Beyond the Barriers by Timothy W. Long Page B

that looked as if it may have been a set of offices at one time. There were some padded mats, dummies, and punching bags in the corners. In the center of the floor was a large, black cushioned bag with the sand or water-type base. I walked to it and pushed. It didn’t budge, and I guessed they had some sort of pad underneath it so the thing would be harder to slide across the floor.
    I took a tentative punch at it, and then another. I looked behind me, then closed the door so I could work out in peace and quiet. I slipped my shirt off in the cold, stretched my joints and tendons. I had tried doing basics in the cabin, but halfheartedly at best. If I were going to be any use to these people, I would need to loosen up and get the old moves back.
    I hit the bag with a quick set of punches, moved past, and then spun around and launched a series of kicks, low and high. I worked a style I had learned from a guy I met in Thailand years ago. I leapt up and planted knees in the pad. Then I came down and slipped boxing into my impromptu workout.
    I worked a form in the air—something like a kata but with fast whip-like strikes. Within a few attempts, I felt like I hadn’t forgotten as much as I thought I had. Then I worked the forms against the bag, and even found a rubber knife to incorporate into the session. I had always been good with knives—nasty things with razor-sharp edges that I could use as an extension of my arm.
    I nearly knocked the bag over with a roundhouse kick, but it wobbled back to the surface of the floor with a heavy thump. Flowing from the kick into a straight punch, and then a series of close-in elbow strikes as I passed, I heard a noise behind me and came to a stop. My breath rumbled in and out like a locomotive.
    I spun around, and a shape slipped out of the shadows of the room near the door. It stepped into the dull light from the hanging flashlights, and I saw that it was a woman. She must have been close to six foot, and had black hair that hung around her face in a bob. She tucked one side behind an ear as she walked toward me and the bag. Her features were fine—sharp little nose and pixie eyes that were hard around the edges. I would put her age a few years younger than mine, but she had a look of weariness that betrayed her years.
    “Fighter, huh,” she said, as if commenting on the rain. Her body was slim and athletic. She had sculpted arms that hung out of a tank top, and I could see a vein running over the top of her biceps. Not a bodybuilder’s frame; she was just in good shape. I smiled at her as she walked past me toward a dummy in the corner. I let my eyes wander down her tight sweats, and couldn’t help but keep the smile on my face.
    “Imprinting it in your memory?” She looked over her shoulder. I noticed she had sparring gloves on, and I wondered if she was good with them.
    I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut.
    “That’s okay. This is a different world than the one you left. The rules have changed, you know.”
    “How so?”
    “All that petty bullshit—it’s gone. If you like someone or something, then you just take it. Like the goddamn ghouls; they think they can take whatever they like, and we won’t do anything about it.”
    “They’re driven by a disease. They aren’t rational,” I pondered out loud.
    “Piss on rational. They’re animals, and they deserve to burn. Each and every one of them.”
    I didn’t press her on that. She grabbed a dummy and dragged it by the shoulders, after tipping it on its side. I moved to help, but she hauled it out and stood it up so that it popped up like a jack in the box, then she swung forward. Before it could right itself, she punched it right in the throat. The model recoiled, and she launched into a vicious assault that saw the life-size man fall back under a barrage of punches and kicks that impressed me.
    I went back to work on my hunk of plastic, but every once in a while I felt her eyes on me,