It was impossible.
Gray teeth snapped at the neckline of his carpet coat. Benny drove his knee into the zom’s groin, not that he thought he could hurt it, but because Tom had taught him to always try and lift his opponent’s mass. The zom’s hips bucked up from the impact, and Benny tried to turn, but then he felt cold fingers wrap tightly around his ankle.
Another zom.
More of them were staggering out of the barn. Farmers and women dressed in nurses’ uniforms and men in logger’s shirts. Kids, too, one of whom still clutched a stuffed bear to her chest. It was horrible and heartbreaking and absolutely terrifying.
“Benny!”
He heard Nix scream his name, but there were three zombies clawing at him now—the big one on top of him, the one holding his ankle, and the little girl with the stuffed bear, who had dropped to her knees and was trying to chew through the sleeve of his carpet coat.
Benny thought, We’re going to die. His inner voice could offer no argument.
And then a sound split the air.
“WOOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
It was a huge, barrel-chested war whoop. The kind Morgie let loose when he hit a homer out past the line on McGoran Field. Benny could hardly see past the growling, biting zom, but he caught a flash of movement as something came from his left and slammed into the burly monster. The zom flipped off him. The figure kicked and stomped and then the other two zoms were rolling away and Benny was free. He spun around on the ground, coming up on all fours, the name rising to his mouth.
“Morgie!”
But as soon as he said it, even before he saw who it was, Benny knew that it wasn’t Morgie. It couldn’t be Morgie. The man who stood over him grinned through the grille of a New Orleans Saints football helmet. He was tall, thin, but wiry, with a carpet coat augmented with metal cut from license plates, each from a different state. He had a spear almost like Lilah’s, except that on the end opposite the blade was a round metal ball as big as Benny’s fist. He wore a pair of cheap black sunglasses and a good Cheshire cat grin.
Benny knew him from the Zombie Cards. Dr. Skillz.
There was a yell and a grunt, and Benny turned to see another man in similar garb taking the head off a zom with a powerful two-handed stroke of a heavy logging ax. J-Dog.
The two bounty hunters grinned at Benny. They were a little younger than Tom, so Benny figured that they had been teenagers during First Night. Tom had said they’d been surfers and beach bums once upon a time, but Benny had only a vague idea what a “surfer” was, and he’d never seen a beach except in books.
“Far out,” said Dr. Skillz. “Benjamin Imura and Phoenix Riley. Wassssabi?”
Dr. Skillz nodded. “Seriously, brah, and Jessie’s daughter’s gone all aliham.”
“Babelini!” agreed J-Dog, though he was smiling, not leering, when he said it. The surfers gave Benny the thumbs-up. “Good call, dude.”
“Huh?” asked Benny.
Dr. Skillz nodded. “Where’s the big kahuna? And … besides that, what are you Menehunes doing out here?”
“Trying not to die,” grunted Nix as she swung her bokken at a zom who charged at her from J-Dog’s blind side. The zom went flying backward with a shattered jaw.
“Dudette’s no Barbie, brah,” said J-Dog, and his partner nodded.
“I know, right? Kahuna was on when he said little cat’s hyper-fierce gnar gnar.”
Nix turned to Benny. “What language are they speaking?”
“Surferese, I think.”
She made a face. “Guys?” she warned. “Zoms?”
J-Dog turned, and if he was concerned about the ten zoms circling them, he managed not to show it. In fact, he managed to look bored. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Good point.” He turned to Dr. Skillz. “Dude?”
“Dude,” he agreed, as if his partner had just said something profound. To Benny he said, “You and the crippler chick hang back. We’ll jack these land-sharks.”
“What?” Benny and Nix asked at the same time.
Dr. Skillz pointed and in plain English said, “Stand over there. Out of the way. Dig?”
Nix pulled Benny to a safe distance.
“Watch out!” warned Benny. “These zoms are different.”
“Different how, brah?” asked J-Dog.
Two of the zoms suddenly rushed at him. J-Dog’s smile flickered for a moment, but even in the presence of zoms moving with nearly human speed, he wasn’t stunned to immobility.
“Whoa,” said Dr. Skillz. “That’s new.”
J-Dog stepped toward the rushing creatures and swung the ax low and wide. The big blade sheared through the knee of the first zom and the calf of the second, and they both went down in a snarling tangle. Dr. Skillz darted past him and with two lightning-fast swings crushed their skulls with the iron ball on the end of his spear.
“Dog,” said Dr. Skillz, adjusting his shades, “these land-sharks are seriously truckin’.”
“Chyeah,” snorted J-Dog. “What’s that all about?”
There were eight zoms left.
“Dude—four on the left,” said J-Dog. “Go agg.”
Dr. Skillz grinned. “Always aggro.”
They waded in, ax and spear whirling and striking and smashing and cleaving. Benny and Nix stumbled backward from the carnage as pieces of desiccated flesh and brittle bone pelted them.
“Dude!” called Dr. Skillz, and J-Dog pivoted as one of the zombie children jumped at him, trying to bite his thigh. J-Dog twisted out of the way and quieted the little zom with a stomp of his steel-reinforced boot. And then, suddenly and inexplicably, it was all over. Not one of the zoms was moving, and not one of them was whole. J-Dog and Dr. Skillz stood in the center of a circle of gory detritus. Dr. Skillz looked around, nodding to himself. “Dude,” he said.
J-Dog nodded in agreement. “Totally, dude.”
They turned to Nix and Benny, pulling off their helmets. Dr. Skillz had long brown hair and a soul patch under his lower lip; J-Dog had long black hair and a goatee. They were both very tan, and when they smiled, their teeth were eye-hurtingly white.
Benny cleared his throat.
“Dude?” he suggested.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
My mom said that everyone who survived First Night has PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. Chong says it should be called PFNSD, post–First Night stress disorder, which he insists is PTSD plus something called “survivor’s guilt.”
Some people pretend like everything is okay with them, as if they aren’t messed up from what happened. Mom said that this is just a symptom of damage. There has never been a trauma as bad as First Night. Even if you combined all the wars and plagues together, they wouldn’t be as bad, so everyone has to be affected.
Other people seem to know that they’re supposed to be a little crazy, so they take the craziness and make it work for them. Tom says that’s why so many people, especially those who deal with zoms out in the Ruin all the time, took weird nicknames. He says, “It’s easier to be like a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.” It took me a long time to understand that.
Tom’s friends J-Dog and Dr. Skillz are like that. After I met them, I could see in their eyes how hurt they are. And how scared. But they play a kind of game. The “surfer dude” game, and that insulates them against reality. It’s like wearing a carpet coat. A bite will still hurt, but it won’t kill you.
It makes me wonder in what way I’m crazy.
54
THE TRAIL OF PRINTS LEFT BY CHONG AND HIS CAPTOR WAS EASY FOR TOM to follow, but the direction was confusing. Instead of heading straight to high ground, where bounty hunters preferred to make their camps, this trail was circling around to head almost due east. That troubled Tom. Could Gameland have been moved to Yosemite? Or was this man taking Chong somewhere else?
Tom heard male voices farther up the path, and he cut quickly behind a line of thick brush and crept toward them in silence. The men spoke with the uncaring loudness
of people who were not afraid to be heard. There were three of them, standing in a clearing formed by the crossroads of two well-used trails.
Tom recognized one of them: Stosh—the surviving partner of the two men Sally had killed. His fashioned Arab scimitar was slung from his waist. The others were strangers; big, brutal-looking men. One was a redhead who wore a necklace of finger bones; the other was brown-skinned and wore matched .45 automatics in shoulder holsters. Tom edged closer to listen to their chatter.
“I still don’t get why you want to try and sell him to the Bear,” said the gunslinger.
“Yeah, why risk it?” agreed the redhead. “Bear don’t want to make deals with you, Stosh. He wants to feed you to the zoms and be done.”
“Nah, you guys got it wrong,” insisted Stosh. “If I bring him Fast Tommy, then it’s gonna be forgive and forget. You’ll see.”
“We’ll see the Bear nail your scalp to a tree with you still wearing it,” said Gunslinger, and Redhead laughed with him.
“Seriously, man,” said Gunslinger, “you ought to cut your losses and head north. Go up to Eden or Fort Snyder. Get outside of Bear’s backyard, ’cause even if you managed to bring in Fast Tommy or his puke brother, Bear’d just take them from you and do to you what he did to Bobbie Talltrees. Stake you out and feed you to the swarm. We tried to tell Bobbie the same thing—but did he listen? Nope. Now look what happened.”
“I know,” said Stosh softly. “That was ugly. Bobbie wasn’t a bad guy. And it’s not fair for White Bear to blame us for what happened to Charlie. Me and my crew were all the way the heck up Hillcrest when that happened. Nothing we could have done.”
“Uh-huh. Bobbie tried to run that by the Bear, and look what it got him,” agreed Gunslinger. “The same thing you’re gonna get if you don’t put a lot of gone between you and the Bear’s territory.”
“No way,” said Stosh stubbornly. He produced a piece of paper from a pocket and shook it at them. “I know how much the Bear wants Tom. You see the prices on this thing? You ever saw bounties like that? No! The Bear wants the whole bunch of them, and he’ll kiss my butt if I bring them in. All of ’em. Tommy, that skank Riley chick, the Lost Girl, and Tom’s rat-meat brother.”
Redhead took the paper and read it, nodding. “Yeah … a man could retire off of this.”
“If you’re lucky,” said Tom as he stood up from behind the bush, “it’ll cover your funeral expenses.”
The three men spun toward him. The black gunslinger made a grab for his twin .45s, but Tom drew and fired in a single smooth move that was too fast for the eye to follow. Gunslinger pitched backward, a neat round hole punched into his forehead above the left eyebrow. It was the kind of kill the bounty hunters called a “one and done.” Head shot, no need to quiet the body later.
That left Stosh and Redhead standing on either side of the corpse, both of them gaping in wide-eyed horror. “Holy jeez,” whispered Stosh. “Tom!”
Redhead sneered. “I know who it is.” He narrowed his eyes to feral slits. “You just shot an innocent man, pardner. You don’t know what kind of trouble you’re—”
Tom put a bullet in the dirt between the man’s feet.
“Save it for someone who cares,” he said quietly. “Lose the hardware.”
The smoking barrel of the gun offered no option for debate. Weapons clanked as they fell to the ground.
“All of it,” warned Tom.
They looked disgusted but began removing knives, two-shot derringers, strangle-wires, and brass knuckles from hidden pockets.
“Kick them away. Good. Now, listen to me,” said Tom, his eyes flat and hard. “You guys have one chance to walk out of this alive.”
“What are you offering?” demanded Redhead warily.
“Straight exchange. You answer my questions and I let you walk out. If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a hard guy to lie to, but you’ll also know I keep my word. You walk out and go somewhere else. I don’t see you again. You don’t work these hills ever again.”
Stosh snorted. “What’s it to you where we work? Heard you were leaving town.”
“Says who?”
“Says everyone. People are talking about it all through the Ruin. Fast Tommy Imura’s leaving town for good. Going on some kind of quest to find that jet plane, or at least that’s the cover story.”
“Way I heard it,” said Redhead, “is that you lost your nerve, that you’re running from White Bear. White Bear says this whole area is his now. He’s bringing in more muscle than you can handle, so you’re cutting out to save your butt. The jet thing is just a cover story to save face.”
“Anyone really believe that?” Tom asked, amused.
“Doesn’t matter. With you gone, the Bear will own the whole Ruin, and folks will believe what he wants them to believe. Bear’s like that.”
“Everyone needs a hobby,” said Tom neutrally.
“What is it you want to know?” asked Stosh. “To let us walk?”
“First, I want that piece of paper,” demanded Tom. “It’s a bounty sheet, right? Give it to me. Don’t get cute about it either. Put it on the ground, weigh it down with a rock. Then step back.”
Redhead did as he was told. He backed up until Tom ordered him to stop. Tom stooped and plucked the paper from under the rock and glanced at it. There were four sketches on the sheet. The text read:
Reward for Four Murderers
Payment on Delivery at G
Nix Riley: ALIVE (one year’s ration dollars);
DEAD (one month’s ration dollars)
Benny Imura: ALIVE (one year’s ration
dollars); DEAD (one month’s ration dollars)
Lilah (aka the Lost Girl): ALIVE (two years’
ration dollars); DEAD (one month’s ration
dollars)
Tom Imura: ALIVE (five years’ ration dollars);
DEAD (one year’s ration dollars)
Tom stuffed it in his pocket. “Who’s looking?”
“Everyone’s looking,” said Redhead. “Whole Ruin’s filled with hunters working your trail.”
“You’re the first I’ve seen. Except for Stosh’s dead friends.”
“Then you’re looking in the wrong place. Everyone knows the routes you usually take, and we got word from town that you were heading out yesterday. Everybody—and I mean everybody—knows that White Bear’s got a stack of cash on this.”
Tom considered. He’d taken Benny and the others out on a route he hadn’t used in months. His intention had been to keep the kids away from the areas of heaviest zombie infestation, but now it seemed as if that decision had saved all their lives. At least so far.
“Paper says ‘payment at G.’ G for Gameland?”
“Yeah. This is all off the record, so to speak,” said Stosh, grinning at Tom with uneven yellow teeth. “From what I heard, they’ll pay double if the young’uns are brought to Gameland with some spunk left in ’em. People say you’ve been training ’em a bit. That means they’d last a whole week, maybe two in the pits. There’s serious money in the Z-Games.”
“This is a lot of money. What’s White Bear’s stake? Especially if I’m leaving?”
Both men looked momentarily confused. “What do you think, man?” asked Stosh, totally perplexed.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask,” said Tom. “And you’re wasting my time.”
“Oh man,” said Redhead, “this is great. This is like those old comedy shows from back in the day. This is fricking hilarious!”
And suddenly Redhead made his move. He kicked a baseball-size rock at Tom and charged forward in a powerful tackle. They must have shared some kind of signal, because Stosh was only a half step behind him. Redhead caught Tom around the chest, and Stosh slammed his shoulders into Tom’s thighs. The three of them crashed backward into the bushes in a cloud of torn leaves, dust, grunts, and yells.
And then a single male voice let loose a high-pitched scream.
A death scream.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Information on bites (zombie and human) that I’ve collected.
I copied some of this from notes Tom put together for us to study before we leave.
Male adult humans bite with more force than adult females.
Adult humans bite with more force than human children.
Zoms do not bite as hard as humans, because their teeth ligaments have decayed.
A “fresh” zombie will be physically stronger in both limb and bite-capability than a weak one, but still less than a human. So the more the zoms decay, the weaker they’ll get.
Dr. Gurijala said (after I bugged him about it fifty times), “Teeth are not fused to bone but rather are attached to the bone by a ligament system. As decomposition occurs, this ligament breaks down and releases the teeth. Morphology of the tooth root will sometimes cause them to be retained in skeletal remains, but the cone-shaped roots of the incisors tend to make them more prone to postmortem loss.”
The act of biting through skin and actually avulsing or tearing out a piece would require forces at the high range of the human biting force. So zombies aren’t likely to tear out large chunks of a person, as people claim in their First Night stories. If they do tear off something, it’s probably from a weak and vulnerable piece of anatomy (e.g., an earlobe).
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
55
BENNY, NIX, J-DOG, AND DR. SKILLZ STOOD IN THE ROAD AND WATCHED the three zoms shuffle toward them. Sister Shanti was out in front, with Brother David and Sister Sarah close behind. They were still sixty yards away.