Dust and Decay (Benny Imura 2)

“Tom says that he found some way to blend into the forest. Even the zoms don’t see him.” He lowered his sword and reached out his hand. “Come on.”

Nix sniffed back tears and took his hand, giving him one of her fierce squeezes. “Where’s Lilah?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I saw her run … but then I lost her.”

“Do—do you think she got out?”

“Absolutely,” he said carefully. “Lilah’s used to taking care of herself.” Though as he said it he was remembering the mad, desperate look in her eyes. He wondered about his own sanity. After all, he had just set an enormous fire and was pretty sure he had seen Charlie Pink-eye standing alive but unharmed in the middle of a field of zoms. Benny debated for less than half a millisecond about whether to tell Nix about this now, and realized that it was something best saved for daylight. At the moment they needed safety and time to check for injuries. The burn on Benny’s shoulder felt white hot, and he was not 100 percent positive that the carpet coats had saved them from the teeth of the living dead. They could both be infected, and that thought nearly dropped Benny in his tracks.

Nix grabbed his arm and pulled him. “Come on,” she said, and they hurried up the hill after the Greenman. However, when they got to the top of the hill and entered the forest path, the strange figure was gone.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Zombies and fire

When some people tell stories of First Night, they say that they used fire to scare off the zoms. They say that zoms won’t cross a line of fire, that they’ll retreat from a torch. They say that if a zom catches fire, it will run away. Tom says this is wrong.

He says that a zom will walk through fire. He says that they are attracted to its light and movement. He says that he’s seen burning zoms walk as far as a hundred yards before the heat did so much damage to muscles and tendons that they couldn’t walk anymore.

And he says that when the army nuked the big cities, waves of radioactive zoms kept coming, and people sometimes died from the intense radioactivity before the zoms could bite them.

What ARE they?

40

“SOMETHING’S COMING!” WHISPERED SALLY TWO-KNIVES.

Tom Imura got quickly to his feet, his fingers curled around the handle of his sword. They were huddled together under the eaves of an olive tree that grew amid a cluster of tall boulders. As he crept to the edge of the largest boulder, Tom heard the soft hiss of Sally drawing one of her knives. He tuned that out and focused on the darkened woods beyond. Before setting up their temporary camp, Tom had gathered armloads of frail twigs and scattered them along any likely path of approach. The snap of a twig had brought them both to full alertness.

There was a second snap. And a third. Whoever was out there didn’t care about making sound. In this world that meant one of two things. Either the person was traveling with a party that was so heavily armed that he had no fear of attracting the attention of the living dead; or they were the living dead. Tom edged farther out and let himself go still, becoming part of the rock, the shadows, and the forest. He had reluctantly accepted some of Sally’s cadaverine only because it would have been virtually impossible to get her up into a tree for the night. With one injured arm and a bad stab wound, Sally would be lucky if she could walk. Forget climbing.

A moment later a figure stepped out from behind a bushy rhododendron. It was a boy, a teenager, possibly thirteen when he died. Now immortal in the cruelest sense of the word. His eyes roved across the gap between the boulders and the olive tree but did not linger on Tom. The creature’s mouth hung slack, the lips were rubbery. The boy wore a grimy and faded Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt and what looked like swim trunks with a pattern of flaming skulls. The teenager’s feet were bare, and the bloodless skin was so badly torn that Tom could see tendons and bones. He wanted to close his eyes or look away, but the boy was still a zom and he was still a threat.

Tom remained still as the dead teenager staggered along the trail and vanished into the gloom. He was about to go back inside the circle of rocks when he paused and straightened. Was the southeastern sky … red? The canopy of leaves was too thick to allow more than a glimpse of the sky, but it seemed to Tom that there was a reddish glow. Was it a trick of the light? He couldn’t tell.

Tom relaxed and moved back into the protection of the rocks.

“Zom?” asked Sally.

“Zom,” agreed Tom.

“You quiet him?”

“No.”

She chuckled. “Mr. Softy.”

He shrugged. Everyone who knew Tom was aware that he wouldn’t kill a zom unless it was part of a closure job or self-defense. This zom had not been aware of him or Sally and was therefore no immediate threat.

Tom settled down and passed her his canteen. She drank and handed it back.

“Been a lot more zoms in these woods lately,” she said. “Last week, ten days. Getting so you can’t take two steps without tripping over one.”

“Really?” Tom said, surprised. “This was always a quiet section. It’s why I brought the kids up here. What’s drawing the zoms here?”

“Not sure, but there’s lots of stuff coming out of the east lately. Weird stuff. I saw a small herd of zebras running along the same game trail as some elk. Bunch of monkeys, too. Haven’t seen a monkey since I took my kids to the San Diego Zoo a million years ago, but I’ve seen a slew of them lately.”

“I saw a rhinoceros,” Tom said, and told her about the encounter.