Rot & Ruin

39

BENNY OPENED HIS EYES AND REALIZED THAT HE’D BEEN ASLEEP… AND that he was alone. The ranger station was in absolute darkness. Benny tensed, reaching for his sword, but his fingers found nothing. He remembered then that he’d left the bokken in the bathroom.

“Nix…?” he whispered.

Nothing.

Very slowly he shifted onto his knees and then climbed to his feet, staying low, listening for some sound. His shirt collar was still damp from her tears, so he knew he couldn’t have been asleep for long. Half an hour maybe?

He went outside. Nix was at the corner of the rail, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her hair blowing in the breeze. There was a sliver of moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks. He stood next to her, leaning his arms on the rail and looking out at the vastness of the sky. The starlight glimmered on the canopy of leaves, and the ocean of trees seemed to stretch away forever.

“Have you heard anything?” he whispered as they sat down on the edge of the catwalk, their feet hanging over into the lake of darkness.

“No.”

“Good. I think we’re safe,” he said, then added lamely, “Up here, I mean.”

She nodded. A mockingbird sang its schizophrenic melodies from a nearby tree.

Benny said, “When there’s light we’ll have to try and find our way back to town.”

Nix just shook her head, and the denial had so many possible meanings that Benny left his questions unasked.

“Morgie,” she said. “Is he…?”

“No, he’s okay. Or will be. They hit him pretty hard in the head, but they say he’s going to make it.”

Benny saw Nix steeling herself for the next question, and he was pretty sure he knew what it was going to be.

“My mom,” she began, and he quietly curled his fingers around the lip of the catwalk’s metal floor. “They said that she was… They said that she’d…” Nix stopped and shook her head, trying it another way. “They wanted to leave a present for Tom. That’s what they called it. A ‘present.’”

“It wasn’t like that,” Benny said. “We got there pretty quick. Your mom was still… your mom. Tom held her all the way up to the last, and she held onto him. It was… I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. But then she was… gone. It didn’t look like she was in pain when it happened. She just went to sleep.”

“Sleep,” Nix said in a soft echo. “And… after? Did she… I mean, did they let her… God, Benny, don’t make me say it!”

“No,” he soothed. “No. She never returned. There wasn’t time. Tom did what was necessary.”

“Tom?”

“Yes. With a sliver. He did it fast and quick. She never knew. And he held her afterward.”

Nix made no comment, but he could feel her pain. She sat and stared into the darkness of her own thoughts as the wheel of night turned above them.

“Why did they come after you, Nix?”

She turned to him in the dark. “It was because of that card. The Zombie Card with the girl on it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Zak Matthias got one too. I ran into him yesterday. He was on his way home from the store with his Zombie Cards, and I asked to see them. He was kind of weird about it, but he showed them to me. When I saw the card for the Lost Girl, I told him that I’d seen that picture before. He seemed really interested and asked where, and I told him that my mom was friends with Mr. Sacchetto, the erosion artist. He came over to the house with Tom a few times, and they talked about the Lost Girl.”

“You never told me about that.”

She shrugged. “Why would I? It didn’t seem to involve us. Just my mom and her friends talking. But when I told Zak, he kept asking me about it. What did my mom know about the Lost Girl? What had Tom and Mr. Sacchetto told her? Did I know where the Lost Girl was?” A tear rolled down her face, and she brushed it away. “I thought he was just interested because of the picture. The girl’s so pretty, you know? Like something out of a book. A faerie princess or something like that. Zak was smiling the whole time and… I don’t know… He’s good-looking, and he was being nice to me and…”

“And I’d blown you off?”

Nix shot him a sharp look, but her face softened and she looked away. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What did you tell him?”

She was a long time answering, and twice her face screwed up as she fought to control the pain in her soul. “I… I told him everything I knew. It wasn’t a lot. I didn’t really pay much attention when Mom and the others were talking about her. I told Zak that Mom knew a lot about her.” She shook her head in confusion. “I don’t know, Benny. Zak was being so nice… I don’t know what I said.”

“It’s okay, Nix.”

She wheeled on him. “Okay? No, it’s not okay! Don’t you get it? I told Zak that my mom knew about the Lost Girl, and I think that’s why Charlie came to the house. It’s because of what I said!”

She hissed the last words at him in a voice that boiled with pain and self-hatred.

“My mom’s dead because of me!”

“No, she’s not,” Benny said with a growl. He took her by the arms. She was strong. She tried to break away and stand up, but he held her. “Listen to me, Nix! Your mom’s dead, because Charlie Matthias is a freak and a murderer and a… a…” He couldn’t find a word vile enough to describe that monster’s nature.

Tears streamed down Nix’s face, but her teeth were set and bared. “Charlie knew you had the same card. All the time he was at the house, Charlie kept saying they should have just taken the card from you. He was furious with you. He said that you sassed him and that if Tom hadn’t come along, he’d have shown you manners. Manners… That’s a word he used at our house. He said that we all needed to show him some manners.”

Benny let go of her arms, and Nix leaned back away from him. “Why come after your mom, though? There have to be several of those cards in print now, even rare Chase Cards like that. In all the towns. He can’t kill everyone who has one.”

“No… it wasn’t just the card. It was what he thought Mom knew about the girl. Where to find her. And… I think maybe Mom did know something. I think Tom might have told her where he thought the Lost Girl was.” She cut him a look. “Did Tom tell you anything about my mom and Gameland?”

Benny nodded.

“Mom had nightmares about that place. About fighting zoms to make money for us to live on. God-the things she had to do just because of me!”

“Whoa, don’t think like that, Nix. That’s going to make you crazy, and it’s not true. Your mom did what she thought was right. She did what she had to do. She did it because she loved you. Only a mother would have the guts or even care enough to do what she did. You can’t let it chew you up.”

Nix wiped more tears from her eyes and nodded, but Benny knew this was something that would take her years to work through. He hoped they would have those years.

“A few months ago Mom told me that Charlie had rebuilt Gameland. I guess Tom told her. Her nightmares were a lot worse after that, and she kept on me all the time not to ever be alone with Charlie or the Hammer. And… and… last night, Charlie told her that they were taking me there. It hurt Mom worse than the beating they gave her. Mom freaked out and smashed him over the head with a rolling pin. I wished she’d killed him, but he turned on her like an animal.” Nix stopped, and Benny did not encourage her to tell any more of that part of the story.

The night birds kept up their continuous chorus.

“Then they hit me so hard that I guess I blacked out, and when I woke up we were already out here in the Ruin. They told me that they were taking me to Gameland.”

“Then it’s somewhere close?”

“I don’t think so. I overheard the Hammer telling one of the other bounty hunters that they were heading to Charlie’s camp up in the mountains and would turn east to Gameland in the morning.”

“I’m glad you escaped, Nix. I was going crazy thinking about you with those maniacs.”

“Charlie wouldn’t let them hurt me too much. He said that I had to be ‘fresh’ for the Z-Games.”

“The stuff they’re doing,” Benny said, “in town last night, out here, at Gameland… It’s worse than what the zoms do.”

“I know,” she said. “Zoms are driven by some disease, but, really, they’re mindless and soulless. These men have souls and minds, and yet they still do this stuff. Not once, but over and over again.”

There was a sound off in the distance that sounded like a scream. Not a human throat, though. Was it Apache or Chief? Or just the call of some night-hunting bird?

Benny shifted to sit a little closer to Nix. “Tom said that he’d heard rumors about them grabbing kids from places where they wouldn’t be missed. Kids for Gameland. Did anyone say anything about that?”

“Yes. One of the men said that they’d rounded up a bunch of kids and that they were waiting at the camp.”

“Do you know where this camp is?”

“No… but it can’t be far.”

Benny chewed on that. “If Tom was… I mean… Maybe Tom would know what to do. He might be able to find the camp and get those kids out.”

Nix looked at him. “God! I wish there was some way that we could do it.”

“Us? Fat chance. We don’t have weapons, training, or anything, and there are about a million zoms out there.”

“So what are you saying? We don’t do anything? We just let those kids be taken to that place?”

Benny shook his head. “That’s not it, Nix… It’s just that we can’t do anything. I mean, be realistic.”

“Realistic? Yeah, and you’re always living in the real world, Benny Imura.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re in love with a girl you saw on a Zombie Card, and you’re asking me to be realistic.” She shook her head, and they lapsed into a tense silence.

“I’m not in love with anyone, Nix. Besides, I don’t even know Lilah. Don’t be crazy,” Benny said.

Nix merely grunted.

“Benny,” she said after a while. “A couple of years ago, when Mom thought I was asleep, I heard her beg Tom to kill Charlie. She wanted Tom to find him out here in the Ruin and kill him… But he didn’t do it, Benny! He should have done it… but he didn’t.”

“I know. But… I think he might have burned Gameland down.”

“So what? The problem isn’t the place, Benny, it’s the people. Tom didn’t stop them. I think he was afraid of Charlie.”

Benny shook his head. “You don’t understand. Tom wasn’t who I thought he was. I was completely wrong about him. He wasn’t afraid of-”

But Nix was on the attack and cut him off. “You never liked Tom, so don’t start defending him now. You always said he was weak. He was supposed to be so tough, and yet he wouldn’t even do what my mom wanted. He couldn’t… and look what happened. Mom’s dead.” She pounded her fists on the metal rail, and the echo bounced off the night-black trees. Benny heard the echo and quickly grabbed her wrist.

“Don’t,” he said. “Not out here. The noise…”

She wheeled on him. “Are you afraid too?” she mocked.

“Yes,” he said. “I am. There are zoms out there, Nix. Zoms and them. Sound carries.”

But her hurt and anger still needed a target. “You’re just as bad as Tom. You and Morgie and Chong. You worship Charlie and the other bounty hunters. You think he’s cool.” She injected that word with so much venom that Benny knew he would never allow himself to speak it again. It sounded hollow and immature and stupid.

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Oh, sure. Now that it’s too late to do anything, you act all wise and noble. Please.”

Her voice was drenched with bile, and it was getting louder. Benny tried to read her face by starlight, but all he saw were harsh lines.

“And about Tom… I’m not sure what I feel about him anymore. I mean, I miss him. A lot. More than I thought I would.” He shook his head. “Ever since he first took me out to the Ruin, everything’s different. I don’t understand him. I don’t know if I ever did.”

She shoved him hard in the chest. “Who cares? He didn’t save my mom and he could have.”

“Nix, I know you’re hurt. I wish I could fix it, I swear to God. I wish I could make it all different, make what happened not true. If I could… I’d give anything. I’d die to make it right for you and for your mom.”

She started to say something, but he touched her arm.

“If you need to lash out at me, if you need to do anything to me-say anything, throw me off this tower-if it will help even a little, then do it. I don’t care what happens to me anymore. I got what I wanted.”

“What’s that?” she demanded.

“You,” he said. “I got you back safe. The monsters didn’t get you.”

Nix stared at him, unable to speak even though she tried.

Benny tugged the worn leather diary out of his back pocket and pressed it into her hands. “I found this on the floor in your room. I kept it. I… haven’t opened it, haven’t read it. I kept it, because as long as I had it, I knew I’d find you again.”

Nix took the diary, and in the pale light from stars and moon, she ran her fingers across the cover and along the binding. When she raised her eyes to look at Benny, her eyes were wet with new tears.

“Benny, I-,” she began, but before she could say anything more, he bent forward and kissed her. It was the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong circumstances. There was nothing right in their whole world.

Except that kiss.

40

NIX FELL ASLEEP WITH HER HEAD IN HIS LAP. BENNY STAYED AWAKE for another couple of hours, stroking her hair and staring into the infinite star field that stretched above him. After that first scalding kiss, there had been others. And then there had been more tears as the full reality of her loss hit Nix. These tears were quieter, though. They weren’t the tears of shock and denial. They’d already been through that storm. These were the deep, heartbroken tears of acceptance.

Their lives had changed. Their worlds had changed. As he sat there stroking Nix’s hair, Benny had the weird feeling that if he turned around, he would be able to see yesterday and the day before that, all the way back to the point where he had decided to apprentice with Tom. It had been at that moment that his footfalls had diverged from the sane and predictable course of his life. He wished he could call out to the Benny of ten days ago and shout a warning not to come this way. Take the job at the pit, work for the German locksmith, get a tower job with Chong. Anything but this.

As he thought about it, Benny felt sickness creeping into his mind, making ugly questions form like tumors.

Would all of this have happened if I hadn’t taken that damn job with Tom?

And worse yet…

Would any of it have happened?

On a deep level he knew that these thoughts were stupid and wrong. Charlie and the Hammer would have still come after Tom and Sacchetto and Nix’s mom.

Wouldn’t they?

He also knew that the guilt he felt was no different than the guilt Nix felt for having told Zak about her mother knowing Lilah. Things said and done innocently should never be used as weapons. There was guilt here, he finally decided, but it all belonged to Charlie.

Just thinking that name made fires ignite in the pit of his stomach.

For the first time in his life he wished that Tom was here to help him make sense of it. Tom. Benny had hated him most of his life and had just started to like him-even if he didn’t quite understand him-and now the zoms had gotten him.

The sudden realization that Tom was not only dead but was probably a zom was like a punch in the face. Benny closed his eyes and found that old, old memory of Mom in her white dress with red sleeves, handing him to Tom, screaming at Tom to run, and Tom running away, leaving her behind. Tom the zombie hunter. Tom the coward.

Tom the zombie. Would there be a new Zombie Card? Two weeks ago Benny might have thought that was funny. Or appropriate.

Now the horror of it was bigger than the night that loomed around him. He remembered the argument they’d had when Tom had showed him the old man and the girl in the waitress uniform.

“It’s not the same. These are zoms, man. They kill people. They eat people.”

Tom had said, “They used to be people.”

Now Tom was one of them. He tried not to think of what Tom’s last few seconds had been like. The Hammer’s shotgun blast had caught him; Benny had seen the blood fly. Had the blast killed him? That would have been a kindness. The alternative was beyond horrible. Falling down into the mass of them, covered in blood. White hands clawing at his skin, rotting gray teeth biting into him, tearing at him…

Tom did not deserve that. Benny was unsure if Tom was a coward or had ever been a coward. He doubted his own memories of First Night, or, at least, of what those old memories meant. No matter what, though, Tom did not deserve what had happened to him.

He shivered and Nix stirred restlessly.

Looking at her dragged his mind into another room of thought. That kiss. With Nix? Nix, of all people. It was absurd, impossible. They’d already come to that hurdle back in town, and they hadn’t been able to climb it together. It was dangerous and wrong to fall in love with a friend. It complicated things. He and Chong had once sworn that they would never ever fall for a girl they knew. A bold claim in a town as small as Mountainside. Now… Nix Riley lay asleep on his lap, and he swore he could still feel the warmth of her lips on his.

He tugged the battered and sweat-stained Zombie Card from his shirt pocket and looked at the Lost Girl. A dagger of guilt stabbed him beneath the breastbone, and he quickly glanced down at Nix. He could see her eyes move under her closed lids and knew that she was dreaming. A soft cry escaped her parted lips, and it was filled with jagged pieces of emotion. Hurt and loss, despair and terror, but also rage and defiance.

Benny brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek.

His stomach churned with confusion and conflict. Even now, even after that incredible kiss he and Nix had shared, when he looked at the picture of the Lost Girl, he felt an almost physical impact. The desire to find and protect Lilah was every bit as strong now as it was when he’d first turned over her card on the porch at Lafferty’s General Store, and that made as little sense to him now as it did then. He didn’t know this girl. Even Sacchetto and Tom hadn’t really known her. Even if she was still out here somewhere, she was nothing and no one to him. And yet…

And yet.

He studied the card for a long time, even as exhaustion dragged on his eyelids. Nix groaned again in the private hell of her troubled sleep. Benny looked from Nix to the Lost Girl and back to Nix.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he stretched out his other hand, and for the second time, he opened his fingers and let the wind take the card. It blew high into the air, tumbling over and over again, its pasteboard face flashing with silver starlight, and then it dropped into the darkness below.

Benny bent and kissed Nix’s cheek. He leaned back against the wall and stared at the night and drifted off into a sea of stars.

41

“NOW AIN’T THIS JUST ADORABLE.”

Benny and Nix jerked awake at the sound of the voice, blinking in the harsh dawn light, struggling to disentangle themselves from each other and understand where on Earth they were.

Two men stood on the metal catwalk that ran around the outside of the deserted ranger station. Both men had guns holstered on their hips, shotguns slung over their shoulders, and ugly smiles on their mouths.

Skins and Turk.

“Ain’t nothing like young love,” said Turk.

“Warms the cockles of my heart,” agreed Skins.

Benny instinctively spread his arms, like a barrier between the bounty hunters and Nix.

“Charlie’s going to like this,” said Skins. “He was pretty smoked about the little witch skipping out like that.”

“Leave us alone,” Benny said with a growl.

“Yeah.” Turk laughed. “That’s gonna happen. We spent the whole damn night searching these freaking woods and then climbed this big mother of a tower, just to go away ’cause you asked. Yessir, we’ll be on our way, so sorry to bother your beauty sleep.”

Skins tapped his palm on his thigh, like he was calling in the dogs. “C’mon… get your butts over here.”

Benny and Nix slowly got to their feet, but they made no move toward the bounty hunters. Turk went into the ranger station and came out with the bokken. “Look,” he said. “Kid has a toy sword.”

He raised it over his head and brought it down in a powerful two-hand swing onto the metal rail. The hard wood rebounded from the hit, but did not break. Turk cursed and turned it sideways and slammed the flat of the blade onto the rail, and with a sharp crack the sword snapped in half. The long end went spinning off into the canopy of trees far below. Turk laughed and tossed the broken handle onto the catwalk.

“They have anything else in there?” Skins asked.

“Nah.”

“Then let’s haul it,” snapped Skins to Benny and Nix. “C’mon, kids, Charlie is going to have a lot of stuff to talk to you two about. Should be a pretty interesting chat.”

“A heart-to-heart.” Turk laughed.

“A meaningful discussion,” agreed Skins.

“Let us go,” said Nix. “You can do that. You can just tell Charlie that you didn’t find us.”

Skins looked genuinely confused. “Now why on Earth would we want to do that?”

Benny took a step forward. “Do you know what Charlie did last night?”

“None of my business.”

“You’re with him. You’re helping him do this stuff.”

Skins looked bored. “Is this where you try to appeal to my better nature, kid?”

Behind him Turk cracked up. “Good luck with that.”

“Please…,” Benny said. “We didn’t do anything to you.”

“Who cares?”

“I won’t let you take her-”

Skins suddenly backhanded Benny across the face. It was so fast and hard that Benny was falling before he realized that he’d been hit. He hit the railing with the small of his back and might have gone over if Nix hadn’t grabbed him and hauled him away. Benny sank to his knees and spit blood and a piece of tooth onto the catwalk.

“Leave him alone!” Nix yelled.

The bounty hunter snatched a handful of Nix’s hair, tore her away from Benny, and slammed her against the station wall.

“Shut up, girlie. You don’t tell us what to do.”

Benny came off the deck in a surge and drove his fist into Skins’ ribs. It was a good try, but he was still dizzy from the blow he’d taken, and his fist merely skittered along the big man’s side. Skins pivoted and drove a heavy punch into Benny’s back, nailing him squarely between the shoulder blades and knocking him flat onto his chest.

“Try that crap again, kid, and I’ll cut pieces off of you.”

It was all Benny could do to breathe. When he’d landed, his breastbone had struck the broken bokken handle, and it felt like the hard wood had punched a hole through his chest.

“Benny!” Nix cried, but when she tried to bend to help him, Turk grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her away. The action caused her shirt to ride high and expose most of her midriff. Both of the bounty hunters whistled and laughed and made comments that were as vulgar as they were threatening. Nix did not give in or give up. She fought them, kicking out as hard as she could, slapping at Turk’s face, raking her nails on his arms, pounding her fists on his chest and cheeks. Her attack was so sudden and fierce that for a moment the bounty hunter reeled back, letting go of her to use both hands to block his face. Nix tried to kick him in the groin, but Turk turned his hip and swatted hard enough her across the face to spin her into the wall again. She hit hard and slid down to her knees.

“Filthy little whore!” Turk growled. His lip and right ear were already swelling.

But even then Nix would not stop. As Benny watched she launched herself from her knees and drove into Turk’s legs, knocking him back against the rail. She made a sound like a hunting cat, a snarl that started low in her gut and rose up, filtered through rage and humiliation and the certain knowledge of what the future held. Her scream scared the birds from the trees and echoed off the mountain slope. Turk kept backing away from her, startled and confused by this child who had been frightened and cowering all last night and who was now attacking him with insane strength and speed.

“Slap some sense into that little hellcat,” demanded Skins. “Screw it… let me do it.”

Skins stepped over Benny and reached to take a handful of Nix’s hair, just as Turk caught one of her wrists and then another. Skins drew a knife with his free hand. “I’ve had enough of your crap, girlie girl. You don’t need both eyes to fight in the zombie pits.”

That was all Benny could take. Even though he could barely breathe, he dug one hand under his chest and grabbed the broken bokken handle, then jammed the other hand hard against the catwalk and heaved himself to his knees.

“Leave her alone!” he screamed and with all of the fury and fear that flowed through him, he drove the jagged end of the bokken into Skins’s back. When the sword had snapped, it left a hardwood stump that was as sharp as a real blade, and Benny threw his weight behind the thrust. The jagged point bit deep into the soft spot above the bounty hunter’s belt, and Benny buried it to the hilt. Blood ran hot and red over his fist, and Skins whirled and clubbed him down. Benny fell, raising his arms to ward off the next blow, but Skins stood there, gasping like a fish out of water, eyes bugged wide in unbelieving surprise.

Nix stamped down hard on Turk’s foot and tore her wrists free of his grip, then shoved him in the chest as hard as she could, hoping to knock him over the rail. Turk was so busy staring at Skins that he was caught off guard, and staggered back all the way to the rail by the ladder, but he did not go over.

Instead, he caught his balance at the last second. Skins dropped heavily to his knees, the impact causing the metal catwalk to ring like a bell. His eyes rolled up, and he fell forward onto his face with a meaty crunch.

“You’re dead.” Turk snarled at Benny. He grabbed his pistol and whipped it from the holster, thumbing back the hammer in a smooth and practiced move. “I’ll friggin’ kill you both for-”

That was all he got out. It was all he would ever say again.

He looked down at his chest, at the bizarre thing that suddenly sprouted from between the ribs on the left side. Benny and Nix stared as well. The whole front of Turk’s shirt exploded with red as three gleaming inches of sharpened steel extruded from the bounty hunter’s chest. He tried to say something, but there was no air left in his lungs, no power left in his voice.

Behind him there was a blur of movement and a grunt of effort. The blade vanished, pulled back into the wound and then out of Turk’s body. Benny watched as the person behind him cocked a leg, placed a foot on the bounty hunter’s body, and shoved him forward, so that he landed face-down, inches from Skins.

The figure stood there in the harsh morning sunlight. Tattered jeans and hand-sewn leather moccasins, a shirt that had once been bright with a wildflower pattern, with a leather pouch slung across her body on a thin strap. Hair the color of newly fallen snow swirled around her tanned face, and she stared at them with cunning hazel eyes. In her tanned hands she held a spear crudely made from a long piece of quarter-inch black pipe wrapped in leather and topped with the blade from a Marine Corps bayonet.

The Lost Girl.

42

“WHO ARE YOU?” NIX ASKED, BUT AT THE SAME TIME BENNY SPOKE her name.

“Lilah!”

The girl stiffened, and the bloody spear swung around in his direction. Her hazel eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.

Benny held up his hands. “No, wait… I’m Benny Imura.”

She showed no sign of recognition.

“I’m Tom Imura’s brother.”

The girl said nothing.

“My brother, Tom… He knew George!”

If he had struck her across the face, he could not have changed her expression more quickly. The suspicion vanished to be replaced by shock.

“G-George?”

She spoke the name, as if her throat was dusty from disuse, and Benny realized that in a very real way it probably was. Almost immediately her suspicions returned, and the tip of the spear rose another inch, level with his eye.

“Where?” she demanded. “George.”

Nix glanced at Benny, putting things together very quickly. “Is this her?” she whispered.

“George!” the Lost Girl prompted with a shake of her spear. Her voice was still a husky whisper, and Benny remembered that horrible story that Rob Sacchetto had told him of how Lilah had started screaming when the men in that little cottage had been forced to kill her mother after she’d reanimated as a zombie.

She screamed herself raw, and then she stopped talking. Those screams must have damaged her vocal chords for good, leaving her with a voice like a graveyard whisper.

God.

“I… don’t know where he is,” Benny said quickly. “My brother knew him. He helped George look for you.”

“Look? For… me?” It was clearly hard for the girl to form sentences. It was a skill that she’d lost over time. Benny could not imagine going for years without speaking to anyone. In some odd way that was as bad as living out here in the zombie wasteland.

“When the bounty hunters took you and your sister from George, he started looking for you.” Benny risked taking a slight step toward her, despite the threat of the deadly spear. “He never stopped, Lilah. George never stopped looking for you. And for Annie.”

At the mention of her sister’s name, Lilah’s eyes filled with tears, but her mouth tightened into a bitter line.

“Lilah, listen to me. The men who hurt you, the men who hurt Annie and George…”

“Benny,” Nix said softly. “Don’t…”

“Those same men hurt Nix’s mother.” He turned his head for a second to indicate Nix. “They hurt her… and she died.”

Lilah held her ground, eyes boring into his.

“And they killed my brother.” Benny licked his lips. “Those men took the people we all loved. They took from each of us.” As Benny said it, he realized that he did love Tom. As troubled and confused as their relationship had once been, Benny felt an ache that went all the way to the core of his heart. “They hurt all of us, Lilah. Do you understand? All of us.” He leaned on that last word and saw how it worked on her, changing her eyes and the line of her mouth. The spear tip wavered ever so slightly.

“Us,” he repeated. “You… Nix… me. Us.”

Benny waited for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, and then took another step forward. The tip of the spear was inches from his face now. Moving very slowly, hands open, eyes fixed on Lilah’s, he reached up and touched the point where the Marine Corps bayonet was attached to the shaft of the spear. He pushed it aside, and the Lost Girl allowed it.

After a moment she stepped back and lowered the weapon.

“Us,” she said.

“Us,” agreed Benny.

After a moment Nix said, “Us.”

Abruptly the Lost Girl stiffened and looked over the rail. Benny and Nix looked as well, but if there was something to see, they didn’t see it. Lilah, however, did.

“Go,” she snapped. “Now. Now!”

Without waiting to see if they followed, she spun around and climbed down the ladder as quickly and smoothly as a monkey. Nix followed, but Benny lingered for a moment, looking at the man he’d killed.

“Benny!” Nix called.

“Wait. Give me a second,” he said. “I have work to do.”

He took the weapons from the dead men, stripping off Turk’s gun belt and buckling it around his narrow waist. The gun was heavy, but the weight was comforting. He left the shotguns. They were big and clumsy, and he had never fired one before. Now didn’t seem like the time to fool around with unfamiliar weapons. However, he took Skins’s knife. It was not as good as Tom’s double-bladed dagger or the hunting knife Benny had lost back at the field, but it would do.

Benny knelt beside the corpse for a second, the naked blade in his hand.

“This is probably cutting you a break,” he muttered, “but we may need this place again.”

With that he plunged the tip of the blade into the back of the man’s neck, right below the skull. Quieting him. He pulled the blade free, lips curled in disgust, and then repeated the process with Turk. Then he wiped the blade clean on Turk’s shirt, slid the knife into the sheath on the gun belt, and climbed down to catch up with Nix and Lilah. His mind churned with what he had just done. Closure, of a kind, although it felt more like taking out the garbage than giving peace to the dead. Either way it was necessary work.

All part of the family business.

43

BENNY AND NIX FOLLOWED THE LOST GIRL INTO THE WOODS THAT surrounded the ranger station. She led them thirty yards up a crooked path that had been carved by rain runoff, making sure to step on rocks or fallen logs, leaving no footprints at all. Nix noticed that first and pointed it out to Benny, and they imitated her careful ways, though it meant that they went more slowly and with far less grace than the lithe Lilah.

Lilah suddenly stopped with her head cocked to listen.

“Hide!” she hissed with quiet urgency, and immediately she appeared to vanish into a tangle of wild roses. Nix pulled Benny down behind an ancient rhododendron, and they huddled together, trying to make themselves as small as rabbits.

“What is it?” Benny whispered, but Nix jabbed him in the ribs and pointed.

They had a good view of the open space at the base of the tower and the various game trails that crisscrossed in front of it. At first Benny didn’t see anything, but then the tall grass in the clearing shifted and a man stepped very cautiously out of hiding.

Charlie Matthias.

Nix gave a sharp inward hiss and grabbed Benny’s arm with such force that he thought she’d break the bones. Her fingernails dug into his flesh, and from that point of contact he could feel a shudder of disgust and murderous fury wash through her. Here was the man who had killed her mother. With his other hand Benny reached for the pistol at his hip, but Lilah appeared out of nowhere and touched his arm. When he looked at her, she shook her head and nodded to the other side of the clearing. Three more men stepped into the sunlight. The Hammer and the Mekong brothers. All of them carried guns.

The men walked to the foot of the ranger tower, casting cautious looks at the surrounding woods and checking the ground for footprints. When they passed the spot where Lilah had led Nix and Benny into the woods, the men saw nothing to attract their attention.

At the base of the ladder, the Hammer cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a short, sharp whistle that sounded like a woodland bird. He waited for a few seconds, then made the call again. He turned to Charlie and shook his head.

“Go on up and see what’s what,” Charlie growled to Vin. His voice carried easily in the clear morning air.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll find my lucky coin,” Vin said as he turned toward the ladder, but Charlie grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.

“You have something to say, boy, you say it to my face.”

Vin looked up at Charlie, and for a moment Benny thought that the smaller man was going to try something. He was holding his shotgun; he could have stepped back and brought the gun up into Charlie’s face. One act of courage or pride, and the devil would be on his way down. Nix gripped Benny’s wrist and gave it a pump, as if that would somehow encourage Vin to do the right thing.

In the end, however, Vin did the cowardly thing. He mumbled something and lowered both his eyes and his gun.

“Go about your business, then,” Charlie said flatly. “Git your skinny butt up that ladder and see what those two morons are doing,”

Vin shot a quick look at Joey Duk, but he didn’t let Charlie see his expression. He slung his shotgun across his back and began climbing as the other men trained their weapons on the catwalk. Vin went up carefully and slowly, and when his head and shoulders were just above the level of the platform, he froze. Benny could hear his curses floating through the trees.

“What is it?” demanded Charlie.

“You better get up here, boss.”

With a growl, Charlie and the Hammer climbed to the catwalk while Joey remained at ground level to guard the ladder. Benny had to crab sideways a few yards to see the three men as they stood there, examining the bodies of their fallen comrades.

It was then that the reality of what he’d done hit Benny.

I killed a man.

Not a zombie… but a real, living human being.

He listened inside for his conscience to scream about the wrongness of it, but all he heard echoing through his internal darkness was the sound of Morgie’s trembling voice back at Nix’s house, and the sound of Tom’s voice as he held Jessie Riley. And the sound of Nix’s awful sobs last night. If his conscience had something to say about what he’d done, it didn’t dare say it loud enough to be heard. And some other part of him wished that he’d driven that wooden spike into the big man with the pale skin and the one red eye, who stood with his fists on his hips thirty yards away. If only Tom had taught him how to shoot. But then, he reflected, he knew enough about handguns to understand that thirty yards was a long way for any kind of accuracy. Even if he emptied the entire magazine at the catwalk, he might not hit anyone and would, in turn, draw deadlier fire from their long guns. Charlie had a rifle slung on his back.

He bent close to Nix and Lilah, and mouthed the words: “Stay or go?”

Lilah made a palms-down gesture. Stay.

Charlie went to the rail of the catwalk and looked out over the mountain slope and the surrounding forest. He swept his eyes slowly from one side to the other, and for one chilling moment his gaze rested on the spot where Benny and the girls crouched. Could that evil red eye see them? Then the big man’s gaze swept past.

The Hammer came and stood beside him. “This is a complete waste of time, Charlie. We need to get them kids and get ours asses over the hill.”

“I don’t like leaving it like this,” growled Charlie. “Unfinished business is sloppy.”

“Yeah, well, wasting time is wasting money,” retorted the Hammer. “We already got us a round dozen for the games.”

“What if the Imura pup gets back to town?”

The Hammer laughed at the idea. “There’s an army of zoms between him and safe, Charlie. Best-case scenario for him is that he falls and breaks his neck before they get him.”

“Worse-case scenario is that I pick up his trail,” said Charlie.

“Truer words, brother,” said the Hammer, slapping him on the back. “Truer words.”

“Okay, let’s roll. Houston John and Bull should be getting in tonight, and I want to be on the move at first light.”

Charlie turned away, and they began climbing down, leaving the bodies of their friends behind, as if they weren’t even worth the effort to bury. The men reached the ground and faded back into the tall grass. From their direction, Benny figured they were going back to the highway or to some spot near it, where their own trail would take them to their camp.

Benny turned to Nix and opened his mouth to speak, but Lilah put a finger to her lips and held it there for a long minute. Then she rose slowly from her crouch and searched the clearing and the woods beyond it. Finally the tension left her shoulders, and she turned to Benny and Nix.

“Thank you,” he said to Lilah.

The Lost Girl looked momentarily confused, as if she didn’t know how to respond to that.

Nix said, “How did you know that we needed help?”

Lilah’s mouth worked as she tried to sort out how to answer, testing and tasting different words. For the second time Benny wondered how long it had been since she’d spoken with another human being.

“Follow,” she began, then changed the word. “Follow-ing. Men. Following men?” She ended it as a question, hoping they understood.

“You were following the men?” Nix asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Following the men. I was. Since, um… dark morning.”

“Since dawn?”

“Dawn,” Lilah agreed, smiling a little. “I was following the men since dawn.”

“Why were you following them?” Benny asked.

Lilah thought about it. “You.”

“Us?”

“Saw you. Last night. Saw you run from them. Walkers. Men. Heard shots. Followed. Heard you last night. Crying. Talking.”

Benny cut a quick look at Nix, who avoided his eyes. Had this feral girl heard them kissing? Benny thought about it, then dismissed it. The kisses were hot, but they weren’t loud. On the other hand, he mused, she could have stood on this very spot and watched them kiss. As he thought it, he realized that Nix had already reached that conclusion, hence her avoiding his eyes.

“Lilah… last night, when you heard us talking. Did you hear everything we said?”

She considered, shrugged… then nodded.

“Did you understand?”

That small smile flickered over her lips again. “I… understand. Just not…” She waved a hand back and forth between them.

“You’re just not used to talking,” Nix said. “Not used to conversation?”

“Conversation.” Lilah repeated the word slowly, enjoying it.

Benny said, “We have to get out of here. We have to get back to town. Do you know about town, about Mountainside? Where we live?”

“Know. Some. Not much.”

“Can you take us there?” Nix asked.

“Can,” Lilah said. “Won’t.”

Benny frowned. “You won’t? How come?”

“Eat,” she said, and when they didn’t react, she looked irritated and mimed the action of picking up food and eating it. “Eat.”

“Yes,” Benny said, “I understand that we have to eat, but we also have to get home.”

As soon as he said it, the reality of that word-“home”-hung in the air, filled with ugly images and new meanings.

“Home to what?” Nix asked, turning sharply to him. “Home to who?”

“I…,” he began, but clearly he had no idea of where to go with that thought. She was completely right. Home to who? Her mother was dead. So was Tom. Both of them had empty houses back in Mountainside. Empty houses and wrecked lives.

“Eat,” Lilah said. “Eat first. Eat and think.”

“Eat where? Here?”

Lilah shook her head. “Follow.”

Without another word, Lilah turned and headed into the woods along a path that whipped and turned, snakelike as it cut around the shoulders of the mountain. Nix tried to talk to Lilah as they walked, but the Lost Girl shook her head and moved way out front, apparently liking to be in her own head when out in the wild.

Soon they heard the gurgle of water, and several times they glimpsed streams that cut downland toward Coldwater Creek. Seeing the streams was comforting, because Benny knew that he could use them to find the creek and from there, maybe find his way back to Mountainside. But just thinking of the creek reminded him of Tom.

Nix must have noticed a look on his face and asked him what was wrong.

“Thinking about Tom,” Benny said.

She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry for what I said about him. Mom… Mom really cared for him. I think maybe she was a little bit in love with him.”

“I think it went both ways, Nix.” He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “I used to think I was a reasonably intelligent person. Not like Chong-”

“No one is,” Nix said with a smile.

“And not like you.”

She said nothing.

“But I’m not completely dense.”

“Okay, but what’s your point?”

“I… I never told anyone about this,” Benny began, and then he told her about his memory of First Night, and of his mother in her white dress and red sleeves and screaming mouth. Of Tom taking him and running away. “It’s the first thing I remember,” Benny concluded, “and it’s how I used to see Tom.”

“As… what?” she asked, although Benny thought she’d already guessed where he was going with this.

“As a coward. I think he ran away.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe your mom told him to get you to safety.”

“She did. Tom told me that much, and I believe him, but he didn’t go back for her. He didn’t do anything to help her. All he did was run.”

Nix was quiet as they climbed over some rocks. Lilah was almost a hundred yards up the trail and didn’t show any sign of slowing down to let them catch up.

“Is she what you expected to find?” Nix asked, one eyebrow arched.

“Not even a little,” Benny said. “She’s pretty weird.”

“She’d have to be,” said Nix.

“Living out here? Fighting zoms and dodging guys like Charlie every day? Yeah, if it was me, I’d have gone buggy a long time ago.”

Nix dropped down on the far side of the rocks and waited for Benny to scramble down. They moved along up the trail, side by side.

“The thing is,” Benny said, “what if I was wrong about Tom all this time?”

“What makes you ask now?”

“Stuff that’s happened. Seeing how he was out in the Ruin the first time he took me out here. He was smart and skillful. He knew things and could do things that I never knew about.”

“That’s true of most people until you get to know them,” she said. “And sometimes even after you think you know them really well.”

He nodded. “Then there’s the way people talk about him. They act like he was all Joe Tough. I think the Hammer and Charlie were even a little scared of him outside of Mr. Sacchetto’s house. Well… maybe the Hammer was scared, and Charlie was just cautious, but why? Tom wasn’t big, and he wasn’t strong like those two guys.”

“My mom said she saw him fight once, but she would never tell me under what circumstances.”

Benny guessed that Mrs. Riley had probably been referring to the time Tom rescued her from Gameland.

“Yeah, and I saw him face down Vin Trang and Joey Duk while all those zoms were closing in on us. Tom was figuring it out. Maybe he was stressed, but I kept looking for him to be afraid, because that’s what I expected to see when the chips were down.”

“But…?”

“But all he did was fight. He died fighting.”

“There’s another thing,” Nix said, her eyes sad. “Charlie and the Hammer went over to Mr. Sacchetto’s and killed him. They broke into our house. But… they didn’t attack Tom directly.”

Benny sighed and trudged along beside her for a while, lost in a sick depression. “It sucks,” he said eventually. “Tom died, thinking that his brother, the only relative he had left on Earth, thought he was a piece of crap coward.” He shook his head. “But I stopped thinking that the first time he took me out here. I’d give a lot to change things between us.”

Nix took his hand and squeezed it. There was a whole world full of things they both wished they could change.

44

THEY FOLLOWED LILAH THROUGH A FOREST OF ANCIENT OAKS THAT WAS SO lush that the canopy of leaves cast everything below into a twilight darkness. Morning mist clung to the mossy ground, and the trunks of the trees rose, like ghosts in the humid gloom. After only a few steps into this nightmare landscape, the wind settled and died, leaving behind a dreadful stillness.

It was Nix who first heard the moans of the dead.

“Wait!” she hissed, dropping into a crouch. “Zoms!”

Benny pulled the big hunting knife he’d taken from the dead bounty hunter.

The moan was a wordless cry of hunger that drifted to them through the pillars of oak trees, like the plaintive call of a wandering ghost.

“Where is it?” Nix whispered.

“There,” said Benny, pointing. “I think it’s coming from over there.”

Lilah bent and ran quickly in that direction, her feet making no sound on the mossy ground, her body bent, spear ready.

“Um… Benny?” said Nix. “She’s running toward the zombies.”

Fifty yards up the trail, Lilah stopped and waved to them.

“And she wants us to follow.”

“Oh crap.”

“Well,” said Nix, “she’s your object of obsession.”

“Very funny.”

Reluctantly and slowly, they followed.

The closer they got, the louder was the moan of the zombie. It was different from other zom voices that Benny had heard, although he couldn’t yet put his finger on what was different. Whatever it was, it made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up.

They reached Lilah, and together they crept around a bend in the path. A zombie stood right in front of them. He had once been a great brute of a man, and even withered and dead he had a massive chest and broad shoulders, and hands that looked big enough to snap Benny in half. He was wearing a mechanic’s coveralls, and there was a line of gaping black bullet holes across his chest and stomach.

Nix yelped in fear. Benny cried out and brought up his knife, ready to make a fight of it. He crowded Nix backward, willing to sacrifice himself for her.

The moan of the zombie changed to a growl of immediate need, and his wrinkled lips curled away from rotted yellow teeth.

The forest around them erupted into a chorus of other hungry moans as an army of the undead began to howl for their flesh. Benny and Nix turned and saw that there were, indeed, hundreds of zombies-men and women, children and adults-and they were everywhere. Lilah had taken them the wrong way. Instead of leading them to safety, she’d stumbled into a terrible trap.

Lilah stood inches from the massive zombie. She turned to Benny and Nix… and laughed.

“What…?” Nix said, blinking as if it was her eyes and not her mind that needed clearing.

“You bitch!” Benny snarled. “You betrayed us!”

45

THE MOANS OF THE DEAD FILLED THE ENTIRE FOREST.

Benny and Nix stood back-to-back. Without realizing it they had already passed dozens of the zoms as they followed Lilah into the woods, and looking back they could see them standing there, dead eyes turned their way.

Lilah put her hand on the center of the big zombie’s chest.

The Lost Girl was still laughing. The big zombie tried to grab her, tried to bite her. But it couldn’t do either.

“What…?” Benny said softly. His mind was struggling to understand this moment.

And then he saw it.

The zombie was tied to the tree. A length of sturdy rope was wrapped around its waist, and shorter lengths anchored each hand. It could move its hands a few inches, but that’s all.

Benny turned and saw that the zombie by the next closest tree was similarly bound. And the next.

“They’re all… tied up,” said Nix, turning in a slow circle.

It was true.

The forest was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of zombies, and every one of them was tied to a tree. In some places three or four were tied to the trunks of massive oaks.

“I… don’t understand,” said Nix, but Benny did. He suddenly remembered something Tom had told him about Charlie rounding up zoms and tying them to trees, so that he could find them more easily if he got a bounty.

He knew where they were.

The Hungry Forest.

Nix wheeled on Lilah. “You think this is funny?”

Lilah’s eyes twinkled. “Yes. Very funny. Your faces!” She laughed, and the sound of it drew another series of long moans from the dead.

“What is this place?” Nix demanded.

Benny told her. Lilah listened and nodded, and Nix looked horrified. Lilah pointed out a few trees where the ropes had been cut and the zoms taken.

“God…,” Nix said, “Charlie’s harvesting them.”

“Sometimes,” Lilah said, “I come here. Cut some loose. Let them go.”

“Why?”

“I do it when I think Charlie is coming.”

“An ambush. Sweet,” Benny said with a grin. “Sick and twisted… but sweet. Oh, and… sorry for calling you a bitch.”

She shrugged. “Been called worse. Don’t care much.”

Nix could not take her eyes off of the legions of living dead. “How many of them are in here?”

Lilah considered, shrugged. “Three thousand. More.”

“It’s horrible.”

Lilah shrugged again and turned to Benny. “You think it’s horrible?”

“I’m not sure what I think about it,” he said.

To Nix, Lilah said, “Two times I came here and let them go. Cut all ropes.”

“Why?”

“To free them. They followed me to the field. By the water.”

“Geez,” Benny said, “those were the zoms we ran into by Coldwater Creek. You let them go?”

Lilah nodded. “Sometimes… seeing them. Tied. Makes me sad. I untie and lead them away.”

“You lead them? How do you do that without getting chomped?” Benny asked.

She looked at him as if he was a moron. “They’re slow. I’m not slow.” Then she pinched the skin of her forearm. “They follow flesh.”

Benny swallowed hard, trying to imagine a horde of zombies, shambling along after this beautiful and crazy Lost Girl.

Lilah looked up through a small opening in the canopy of leaves at the position of the sun. “Time to go.”

With that, she turned and walked deeper into the Hungry Forest. Each zombie she passed craned its neck and tried to bite her, but the Lost Girl did not appear to notice. Or care.

Benny and Nix lingered a moment longer, caught up in all of the different ways in which this place was wrong. Whether the zoms were tied to the trees or taken for bounties or freed to wander, the horror of it was overwhelming.

The zombies closest to them moaned incessantly, biting the air, as if aching to feed on just the smell of living flesh.

“Your girlfriend is deranged,” said Nix.

“She’s not my girlfriend, thank you very much. And I believe Tom said the expression was ‘touched by God.’”

“She’s touched all right. Come on, this place is way beyond creepy. Let’s get out of here, Benny,” Nix said. “Right now.”

“With you on that,” he agreed, but as they hurried along the path to catch up, Benny kept looking back, compelled to lock this image in his mind. There was something about it that was starting to shove ideas around in his head. Weird and wicked ideas.

Nix caught the look on his face. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he lied. The thoughts running through his head were not thoughts he wanted to share with her. Not yet.

46

THEY CAME TO A SHELTERED CLEARING BY A ROCK CLIFF, THROUGH WHICH a million years of erosion had cut a waterfall that fed all the streams that ran down to Coldwater Creek. It was a strange place. The woods were overgrown with vines and scrub pines, the ground was covered with a thick carpet of pine needles. At the base of the cliff was a pool of threshing water that looked as clear as glass. However, all around the clearing, there were dead animals in various stages of decomposition. The stink was ungodly, and the air was thick with flies.

Nix gagged, and Benny dug the bottle of mint paste from his pocket, showing her how to dab it below her nose to kill the smell. As he did so, he marveled at the restraint with which she’d managed to put up with his smell since last night. He realized that his clothes were probably still ripe with the stench of cadaverine.

Lilah stood at the point where the path reached the clearing.

“Here,” she said, pointing to the waterfall.

“What, through there?” Benny asked.

She nodded, then pointed to the open ground in front of them. “Feet where my feet go.”

Benny didn’t immediately understand what she meant, and when she set off across the clearing in a weird zigzag pattern, he started walking straight toward the cool water. Lilah turned abruptly. “Stop!”

She hurried back, following the same twisted route.

“Stupid?” she asked harshly, then knelt in front of him and dug her fingers under the covering of pine needles and lifted a section of ground that proved to be a very thin, woven screen with needles and other debris cleverly sewn onto it. Beneath the screen was a hole that was filled with the pointed ends of wickedly sharp sticks.

“Oh my God!” Benny said.

Nix gestured to the clearing. “Is the whole clearing like that?”

“Yes,” said Lilah in her graveyard whisper of a voice. “So, watch my feet. Where I walk only. Yes?”

“Absolutely,” agreed Benny weakly.

In single file they followed Lilah around the clearing toward the cliff wall. There was no way anyone could have picked out a safe route through without knowing exactly where to step. Benny was impressed.

Along the wall was a screen of bushy pine trees, and it wasn’t until they’d all reached them that Benny and Nix could see that there was a narrow path behind them, which led to a depression behind the waterfall. The water cascaded out and away from the wall, and there was a cave mouth five feet high and seven feet wide. The whole mouth of the cave was covered with multiple sheets of heavy industrial plastic that Lilah had scavenged from somewhere. She pushed through, and they followed her into a short, damp chamber. Another set of plastic was hung ten feet in, and behind that was a thick layer of heavy drapes. Benny was blown away by how smart this was. The plastic kept the water out and the drapes kept light in, and together they muffled the roar of the waterfall. Lilah went in first and Benny followed, with Nix holding the drapes open to allow diffused light in. Lilah apparently didn’t need it, because she went into the darkest depths of the cave, and soon there was the scrape and smell of a sulfur match. Lilah lit an oil lantern, and a comfortable yellow glow expanded out to fill the huge inner chamber.

Benny and Nix were speechless. The cave was a treasure trove. There was a comfortable chair and a small table, a wire rack of dishes, barrels filled with canned food, some old toys, and books. Thousands and thousands of books. Technical manuals and novels, anthologies of short stories and collections of poetry, biographies of great thinkers and joke books, magazines and comic books. There were stacks of books on every surface, heaped against the walls. Even in the town library, Benny had never seen so many books. Nix looked dazed, her mouth open in a silent “oh.”

Lilah looked from them to the books and back again. “I read,” she said simply.

Then Benny noticed the second thing that Lilah had been collecting. There was a table made from boards stretched across stacks of heavy encyclopedias, and the table bent under the weight of weapons. Handguns and boxes of bullets, knives and clubs, spears and axes. Enough weapons to start-and win-a war. Benny realized Lilah was doing exactly that-fighting a war. He walked over to the table, aware the Lilah was watching him, and saw that a how-to manual for making bullet reloads was open and looked well-thumbed. There were coffee cans filled with lead pellets and gunpowder, and a bullet mold with castings for various calibers. Several men in town had similar setups.

“This is amazing,” he said.

She shrugged. It was commonplace to her. It was her day-to-day life.

Lilah folded some blankets and set them on the floor, then indicated that they could sit down while she started a fire in a small stone cooking pit. Benny noticed that the smoke funneled upward instead of filling the cave, and he bent forward to see that there was a hole in the ceiling. No daylight showed through, so he figured it didn’t rise straight up, but instead filtered out through various fissures in the rock. He thought that Tom would approve.

Benny watched Lilah as she busied herself with what probably passed for her daily routine. Her first concern was security, and she checked the hang of the drapes to prevent any trace of light from showing through. Even a pinpoint of firelight would be visible for miles in the absolute darkness of these mountains at night. Then Lilah strung two lines across the entrance. The first was a length of twine on which dozens of empty tin cans and pieces of broken metal were strung. When it was in place, it lay against the drapes. If anyone moved the cloth, the metal would kick up a jangling din, loud enough to wake her. The second line was a length of silver wire she positioned at mid-shin level. It was virtually invisible in the gloom, but once someone passed the drapes, they would trip over it. Between the noise and this delaying trick, whoever broke in would not be sneaking up on a sleeping girl, but would be sprawled on the ground while a practiced killer hunted them in the dark.

“Did you ever have to use that trip wire?” he asked. He and Nix and their friends had learned all about simple booby traps in the Scouts. They were great for slowing down a zombie attack.

Lilah tested the tension on the trip wire, plucking it like a guitar string, so that it hummed. “Once,” she said. “It worked.”

“Zom or human?” asked Nix.

Lilah shrugged. “What does it matter?”

Once the entrance was rigged, she unbuckled her gun belt and placed it next to the pallet she used as a bed. She put the spear into an old umbrella stand in which there were various clubs, baseball bats, hockey sticks, and a long-handled axe.

“Lilah,” said Nix. “This place-all these things-it’s incredible. You brought all of this here by yourself?”

Lilah poured water into a cooking pot and began adding bits of meat and vegetables. “By myself. Who else?”

“How many of these books have you read?”

“All.” She smiled for the first time since they’d started walking. She leaned over and began stirring the mixture in the pot. “I… read, um, better than talk. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” said Benny enthusiastically. “Lilah, you’re amazing! Isn’t she amazing, Nix?”

Benny, caught up in the moment, turned to Nix, but her expression was a few hundred degrees colder than his. Benny’s common sense took a giant step back for an emergency re-evaluation of everything that had happened in the last few seconds. Lilah, lit by the soft glow of the cook fire, was bending over and smiling. The inadequate rags of her shirt were doing even less of their job. Benny, who, to his credit, hadn’t even been aware of all this, was suddenly very aware-and aware of the fact that Nix was watching both of them. The common sense part of him slapped his forehead and prayed for an earthquake or a timely invasion by a horde of zoms. Benny tried to salvage the moment by stretching his last question into a longer one. “… to have read so many books.”

As lame attempts go, this one was barely able to limp.

The grin he gave Nix was intended to be earnest, scholarly, and totally oblivious to the miles of cleavage Lilah was showing. Nix’s smile was chilly enough to kill houseplants.

And Chong fries Morgie for being thick, Benny thought, feeling the edges of his smile begin to crack.

To Lilah, Nix said, “George taught you to read?”

Lilah, who was unpracticed enough with people to misread the moment, nodded and sat back. “Yes. We had to read. All the time. ‘Knowledge is power,’” she recited in a voice that was clearly an attempt to imitate George’s.

They nodded. Benny took the opportunity to ask her some questions. “Lilah, have you been alone all this time? I mean… since Gameland?”

She nodded. “Alone.”

“How did you survive?” asked Nix.

Lilah turned cold eyes on her. “What I see,” she said, “I kill.”

“God,” said Nix.

Benny said, “What about the way-station monks? Do they help you at all?”

“Monks… We don’t talk. They have their, um, things. I have mine.”

“Tom said he saw you twice.”

“Tom,” she said, and shook her head.

“He looked like me. But he was older. Darker hair, darker skin. Tall. Carried a sword.”

The Lost Girl brightened and smiled in a way that Benny thought it showed she not only knew who Tom was but maybe betrayed something more than simple recognition.

“Sword man,” Lilah said. “Very, um, pretty.” She looked at Nix for approval. “Pretty?”

“Handsome,” Nix said. “Hot.”

Lilah liked that word. “Hot.” She turned to Benny. “But… dead?”

He nodded. “The Hammer shot him, and he fell into a bunch of zoms.”

Her smiled vanished. “Then he’s a walker.”

Benny couldn’t bear to think about that and changed the subject. “Lilah, Tom said that you could tell people where the new Gameland is.”

“What people?”

“People in our town. In Mountainside.”

She shrugged. “Why?”

“I think he was hoping to have Charlie arrested. Do you understand what that means? Arrested?”

“Read about. Old world stuff. Not our world.”

“No,” said Nix bitterly. She touched Lilah’s arm. “Tell us, though. What happened after they took you and Annie away from George?”

“George,” she said in a small, sad voice that was an echo of the child she had once been and would never be again. She sorted through her conflicted emotions and jumbled thoughts. “They hit George. Killed him, I thought. But… not?”

“No,” said Benny. “He was hurt, but he lived. As soon as he woke up, he started looking for you and your sister. He met Tom, and they looked together. They couldn’t find you. I guess George didn’t know where to look. How far is Gameland from here?”

“Far. Three days fast walk. Two mountains from here,” said Lilah. “Have to know how to, um… find it. Hard to find.”

“George never found it. All he heard were rumors of what goes on there. It tore him up.”

It took Lilah a second to understand that last comment, then she nodded. “George loved us. Loved him. He is… dead?”

“I think so. A monk told Tom that George hung himself.”

Lilah barked out a harsh laugh and shook her head. “No,” she said decisively.

“Tom didn’t believe it, either.”

They sat for a minute in silence.

“He was murdered,” Nix said eventually. “Do think it was Charlie?”

“Or one of his creeps,” said Benny. Lilah’s lip curled, but she said nothing.

“Lilah… tell us about Annie.”

“Annie.” Lilah’s eyes were as hard as knife steel, but they glistened wetly. “They took us. Lots of girls at Gameland. Boys too. They… make us fight.” She loaded that last word with enough venom to kill a hundred men.

“Did they make you fight?” Nix asked, and Benny winced, not wanting to hear the answer.

But Lilah shook her head. “Tried. Many times they tried. Fought them instead. Bit. Kicked. Thumbs to eyes. George taught me. Taught Annie.” She made a fist so tight, her knuckles creaked, and the lights in her eyes looked both dangerous and a little crazy. “Be tough, George said. Be tough and live. George always said that.”

“George was right,” Benny said. “I wish I’d met him. He sounds like a pretty great guy.”

Lilah gave Benny a slow up-and-down appraisal, perhaps re-evaluating him. Or maybe seeing him for the first time and getting who he was. She nodded, although Benny wasn’t sure if that was an agreement with what he’d said or a confirmation of some unspoken thought.

“So you fought?” Nix said, perhaps a little more sharply than was absolutely necessary.

Lilah’s eyes lingered on Benny as she said, “Yes.”

“What did they do?” Nix asked, and this time there was more compassion in her voice.

“They beat me.” Lilah shrugged as if that was nothing, as if measured against all that she had endured, it was a small thing. Nix paled and Benny shivered. “Beat me a lot. No food.”

Nix cursed.

Lilah gave another shrug. “Made me tougher. Made me mad. Mad enough.”

“And Annie?”

“She… ran.”

They looked at her and saw a tear break from the corner of one hazel eye and roll down her tanned cheek. It glistened like a diamond in the lantern light.

“Ran?”

“Fought and ran. Stormy night, lots of rain. Annie ran, the ugly man chased her. Hammer. He chased. Annie tripped. Slipped on mud. She fell. Badly. Hit her head on a stone.”

“No…”

“I couldn’t do… anything.” Lilah shook her head in denial of the memory. “They left her there. Like trash out in the rain. Like she was nothing. I was already out of there, escaped two days before, but came back. Sneaky, quiet. To get Annie. But… when I found her, Annie was gone. Already gone. Then she… came back.”

“Oh God, no…”

“Tried to bite.”

More tears fell from Lilah’s eyes. It was all that Lilah would say on the subject. Nix asked her what she’d done with her sister, but Lilah just shook her head. Benny matched this against what Tom had told him, of the man Lilah has been trying to kill over and over again. The Motor City Hammer. All these long, frustrating years, Lilah had been killing the image of the Hammer in the hopes that one day she’d get him within range to take revenge for what had been done to her and her little sister.

“I’m sorry,” said Nix.

Lilah turned to her, eyes cold, voice frosty. “Sorry? Does that bring Annie back?”

“Well, no, but I-”

“Save words like ‘sorry.’ Save for the dead. Living don’t need them.”

She snatched up her spoon and forcefully stirred the stew, slopping some bits into the fire. Benny reached out and took Nix’s hand.

“How can the world be this cruel?” Nix asked quietly.

There was no chance that Benny could answer that question, but there was something about the warmth and reality of the hand he held in his that made an argument that cruelty wasn’t the only force at work in their world.

Nix said, “Lilah, will you come back to town with us?”

The Lost Girl looked up. “Why?”

“So you’ll be safe,” said Nix.

“Safe now.”

“It’s safer in town,” Nix said, but Lilah laughed.

“Charlie and the Hammer killed your mother in your town.” She pointed to Benny. “Killed his brother out here. Nowhere is safe.”

Before Benny or Nix could reply to that, Lilah added, “Out here-I kill. Walkers, bad men. I kill and I live. I’m safe here.”

That put an end to the conversation until after the stew was cooked. She dished out food, and Benny had to use real effort to maintain a straight face, because the one thing this wild girl could not do was cook. The stew tasted like hot sewage. He noticed that Nix was pretending to enjoy it while not actually eating much.

“Lilah,” Benny said, “Charlie Pink-eye’s camp is up here, right? On the other side of the mountain?”

Lilah nodded.

“Nix, you heard him,” Benny said. “He has kids up there, right?”

“Yes,” Nix said with a shudder. “They’re taking them to Gameland. It’s where they were going to take me.”

“Gameland,” Lilah said, and she bared her teeth like a hunting cat. Her fist knotted around her fork until the tendons in her hand were as taut as fiddle strings. “Annie.”

“Gameland,” repeated Nix in a sick, flat voice.

“Charlie and the Hammer have destroyed all of our families. They’re worse than any zom out here in the Ruin. They’re worse than a world of zoms. At least the zoms don’t know that what they’re doing is wrong. Charlie and the Hammer do. They’re evil.”

“Evil,” Lilah said, and the Nix echoed the word.

“Where are you going with this, Benny?” Nix asked.

He set down his dish and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Look,” he said, “I’m nobody’s idea of a hero, but I don’t think I want to go back to town just yet. In fact, I don’t think I can go back to town, knowing that those other kids are up there.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Nix. “That we march into his camp and ask him to release those kids?”

“I don’t know, but we have to do something,” said Benny. He jumped to his feet in agitation and began walking back and forth as he spoke. “I can’t just go on with my life, knowing that they’re out there and that they’re going to just go on destroying other families and other lives without anyone even trying to stop them. Tom said that before First Night, people wouldn’t do anything. They’d let families live on the street and starve. I can’t. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in.”

“But the camp,” said Lilah. “Too many men.”

“How many?”

She thought about it. “Maybe twelve. Maybe twenty.”

“Too many of them, but-,” began Nix.

“Not enough of us,” said Lilah, finishing the thought.

Benny suddenly straightened. “Wait, wait… Let me think for a second. Lilah, you said it. There’s not enough of us. Right… riiiight…” He trailed off and looked at the rocky ceiling, as if he could see out of the cave and through the mountain and all the way to Charlie’s camp. An idea was forming in his head. But the idea was insane and stupid. It was absurd and impossible.

“What is it?” asked Nix.

“Hm?” he said distractedly.

“Why are you smiling?”

He hadn’t realized that he was, and he certainly had no reason to smile. The idea that had started to take form in his head wasn’t funny. It was suicidal.

“Okay,” he said, his eyes brighter than the lamplight. “I have an idea, but you won’t like it.”

“Tell,” insisted the Lost Girl.

“For this to work,” said Benny, “we’ll need to create a diversion and then get the kids out.”

“What kind of diversion? The guys are used to being out here. They’re always on guard. Whatever we do, they’ll see it coming.”

Benny Imura gave the girls a very strange, very dark grin. “No,” he said, “I can guarantee you they won’t see this coming.”

And he told them what that was.

47

LILAH AND NIX STARED AT BENNY IN TOTAL SILENCE FOR MORE THAN TWO minutes. The stew in the pot began to bubble and burn; the waterfall roared softly in the background. Somewhere deep in the cave, water dripped with the constant rhythm of a metronome. Benny stood there and waited out the silence.

“You are crazy,” said Lilah.

“Probably,” said Benny.

“Are you serious?” asked Nix.

“As a heart attack,” said Benny.

Lilah took the burning stew off the fire and set it on the rocks. She leaned toward Nix. “Is he… damaged?” She touched her head to indicate where the suspected damage might lie. Nix held one hand up and seesawed it back and forth.

“Opinions vary,” she said.

“It could work,” said Benny.

“We could die, Benny,” Nix said.

“We could,” admitted Benny. “Maybe we will.”

“Maybe not,” said Lilah, and they both looked at her. A crooked smile had worked its way onto her lips, and she appeared to be re-evaluating his plan.

“Maybe not,” repeated Benny.

Nix ran her fingers through the red tangles of her hair. “Maybe not,” she agreed eventually, although with far less conviction.

The shadows made the cave seem as vast as outer space.

“You do understand that this plan is crazy,” Nix said.

“Yes,” said Lilah, tapping her skull again. “Very crazy.”

“No doubt.” Benny nodded. “But it’s also justice.”

Nix snorted. “Justice is dead.”

Benny broke out into another twisted grin. “It sure as hell is.”

The Lost Girl turned to him, and her smile was every bit as big and bright and dark as his.

It took Nix another few seconds, but then the crazy sense of it took hold in the cracks that had been torn in her heart by Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer. Then she too smiled.

Anyone seeing those three teenagers smiling the kinds of smiles they wore would run in terror.

Benny was counting on it.

48

ONCE THE IDEA WAS OUT, THEY TACKLED IT AND WRESTLED IT AND BANGED it into a weird shape. It became immediately clear that they had to move fast and start at once. Lilah’s trove of weapons and equipment provided them with everything they needed. As they sorted through the supplies, Lilah never took her eyes off Benny, and he was uncomfortably aware of it. Just as he was aware that Nix never took her eyes off Lilah, and Benny wondered if Nix was trying to telepathically transmit some message. If so, Lilah was either immune to the nuclear radiation of Nix’s thoughts, or didn’t care. Or maybe having lived alone for so long-and all through puberty-she had no clear understanding of what she was feeling, what signals she was sending, and the complexities of social interaction. Benny wished Chong was here to explain it to him.

When they were done gathering the equipment, Lilah led them out of the cave and through her maze of booby traps, then back directly into the forest. She moved fast, selecting paths that were secret as well as efficient. They struggled to keep up as they crossed running water, climbed rocky outcrops, crawled through thorny thickets, and ran along game trails through dappled sunlight. The day felt like the hottest of the whole summer, and sweat poured out of them, but none of them cared. Having a purpose put iron in their limbs; knowing there was a chance to get revenge against Charlie ignited fires in their chests that burned hotter than the sun.

The bounty hunters’ camp was on the far side of the mountain, and it took them almost two hours to reach it. Lilah guided them to a rocky promontory that was overgrown with white sage. They flattened out on the edge of the narrow cliff and pulled foliage over themselves. The camp looked strangely exposed, with paths leading up through forestland to a plateau as flat as a tabletop. Three traders wagons were positioned to block each path, their sides reinforced with sheet metal. The teams of horses were corralled in the center of the camp, each of them wearing a carpet coat, even in the afternoon heat. Without saying a word, Lilah slowly pointed out each guard and the other men wandering around the camp.

Nix cursed very quietly under her breath. There were twenty-three men in the camp. She glanced at Benny, but he kept his jaw set, so she didn’t see the new fear that was making his heart jump around in his chest. The resolve he’d had back in the cave-one part bravery, one part need for revenge, and a couple parts craziness-felt suddenly brittle.

He had not expected there to be so many. Then his roving eyes found the pen where they were holding the kids. It was a pen, too, the kind used for keeping pigs. Two guards stood watch over the captives, and through the shimmering heat haze, it took Benny a couple of tries to count them all. There weren’t a dozen kids. There were nineteen of them. Other bounty hunters must have joined the camp in the last few hours, which would account for the higher number of guards and captives.

Nineteen kids. Five boys, fourteen girls. The oldest looked to be twelve, the youngest about eight. They were all hunkered down, tied together by ropes that were attached to metal rings in the leather collars each of them wore.

Any doubts Benny had when he’d first looked down at the camp withered and died at the sight of those kids huddled like animals in the pen. If Nix hadn’t escaped, she’d be collared and penned with the rest. He knew that Lilah had already been through that hell.

He saw Charlie Pink-eye walk across the center of the camp, and Benny pointed a finger at him, tracking the big bounty hunter, as if he was looking down the barrel of a hunting rifle. If wishes were bullets, Charlie would be sprawled dead in the dirt.

Careful not to make the slightest sound, they crawled back from the edge of the plateau and huddled together under a willow.

“Harder,” Lilah said. “More than I thought.”

“More kids, too. Nineteen.”

Benny cleared a space on the ground and, taking a small stick, began drawing a map of the camp. The others helped, making additions and corrections. Benny asked Lilah to mark where the landmarks were: Coldwater Creek, the blocked highway, the ranger station, and other places that had factored into recent events. Benny studied the map for a long time in silence. He rolled over onto his back and marked the position of the sun. In the Scouts, Mr. Feeney had taught them how to tell the time of day by using the sun, and Benny had a rough guess as to when it would set.

“Okay, we have about five hours until twilight,” he whispered.

“Less,” said Lilah, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. They looked to where she was pointing and saw a line of heavy clouds.

“Rain?” asked Nix. “Will that help or hurt us?”

“Rain is bad,” said Lilah. “Can’t hear, can’t see.”

“Neither can they,” said Benny. “If it rains, we deal with it. We’ll find a way to make it work for us.”

Lilah took a last look over the edge. “Need go. Much… to…” She stopped, and Benny could see her working something out, then she said, very slowly, “I need to go, now. I have much to do.” She almost blushed. “I don’t… think… the same way I read. It is… harder to put thoughts… into sentences.”

“You’re doing better than I would have if I lived alone all this time,” said Nix. “And you’re doing better than Benny does now.”

“Hey!” said Benny, but he was grinning.

“It’s strange,” said Lilah. “I never thought I would… want to talk. To people. I just talk to Annie and George. In my head.”

For the first time since they’d met the Lost Girl, Benny felt that a window had opened into who she was. It was only open a crack, but he thought he caught a glimpse of the stark loneliness and sadness that defined her interior life, just as the weapons and quick actions defined her exterior world.

“Lilah,” he said, “when this is all over…”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to go on knowing you. I’d like us to be friends.” He cut a look at Nix, who was listening intently. “You, me, Nix. And our other friends. Morgie Mitchell and Lou Chong.”

“‘Friends,’” Lilah echoed, as if it was a word she’d never encountered in any of her reading. “Why?”

Benny opened his mouth to speak, but it was Nix who answered. “Because after all of this, after everything that’s happened to us, Lilah… We’re already family.”

It wasn’t exactly what Benny was going to say, but what she said was right. He nodded. The Lost Girl considered it for a while, then said, “Let’s talk about that tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Nix, “I’d like-”

“If there is one.” She turned away and checked her weapons as she prepared to depart.

“Lilah,” said Benny, “are you sure you can do this?”

Instead of a smile or some reassuring comment, Lilah simply said, “Have to try.” Then she paused and looked Benny straight in the eye. “Why?”

“Why… what?”

“You could go back. To your town. You and Nix. These people”-she waved a hand in the direction of the kids in the pen-“aren’t yours. So… why?”

Benny didn’t have a ready answer for that. There had not been time to explore his own feelings about everything that had happened or was still happening. He would liked to have made a bold speech about honor and dignity, or fired off a remark of the kind that would be quoted by future generations. All he managed was: “If we don’t do something to stop this, who will?”

Lilah considered him, her hazel eyes seeming to open doors into his thoughts. She must have seen something that she liked, or perhaps it was the simple honesty of his words, because she nodded gravely.

“Have to try,” she said.

“Have to try,” Benny said, nodding. “For Tom, for Nix’s mom… for Annie.”

Lilah closed her eyes for a moment, nodding silently to herself. Then, without another word, she turned and slipped like a promise into the shadows under the trees.

Benny and Nix climbed down from the plateau and found a dark and sheltered spot under a row of thick pines. Their part would not start for hours.

Overhead a lone buzzard drifted on the thermals.

Benny held his hand out to Nix, and she came and sat next to him. They drank from Benny’s canteen and ate some of the dried meat Lilah had given them. It was only marginally less disgusting than her stew, but they were hungry and eating gave them something to do. They said nothing for almost an hour. Benny spent much of that time reviewing the plan and looking for holes. There were plenty to be found. In fact, there were more ways the plan could go wrong than go right.

“Life’s weird,” Benny said.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“No… It’s just that two weeks ago the worst thing I had to worry about was finding a job before they cut my rations. All summer long the bunch of us-you, me, Chong, and Morgie-all we did was goof off, hang out, and laugh. We used to laugh a lot, Nix. Life used to be fun.”

She nodded sadly.

“I have to believe,” Benny continued, “that we’ll get through this. Not just this stuff tonight, but all of it.”

“Get through it for what reason? Nothing seems to matter anymore.”

“That’s just it, Nix. I can’t let myself believe that nothing matters. You matter. We matter. We both need to believe that we’ll get past this. That we’ll be able to laugh again. That we’ll want to.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine that right now.”

He had no comeback to that. Her argument was too strong, and his was based only on wishful thinking and a threadbare piece of optimism.

They sat together and listened to the forest.

“Benny?” Nix asked quietly after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Last night… when you kissed me…?”

His throat went instantly dry. “Yeah?”

“Why did you do it? I mean, was it because I was so upset and you didn’t know how else to help me? Or was it because you really wanted to?”

“I-”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

He took a breath. “I kissed you because I wanted to,” he said.

She nodded. “Last night, when you thought I was sleeping… I saw you looking at her card.”

Benny plucked a stem of grass and ran it slowly between his fingers. It felt like cool silk. “Did you?” he asked.

“I saw you throw it away, too.”

“Did you?” he asked again softly.

“Yes, Benny… I did.”

She didn’t say anything else, didn’t speak another word for a long time. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and they sat there and waited for the day to burn away.

49

BY LATE AFTERNOON THE SUN WAS COMPLETELY COVERED BY A SHEET OF thick gray clouds. The temperature fell, but the humidity thickened the air to a hot soup. Benny drowsed against the trunk of one of the pines, and in his dreams he heard a sound that was like the roar of Lilah’s waterfall. The sound started small and far away, and Benny’s dreaming mind made it be the noise of the waterfall, which was a perfect backdrop for his dream of running through the woods, being chased by Charlie and the Hammer, both of who were now zoms but who also somehow managed to keep their personalities. They yelled to him in mocking voices, calling him “Little Benny” and promising to do terrible things to him. In his dream Benny ran as fast as the wind, and somehow the surrounding landscape barely moved, as if he was almost running in place. The zombie bounty hunters shuffled along behind him, almost close enough to grab him.

The roaring sound grew steadily louder, and Benny thought that maybe he was making some distance, that he was nearing the waterfall, but when he looked around, all he saw was the plateau on which the bounty hunters had their camp. Something brushed him, and he turned to see that Nix was running next to him. She was screaming, but Benny could not hear her voice. The roar of the waterfall kept getting louder and louder. And it was deeper in tone now, more of a loud drone than the splash of water.

“Benny!” Nix called his name, but it didn’t match the shape her mouth made.

The roar was huge.

“BENNY!”

With a start, Benny realized that Nix’s voice was not coming from the girl running beside him, and just as quickly he understood that he was dreaming and that the real-world Nix was yelling at him. He snapped his eyes open. The camp and the zombies vanished. The roar, however, was still there. Deep and loud, and getting louder.

“Benny!” Nix yelled.

“What… what is it?”

“You have to come and look!”

Nix grabbed his hands and fairly hauled him to his feet and then pulled him out from under the shelter of the trees. Not toward the promontory that looked down on the camp. Instead, she pulled him toward the trail that led back into the woods. She was running, and her grip was so tight and insistent that Benny ran too.

“What is it? What’s that sound?”

“You have to come see!”

They raced along the path to a clearing, and there, Nix stopped and pointed. She need not have bothered, because Benny saw it. His eyes bugged wide, and his mouth fell open as he stared up at the roaring thing.

It was silver and white, with vast wings that lifted it high above the mountains. Benny raised his hand, as if he could touch it. The thing appeared to move slowly, but that was an illusion. It was just so far away. Higher than the tallest of the surrounding mountains, skimming just below the ceiling of gray storm clouds. In another hour there wouldn’t have been enough light to see it. If the storm had started, it would have been both invisible and unheard.

But they stood there, holding hands, staring up as it roared above them, soaring with alien majesty from one horizon to the other. Coming from the west, heading east; far, far above the Rot and Ruin.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Nix just shook her head.

“Where did it come from?”

“From the east.”

“No, it’s heading east,” he said, but Nix shook her head.

“It came from the east and turned around. I saw it and ran to get you.”

They watched it go, diminishing in size from a giant to a gnat and then to nothing, taking its roar with it. When it was gone, there was at least five minutes of silence before the birds began to sing again. They stood in the clearing for ten minutes more, hoping it would come back. Willing it to come back.

Benny said, “Nix… did we just see that? I mean, tell me we actually saw that.”

Nix’s green eyes were filled with magic, and her smile was bright enough to hold back the storm. “It’s real, Benny. We saw it.”

“But how? It doesn’t make sense.”

She shook her head, and they stared off to the east. The thing they had just seen belonged to another age, to the days before First Night. They knew about them from the history books, but neither had ever seen one. Never expected to. They kept looking into the distance.

But the slow, lumbering jumbo jet did not return.

50

THEY DID NOT KNOW HOW TO TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY HAD JUST SEEN. It was strange and wonderful, but it seemed more like a dream than a part of what they were about to do.

“I wish I could tell Tom,” Benny said.

“I wish I could tell Mom,” said Nix, then she said, “Benny, if we get out of this-”

“When we get out of this,” he corrected.

She gave only a tiny nod to acknowledge that possibility. “After this is over,” she said, “we need to find out about that jet.”

“Sure, I mean we let everyone know-”

“No,” she said firmly. “We have to find out about it. Lilah was right. We don’t have a home anymore. We’ve been-I don’t know how to say it. Cut loose? We’re no longer connected to anything, and certainly not to Mountainside.”

“There’s Morgie and Chong.”

She shrugged. “If you want, we can go back for them, Benny. But then I want to follow that plane.”

“Where? All we know is that it went east.”

“It came from the east and turned around and went back. Why? Was it exploring to see what was out here? Or was it sending a message.”

“What message?”

“’Follow me’?” she suggested. “I don’t believe in much anymore, Benny… but I believe that was a sign.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then I’ll find that out. One way or another, Benny, my life is over in Mountainside.”

He thought about it and looked up at the cloud-covered eastern sky. “Yeah,” he said after some long thought. “Maybe.”

“That’s what I’m going to do, Benny. If I’m alive tomorrow, then I’m going east.”

“We don’t know that there’s anything out there but three hundred million zoms.”

“Sure. Three hundred million zoms and enough people to repair, fuel, and fly an airplane. A jet. That says something. That says a lot.”

The storm clouds pulsed with lightning.

“If you’re going east,” he said, “then so am I.”

They sealed the deal with a kiss.

Two hours later the storm roiled and boiled above them, and Benny knew that this one was going to be every bit as bad as the one that had pounded the town two nights ago.

God, he thought, was it only two nights ago?

In less than two hours the clouds went from white to slate gray to bruised purple to midnight black, and fierce winds from the lowlands snatched up leaves and branches and desert dust and used them like artillery. The rain had not yet started to fall, but the humidity made Benny and Nix feel like they were underwater as they climbed down from the promontory and began sneaking toward the camp. Lilah was nowhere to be seen, nor had they had a sign of her in hours. Had she succeeded or had Benny sent her to her death with his harebrained plan?

The wind howled through the trees, like a host of banshees. Benny had never heard anything like it, and despite everything, there was some weird little part of him that liked it. It wasn’t “cool”-He’d cut off his leg before he used that word again. No, it was, in its own raw and primal way, magnificent. Nature screaming in anger, and Benny could not help but believe that it was screaming in anger against all that had been done by the men in this camp. Maybe some of those whistling shrieks were in support of what three kids-a red-haired beauty of a sun-freckled girl, a wild hazel-eyed man-killer, and a moody and battered boy who had no right trying to be a hero-were trying to do.

As they crawled through the foliage, Benny kept grinning. Nix looked at him and shook her head. That’s okay, he thought, she already thinks I’m crazy.

Charlie Matthias whipped open the flap of his tent, and the wind nearly knocked him over. He tilted into the gale and grabbed a sapling for support. All around him debris was flying. A cooking pot sailed past him, and he was pelted by acorns and pinecones. Using one massive hand to shield his eyes, he roared orders to his men to secure their gear.

He pointed at the pigpen, where the kids huddled in terror. “Joey! Get over there and see to the merchandise!”

On the far side of the camp, Joey Duk climbed out of his tent and bent into the wild rain to comply. He climbed over the rail of the pen and pushed through the kids. All of their collar ropes were bundled together in one central point, and that was wound around the trunk of a small tree, but the tree was whipping back and forth with each gust. Joey lashed the lines tighter and shifted the central line lower to make use of the thicker base of the tree.

Benny and Nix watched from thirty feet away. They were in shadows and hidden behind a cracked boulder. Benny pointed to the tent Joey had come out of. Every time the wind blew, the flap opened, and they could see part of Vin Trang’s face.

“That’s it,” Benny said in an urgent whisper. “That’s how we’re going to create part one of our diversion.” He quickly told Nix what he had in mind.

“How are you going to get past Vin?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Okay, but we also have to get Charlie and the Hammer away from the pen,” said Nix, her mouth right against his ear, so that he could hear through the storm.

He nodded. The storm was complicating things. Half an hour ago most of the men were in their tents; now everybody was running around. He grumbled about it, but Nix shook her head. “Maybe Vin will come out of his tent too.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Where’s Lilah? Shouldn’t she be back by now?”

“Give her time,” said Benny, but in truth he was starting to worry. Lilah should have been back twenty minutes ago. He began to get a sinking feeling about whether she would be coming back at all.

The wind began to slacken, and they looked up to see that the dense black cloud cover was now a swirling gray blue.

“Oh come on, man,” Benny said despairingly. “Can you try and cut us one frigging break? I mean, really… just one?”

A fat raindrop splatted him right in the eye.

Just the one.

Benny quietly cursed as he wiped his eye clear. He and Nix turned and looked at the camp. The bounty hunters were laughing now, bending to pick up their scattered possessions, making rude jokes about Mother Nature. The kids in the pen cringed together. Benny leaned as far forward as he could, almost coming out of the shadows, trying to get a handle on their next move.

On the outside edge of the huddle, the oldest of them, a girl of about twelve, knelt with her arms around the shoulders of the smallest. Her face was streaked with tears, but she spoke soothing words to the others, keeping up a steady patter, reassuring them, calming them. Then she raised her head and looked straight into Benny’s eyes. From her kneeling position she had an angle between the rocks that the others in the camp did not have. Only she could see Benny as he crouched behind the cracked boulder. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to say something to the others, but Benny quickly put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

The girl closed her mouth. Benny held up a finger and mouthed the words: “Be ready!”

He could see her lips move as she read his words. She gave a quick nod, and then the girl did something that she probably never thought she’d do again in this life: She smiled.

A second later the rain began to fall.

Five seconds later the vault of the heavens opened up and dumped an ocean on the mountain.

“Perfect,” Benny said. He said it aloud, at normal level, but it didn’t matter. The rain was falling so hard that not even Nix heard him, and she was standing right next to him.

51

BENNY PULLED NIX CLOSER AND SPOKE QUICKLY IN HER EAR.

“We can’t wait any longer,” he yelled. “I don’t think Lilah’s coming back.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Okay… but she’s not here now, so we’re on our own. I have an idea. Here’s what I need you to do…”

The rain was hard and steady, but the sky above was still not as dark as Benny would have liked. He had no idea how long this downpour would last. If it didn’t last until Lilah got here, then this was very likely going to be the shortest rescue attempt in history.

“Be careful!” Nix said.

“You be more careful,” he said.

They smiled at each other, then Benny pulled her to him and they kissed. They had no time for this, but Benny took the time. If it was going to be their last kiss, then it was going to be one of history’s best. There were no words, no “I love you”s shared back and forth. It was not a good-bye kiss, either. After that kiss, as Benny released Nix and they both staggered back from that moment, Benny knew that he damn well wanted to live.

He turned and left without another word.

Benny faded back into the forest and circled the camp, running fast, slipping now and then in the mud. Any sounds he made were lost to the roar of the falling rain. He was soaked to the skin, and his clothing and weapons felt heavy, but he held an image in his mind as he ran. Those kids huddled together, and the oldest girl’s smiling face filled with hope. Filled with the belief that despite all of the evidence to the contrary, someone in this world still cared what happened to her and the other children. When Benny fell, that image was what picked him up. When his lungs began to burn from the effort of slogging through the mud, that image put steel into his legs and fire in his muscles. When the fear threatened to take the heart out of him, that image made him keep going, step after trembling step.

He reached the last of the paths that led into the camp and skidded to a muddy stop between a pair of dead trees. There was a guard. A big man with a yellow rain slicker and a shotgun, the big double barrels pointed at the ground to keep them from filling with water. Benny had only two chances, and he’d thought long and hard about them this afternoon while waiting for this moment. He could try and sneak past the man or he could attack him.

He liked the first idea better, because it seemed to have a future attached to it. But the reality was that if he left the guard in place, then Lilah would probably be spotted when she returned. No, Benny decided, this was the moment to stop acting like a kid and start acting like a man. He crept forward to the trunk of the larger of the two dead trees. Old branches littered the ground, and Benny had to be careful where he stepped. If the branch was old enough, then breaking it would sound like a gunshot. They might not hear that from the camp, but this man certainly would.

The man stepped closer to the cliff wall, to try and keep the rain from pounding his head, and began fishing in his pockets. He brought out a pipe and some matches and leaned into a cleft to light it, turning completely away for a few seconds. Benny used those seconds. He bent and picked up one of the dead branches-a length of gnarled hardwood nearly as long as his bokken. He held it like the wooden sword as he crept catfooted through the mud, and he was nearly within striking range when the man turned, his pipe lit, smoke funneling out from under his hood.

He saw Benny.

The man was fast. He dropped the pipe and swung the shotgun up, the deadly weapon sliding easily on its wet shoulder sling at the same moment as Benny jumped forward and hit the guy across the face as hard as he could. The old branch was brittle, and it shattered into a hundred soggy splinters as it broke over the man’s cheek and nose.

The blow slammed the guard back against the cliff wall. The strike from the stick did not knock him out. Hitting his head on the wall, however, did.

The crack of bone on rock was lost as thunder boomed overhead, but Benny saw the shiver that ran through the man’s whole body. He dropped to his knees and fell face forward into the mud, an inch from Benny’s toes.

Benny looked dumbly at the fallen man for a moment, then dropped the broken remains of the stick onto his back. He gagged at the thought of what he had just done, but even while his chest was still hitching, he drew his knife, positioned the tip of the blade in the correct spot at the base of the skull, and pushed. When he straightened, the world seemed too loud and too bright for a moment, and he took a couple of dizzy steps away from the corpse.

“One down,” he mumbled, his voice thick, his heart hammering. “Only twenty-two to go. We can start the victory party now.”

He took a breath to steady his nerves, turned, and ran as fast as he could through the rain.

Nix wormed her way to the outside of a tent that was at the very edge of the camp. The tent’s occupant had crawled out when the rain had started, and had run to another point in the camp. Nix listened at the side of the canvas long enough to assure herself that there was no one else in the tent.

She drew her knife.

“Come on, Benny,” she whispered. “Please…”

Benny reached the far edge of the camp and slipped inside without anyone noticing. He could see groups of the bounty hunters, standing together under tarps strung between trees. Benny remembered that trees could attract lightning strikes, but he didn’t think his good luck extended to a timely bolt from the heavens that would fry all these creeps.

He kept to the shadows, moved to the rear of the tent, and squatted down. There was no light from inside and no movement. If Vin Trang was still in there, then he was being very quiet. Benny fished in the mud for a stone and lobbed it in a slow overhand, so that it hit the far side of the tent.

Nothing. No movement. No head poking outside to see what had made the noise.

Benny grinned and moved from his spot, keeping the tent between him and the rest of the camp. When he reached the flap, he tossed another wet rock inside.

Still nothing.

Benny drew a breath and slipped inside the tent. It was pitch-dark, and Benny wasted several seconds feeling around for what he wanted, finding only socks, a dog-eared book, some toiletries. Nothing of use.

He had to risk a light.

“Crap,” he whispered as he fished in his pockets for his tin of matches. He rattled them and then dried his fingers hastily on Vin’s bedroll. Then he opened the tin and removed one of the three remaining matches.

He closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he struck the match on the knurled end of the tin. The match flared at once, and the light filled the whole tent. There were two bedrolls and a lot of junk scattered around. Two shotguns lay on one bedroll. For a moment Benny didn’t think he would find what he was looking for, and without it the whole plan was going to come crashing down. Then he saw that the thin pillow of one of the bedrolls rested on a small leather satchel.

He found what he was looking for in the satchel.

“Perfect…,” he said breathlessly.

“Hey!”

Benny heard the cry and recognized the voice at once. Joey Duk.

The flaps were closed, so Joey could not have seen him, but the glow from the match made the whole tent glow. Outside, there were shouts and the slopping sound of feet running toward the tent. There was no time to do anything but act. Benny dropped the burning match on the bedroll, slung the satchel over his shoulder, and drew his knife.

The match ignited the bed linen, and fire spread with frightening speed. Benny used his knife to slash at the rear wall of the tent. Even in his haste he did it the smart way-cutting the bottom of the wall, right where the lacing was wrapped around the aluminum frame-and then he pushed the canvas up and slithered out like a snake. The canvas fell back into place, so that the back of the tent appeared undamaged.

The shouts were almost on top of him as he shimmied on his belly through the mud and slid over the edge of the plateau. He froze and tried to melt into the landscape, as if he was just another lump in the big, wet, muddy mountain.

The shouts increased in volume, and he risked a quick backward look.

The tent was ablaze.

Vin Trang and Joey Duk stood staring at the blaze. Other bounty hunters ran from all parts of the camp, some shouting, some laughing. Nobody was firing a gun. No one seemed to be looking out into the woods or down the slopes. Vin turned to Joey and yelled something very loud in Vietnamese, then shoved his friend violently in the chest. Joey went staggering back, slipped in the mud, and fell hard on his ass. The others burst out in uproarious laughter. Vin, not content with knocking Joey down, snarled like a cat and jumped atop Joey, then started hammering at him while behind them the tent burned.

This was even better than Benny could hope for. Vin obviously thought Joey had left something burning in the tent and was pummeling him for having lost all of his possessions.

“There is a God,” Benny said to himself as he slipped away into the shadows, “and apparently He has a warped sense of humor.”

He moved off into the darkness and circled halfway around the camp. Even with the heavy downpour, he could still hear the shouts and laughter. He had a sudden flare of panic. Had Nix heard it too? Would she think this was the diversion that Benny had planned? If so, she was going to start too soon!

He ran faster.

Then his foot came down wrong in a puddle that was deeper than it looked, and Benny pitched forward, sliding face-first through the mud. His hands opened, and he watched in absolute horror as the little tin of matches went sailing into the rain and out of sight.

“NO!” he shouted.

It was small a blessing that no one heard him. It almost didn’t matter, because without those matches, he and Nix were probably going to die.

Nix cut open the side of the tent and crawled quickly inside. The pen was just outside, and she knelt, knife in hand, and peered out into the rain. The twelve-year-old girl had the other kids clustered together, and they were as calm as they could be under the circumstances. She must have told them about what she’d seen, because they were not wailing. Each of them stared into the storm with huge eyes that were filled with tears and hope.

One of the guards walked past, and Nix watched as he went several paces down the center path of the camp and stretched his head to try and catch what was going on over at Vin Trang’s tent. She’d hoped he would have gone all the way over, but he stayed relatively close to his post.

“Here goes,” Nix whispered to herself and then crept out of the tent and crabbed sideways in a low crouch, until her shoulder bumped up against the pen rail. The kids gasped, but Nix shushed them. She reached through the wood slats of the pen and touched several of them, assuring them of her reality. Nix slid along the pen rail to the back corner and watched the guard. He was still craning to listen through the hammering of the rain.

Nix straightened and then climbed quickly and quietly over the rail. She dropped down in the mud and then huddled next to the crowd of kids. In the gloom and with all the mud, she blended in. When the guard cut a quick look over his shoulder, all he saw were children hunkered down in a bunch. He grunted to himself and turned back to watch the fun. Vin and Joey were beating the hell out of each other, and everyone was yelling and cheering them on.

Nix showed her knife to the oldest girl. The girl’s eyes went wide, but she understood. Nix gritted her teeth and attacked the bundle of ropes, and in less than a minute the whole bundle of ropes was cut.

Nix pulled the twelve-year-old girl close. “Go over the rail and down the slope. There’s a path down there. Follow it all the way down to the creek. Don’t leave the path and don’t stop. You understand?”

“Yes! But, who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nix snapped. “Just run!”

The girl scrambled over the edge of the pen and reached out to pull the first of the children over.

Then something big and dark moved out of the rain, and they all looked up in horror.

Charlie Pink-eye stood there above them. He held a pistol in one hand, and the barrel was pointing straight at Nix’s face.

52

“WELL, I’LL BE A ONE-EYED SKUNK,” YELLED CHARLIE PINK-EYE SO LOUD that Benny could hear him through the rain, the laughter, and the noise of the fistfight. All of the men who were clustered around the burning tent stopped and turned to see their boss standing by the pig pen, pointing a gun at the red-haired girl who had escaped the day before. They laughed as if this was some new form of entertainment, and the whole mass of them broke into a run to go share in the fun. Vin pushed Joey away from him, and the pair, bruised and bloody, got to their feet and staggered along as well.

Benny came out of hiding and ran low and fast to the shadowy cleft between two of the wagons. There was a big bonfire that had been sheltered from the rain by a thick stand of tall pines. He craned his neck to see what was happening.

“Move one muscle, little darlin’,” said Charlie, “and I’ll cut my losses and leave you for zom meat. Don’t think I won’t.”

Benny’s heart froze in his chest at those words. He climbed onto the side of the wagon for a better view. Despite the rain, his mouth went dry at what he saw. Nix, covered in mud, stood inside the pen, and Charlie stood on the other side of the rail, his pistol held in one rock-steady hand. Stark terror and raw hatred commingled on Nix’s face, transforming her beauty into a mask equally as feral as Lilah’s, but in some indefinable way, more savage. Perhaps it was because Lilah had never been civilized, and any thought she felt was immediately and unthinkingly displayed on her face, whereas Nix had always been controlled and self-aware. What Benny saw now was her unguarded, naked emotion.

Two of the men climbed over the fence and closed in on Nix from either side. It was clear they did not consider her a major threat, but they were nonetheless cautious of the big-bladed hunting knife she held. Charlie used the barrel of his gun to gesture to the knife Nix held clutched in her fist. “Drop that pig sticker, little darlin’.”

Nix did not drop the knife. She clutched it to her chest, cutting desperate looks to her left and right for some way out.

Charlie swung the barrel of the pistol away from her and aimed it at the twelve-year-old. “Drop the knife, girl, or I’ll put a hole in this little cutie.”

The girl, seeing her death, straightened and held her head high. Then she spat into the mud at Charlie’s feet.

Charlie thumbed the hammer back.

Nix dropped the knife. It struck point-first into the mud and stopped there, standing straight out from the ground like King Arthur’s sword. Nix looked down at it with regret. One of the men laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

Benny darted through the shadows until he could see the big bonfire on the other side of the wagon. Working quickly, he opened the satchel and removed a few items that he hoped he’d live long enough to use, and then he tossed the bag with a slow underhand pitch, straight into the fire. It struck the center of the blaze and kicked up a huge tower of sparks, but when the men in the crowd turned to see what had happened, Benny was already back into the darkest corner of shadows, totally invisible.

“What the hell was that?” demanded Charlie.

“Nothing, boss,” said one of the bounty hunters. “Log shifted in the fire.”

Nix took that moment. She suddenly bent forward and grabbed the handle of her knife. She pivoted as fast as she could, and Benny saw a flash of steel and then the guard to her left suddenly bent double and let loose with a terrible cry of pain. The other one had been looking at the bonfire and turned at the sound, but Nix spun toward him and then he was falling, the knife buried in his chest.

Charlie bellowed in surprise and fury, and swung the gun back toward Nix and pulled the trigger.

His shot sounded like an entire barrage of artillery, because at the same second that he pulled the trigger, all of the firecrackers in Joey Duk’s satchel exploded. The sudden sound made Charlie jump, and his shot tore through Nix’s hair rather than her head.

The night was filled with a thousand sharp cracks, and all of the men ducked and dove for cover, thinking they were under armed attack. They whirled and fired in every direction, filling the air with louder bangs as shotguns and heavy pistols spat fire and hot lead. A dozen bullets ripped jagged holes in the sheet-metal sides of the wagon beside which Benny crouched, and he bent and rolled beneath the wagon, feeling the shudder as the barrage continued to tear at wood and metal.

Nix tore her knife free, rushed at the pen rail, and tried to leap over it, blade high, to stab Charlie, but the big man swatted her out of the air. The blow caught her on the shoulder, and it was so shockingly powerful that Nix went flying. She hit the ground and slid five feet. Her knife went spinning out of her hands.

Benny saw this from where he lay, and the sight of Nix falling made something snap in his mind. He rolled out from under the wagon and ran around behind it, circling the camp at a dead run to come up on Charlie from the shadows.

The bounty hunters were still firing, and someone’s shotgun pellets struck the flanks of a massive Clydesdale in the corral. The huge draft horse screamed and reared up, throwing all of its two thousand pounds of muscle and bone against a tethering line that snapped like cotton twine. The Clydesdale’s flailing hooves struck another horse, and soon the whole pack of draft animals were screaming and kicking and tearing loose. They charged across the camp, spooked by pain and the continual popping of the firecrackers, scattering bounty hunters who dove for sudden cover. One man was caught in a moment of indecision, shifting right and left half a dozen times before his last moment of choice ran out. The herd of horses ran him down and ground him into the mud. Benny saw the Hammer trying to make a grab for them, but one of the animals rammed him and sent him flying into Joey Duk’s burning tent. The Hammer landed hard, but instantly began screaming and thrashing as he rolled out of the fire. The mud and the rain put out the flames, but he lay there, smoking and dazed.

The twelve-year-old was pushing the children over the rail. She was the last one over, and they raced together into the darkened woods, but as they fled, Benny realized he was on the very path that Nix had told them to take. He tried to dodge behind a tree, but the whole pack of kids saw him at once… and screamed.

Charlie whirled, thinking that one of his men had circled to block the kids.

He stared straight into Benny Imura’s eyes, saw all nineteen of his captives fleeing past him into the shadows.

Charlie Pink-eye’s face darkened with a brutal rage, and he raised his pistol.

And Benny Imura raised his own.

53

“LIFE JUST KEEPS GETTING MORE AND MORE FUN,” GROWLED CHARLIE Matthias.

“BENNY!” Nix screamed, but the Hammer moved behind her and wrapped an iron arm around her throat. The other bounty hunters laughed, knowing that a bad night was suddenly about to become more entertaining.

“If you think getting shot is fun,” Benny said, “then you’re going to die happy.”

Charlie laughed. “Boy, maybe your brother might have pulled off that kind of banter, but it doesn’t carry the same pop if your voice cracks while you’re talking trash.”

The gun was heavy, but Benny forced his hand to stay firm. Charlie appeared to be unimpressed. The rain was thinning, and the last of the firecrackers banged and then went silent. Benny licked his lips, tasting mud and cold sweat.

“If you’re going to pull that trigger, pup, do it while you still have some balls.”

“I’ll pull it,” said Benny, stepping forward in what he hoped was an aggressive move. Charlie merely looked amused. “But I want to know something first.”

Charlie grinned and looked around at the other bounty hunters. Most of them were trying to round up the horses, but a handful had stood to watch the fun. Now they were pointing guns at Benny too. “Kid wants to have a fireside chat, boys. Ain’t that cute?”

“Maybe he wants to know how to grow a set!” yelled one man.

“Maybe he wants to join,” suggested Vin Trang.

“Maybe he wants to cry about what happened to Tom,” offered the Hammer, who was scuffed and blackened, but did not look much worse for wear. He gave Benny a truly murderous look, and Benny knew that if the Hammer got his hands on him, he’d make him pay very dearly for what had just happened.

Benny could have taken his shot when Charlie was turned away, but he kept hoping that Lilah would show up. One more diversion was all he needed to rescue Nix. But all he heard in the woods behind him was the diminishing splat of raindrops on leaves and the moan of the wind through the trees.

Showing no trace of concern that a gun was pointed at him, Charlie turned back to Benny. “Sure, kid… You got some burning question you want to ask, then ol’ Charlie’d be happy to oblige. Charlie’s everybody’s friend.”

The bounty hunters all laughed at that.

“Why do you do this?” Benny demanded. “I mean, how can you live with yourself after everything you’ve done?”

The big bounty hunter chuckled. “Grow up, boy. You think I’m evil? Sure, you want to hang that word on me, because I use muscle to take what I want, but you don’t have a clue about how the world works. It’s the same now as it was before First Night. Anyone says different is a fool or a liar.”

He took a step closer, and Benny reflexively backed away. Charlie looked pleased, and he bent forward and leered at Benny.

“You look at me and you see the Big Bad Wolf. You think I’m some kind of monster. Well, there’s a lot worse than ol’ Charlie out here in the Ruin, and I ain’t talkin’ about zoms. You got no idea what evil is.”

“I’m looking at it.”

“Hell, boy, I ain’t evil. I’m just the guy that’s in power. I’m a conqueror, like all them great kings and generals in history. You want to call me evil because of Gameland? You think that’s the height of evil? Boy, there are people who conquered half the world, slaughtered whole populations, wiped cultures off the face of the planet, and you know what history calls them? Heroes! Kings, presidents, champions, explorers. You think America was settled by white men because the Indians invited us here? No, we took this land because we were stronger, and that’s how every page of human history is written. It’s just our nature. We’re a predator species, top of the food chain. Survival of the fittest is written in our blood, it’s stenciled on every gene of our DNA. The strong take and the strong make, and the weak are there only to help them do it. End of story.”

“You’re wrong.” The gun was getting impossibly heavy. Benny’s whole arm trembled.

“I can see it in your eyes, boy, you know I’m right. You’re so wrapped up in wanting to be a hero your ownself that you can’t admit it.” He took another step, and Benny yielded ground again. It was that or pull the trigger, and he couldn’t make himself do it. Not yet. Charlie said, “I know they teach you pups history in school. They teach you about the old world, about the heroes who built this great nation, blah, blah, blah. But do you think any general anywhere ever won a war without taking exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted? Or without letting his men have what they needed, whenever they needed it? All through history the winners ran rampant when they conquered a city or a country, and it was one big party-just as it should be. If a man is going to put his life on the line, then he deserves some benefits. It’s only fair.”

“What are you talking about? You’re not some general fighting an invading army. You’re not freeing anyone. You’re not fighting for anything!”

Charlie’s face darkened. “Oh I’m not, am I? Well, learn a little of your own history then. I was there when we found Mountainside. Me, Charlie Matthias. I helped build that stinking town. I scouted the first trade route through the Ruin. I brought the first wagons of supplies from the cities to help reinforce the fence. I was the one who raided the hospital and brought back half a ton of medical supplies. Most of the men who protect the traders and city scavengers now work for me or were trained by me. And I brought more survivors, including a couple hundred whole families out of the Ruin to Mountainside. I’ve saved more people than you ever met, my young pup. So don’t tell me I haven’t been fighting for anything.”

He took one more step, and this time Benny was too flummoxed to step back.

“Benny!” yelled Nix. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to confuse you.” She would have said more, but the Hammer flexed the massive muscles in his arm, and his biceps choked Nix to silence. Benny licked his lips.

Charlie said, “Once upon a time I met a group of travelers in these mountains, who were half dead and running from a pack of zoms. A group that included a skinny Japanese kid and his baby brother… and I showed them the path to Mountainside. So, boy, you want to get your facts right before you tell me that I ain’t been fighting the good fight. A hundred years from now, when they write the history of First Night and the years that followed, they’ll put my name down as the greatest hero of the zombie war. Me, Charlie Matthias.”

Benny did not want to believe Charlie, but he knew the big man was telling the truth. At least the truth as he knew it.

“Maybe you did all that,” Benny said, using his left hand now to support his trembling right. “But it still doesn’t give you the right to do the other things you’re doing.”

“Don’t it? Being ‘right’ is all about living up to a set of laws, and there are no laws out here in the Ruin. Even your worm-meat brother told you that much. The laws of places like Mountainside end at the gate, because nobody there has the guts to step past those fences and establish the law outside. Nobody but me, and since I’m the top dog out here, I get to make whatever laws I want.”

“I’m not talking about laws,” said Benny through gritted teeth. The moaning of the wind in the forest behind him was louder. Was the storm going to build back up again? “I’m talking about right and wrong.”

Charlie laughed. “You’re going to stand here with a gun in my face, ready to kill me, and you’re going to lecture me on right and wrong? Who appointed you judge, jury, and executioner? You pass a burning bush on the way here and get some new Commandments? I think the old ones kind of dried up and blew away when the first of the dead rose up and started eating people. Call me crazy, but I think that was a game changer. When dead ain’t even dead no more, then as far as I’m concerned, no other previous rules apply. So that means ‘right’ is whatever I decide it is.”

“No-,” Benny began, but Charlie made his move. He stuck his left hand out to the side, and Benny’s reflexes reacted before he could control them and his eyes flicked toward the movement. With lightning speed, Charlie used his right to slap the pistol out of Benny’s hand. With one step he was chest to chest with Benny, and his face was a mask of naked fury. He grabbed Benny’s shirt with one hand and hauled him to his toe-tips and knocked his head to one side with a powerful slap of his hard open palm and then backhanded him, so that his head whipped all the way to the other side. The shock to Benny’s cheek was nothing compared to the double jolt to his neck, and Benny’s knees buckled.

“Benny!” Nix cried, but all that escaped the stricture around her throat was a desperate croak.

Charlie Pink-eye shoved Benny away in disgust. “You’re a worthless little piece of crap, kid. You talk big when you’re holding a gun, but you don’t even have the stones or the smarts to pull the trigger when you have the chance. That’s why people like you don’t run the world. It’s people like me-people who aren’t afraid to make the hard choices and take the tough actions-who get things done and who deserve to say what’s what. Power is the only thing that matters, pup, and the sad news is that you just don’t have enough of it.”

“Kiss my ass!” Benny snarled, and he launched himself at Charlie. His training with Tom hadn’t lasted long enough for him to learn the subtleties of combat. He didn’t know many tricks, wouldn’t have qualified for any belt. All he had was his rage. He barreled into Charlie so hard that the big man was actually forced backward two steps. Benny came in low and fast, driving his shoulder into Charlie’s thighs, hoping to knock him down. If he could get him down, maybe he could stomp on him, break an ankle or a knee. Or Charlie’s face.

But Charlie didn’t go down. He dug his heels into the mud to stop Benny’s rush and then he clubbed Benny aside with a forearm shot to the side of the head. Benny saw it coming and ducked enough to miss most of the force, but there was still enough power there to drive him to one knee. With a growl of anger, Benny tried to hook a punch into Charlie’s crotch, but Charlie turned into it, and Benny’s fist collided with the big man’s hip bone. Pain exploded in Benny’s hand.

“Nice try, pup,” Charlie said. “Points for having some stones. More than I thought. Not enough, though.”

He grabbed Benny by the hair, jerked him to his feet, and then buried an uppercut so hard into Benny’s stomach that his whole body was lifted off the ground. His entire abdomen seemed to be folded around Charlie’s massive fist, and the impact drove all of the air out of the world. Benny fell, eyes bulging, face purpling, gasping, capable only of making high-pitched squeaks as he fought to take in even a mouthful of air.

He heard Nix calling his name, screaming as she fought against the Hammer.

He heard the laughter of Charlie and the other bounty hunters.

He heard his own inhuman squeaks.

He heard Charlie say, “Digger, Sting… You boys do me a favor and drag his sorry butt into the pen and tie him up. Don’t be nice about it. Hammer, show the girl some manners and then tie her up with the others. The rest of you, go find those other kids and let’s get this camp together. This whole thing’s been a total clusterfu-”

And something came hurtling out of the dark and slammed into the back of the man called Digger as he bent to grab Benny. He gurgled out a single low cry and fell face forward onto the ground. Benny stared at the man, at the knife that was buried nearly to the hilt between his shoulder blades. The handle was black and ribbed, and the inch of blade that showed was equally black and double-edged.

Benny felt his brain twist around backward. He knew that knife!

Then a scream cut through the air as something massive leaped over the dying man’s body and crashed full force into the knot of bounty hunters. The horse was not one of the bulky draft horses that had broken free from the camp.

It was Apache!

And riding the big buckskin was a bloody man, whose clothing hung in rags, whose eyes were dark and wild, and who slashed at the bounty hunters with a glittering sword.

Tom!

54

“TOM!” BENNY YELLED, NOT KNOWING IF WHAT HE WAS SEEING WAS real or if he had just gone completely crazy. How was it even possible?

Apache reared up and kicked one bounty hunter in the chest, and the man flew backward, as if he’d taken a double load of buckshot. Another man rushed the horse from the side and tried to pull Tom from the saddle. Tom’s sword flashed downward, and the man fell shrieking beneath the horse’s hooves.

“Christ!” bellowed Charlie. “That’s Tom Imura. Kill him!”

He brought his gun up, but Benny came up out of the mud and once more drove his shoulder into the big man. Charlie wasn’t ready for it this time, and the impact knocked them both to the ground. Charlie’s shot punched a hole through the shoulder of Texas Jon McGoran. As the bullet slammed Texas Jon backward, his fingers jerked the trigger of his pump shotgun, and the spray caught Wild Bill Fairchild full in the face.

Benny had no chance against Charlie in any kind of a fight, but he could at least keep him from shooting Tom, so Benny lunged at Charlie’s arm and bit his wrist. Charlie howled in pain, dropped the gun, but then used that hand to punch Benny in the face. Benny felt his nose crack. He kneed Charlie in the thigh twice and then flung himself away from a second and more powerful punch that would have easily broken his neck.

He scrambled to his feet and spun around looking for Nix. She was twenty feet away, and the Hammer was holding her like a shield as Tom advanced on him. The rain faded to a drizzle and then stopped, although thunder rumbled through the heavens and lightning flashed in the west.

“Drop that sword, Tom, or I’ll snap this little girl’s neck,” the Hammer promised. He meant it, too. He had his whole arm looped around her throat and held her so that her feet were inches above the ground.

The other bounty hunters were recovering from the initial shock of seeing Tom Imura, returning from the dead as a living, breathing, fighting man. They pulled their guns and pointed them at him.

Tom reined Apache to a stop. The buckskin still wore the remnants of his carpet coat, although it looked like it had been gnawed on by every zom from here to the state line.

“You don’t want to do that, Marion,” said Tom in a voice that was surprisingly calm. “Put the girl down.”

“Kiss my hairy butt, Tom. You drop that sword or so help me, I’ll pull her head clean off.”

Tom flicked his wrist so that the blood that streaked the sword was whipped off. It splashed Joey Duk across the face.

“Benny,” Tom said, “are you okay?”

Benny got to his feet, his head spinning from the punch to the nose. “Yeah,” he said breathlessly.

“That’s going to cost you.” Charlie growled as he also got to his feet. His gun was muddy and useless, but he didn’t need one. Tom was surrounded by nearly twenty bounty hunters.

Tom slowly raised his sword until the tip of the blade was pointed directly at the Motor City Hammer. “I’m going to give you one last chance, Marion. Let Nix go.”

The Hammer laughed, and so did the other men. “Or what?” He sneered. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned, Tom. What the hell do you think you’re gonna do?”

“Me?” Tom looked faintly amused. “Hell, I’m not going to do anything. But you will let her go.”

“Says who?”

“Says me!” A voice snarled out of the darkness, and there was a heavy whoosh as a long metal pole cut through the air, and a flash of silver as a wickedly sharp bayonet blade cut through the back of the Motor City Hammer’s left leg. His Achilles tendon parted with an explosion of blood, and he screamed-as high and shrill as a little girl-and fell. He literally threw Nix from him, and she staggered toward Benny, who rushed to catch her.

Everyone turned as a pale figure jumped forward into the firelight, her snow-white hair swirling as she landed and pivoted and slashed again with her spear. The air was suddenly filled with a new rainfall, but these drops were a red so dark that it was almost black. The Hammer clamped both of his hands around his throat. His eyes went wide and were instantly filled with the dreadful certainty that no matter who won this night’s conflict-Charlie Pink-eye or Tom Imura-he, Marion Hammer, would own no piece of either victory or defeat, and that he would play no part in whatever future was being written here. He tried to speak, to say something, to articulate the terror and need in his heart, but that bull throat of his was no longer constructed for speech.

He toppled slowly forward, like a great building finally yielding to years of corruption and decay, and then he fell into the mud.

The Lost Girl stood over him, her hazel eyes as cold as all the hatred and loss in the world, and then she spat on the unmoving back of the man who had chased her sister into the rain and then left her body in the mud, as if it was garbage.

“God,” Nix breathed, massaging her bruised throat.

Charlie Matthias stared at his fallen friend, his mouth open, disbelief painted on his features. Benny could only imagine what was going on in the big man’s mind. Benny had heard all of the stories of Charlie and the Hammer. He’d sat in Lafferty’s General Store on far too many afternoons and listened as they recounted their adventures. Always their adventures. Always together, a pair of devils, drawing power from each other, enabling and supporting each other. The right and left fist of violence out here in the great Rot and Ruin.

And now the Hammer was dead.

In a few minutes he would reanimate as a zom. As one of them, as one of the things that Charlie and the Hammer hated and humiliated and debased for fun and profit.

As Benny watched, Charlie’s face changed. His eyes went from wide shock to narrow slits filled with lethal intent, and his mouth tightened into a grimace of bloodlust.

“I’m going to rip you apart, girl,” he said. “I should have done it five years ago, and now I’m going to make sure it’s done and done right. By God you are going to scream all the way to hell!”

Lilah raised her spear, and the bounty hunters raised their guns. Benny and Nix stepped up to flank her, the three of them ready to make a stand against Charlie Pink-eye.

Tom stepped between Charlie and them.

“A long time ago I gave you a chance,” said Tom. “Your goons here don’t know it, but I had you down and bleeding when you tried to invade Sunset Hollow. Your life was in my hands, Charlie, and you begged me-begged me-to give you another chance. You swore to me that you’d change, that things would be different. I didn’t know then that you were the one who was behind everything bad that goes on out here. That you started Gameland and that you were the one who kept it going. Back then I thought you were just a hired gun, working for someone else. Now I know different, Charlie. Now I know the truth, and every day for the rest of my life I’m going to feel sick, knowing that I let you live when I should have just switched you off. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was being merciful. Never kill a helpless enemy.” Benny saw Tom’s face darken with self-loathing. “I’ve got five years of blood on my hands, Charlie. How many lives is that? How many men, women, and children whose futures were ruined? How many people tortured or murdered?”

Charlie was not impressed. “Yeah, you suckered me once and got the upper hand, big friggin’ deal. You think that makes you tougher than me? You think that makes you anything? You ain’t nothing but a sad footnote in an old history book, Tom. You’re not a cop and you’re not a samurai. You’re not even a good bounty hunter. You don’t have the guts for it. You’re nothing but a fool and a coward.”

Benny stepped forward and punched Charlie in the face. He put every ounce of outrage and almost fourteen years worth of inner conflict into that punch, and it caught Charlie on the point of the jaw and spun him halfway around.

“My brother is not a coward!” he bellowed.

Time seemed to grind to a halt.

Charlie turned slowly back to face them. There was a purple knot forming on his jaw, but if the punch had done him any real harm, then it didn’t show on his face. His eyes danced with humor, and he wore an ugly butcher’s smile.

“You throw a good punch for a little pup,” he said. “How’s the hand?”

Benny said nothing. In fact, he had to clamp his mouth shut, because he was pretty sure that he had just broken his hand. Every one of the thousands of nerve endings in his fist was sending white hot flashes of pain to his brain, and his knuckles were swelling like balloons. He tried to block out the pain, tried not to let his eyes fill with tears. He concentrated on hating Charlie and tried to figure out a way to save Nix. The rain started falling again, and the wind was moaning louder than ever in the trees.

Charlie pointed to him. “I’m going to save you for last. After I kick your brother’s ass, I’m going to take the Lost Girl and see how she does in a zombie pit without any weapons. That goes for your redheaded friend, too. Think that’ll be fun? Afterward, I’m going to feed you to the zoms, one finger at a time.”

Nix made a lunge at Charlie, but Tom grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

“No, sweetie,” he murmured, “this animal is mine.”

Charlie gave him “a come and get it” gesture with both hands, then called to his men. “What kind of drugs are you taking, Tom? You’re frigging well surrounded and outnumbered. We’re not going to duke it out. This isn’t a fair fight. You’re just going to die. I don’t know how you escaped them zoms back on the highway, but you should never have come back here. Not alone.”

“No,” Tom agreed, “it isn’t a fair fight. And just so you know… I’m not alone.”

Charlie looked momentarily perplexed. A few of the bounty hunters exchanged looks and then everyone turned slowly around. The rain was falling steadily now, but the moaning in the forest had nothing to do with the wind.

The entire camp was surrounded by hundreds of the living dead.

Tom Imura looked at Lilah, and they both smiled.

55

THE ZOMS SHAMBLED INTO THE CAMP, AND THE MOAN THEY LET LOOSE was an unrelenting cry of hunger that now had the promise of being satisfied. The bounty hunters screamed and backed away, colliding with one another. Everyone who had a gun began firing.

“Benny!” cried Nix, and shoved him out of the way as a zom lurched toward him. She ducked under the zombie’s arms and kicked it savagely in the knee, but as it toppled, she shoved it into the arms of one of the bounty hunters. The man shrieked as the crippled zom bore him to the ground and clamped its rotting teeth onto his shoulder.

Lilah used the butt end of her spear to jab several of the zoms in the chest, knocking them away as she retreated. “With me!” she called, and Benny and Nix clustered next to her. Neither of them had a weapon. “Gun!” Lilah barked, but Benny looked around, expecting to see someone trying to shoot him. Nix, however, caught Lilah’s meaning and reached for the pistol in the Lost Girl’s holster. It was an automatic, and Nix racked the slide and took the gun in a firm two-handed shooter’s grip as the three of them kept backing toward the wagons.

Benny saw one of the zoms-it was the huge man in the tattered overalls of a mechanic-grab a bounty hunter by the throat and drive him back against a tree. The ropes that had once held the mechanic to the tree in the Hungry Forest still dangled from his wrists. Other shapes moved through the shadows behind him. Ropes dangled from withered necks and emaciated waists, and firelight sparkled in their dead, black eyes.

Benny felt a mix of savage pride and relief-it had been an insane plan, and it had taken longer than Benny had expected-but it was working. He should have trusted that Lilah would get it done.

But… Tom! Nothing in his plan explained how his brother had returned from apparent death and had come here to save them. And it was clear from what Tom had said, and from the knowing look he’d shared with Lilah, that he had known that the zoms were closing in on the camp. How had he known? Had he met the Lost Girl and, after all of his attempts, finally spoken with her? Here, on this night of storms and blood?

Benny turned to find his brother, and there Tom was, right in the thick of it. Several zoms separated him from Charlie. Several bounty hunters tried to rush Tom at the same time that half a dozen zoms closed in on him, and it was in that moment that Benny finally saw, and understood, the kind of man Tom Imura was.

His whole body was a blur of coordinated movement. Big Jim Starr, one of Charlie’s fiercest men, grabbed Tom by the shoulder and spun him around, but Tom turned into the pull, and his left hand shot out with whiplike speed. Big Jim clutched a ruin of a throat and fell away, but before he even had time to fall, Tom slashed up and wide, then left and across, and two zoms seemed to fly apart. Joker Brills pulled a pistol and snapped off a shot, but Tom had seen him go for his gun and was moving before the barrel was properly aimed. Gun and gun arm flew into the air, and Tom pivoted and cut the legs from another zom, then rose and slashed Axeman Santiago across the chest in a double cut that left a deep red X across his torso. Tom whirled and cut, whirled and cut, and his attackers-both the living and the dead-fell before him. Benny could see Charlie watching all of this from the far side of the clearing, and there was a slack expression, somewhere between shock and awe, on his heavy features.

Then a powerful hand clamped onto Benny’s leg, and he was falling. As he went down he twisted around and saw the Motor City Hammer, staring at him with black and lifeless eyes as he pulled Benny toward his bloody mouth.

Benny screamed and kicked him in the face, over and over again, but the Hammer was beyond feeling pain. Then Nix stamped down on the Hammer’s wrist and put the barrel of the pistol hard against the zom’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The Hammer’s head jerked back, and he collapsed down, dead forever this time.

“Thanks!” Benny gasped as Nix hauled him to his feet.

“Here!” Lilah said. She knelt by the Hammer’s side and pulled from his belt the heavy metal club he always carried. She tossed it to Benny, who caught it with his swollen hand.

He yelped and cursed, but he managed to close his fist around it. Maybe it’s only sprained, he told himself, then he had no more time to think about it as Vin Trang rushed at him with a butcher knife in his fist. Joey Duk made a grab for Nix, and four zoms staggered toward Lilah.

“You and your brother are a pain in my-,” Vin began, but Benny didn’t want to hear it. He used the pipe to batter aside the knife and then rang the club off of Vin’s forehead. Vin’s eyes lost focus, and Benny closed the deal with an overhand swing that put Vin down. Benny didn’t know or care if he’d killed the man or not. He needed to help Nix and Lilah, but as he turned, he saw Nix moving backward and firing with each step. Her bullets punched into Joey Duk with such force that it made him look like a puppet, dancing on the strings of a demented puppeteer. The last shot caught him high and he pitched backward into the arms of three zoms-a nun and two men in business suits. The man collapsed under the zoms, screaming as they began to feast.

Nix stared at the fallen man, then down at the gun she held.

“God…,” she murmured, her voice sounding lost, and for a moment Benny thought that killing Joey had somehow broken her. But then a zom reached for her, and Nix calmly, coldly, turned and shot it between the eyes.

Another body fell past Benny, and he turned to see Lilah dispatch the last of the four zoms who had rushed her. Her face ran with rainwater, and she was grinning. Grinning.

That is one spooky girl, Benny thought. From all that Lilah had been through, she was “lost” in more ways than one. He wondered if there was any roadmap that would lead her toward some kind of normal life. Or was she too far out in the wilderness of her own experience for that?

“Benny!”

Tom’s voice shook him back to the moment, and he saw his brother running toward him. The last of the bounty hunters were trying to make a stand by the bonfire, and a wall of zoms was closing in on them.

“The east path!” Tom yelled, pointing with his bloody sword, and Benny turned toward the path the children had taken. It was the only path clear of the dead. Lilah had said it was the best one for their escape, because it was elevated-part of an ancient rock wall that had long ago collapsed, and unlike all of the other paths, it didn’t directly connect with the forest. It had been their planned escape route, but in all of the turmoil, Benny had become confused.

“RUN!” Tom yelled, and even as he said it, Apache came tearing out of the shadows and galloped at full speed along the path, sensing the direction of safety. Benny began backing up, but he was still looking at the camp. There were more than a thousand zoms closing in now, and only eight bounty hunters. After all they’d done, after all the harm they had caused, Benny felt a flicker of compassion for them, and he knew that this was the same thing Tom must have felt when he’d spared Charlie’s life years ago. Back in Sunset Hollow, whatever that was.

But there was no saving these men. Lilah and Nix knew it, because they ran along the path without a flicker of hesitation. Tom knew it, though when he caught up with Benny, he too turned and looked back for a moment.

“We can’t save them,” Tom said.

“No,” whispered Benny, but his reply was lost in the rain.

“Go catch up with the girls,” Tom said. “I’ll hold this trail until you’re well clear. Leave Apache for me, because when I leave, I’ll be in a hurry.”

Benny ran down the road and whistled for the horse, and Apache stopped, turned reluctantly, and trotted back to him. Benny tied the reins in a loose pull knot to a stunted tree.

“Tom, how did you… I mean… How are you alive?”

Tom flashed him a grin. “Remember when you threw that bottle of cadaverine to me with the cap loose, and I spilled it all over myself? I think you saved my life. After I fell, I landed right in the middle of them, but they didn’t go for me. Not right away. The cadaverine gave me a couple of seconds, and I rolled under a car. I was stuck there for hours. I didn’t know where you were… or if you were alive.”

“Geez. How bad are you hurt? I saw a lot of blood…”

“I took some buckshot pellets. It’ll be fun getting them out, but it could have been a lot worse.”

The gunshots and screams were intensifying.

“Family reunion later, kiddo. Haul ass.”

Benny did just that. He turned and followed Nix and the Lost Girl out of the camp, leaving the dying to the dead.

But as he rounded the bend in the path, Benny skidded to a stop. Nix and Lilah stood on either side the road, and fifty yards beyond them was the twelve-year-old girl and the other children. Standing like a monster from some old fairy tale-covered with mud and blood, fierce and terrible-was Charlie Pink-eye.

He held the pistol at arm’s length, but his gun hand was no longer steady. He was breathing hard, and his red eye leaked tears of blood. There were deep gashes on his cheeks, and his shirt was torn open to reveal a body that was crammed with muscles and crisscrossed by scar tissue.

“Damn you all to hell,” he said in a low hiss. “You took everything I had away from me. You led those monsters here! You turned against your own kind.”

Benny’s lips curled back, but Nix got her words out first. “You’re not our kind, you freak. You killed my mother! You’re not even human.”

She pointed her pistol at Charlie and fired, but he read her intent and ducked to one side, and the shot went wide by five inches. The slide locked back with a hollow click, the magazine empty. Growling with frustration, Nix threw the pistol at Charlie and caught him on the shoulder, but he only winced. Lilah tried to gut him with her spear, but the big man moved so fast that only the tip of the blade grazed him. Even so, it drew a hot red line across his abdomen, and he howled in pain. He used one fist to club the spear down, so that the point dug into the mud, and with his other fist he punched Lilah in the stomach. She collapsed to her knees and threw up into the weeds. Nix made a grab for Lilah’s spear, but Charlie backhanded her to the edge of the path, so that she stood wobbling on the edge of a sheer drop, her arms pinwheeling for balance.

And then Benny moved. He ran to Nix and grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the ledge and then he rushed at Charlie. He still had the Hammer’s club, and Benny swung it hard at Charlie’s head. The bounty hunter was actually starting to smile at the obviousness of the attack, but Benny was tired of being obvious, tired of being beaten up, clubbed down, tossed aside like something that, in the grand scheme of things, just plain didn’t matter. He turned the swing into a fake, checked the hit, and used his left hand to punch Charlie in the nose. It wasn’t a very powerful blow, but it doesn’t require power to break a nose. Charlie’s head rocked back as his nose flattened and blood flew from his nostrils.

And that’s when Benny hit him with the pipe.

He grabbed the weapon with both hands and swung it in a sideways arc that fourteen years ago would have sent a baseball into the bleachers in any major league park in the country. The swing had everything Benny had to give: rage and hate, hurt and fear, passion and confusion. And it also had love and grief. For Nix and her mother. For Lilah and her sister, Annie. For the twelve-year-old girl and the kids who huddled around her. For George Goldman, the quiet hero. For Tom and the heartbreak he felt over Jessie Riley. For people named and unknown who had fallen victim to this man. This abomination.

He hit Charlie Matthias only once.

And once was enough.

The big man took a single wandering sideways step, all sense and control knocked out of his head by the blow. He staggered past Nix, who was crouched down holding Lilah against her. He swung around in a sloppy turn, fighting for balance that was no longer his to own, and then his next step came down three inches past the edge of the path. Below his big foot was a drop that plunged a hundred yards into darkness. Charlie Matthias shot Benny one last, momentary glance of desperation and fear.

Benny would like to have seen guilt there or some last minute awareness and acceptance of the wrongness of all that he had done. That would have been nice. That would have been closure.

All he saw in Charlie’s eyes was hatred.

Then Charlie fell.

With the rain, with the last few pops of gunfire from the camp, and with the moans of the hungry dead, they never heard him land. Benny stood on the edge of the trail, and for all that he could see or hear, he might as well have been on the edge of the world. He held the Hammer’s club out at arm’s length, opened his hand, and let the weapon fall. There would be a need for weapons, he knew that; but there would be other weapons. This one, like the man it had killed, was unclean.

He turned to the others and sank to his knees by Nix and Lilah. They both stared past him to the edge of the road, their eyes wide. Benny rested his head on Nix’s shoulder, and she gathered him to her. Lilah wrapped her arms around them both. Then there were other arms-the twelve-year-old girl and the children.

Tom Imura sat on Apache’s back and stared at the huddled mass. He’d heard the single gunshot behind him and had come as fast as he could. He read the scene and understood what he was seeing.

He heard Benny and Lilah and Nix and the others as they wept.

Tom bowed his head and he too wept.