Flesh & Bone

by Jonathan Maberry

  Nix looked over the little girl’s head at Benny’s empty hands. “Where’s your sword?”

  “It’s stuck in a zom.”

  “Stuck in a—?”

  Benny pointed at the soldier zom far back in the crowd.

  “God. We’ll never get it!” she gasped.

  “We have to,” Benny snapped.

  The wall of zoms pressed forward even as Lilah cut away at it.

  “We can’t,” growled Lilah. “There are too many.”

  Nix cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled upward. “Chong!”

  Instead of an answer, a coil of rope fell from above and landed heavily on Benny’s head, nearly knocking him to his knees.

  “Heads up!” came the yell a half second later.

  9

  BENNY PULLED THE ROPE OFF HIS HEAD AND LOOKED UP TO SEE CHONG’S head and shoulders leaning over the edge of the ravine, his long black hair hanging straight down.

  “Hey, Benny,” he yelled. “Lilah said you were out here practicing your brooding, and—”

  “Chong!” Benny barked. “Shut up and tie that rope to a tree.”

  The smile vanished from Chong’s face. “Already done. But c’mon, man, hurry up down there. It’s getting weird up here. There have to be fifty zoms on the other side of the ravine.”

  “Yeah, well, there are one or two down here, too,” Benny grumbled.

  “Then why’d you go down there?” asked Chong.

  Benny ignored the comment and turned toward Lilah. The bayonet blade at the end of her spear was smeared with black goo. “Let me have your spear and I’ll hold them off while you and Nix—”

  Lilah’s snort of derision was eloquent. “Go away,” she said in her ghostly whisper of a voice.

  “Nix,” Benny said, turning to her, “give me your bokken. I’ll guard your back while you take the kid up.”

  “Oh, please. She’s too little to climb, and I’m not big enough to carry her while I climb. You take her up, Benny. Lilah and I will guard your back.”

  “No freaking way. This is my job.”

  “Your job?” Nix rolled her eyes. “If you’d stop trying to be the samurai hero for a moment, you’d realize that we’re trying to save your life!”

  “No, I have to get my sword and save—”

  Nix got right up in his face. “I’m not asking you, Benjamin Imura.”

  Benny very nearly snapped to attention. Nix never called him Benjamin except when she was very mad at him, and she never used his first and last name unless she was going to kick his butt about something.

  He flicked a look at the wave of zombies and back at Nix, who stood five feet tall in shoes and had to lean back to look up at him. Even the little girl seemed to glower at Benny, and she had no reason to, since he’d just saved her life. Maybe it was a girl thing. He was dimly aware that there was some important message about female power to be learned here, but now wasn’t the time to philosophize. Even Nix’s freckles seemed to glow with anger, and her scar turned from pale white to livid red.

  He wanted to yell at her, to push her out of the way, to take her bokken and return to the fight—but instead he swallowed his frustration and backed off.

  Benny pulled on the rope, which was indeed securely tied. The best and safest way to do this would be to rig a sling around the kid and haul her up; and though they were all good with knots, there simply wasn’t time. However, Benny could see that the collapsed end of the ravine was not sheer. Much of the debris had tumbled down to form a slope, but that slope was far too steep to walk up. With the rope, though, he might be able to do it. He cut a look at the little girl.

  That’s your job, spoke that inner voice. Stop trying to be a hero, and get her out of here.

  “Right,” said Benny under his breath. He knelt by the girl. “Hey, sweetie, I need you to listen to me and do exactly what I say, okay?”

  The child gave him an owl-eyed stare but said nothing.

  “I’m going to climb out of here with this rope, and I need you to hold on to me. Like playing piggyback. Do you know that game?”

  She paused for a moment as she looked up the dark dirt wall. In the gloom it seemed to stretch on forever.

  “It’s okay. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Behind him he heard a dull thud that he recognized as the impact of a wooden sword on dried flesh and bone. Sharp and hard, accompanied by a soft grunt of effort. Nix had joined the fight. It was not a comforting sound. It did not mean that they were winning. It meant that there was too much for Lilah to handle alone. It meant that the dead were coming. More and more of them.

  Benny squatted and turned his back to the girl. “Wrap your arms around my neck and hold on, okay?”

  The little girl suddenly wrapped her arms tight. “Benny!” cried Nix. “Hurry!”

  He snatched up the rope and began to climb.

  At first it was easy. Tough, but not beyond his strength. Seven months of training with Tom had given him muscle and tone; another month of living wild in the Rot and Ruin had built his endurance. He was stronger than he’d ever been, and even with the fear that swirled around him like polluted water, he felt powerful. It was how he imagined Tom had felt all the time. Strong enough to do whatever he needed or wanted to do.

  Those thoughts brought him about halfway up the wall.

  Then, within the next three labored steps, the light-as-a-feather child suddenly felt like she weighed more than Morgie Mitchell after the harvest feast. Benny’s foot slipped on the moss-slick wall, and the little girl screeched in his ear like a frightened starling. Her tiny arms locked tighter around his throat, and suddenly Benny could barely breathe.

  “Not . . . so . . . tight . . . !”

  But she was too terrified to understand. She was halfway up a wall, hanging on for her life. It was going to take a crowbar to pry her off.

  Benny took another step and winced as his muscles began to ache. His thighs burned, and grasping the rope felt like holding red-hot coals.

  “Come on!” yelled Chong, and Benny looked up to see his friend stretch a bony arm down to him. Chong had a lot of wiry strength, but at the moment his proffered arm looked like it belonged to a stick figure. And it was still too far away.

  Chong gaped. “Wait . . . what’s that on your back?”

  “What . . . does it . . . look like . . . you brain-dead . . . monkey-banger?” gasped Benny.

  Chong didn’t even try to answer that. Instead he leaned farther out, straining to reach down for Benny.

  “No!” Benny yelled. “The edge is—”

  There was a soft whuck of a sound, and then Chong was tumbling head over heels toward them, and he and a hundred pounds of loose dirt tried to smash Benny and the girl back down into the zombie pit. The little girl deafened him with a shrill wail that was loud enough to crack glass. Benny threw his weight sideways, running across the wall as Chong tumbled past, yowling like a kicked cat. Below him, Chong landed with a thump and a sharp exhalation of pain. Curses floated up through the shadows. Lilah’s and Nix’s were louder than Chong’s.

  Benny’s feet slipped on the loose soil that now covered the wall like a coat of oil. The rope tried to slither through his fists, but Benny knew that if he fell, the impact would probably cripple or kill the little girl.

  Hold on! cried his inner voice.

  He held on, gritting his teeth against the strain and the pain.

  With a grunt he took a step upward, slamming his foot into the soil to find solid ground. Using legs and back and arms, he pulled upward. The little girl was still throttling him, but Benny lowered his chin to help open his airway. He took as deep a breath as he could and hauled again, taking another step. And another.

  It felt like all he was doing was inching his way up. The wall seemed impossibly high.

  And then he rose from shadows into bright sunlight. Benny blinked, his eyes stinging, but he’d never been happier to see a bright, sunny sky than he was at that moment. He pulled, and pulled, and cli
mbed and collapsed onto the grass of the torn ravine edge. He crawled forward along the rope, landing chest first on the ground with a gasp like a drowning man taking his first gulp of air.

  “Climb off,” he wheezed, and the girl scrambled like a monkey over his back and shoulders and head.

  “Benny!”

  The cry came echoing up from the darkness, and instantly Benny staggered to his feet. His limbs trembled and his hands were puffed and red, but he was safe. Across the black gash of the gorge a hundred zombies stared at him with eternal hunger and endless patience. No more of them fell into the gorge, and Benny thanked God for that.

  “Nix! Climb out. I’ll pull. Hurry!”

  As soon as he felt her take up the slack, Benny began pulling hand over hand. The rope burned his palms and his muscles screamed, but he planted his feet wide and put everything he had into it. Nix’s wild red hair appeared at the edge of the ravine, and then her beautiful face, tight with effort and fear.

  Nix climbed out and wiped sweat from her eyes.

  “Is Chong hurt?” asked Benny.

  “Not as hurt as he’s going to be when Lilah gets out of there. She’s furious with him for going down into the ravine.”

  “He fell in. It wasn’t intentional,” Benny said, coming immediately to his friend’s defense.

  “Yeah, well, she’s not happy with you, either.”

  “Swell.” Benny tossed the rope into the hole. “How about you? You mad at me too?”

  She gave him a wicked grin and punched his chest. Which hurt.

  Chong came puffing and wheezing up into the sunlight. He did not weigh much more than Nix, but Benny was beyond exhausted, and it felt like hauling a bull out of the pit.

  “I’m sorry,” Chong began, but Benny cut him off.

  “Grab some rocks.”

  “Rocks?”

  “Rocks. Anything we can throw. We have to give Lilah some cover. Go!”

  Chong understood at once and ran to collect fist-size stones.

  Benny tossed the rope down again. “Lilah! Listen to me.”

  She didn’t answer, but he heard her grunts as she fought.

  “We’ve got some rocks. When I say ‘go,’ drop a couple of zoms with leg cuts to stall the others and—”

  Something flashed past him, missing his head by inches. Benny recoiled from it and saw that it was Lilah’s spear. Before he could even speak, the line went taut and Lilah came swarming up the side of the wall, as fast and nimble as an acrobat. She grabbed his shirt as she came out of the hole and used his weight to catapult her body over the edge. She pitched forward, rolled effortlessly, and came to a rest on the balls of her feet. She pivoted and looked at Benny, who lay flat, and Chong, who crouched a few feet away with one arm raised to throw a rock. Benny and Chong gaped at her, unable to manage a single coherent comment between them.

  Lilah reached around behind her and removed an item that she’d thrust through one of the straps of her vest, then tossed it onto the grass in front of Benny’s goggling eyes.

  Tom’s sword.

  Lilah stood above them, tall and beautiful, her white hair whipping in the fresh breeze, her clothes streaked with gore, her hazel eyes glowing with fire.

  She turned slowly to Nix and in her ghostly whisper of a voice said, “I hate boys.”

  FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

  Warrior Smart.

  That’s what Tom called the training program he put together to get us ready for our trip into the Ruin. He said that he based it on a few different things. First were the martial arts he’d been involved with ever since he was a kid. Before First Night there were thousands of different kinds of martial arts. Karate, tae kwon do, kung-fu, aikido, judo. I don’t know much about them. Tom used to study something called jujutsu (which I’ve seen in books spelled a bunch of different ways: jiujitsu, jujitsu, etc.). Tom said that jujutsu was an old Japanese system that his family had practiced for hundreds of years. He said that the name means “art of nonresistance,” and a lot of it involves using the opponent’s attack against him.

  Tom also included some of the things he learned while he was in the police academy. And a lot of stuff he learned since, including tracking and hunting, which he mostly learned from bounty hunters like Solomon Jones, Old Man Church, and the Greenman.

  The training was hard, and sometimes we all hated Tom because he never cut us a break.

  Now I understand. Sometimes I wish he’d been even harder on us.

  10

  NIX SAT WITH HER BACK TO THE TWISTED TRUNK OF A BRISTLECONE TREE that loomed over the clearing forty yards from the edge of the ravine. She hugged the little girl to her chest as the child continued to scream and cry. Benny wondered if the kid’s mind had snapped. Those screams were hammering cracks in his own sanity.

  Lilah squatted in the tall grass a dozen feet away and stared at the child with hollow eyes through which sad shadows flitted. Benny had once heard Tom refer to that kind of look as a “thousand-yard stare.” When Chong made to sit down next to her, Lilah drew her knife and stabbed the point into the earth between them.

  “I can see that you need some quiet time,” he said, and scuttled quickly away.

  Eventually Nix’s soothing tones and comforting embrace worked their magic on the girl, and she settled down to sniffles. Nix smoothed her hair.

  “Sweetie . . . can you tell me your name?” she asked.

  “E-E-E . . .” The girl tried to get it out, but every time she tried, she hiccuped a sob. “Eve,” she finally managed. Tiny jewels of tears sparkled on her face.

  “Okay, Eve,” said Nix in a voice that reminded Benny of Nix’s mother. Soft and soothing, and full of the certainty of whatever was going to happen next. A parent voice. “Where did you come from?”

  Eve looked at her with huge eyes and then looked over her shoulder, as if she could see her own memories. Her words came out all in a rush. “I was running after Ry-Ry, and I lost my way ’cause there were angels in the woods, and then the gray people were there and I ran some more and I tripped and fell. Where’s my mommmmeeee?”

  Nix pulled her close again, and the child’s face vanished into a swirl of soft red curls. “Shhh, it’s okay, Eve. Everything’s going to be okay. We’ll find your mommy.”

  Benny looked down at the child clutched in Nix’s warm arms. He was far less certain about that.

  He wasn’t certain about anything. He thought about the sheer number of zoms that had come out of the forest.

  Don’t forget the first rule about the Ruin, whispered Tom’s voice. Out here everything wants to kill you.

  Benny closed his eyes, and even now, separated from the madness of the ravine, he wasn’t at all sure if the voice was a memory or a ghost.

  Or something worse than both.

  Please don’t let this be me, Benny thought. Please don’t let me be going crazy.

  The sun shone and the birds sang in the trees and Benny tried hard not to scream.

  11

  IN A QUIET TONE SO THAT ONLY BENNY COULD HEAR HIM, CHONG MURMURED, “Some day, huh?”

  Benny jumped, and Chong shot him a puzzled look.

  “What are you so twitchy about?”

  For a moment Benny wondered if Chong could read his thoughts.

  “Sorry,” said Benny when he was sure his words wouldn’t come out choked and twisted. “Yeah. Weird day.”

  Chong sneaked a glance over at Lilah and sighed softly. “You know, I think I liked being down in that hole better. All the zoms wanted to do was eat me. I think Lilah would enjoy skinning me alive.”

  Benny followed his gaze and half smiled. “It’s not you, man.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not mad at you. I mean, she is . . . but not any more than usual.”

  “I fell in, and you know how she is with the whole thing about me being a clumsy town boy and—” began Chong, but Benny cut him off.

  “It’s the kid. I . . . think she looks like Annie.”

  Chong winced
as if Benny had punched him in the stomach. “Oh, man . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  Benny understood Lilah’s pain. He and Tom had quieted the zombies that had once been their parents. Tom had helped him through it, though; and later, when Tom passed, Benny had been spared the horror of quieting him. Tom never reanimated. However, Lilah had been all alone with Annie. She had no older sibling to help her through it. Benny was wise enough to understand that no matter how bad his own experiences were, there were some people who had it worse.

  As if reading his thoughts, Chong said, “I’d give a lot, you know? To make it different for her.”

  “Yeah, man. I know.”

  It was something Benny deeply understood, and he wondered if there was anything he wouldn’t give to change some of the things that had happened. To Nix’s mom. To Nix. To Tom.

  To his parents.

  He and Chong each drifted down the silent corridors of their personal pain as the sun burned its way through the hard blue sky. A pair of spider monkeys chattered in the trees. Benny looked at them because it was easier than looking at Eve, who still wept in Nix’s arms. He sighed, feeling immensely useless.

  In town there was always someone around to help with children. The whole town looked after everyone’s kids. It was the way it had always been, at least in Benny’s experience. No one would ever let a little kid go wandering off on their own.

  Nix kept stroking the sobbing child’s hair and murmuring words that Benny could not hear.

  Eve was a little girl. Five years old. Helpless.

  As Annie had been helpless.

  Benny felt the weight of the sword slung over his shoulder. Tom’s sword. His sword now. The sword he had very nearly lost.

  He felt his face flush as he thought about how Nix had chased him out of the ravine and Lilah had recovered the sword. That was wrong. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to work.