Dust and Decay (Benny Imura 2)

He ran lightly, ducking under branches, leaping small gullies, running no faster than his ability to perceive what the forest had to tell him. Tom had stopped calling out Chong’s name. The boy had clearly wanted to run, and calling him might make him hide. In this gloom the best hunter in the world couldn’t find someone deliberately hiding. It was getting hard enough to follow Chong’s trail. Luckily, the boy had tried that old trick of using a piece of brush to wipe out his footprints. Sure, it wiped out the prints, but it left behind very distinct striations in the dirt and moss. Tom almost smiled when he saw it.

Eventually he reached the point where Chong had stopped trying to cover his trail and his distinctive waffle-soled shoe prints were clear in the fading light.

There were other prints along the path too. Most were animal tracks that were of no concern to Tom. He found some human—or perhaps zom—prints, but most of these were days old, and Chong’s tracks overlaid them. One set of tracks made him freeze in place and even touch the butt of his holstered pistol. Old-world hiking boots with worn treads and a crescent-shaped nick out of the right heel.

Tom bent low and studied the prints. Preacher Jack’s without doubt, but it was clear that these had been made on his way to the encounter that had happened a few hours ago.

Tom continued his hunt. The forest was growing quiet, and he moved only as fast as he could go silently. It was a tracker’s trick: Never make more noise than what you’re tracking.

Crack.

There was a sound, soft and close, and within three steps Tom slipped into the shadows between two ancient elms. He listened. Sound was deceptive. Without a second noise it was often difficult to reliably determine from which direction the sound had come. Ahead and to the left? Off the trail?

A rustle. Definitely off to the left. Tom peered through the gloom. The second sound had been like a foot moving through stiff brush. A long pause, and then another crunch.

Tom saw a piece of shadow detach itself and move from left to right through an open patch. It was a quick, furtive movement. Something that walked on two legs. Not a zom, though, he was sure about that.

Preacher Jack? If so, Tom was determined to have a different kind of chat with him than they’d had back on the road.

The figure was coming his way, but from the body language it was clear the person had not seen him. The head was turned more toward the north, looking farther along the game trail.

Judging where Tom should have been if he’d kept moving.

Tom nodded approval. A pretty good tracker, he guessed.

“Tom!” called a voice. A very familiar voice. “Tom Imura. I know you’re up there behind one of those trees. Don’t make me have to walk all the way up the slope.”

Tom stepped out from behind the tree with his pistol in his hand. The shadowy figure emerged into a slightly brighter spot of light. From the soles of her boots to the top of her orange Mohawk, the woman was tall and solidly built, with knife handles and pistol butts jutting out in all directions like an old-time pirate. In her right fist she carried a huge bowie knife with a wicked eighteen-inch blade.

Something black gleamed on the blade, and though it looked like oil in the bad light, Tom knew that it was blood. The woman’s face and clothes seemed to be smeared with it. She tottered into view, and Tom saw that her left arm hung limp and dead at her side.

Tom stepped out from behind the tree. “Sally?”

Sally Two-Knives grinned at him with bloody teeth. “You alone, Tom?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said, and pitched forward onto her face.

35

“BACK … BACK!” CRIED NIX IN A FIERCE WHISPER. AS SHE SAID IT she walked backward, herding Lilah and Benny toward the open door. Lilah stumbled along as if her brain had shut itself off. Benny had to push her into the way station. Nix was last in. She tossed down her bokken, grabbed Lilah’s pistol, and stood for a moment in the doorway, tracking the barrel left and right, but she did not fire. There was no point. If she had a barrel filled with bullets it would not be enough. Nix lowered the pistol and retreated inside.

“We’re dead,” Lilah said again, and her voice already sounded dead.

Benny closed and locked the door. “It won’t hold for long,” he said quietly. “Same with the windows. That glass is old. It might last if a couple of them beat on it … but there are hundreds of them out there.”

“Thousands,” said Nix. “There had to be five hundred of them just coming down over the rocks. It’s insane.”

It was insane. Last year Benny had seen three thousand of them in the Hungry Forest, but the seething mass of the living dead outside had to number twice that many. It was an army of rotting flesh-eaters. “Where did they come from?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Nix. “It doesn’t make sense. We weren’t that loud. And I don’t think they could see our cooking fire from outside. Not all the way into the forest and up the mountains.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” said Lilah in a hollow voice.

“What about the cans? Zoms couldn’t do that,” said Benny.

“I know, Benny,” said Nix. She scraped a match and lit the little oil lantern.