into the soldiers throat, windpipe and arteries.  Crist’s fingers clawed at the horrors eyes dragging one out but it kept biting.  Crist’s struggles evaporated as his life blood spread across the floor of the old castle. 

 

Lohberger’s kick caught the monster in the side of the head, rolling him off Crist.  He followed through and ended up standing over the un-dead ghoul, one boot on each of its upper arms.  He brought his assault rifle up and fired at point blank range, on fully automatic, directly into the face of the beast.  The bullets blew its head apart in a spectacular yet bloodless fashion.  The young soldier stepped off and turned back to his comrades.  It was then he saw Private Bangar at work, hacking at the heads and shoulders of the remaining zombies feasting on Sergeant Murphy.

 

“Re-group,” came the call from Commander Fleming.  Bangar put the small axe away in a sheath on the back of his ballistic vest and picked up his shot gun “Better come up to us boss” said Bangar, a bit out of breath.  Down in the darkness of the hallway out of range of the infra red beams came a shuffling, snuffling noise broken by the occasional scream and sounds like a cat fight.   

 

Murphy and Crist were dead and their wounds had taken on a strange green tinge.  The surviving soldiers were badly shaken.  The smell of death was everywhere.

 

“We can’t kill them,” said Lohberger through clenched teeth.

 

“What are they?” asked Stuart.

 

“Knives are the way, guns for show, knives for a pro,” said Private Bangar coolly, rotating a black bladed non issue knife in his hands.

 

The others looked at him a bit oddly.

 

“By the looks,” said Hawke as he scanned the hallway, “I would say we’ve stumbled onto a nest of zombies.  Head shots should do, once they can’t see they just sit down like those ones over there.  When we finish, we’ll have to blow them up and burn them out of the nest.  I’ve read about it.”  There was a murmur of agreement.

 

“I just can’t believe in zombies, it’s got to be something else,” said Private Denny. He pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“Well they’re not bloody werewolves are they!,” insisted Hawke, “They are clearly the un-dead, look at that one with his head shot off, he’s sitting there, he’s tapping his damn fingers.  Creeping me out.”

 

In the far distance they could hear human voices yelling and guttural cries of anguish.

 

“We need to find out what’s up ahead, Denny you have point Hawke take the rear,” order Fleming.  The men were up and moving, instantly alert.

 

As they walked past the un-dead bodies and dismembered heads they all noticed the eyes tracking their movements.

 

Further along the hall Denny noticed a faint light coming from around the corner.  “I’m going to have a quick look sir.”  He braced himself against the wall, rifle pointed upwards, sweating even in the cold damp air.  He slowly eased his head around the corner.

 

CRUNCH.

 

The troop had paused, covering Denny as he looked around the corner.  They all hear the terrible ‘CRUNCH’ noise and saw his body stiffen.  They were moving by the time they heard his gun clatter to the stone floor. 

 

They ran as one, as the still spasming body of Private Denny was dragged around the corner.

 

Lohberger was first there, sliding into the corner on his knees gun blazing away on fully automatic, Stuart was a bit more circumspect and opened fire from the same place Denny had been taken from.  There was nothing there, other than the Private’s Army issue glasses.  Twenty yards ahead a red glow with intermittent flashes of brilliant blue white came from a large circular pit.

 

That was when Hawke open up, behind them.  The steady crash, crash, crash of the Colt was mechanical in its precision, industrial in its accuracy.

 

A horde of twenty or thirty of them, were advancing on the troop.  The rifle fire was blowing great holes in the beasts but wasn’t thinning their ranks quickly enough.  Bangar yelled “Grenade!” just as half a dozen rushed him, smother tackling him to the ground, mumbling and biting, drooling and coughing up bits of dirt, the zombies clawed at him and each other and then the little Mills bomb went off.  The Zombie’s were torn apart into bloodless manageable chunks.  Bits and pieces were stuck to the ceiling and wall.  Nothing larger than a shoebox was left.  Unfortunately the same could be said for the Private.

 

It was then that the rest of the zombie horde rushed the surviving soldiers.  Fleming stood his ground firing his Webley Scott automatic pistol one handed “Retreat! Retreat!”  The men ran past him around the corner and towards the glowing pit.  “Come on Sir” said Stuart who was at his shoulder

“Righty Oh.”  Fleming put the un-pinned grenade he had in his left hand on the floor.  The safety lever sprung away and the two men turned and sprinted around the corner

 

The explosion took out the front ranks or the advancing zombies but didn’t slow them all down.  One or two stopped to sample their fallen comrades but they wanted fresh meat now, the blood lust had overtaken them.

 

The soldiers were re-loading on the run.  They hit the downward ramp without slowing and were faced with dozens of the un-dead, arms outstretched, white eyes staring, drool hanging from mouths, a steady moan and groan coming from their massed ranks.  The smell of death was appalling.  The four remaining soldier opened up with long busts from their assault rifles cutting swathes through the slowly advancing nightmare. 

 

A hand reached up and grabbed Hawke by the ankle and PULLED.  He tumbled over the ramp flapping his arms trying to fly and fell into a mass of partly reconstructed zombies, ones without legs or two arms but all of them had teeth.

 

Fleming fired more controlled, three round bursts into the advancing line of death, a rictus grin set on his face.  Stuart heard him yell “My name is Bond, James Bond.”

Stuart said to him over the noise of the battle “Oh Ian, I do wish you wouldn’t do that.” 

In a lull in the fighting Commander Fleming said “It’s the only bit of fun I have left after the uptimers blew my cover as a secret agent.  And diddled me out of a writing career I knew nothing about.”  Stuart lobbed two grenades further back down the ramp.  An explosion much larger than the two grenades followed, large chunks of stone and metal rods whickered through the air.

 

“Must have hit a gas line.” yelled Stuart.  “Are those fuel tanks up there?”

“Yes they are,” answered Fleming, “Stuart, do you think you can make you way up there to puncture them?”

“I’d certainly like to try.”  And with that he was off. 

 

Fleming watched the young Englishman run from cover to cover taking careful shots at the horde but with each move, getting closer to the fuel storage tanks.  Just then, Fleming was distracted by the zombie horde parting, as a tall heavily built, un-dead monster came staggering out of the melee.  A long iron rod protruding from his chest and various pieces of zombie flesh stuck to it.  Bystanders were being splatter with bits of gore from it as it swung about.  The beast charged toward Lohberger. 

 

Fleming fired, emptying his magazine and called out a warning to the young Lance Corporal, “Look Out! Rod…Zombie!” was all he got out before the horror had cannoned forward and impaled the soldier through the chest.  The monster clutched the rod and pulled himself along it, inching closer and closer to the skewered soldier.  Fleming was fighting for his own life and was by now almost completely surrounded.  He turned and looked at Lohberger.  The monster was not quite in biting range, slobbering and clawing its way along the rod impaling it.  Lohberger drew his side arm and shot the creature in the forehead.  It screamed and raged and raised its jagged claw like hands at him.  It was then the Corporal took the opportunity to shove his last Mill’s bomb into the zombies open mouth.  The explosion obliterated both of them.

 

Meanwhile Lieutenant Stuart had crawled and inched his way close up, next to the fuel drums.  He took out his short fighting knife and stabbed low on one of the drums.  Liquid gushed out soaking the officer head to foot.  Benzine! he thought, The Professor is a polluter as well!  Suddenly he felt incredible pain as a zombie bit into his calf, it held on and chewed.  The wind was then knocked out of him as another jumped onto him and started biting the back of his neck.  He knew he didn’t have long.  Fighting against the inhuman strength of the monsters and the panic brought about by his impending death, Stuart reached into his pocket and withdrew a box of matches.  Shielding them from the zombies with his body he nervously took out a match.  As he struck it he thought fondly of his mother and his friends and then nothing.

 

The explosion sent great sheets of burning liquid into the horror pit from where the zombies had been emerging.  Fleming could now see there were literally hundreds of them on fire and now, running past him.  All urges for fresh food were gone, just their base urge to escape the flames remained.  It seemed all had run past him and then out of the smoke and flames staggered a smouldering young Japanese woman, clearly not a zombie with life and fear showing in her eyes.  She took a step towards him and was grabbed roughly from behind. 

 

His white lab coat was now a gore splattered mess, his hair was singed and rumpled and his glasses cracked and askew on his face, Lieutenant General Ishii Fu of the dreaded Oka Extermination Unit 9420, emerged from the holocaust behind him holding the woman Keiki by the throat with a syringe full of plague bacillus and malarial parasite pointed at her neck.

 

“Who are you!” he demanded in a strongly accent but clearly understood voice.

“My name is Bond, James Bond of His Majesty’s Secret Service,” said Fleming grinning as he raised himself from the floor, “put that down and let the girl go.”

 

“I cannot!” said Fu.

“Your zombies are burning down the house.  Its time to go,” said Fleming reasonably.

 

“You will help me escape,” he insisted.  Just then, Igor stumbled out of the smoke and bumped into his Master.  That momentary distraction was enough to allow Fleming to draw his pistol and fire, hitting the villain in the forehead, killing him instantly.  The young, and beautiful, Keiko ran into his arms, embracing him fiercely.  Fleming pointed his pistol at the bent and burnt Igor.

 

“And just who are you?” queried the Commander.

“Igor,” he said.

 

Fleming raised an eyebrow, “and who was that?” waving the gun towards the Lieutenant General.

“No,” said Igor

“You will tell me.  I am in no mood to put up with any recalcitrance,” threatened Fleming.  Keiko pressed in closer against the Commander’s chest.

“No is his name, Fu means No,” explained Igor.

 

“I see,” said Fleming brightening somewhat, “so he was Professor No.”

“Not correct at all,” said Igor, “he was only a Doctor.” 

 

Igor could not understand, with all the death and mayhem around them, what had made the gaijin Commander so happy he laughed.