The knowledge of that, the shocking awareness of it, did not spark him into action. It did exactly the opposite. It took the heart from him, and with that went all the power in his muscles. He sagged back against the mud wall. His knees wanted to buckle.
Benny looked into the faces of the zoms as they shuffled closer to him. In those last moments he saw past the sun-bleached skin and desiccated flesh; past the rotting death and milky eyes. For just a moment he saw the people they had been. Not monsters. Real people. Lost people. People who had gotten sick, or who had been bitten, and who had died only to be reborn into a kind of hell beyond anything anyone should suffer.
But they eat people! Benny had once said to his brother, yelling the words during an argument on their first trip to the Ruin.
Tom had replied with five of the most damaging words Benny had ever heard.
They used to be people.
God.
“Nix,” he said, feeling a wave of wretched guilt because he knew how much his death would hurt her. And how much it would disappoint her; but there did not seem to be anything he could do about that.
All of the zoms were close now. A knot of dead-pale faces fifteen feet away. Monsters coming for him in the dark, and yet the faces were not evil. Merely hungry. The mouths worked, but the eyes were as empty as windows that looked into abandoned houses.
“Nix,” he said again as the dead came closer and closer.
Each face that Benny saw looked . . . lost. Blank and without direction or hope. Farmers and soldiers, ordinary citizens, and one man dressed in a tuxedo. Beyond him was a girl in the rags of a dress that must once have been pretty. Peach silk with lace trim. She and the zom in the tuxedo looked like they had been about Benny’s age. Maybe a year or two older. Kids going to a prom when the world ended.
Benny looked from them to the sword he held, and he thought about what it would be like to be dead. When these zombies killed him and ate him, would there be enough of him left to reanimate? Would he join their company of wandering dead? He looked around at the ravine. There was no visible way out of this pit. Would he and all these dead be trapped down here, standing silently as the years burned themselves out above?
Yes.
That was exactly what would happen, and Benny’s heart began to break. The helplessness was overwhelming, and for a horrifying moment he watched his own arms sag, allowing the sword to dip in defeat before the battle had even begun.
“Nix,” he said one last time.
Then a single spark of anger popped like a flare in his chest. It did not chase away Benny’s pity and grief—it fed on it.
“Tom!” he yelled. “You left me! You were supposed to be there. You were supposed to keep the monsters away.”
Despite the anger, his voice was small. Younger than his years.
“You weren’t supposed to let me see this.”
Tears ran like hot mercury down his cheeks.
The dead reached for him.
6
THEN SUDDENLY THE AIR ABOVE HIM WAS SHATTERED BY A HIGH-PITCHED scream of total terror.
Benny whirled and looked up.
The zoms—their fingers inches from Benny’s face—looked.
There, wavering on the edge, fighting wildly for balance at the brink of destruction . . . was a little girl. Maybe five years old.
Not a walking corpse.
A living child.
And all around her were the ravenous living dead.
Benny stared at the child in absolute horror.
A hundred questions tried to squeeze through a crowded doorway in Benny’s dazed brain. Where had she come from? Why was she here?
The little girl could not see Benny down in the pit.
“Get away from here!” he yelled as loud as he could, and the little girl’s scream froze as she twisted to look down with wild eyes. “Get away from the edge!”
“Help!” she screeched. “Please . . . don’t let the gray people get me!”
She backed away from the zombies, who closed around her, and Benny screamed out a warning a half second before her retreating foot came down on empty air. With a shriek so loud that Benny was sure every zom for miles could hear it, the girl pitched into the pit. Her tiny hands darted out and caught the crooked roots under the lip of the edge and she hung there, legs kicking, her scream unrelenting. The zoms in the pit moaned and reached for her.
The zombies choked the narrow ravine, and Benny knew that if he held his ground, their sheer numbers would crowd him to the point where he could no longer swing the katana. Attack was the only option, and that meant carving a pathway through them, impossible as that seemed. It was reckless and crazy, but it was the only choice left to him.
Suddenly Benny was moving.
The katana snapped up and flashed outward, and the head of one zom fell to the dirt. Benny spun away from the corpse and cut once, twice, again and again, lopping off dry arms and heads. He ducked and chopped, taking off legs and sending zoms crashing to the ground. If his weary arms ached, he ignored them completely. Rage and urgency filled him.
The undead fell before him, but they did not fall back. Retreat was an impossible concept. They crowded forward on both sides, their attention shifting back and forth between the prey above and the prey at hand.
“Mommmeeeeeee!” shrilled the girl. “The graaayyyy peeeepuuuull!”
He slashed back and forth to clear some room and then attacked the nearest zom with a jumping front kick to the chest that sent it staggering backward into two others. The three of them went down. Benny ran straight at them, running over their bodies, his feet wobbling uncertainly as he stepped on thighs and stomachs and chests. He pivoted and slashed again as a massive zom in the burned rags of a soldier’s uniform came lumbering at him. Benny crouched and aimed a powerful cut across its legs. It was a move he had seen Tom do several times, a fierce horizontal sweep that literally cut the legs out from under an attacker. But when Benny tried it, he aimed too high, and his blade struck the heavy thighbone and stuck fast!
The jolt tore the handle out of his hands and sent darts of pain shooting up his arms.
Even with the sword blade notched into his femur, the big zom came relentlessly on.
Above Benny, the little girl screamed. Her fingers were slipping through the roots. Cold hands reached down from the edge and up from the pit.
“No!” Benny drove his shoulder into the soldier zom’s stomach and ran him backward into the mass of walking corpses. As the creature fell off balance, Benny grabbed the handle of the katana and tried to pull it free, but the blade would not move.
“Help!” The scream had an even sharper note of panic, and Benny looked up to see the little girl’s fingers slither through the last of the roots. With a piercing howl, the child fell.
“Helllllp!”
Once more Benny was moving before he realized it, slamming into the zoms with crossed forearms and then throwing himself under the tiny body, turning, reaching—praying.
She was so small, no more than forty pounds, but she had twenty feet to fall, and the impact slammed into Benny’s chest like a thunderbolt, crushing him to the ground and driving the air painfully from his lungs. He went limp with her atop him, and instantly she began kicking and punching at him to try and escape.
“Stop it . . . c’mon, ow! OW! Stop!” cried Benny in a hoarse bellow. “Stop it—I’m not one of them!”
Panic filled the girl’s eyes, but at the sound of his voice she froze and stared at him with the silent intensity of a terrified rabbit.
“I’m not one of them,” Benny croaked again. His chest felt smashed, and pain darted through his lungs and back.
The girl looked at him with the biggest, bluest eyes in the world, eyes that were filled with tears and a flicker of uncertain hope. She opened her mouth—and screamed again.
But not at him.
Zoms were closing in on all sides.
With a cry of horror, he rolled onto his side, huddled his body over
the girl’s, and kicked out at the legs of the closest zombie. Bone cracked, but the zom did not go down, and Benny saw that it was one of the burly farmers. The thing had been rawboned and sturdy in life, and much of that strength lingered in death.
Benny kicked again, knocking the lead zom backward. He scrambled to his feet and pulled the girl up, shoving her toward a bare patch of wall, away from the grasping hands of the army of the dead. Behind them, the ravine ran on for forty yards and vanished into the shadows around a bend. In front of them were dozens of zoms; and far back in the crowd was the soldier with Tom’s katana buried in its thighbone. There was no way on earth Benny could retrieve it.
“They’re going to eat us!” wailed the girl. “The gray people are going to eat us!”
Yes, they are, Benny thought.
“No they’re not!” he growled aloud.
He backed away, using his body to push the girl deeper into the ravine. “Go,” he whispered urgently. “Run!”
She hesitated, lost and confused, the fear so overwhelming that instead of running, she closed her eyes and began to cry.
The moans of the dead filled the air.
Benny had no choice. He turned away from Tom’s sword and the lost possibilities of survival it promised, then snatched up the little girl, pressed her to his chest, and ran.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
The first time I was out in the Rot and Ruin, after I escaped from Charlie Pink-eye and was hiding with Benny, we saw something impossible. A jet. One of the big flying machines from the old world, from before First Night.
It was in the sky, flying west, almost in the direction of home. Then it turned and flew back toward the east.
I know that if I’d been alone when I saw it, I wouldn’t have believed it. And no one would believe me if I told them. But Benny saw it too. And Tom.
We knew we’d have to go find it. I mean, how could we not?
That’s why Tom started the Warrior Smart program. To get us ready for whatever we’d find. So far it’s saved our lives more times than I can count.
Now . . . finding the jet is the only thing that matters.
7
AS HE RAN, BENNY COULD FEEL THE LITTLE GIRL’S FLUTTERING HEART BEATING against his chest. It called up an old memory—the oldest memory he owned, a memory born in horror on First Night. It was a memory of being held just like this when he was a toddler less than two years old, being held tightly in Tom’s arms while his brother ran away from the thing that had been their father. And the weeping, screaming figure of their mother, who had used the last moments of her life to pass Benny through a window to Tom and beg him to run.
To run.
As Benny ran now.
Through darkness and horror, with death pursuing and no certain knowledge of a way out of the moment.
For most of his life Benny had misunderstood that memory, thinking that Mom had been abandoned by Tom, that his brother had been a coward who fled when he should have stayed to rescue her, too. But then he learned the truth. Mom was already dying, already becoming one of the living dead. She had pushed both her sons out of the window, saving them from the terror inside. And Tom had honored that sacrifice by keeping Benny safe—that night and all the other nights and years that followed.
Now Tom was gone too.
He, too, had died to save others. He, too, had sacrificed himself so that life could continue even in a world ruled by the dead.
The little girl Benny carried wept and screamed, but she also clung to him. And he to her. Even though she was a total stranger to him, Benny knew that he would die to save her.
Was it like this for you, Tom? he wondered. Was this what you felt when you carried me out of Sunset Hollow on First Night? If you were really the coward I used to think you were, you would have run off and left me. Wouldn’t you? You would have saved yourself. Alone, without having to carry me, it would have been easier for you to slip away. But you didn’t. You carried me all the way.
Was it a memory? Or now that Benny stood at death’s fragile door, was it easier for Tom’s ghost to whisper to him from the darkness on the other side?
Benny, whispered Tom, I didn’t die to save you.
“I know that, Einstein,” Benny growled back as he ran.
No—listen! I didn’t die to save you.
A zom fell into the ravine directly in front of them, and the little girl screamed even louder. But Benny leaped over the awkward form before the zom could struggle to its feet.
I lived to save you, said Tom. I lived.
“You died, Tom!” Benny snarled.
Benny . . . back then, on First Night, I didn’t die to save you. I did everything I could to stay alive. For both of us. You know this. . . .
“But—”
Don’t die, Benny, murmured Tom from the deeper shadows in Benny’s mind. The sound of Tom’s voice was comforting and terrifying at the same time. It was wrong and right.
“Tom,” Benny said again as he wheeled around a sharp bend in the ravine. “Tom . . .?”
But Tom’s voice was gone.
The ravine sloped down, becoming deeper, and soon he realized that even the gnarled tree roots clinging to the edge of the cleft were too far above his head. He’d hoped for just the opposite, figuring once they were well clear of the zoms he could pass the kid up and let her pull herself out, then scramble up himself. That plan was hopeless now.
They rounded another bend, and Benny slowed from a run to a walk and then simply stood there. Ten feet away was a solid wall of dirt and rock. The entire ravine had collapsed beneath the weight of a massive oak tree whose root system had been undercut by runoff. There was no way through it, and the sides were far too steep to climb. He and the little girl were trapped. He had no sword, no carpet coat. Only a knife, and that would not stop the mass of dead things following them.
“Now what, Tom?” he demanded, but there was only silence from the shadows in his mind. “Really? Now you’re going to shut up?”
Nothing.
Benny glanced down at the girl. Could he lift her high enough so that she could grab one of the roots and climb up? It would be her only chance, but doing it would use up the last seconds he had and give him no chance at all. Even so, he thought, he had to try. Better to die trying to save a life than share a hideous death down here in the fetid darkness. He listened for some trace of Tom’s voice, but there was still nothing.
The first of the zombies rounded the previous bend. Five of them, with more behind. One of them broke from the pack and started running along the ravine.
Oh no, thought Benny, a fast one. Oh God!
It was horribly true. Lately some of the zoms they encountered were different. Faster, able to run. Maybe even smarter.
Benny set the girl down and pushed her behind him; then he drew his knife. It was hopeless, but he had to try. For the child, he had to try.
The zom raced toward him almost as fast as a healthy human could run. Its teeth were bared and its hands were outstretched to grab. Thirty feet, twenty.
Ten. Benny gripped his knife with all his strength.
Tom . . . I need you now, man.
And then a voice cried, “BENNY!”
Everyone turned and looked. Benny, the girl, the zoms; even the fast zombie slowed to a confused walk as it cast around for the source of the shout.
Suddenly something pale and lithe dropped into the ravine. There was a fierce war cry and a flash of silver at the end of a long pole, and then the head of the fast zombie leaped into the air and bounced off the wall.
“Lilah!” cried Benny.
The Lost Girl had found him.
A moment later another form dropped from the edge of the ravine above. Smaller, rounder, with masses of curly red hair and freckled hands that clutched the handle of a well-worn wooden sword with deadly competence. A long jagged scar ran from her hairline down her cheek almost to her jaw, but it did not mar the beauty of her face. Instead it made her look like a warrior princess out
of an old legend. She looked at the zoms and then at Benny, and she grinned.
“I can’t leave you alone for a minute without you doing something stupid, can I?” asked Nix Riley.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Ever since Tom died Benny seems to think that he has to BE Tom.
Is that normal grief? Or should I be worried?
I asked Chong, but for once he didn’t have any answers. I think he’s worried too.
8
“TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH,” SAID BENNY, WIPING SWEAT FROM HIS EYES.“I was getting bored down here.”
He tried to make it sound cool and casual. It didn’t.
Nix snorted and started to say something else, but then she caught sight of the tiny figure cowering in the shadows behind Benny.
“What—? Oh my God! Where—where—where—?” Her words disintegrated into a baffled stammer.
“Long story,” said Benny.
Nix bent over the girl, who was sniffling at the edge of full-blown tears. She touched the girl’s cheek and smoothed her hair. “Hello, sweetie. Don’t be afraid. Everything’s going to be okay now.”
A few yards away, Lilah looked over her shoulder to see what was going on, and her eyes bulged.
“Annie?” she murmured.
Even with everything else going on around them, hearing Lilah say that name came close to breaking Benny’s heart. Annie was the name of Lilah’s little sister. Annie had died years ago trying to escape from the zombie pits at Gameland, and Lilah had been forced to quiet her when she reanimated. Benny could only imagine what was going on in Lilah’s head—seeing another little blond-haired girl, here in a pit filled with zombies. It was weird enough to Benny; to Lilah it must be totally surreal.
Another fast zom dashed along the ravine—a huge woman with wild black hair and a line of bullet holes stitched across her enormous bosom.
“Zom!” barked Benny, and Lilah blinked once. The shock on her face was gone in an instant as she turned back to deal with the running zom. The black-pipe spear she carried flashed out, and the bayonet blade cut through dry flesh and tough muscle. Lilah’s face was stone, but Benny wasn’t fooled; her mind had to be churning on this mystery, and it was evident in the renewed force with which she smashed and hacked.
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