Lost Roads (Benny Imura 7)

She tried to feel the machine as if it were an extension of her own body, just as—in combat—she felt the spear as an extension of her arm. Lilah wanted it to be strong, to be capable, and willing to blow past its own limitations. The engine’s growl was reassuring, but every time she goosed the speed past twenty-five miles an hour, it shuddered. As if it were afraid of going too fast. Or afraid of what was waiting out there, standing between them and saving Chong.

Lilah knew it was stupid to think of the quad as anything more than a dumb machine, and the shudder as more than leftover damage from what Captain Collins did.

That did not change how she felt. Not one bit.

“Come on,” she told it, speaking low so Nix wouldn’t hear. “Come on.”

The machine tried.

Lilah believed that because she needed to believe it.

“Come on.”

* * *

Seated behind her, Nix heard the words, knowing full well that she was not meant to. It hurt her heart. Lilah was so strong, so skilled, so dangerous that it was easy for most people to think that she was this invulnerable goddess of combat. The kind of hero who went joyfully into every battle and lived for whatever kind of bloody conflict was coming next.

Nix knew Lilah. She knew about how the Lost Girl became lost. She’d been part of group of refugees, had seen her mother die giving birth to Lilah’s sister, Annie. Had lost all of those people and then she and Annie wound up in the fighting pits of Gameland, a horrific place where children were forced to fight zombies so corrupt people could place bets. The sisters escaped, but Annie was murdered in the process. When she reanimated, Lilah had been forced to silence her sister forever. The Lost Girl became lost indeed. For years she hid in the mountains and spent her days hunting evil men like the ones who’d captured her and Annie.

It was Nix and Benny who found her. Together with Benny’s older brother, Tom, they had destroyed Gameland. They took Lilah back to their town, where she met and fell in love with Chong.

However, neither revenge on her sister’s killer nor the love and support she found in Mountainside could bring Lilah all the way back from the remote places where her mind lived.

What Nix understood and Lilah probably knew subconsciously was that this love was built as much on fear of abandonment as it was on true affection. Maybe the Lost Girl believed that if she lost Chong, who else could ever love her as much or as freely?

As they drove, Nix’s mind wandered from Lilah to the troubles they were running from. Or was it toward? Her perspective seemed askew.

Nix thought about the name the people in New Alamo used instead of Rot and Ruin. The people here called it the Broken Lands. That almost made her laugh, because everything and everyone was broken in one way or another.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

The rhyme jangled in her head like notes played on an out-of-tune piano.

Yeah, she thought. That’s all of us.

* * *

Lilah tapped her with an elbow, and Nix turned to follow her pointing finger. Ahead was a patch of smoke. Dark and oily, rising in a slow column into the blue sky.

Nix leaned close and yelled, “You think that’s the hidden base?”

“Has to be.”

“Don’t get too close,” Nix warned.

Lilah pointed with her spear. “Look, over there…”

A thousand yards from the smoking crater of what had been the base was a group of tattered figures. Lilah slowed and stopped so they could both study them through binoculars.

One corner of the exposed base was relatively undamaged, and several zoms milled around, pawing at flickering fire or curls of smoke. They all wore the burned tatters of military uniforms, and a few still had helmets and holstered sidearms.

“Are… are they zoms?” asked Lilah. “Or people from the base who managed to get out?”

Nix studied the figures. “I don’t know.…”

One of them must have seen her movement and raised his head. He stared at the two girls. She could see him peering through the haze. Then the zom did something Nix had never seen one of the dead do before: he used the flat of his palm to shade his eyes. Then the dead thing raised his other hand and pointed directly at them.

“He’s still alive—” Nix began, but then her mouth fell open in shocked silence.