Laughing at the weak, skinny kid. At the “town boy” who thought he could be a warrior.
At the fool who dared to think that he could ever in a million years win the love of someone as magical and powerful as the legendary Lost Girl. At the loser who had endangered the lives of his friends. At the coward who had run away. The images and the implications were like nails driven into his flesh.
But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace. He bit down on the pain, devouring it, accepting the hurt as something he deserved, and fueled by its energy he planted a foot flat on the ground, pressed the knuckles of his two balled fists into the cold dirt, and pushed himself up off his knees. It took a million years to get all the way to his feet. Straightening his body made it feel like every bruise was being stretched to the ripping point, but the shame would not let him stop until he was up and straight and at his full height.
“Warrior smart,” he said, but he loaded the words with scorn.
“Now ain’t that just a stirring sight?”
The words were like a bucket of cold water over Chong’s head. He jerked backward as if pushed, and he snapped his head upward to see three men looking down at him from the lip of the pit. One was the big one-eyed man with the flowing white hair who had brought him here. The man whose face was a melted ruin. The other two were strangers. They were smiling in ways that leached all the strength from Chong’s limbs.
“Who are you?” Chong demanded. It would have sounded better if his voice hadn’t cracked.
“’Who are you?’” mocked the big man. His voice made Chong’s skin crawl. It almost sounded like Charlie Pink-eye.
Could this be Charlie? When Benny had hit Charlie, had the bounty hunter survived and gone back into the burning camp? Or had the fires from that battle caught up to Charlie as he tried to crawl away? Was this Charlie Matthias? Or had some other monster descended into this already troubled and dying world?
“I’ll bet you have a lot of questions, little man,” said the Burned Man, as if reading Chong’s thoughts. “Well, think on this.”
He tossed something down into the pit that struck the dirt between Chong’s bare feet. It was a length of black pipe. One end was wrapped with black leather. There was old blood caked on the whole length of the weapon. Chong bent and gingerly picked it up.
“That there used to belong to a friend of mine,” said the Burned Man. “He used that there club to kill a thousand zoms. And near half that many folks who wasn’t zoms. Yeah … that piece of pipe’s got some history. It made my buddy famous all across the Ruin and in every town from Freehold to Sanctuary.”
The other two men laughed at this, giving each other high fives.
Chong gripped the object that had given the Motor City Hammer his nickname.
“My friend’s long since dead,” said the Burned Man, “but he’d be right pleased to know that his legend lives on.”
“I didn’t kill him,” said Chong, and then cursed himself for how cowardly and defensive that sounded.
“Maybe not,” conceded the Burned Man. “And then again, maybe you did. Or maybe you’re friends with those who did. Tiny Hank Wilson was one of the few who survived what happened at the camp last year. He said he saw what happened to the Hammer. Said it was a girl who killed him. That white-haired slut who’s been running these hills the last few years. But I don’t believe a little girl could take down the Hammer. No sir, I do not believe that. But a strapping kid like you, sneaking up behind him? Maybe clubbing him down when he wasn’t looking? That I can believe.”
Chong wanted to throw the club at him, but he held on to it. It was all he had.
“So, I think it’d please the Hammer all to hell to know that his favorite little toy wasn’t going to be forgotten. That it was still doing some killing.” The big man squatted down. “It won’t matter to him, or to me, if you live or die, little man. You live and you get to hold on to the hammer. Maybe one day you’ll be the Hammer. Wouldn’t that be something?”
Chong shook his head but said nothing.
“On t’other hand, if you die … well then, we got lots and lots of other kids who’d kill to have something like a nice piece of black pipe for when it comes to be their turn.”
Chong finally managed to squeeze three words through his gritted teeth. “Go to hell.”
The men all laughed, and the big man hardest of all. “Hell? Boy—ain’t you been paying attention? We’re already in hell. The whole world’s been in hell since First Night.”
He stood up and nodded to the other men. They vanished, but almost immediately other faces appeared around the edges of the pit. Men and women. Hard faces with hard eyes and mouths that smiled with icy cruelty. A small rat-faced man and a boy who was clearly his son shoved their way to the edge of the pit and started calling numbers and taking money.
Bets, Chong knew with growing horror. God … they’re taking bets.
The crowd fell into an expectant hush, and every eye turned in the direction where the two companions of the Burned Man had disappeared. When they came back, both of them were wearing carpet coats and football helmets with plastic visors. Between them was a pale figure that snarled and twisted and tried to bite the air.
“Welcome to Gameland,” said the Burned Man.
And then they pushed the zom into the pit with Chong.
43
BENNY WAS CHASED OUT OF HIS DREAMS BY MONSTERS.
From the moment he’d fallen asleep, he had gone running through a nightmare landscape where gigantic trees rose on black trunks that towered a thousand feet above him, their leaves burning with intense yellow fire. Benny ran through a field of blackened grass, and with every step a withered white hand would shoot up through the soil to grab him. He dodged and jagged and stumbled as hand after hand burst through the charred topsoil to claw at him.
No zoms emerged … just the reaching hands with their broken nails and bloodless skin.
As he ran he called Nix’s name, but the hot wind snatched her name away and tore it to soundless fragments. He could not see her anywhere. He ran and ran.
He saw Tom walking slowly away from him among the sea of clutching hands. Benny ran to him and grabbed his arm and spun him around. Tom stared at him with dusty black eyes. Tom’s face was the color of old wax, and his teeth were broken stumps. When Tom opened his mouth to speak, all that escaped was the starving moan of a zombie.
“NO!” Benny yelled, and backed away. Pale hands grabbed his ankles and held him as Tom took one unsteady step toward him, and then another. And another. Benny screamed again and kicked his way free just as Tom’s dry fingers brushed his face. Benny ran as ash drifted down from the burning trees.
“NIX!” he cried, but still his voice had no volume. No power.
There was movement and color off to his left, a flash of red, and Benny cut that way. He saw Morgie Mitchell sitting cross-legged on the hood of a burned-out car, his face screwed up with concentration as he tried to repair the broken pieces of his father’s fishing rod. Lying slumped against the side of the car was a slender figure covered with bright red blood.
Chong!
Benny hurried to him and knelt down, trying to figure out where his friend was hurt. “Chong! Chong … can you hear me? C’mon, talk to me, you skinny monkey-banger.”
Chong’s eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. There was still life in his eyes, a wet glimmer deep in the brown irises. Chong tried to smile. He began speaking very slowly and softly, and Benny had to bend close to hear.
“Everything out here wants to kill you, Benny,” Chong said.
“Chong! Where are you hurt?”
Chong lifted a hand, and with one bloody finger he tapped his temple. “It hurts in here, Benny. Nothing in here works anymore.” Then the hand fell limply away, and Chong slumped over sideways, his last breath rattling from his throat.
Benny fell backward, kicking himself away from Chong.
More hands burst through the dirt and clamped around his wrists.
“No!” Benny bellowed, and he twisted and kicked and bit the fingers until they broke apart and became hot ash. He spat out the ashes and scrambled to his feet. Tom was still coming toward him.
“You should have stayed home,” Morgie said without looking up from what he was doing. “’Cause you know that you’re all gonna die out here.”
“Where’s Nix?” Benny demanded.
Morgie looked up. Instead of eyes he had two empty black holes in his face.
“She’s gonna die too, Benny … and it’s your fault.”
Anger and revulsion warred in Benny’s heart, but he backed away. Suddenly hands grabbed him. Not the cold hands of the buried dead, but two small, warm hands. They touched his back, then his shoulders, and finally the sides of his face. Benny turned slowly, gratitude and relief flooding his heart.
“Nix … God! Where were you?”
His voice trailed away. Nix Riley was a withered thing. Her red hair hung like limp red strings from a scalp that was patchy and blotched. Her skin was leached of color and there were clear signs of bites on her cheeks and shoulders and arms. Worst of all, her eyes … her beautiful green eyes … were wrong. They were a diseased confusion of green and gold and black. The effect was dreadful, the eyes of a thing rather than a girl.
“Benny,” she said, and then she smiled. Rotting lips peeled back from jagged teeth. “Kiss me.”
• • •
Benny screamed himself awake.
He sat up, gasping, heart pounding, his body drenched in sweat. Cold starlight filtered through the leaves, casting the world into a blue-white strangeness, as alien as the dreams-cape from which he’d just escaped.
Benny turned to Nix, surprised that his scream hadn’t startled her awake. Or had the scream been part of the dream too? He touched her arm to gently shake her.
But her skin was as cold as ice.
“W-what … ?” Benny’s voice was hollow and brittle.
He turned her over and she moved stiffly, her limbs already freezing into the rigidity of rigor mortis.
“No!” He fumbled at her throat, trying to find her pulse, needing to find at least the thread of it. All he found was slack skin beneath which nothing moved. “NO!”
Benny grabbed her and pulled her to him, a new scream rising like volcanic lava in his chest. How could this be? How was it possible? Was it the cut on her face? No … that was just a cut. Had she been bitten? Where? When?
And that fast he knew the answer. On the field. In the dark. As the fire raged and the smoke obscured everything, one of the shambling monsters had bitten her. In their panic and flight, maybe Nix hadn’t known. Or maybe she had and didn’t dare tell him.
She was like a block of ice in his arms, and Benny cried out her name over and over again. It was impossible. The world could not allow this. It could not be true.
Nix stayed cold and dead in his arms.
Until she moved.
Benny recoiled from her, staring at her, his splintering mind scrabbling for that last bit of hope. Please … let her be okay! Maybe she’s just sick. Please … please … please!
Nix Riley opened her eyes.
They were the green and gold diseased eyes of a zom.
With a snarl of impossible hunger, she lunged at him.
44
AND HE WOKE UP.
The forest was as black as death. The crickets pulsed and the night owls hooted. The girl in his arms was a soft, warm reality.
Benny Imura held her. His heart hammered and hammered. Sweat poured down his face, mingling with his tears.
“Nix,” he said gently. She moaned softly in her sleep, lost in her own dreams, and snuggled against him. He held her as tightly as he could without waking her. Benny did not sleep again the rest of the night.
He did not dare.
45
TOM IMURA WAS UP LONG BEFORE DAWN. HE FIXED A QUICK MEAL FOR himself and Sally, refilled their canteens from a small stream, and was ready to go by the time there was enough light to be able to distinguish shadows from substance.
It took Sally Two-Knives a little longer to climb out of the well of sleep, but after she’d eaten something and had her fill of water, she looked and sounded much better than she had the night before. “You’ll live,” Tom said with gentle humor.
“I’ve actually had worse,” she said, carefully probing the knife wound beneath the bandage. “So have you.”
He shrugged. “Fact of life.”
Sally reached out a hand. “Help me up.”
He did. They were both very careful about it, and Sally micromanaged the process with a lot of curses and complaints until she was on her feet and leaning against one of the rocks that formed their shelter. “Well,” she said, “that was interesting.”
“You shouldn’t be up.”
“Can’t stay here. Besides, my horse is out there somewhere. I find her, I’ll be okay.”
“Riding a horse with a stab wound is—”
“—going to hurt, no kidding. Better than walking.”
“You should try and rest for most of the—”
“Don’t even try, Tom. It’s kind of you to be nice to a lady—if we can suspend disbelief long enough to use that word for me—but you need to go find that boy, and I need to go find your brother and the girls.”
Tom had no argument for that. “Thanks, Sally. Can I do anything for—”
“Get your ass in gear, boy. You’re burning daylight.”
He smiled. It was only barely bright enough to see the path. Tom nodded and was about to step back when Sally grabbed him by the front of the shirt with her good hand and pulled him in for a whopper of a kiss. When she finally pushed him back, he gasped and blinked like a trout on a riverbank.
“Wow!”
“In case I don’t ever see you again, Tom,” she said, giving him a wicked little smile. “I don’t want you to forget me.”
“Um … not a chance. Wow.” He gave her a last smile, turned, and vanished into the forest.
Sally watched him go. In the brief moment between his smile and his departure, as he turned away, she saw the smile fall away from his handsome face to be replaced by the face of the hunter. She repeated what she’d said the night before.
“God help anyone who gets in your way.”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Zom 101
Zom: What just about everyone calls the living dead.
Zom: Nomadic zoms. Ones that walk around but aren’t actually following prey. (Most zoms don’t move unless they are following something.)
Walker: Another name for a Nom, though some people call all zoms walkers.
Sliver: A thin piece of metal with a sharpened tip used to “quiet” a zom. It’s inserted at the base of the skill in order to sever the spinal cord.
Quieting: What people call it when a zom is “killed” permanently.
46
BENNY LET NIX SLEEP UNTIL THE WHOLE FOREST WAS INFUSED WITH A pink light. He studied the woods, looking for any signs of zoms. Or of Lilah. Or Tom. No sign of the Greenman, either. For the moment it appeared as if they had the forest all to themselves.
Benny touched Nix’s face with his thumb, caressing her cheek very gently. He lifted the edge of the bandage and studied the long cut and the delicate stitchery. The wound was a little red and puffy, but it wasn’t bad.
Nix made a soft sound and opened her eyes. Green eyes. Not green and gold and black.
“Hey,” she said almost shyly, smiling up at him.
“Hey yourself.”
“What time is it?”
“Half hour past dawn.”
Nix stretched against him and then sat up and yawned so hard her jaws creaked. Then she held her palm up and breathed against it. “Gak! I have monkey breath.”
“Mine’s closer to one of the great apes,” he said.
Their backpacks and gear were back at the way station.
Or in t
he ashes of it. All they had was what they’d carried in their vests and jeans pockets. Matches, first aid kit, sewing kit, knives, cadaverine. No toothbrushes. Nothing to eat.
Benny handed her his canteen and she rinsed and spat. Then she told him to take off his vest and open his shirt. He was shy about it—not from modesty but because he didn’t really want to know how bad the burn was. It hurt less this morning, but his mind conjured images of charred ends of bone sticking out of gangrenous flesh.
The actual wound was almost disappointing. Three lines of blistered skin, each no wider than a pencil and each less than an inch long. The skin around the burns was puffy, but there was no sign of infection.
“You’ll live,” Nix declared as she finished cleaning the burns with a piece of bandage.
“Doesn’t even hurt,” he said, but he was sure she didn’t believe him.
His stomach suddenly growled as loud as a hungry zom. “We need to find some food.”
They removed the bokkens from Benny’s carpet coat and climbed carefully down from the tree. It was a slow and painful process; they were both stiff and sore. As they dropped to the grass they both froze.
There was something at the base of the tree. Someone had placed several fist-size stones in a tight circle to act as a base on which was placed a large hand-carved wooden tray. Large, clean leaves covered the tray, and a wonderful aroma drifted out from beneath them. Nix lifted the leaves and gasped. Benny’s mouth fell open. The wooden plate was piled high with fat yellow mounds of scrambled eggs, thick fried potatoes, and a mound of fresh strawberries.
“What?” Benny asked, looking around. “Who—?”
“Who cares?” Nix said as she scooped a handful of eggs off the plate. “God … there’s enough here for ten people.”