They rode their horses to the outside edge of the shoulder and stopped. The animals did not like the endless line of cars, although Benny didn’t see any zoms hiding among the dead machines.
Bones, however … There were plenty of those. Skeletons—long since picked clean by zoms, scavengers, and the elements—were scattered everywhere. Thousands upon thousands of skulls and rib cages, leg and arm bones, bleached white by the merci-less California sun. The cars themselves were slammed and smashed together. Some had burned, some were skewed sideways or overturned. A few had rolled off the highway and lay half hidden in the tall grass beside the road. Benny could see that the windows of all the cars were broken. Some had been smashed out by people escaping—or trying to—and some were smashed in by fresh zoms who still had enough of a functioning brain to pick up stones. There were plenty of stones. The roadbed was edged with countless white plum-sized rocks, placed for drainage, Benny knew, but used as weapons.
Benny nudged a cracked thigh bone with his toe. “Tom, how come there are so many bones? Didn’t most people turn into zoms?”
“Most did, sure, but there were still hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who died fighting. Died in ways that kept them from rising. Broken necks, crushed skulls, bullets in the brain. Arms and legs torn off. It’s not like back in town where we bury the dead. Here … Those that truly die just rot away until bones are all that’s left. ”
Hundreds of the cars were pocked with bullet holes, and it was clear that at one point the helicopter had fired on the stalled vehicles. Tom saw where Benny was looking, and he pointed out a black shape rising from the side door of the crashed Black Hawk.
“They used their minigun. It’s a 7. 62 mm, multibarrel machine gun that could fire three thousand rounds per minute. ”
“Wasn’t enough,” Benny said.
“No,” Tom agreed.
On the far side of the line of vehicles was a vast meadow of tall grass and wild wheat that stretched into green and brown forever. Scattered here and there were hundreds of young trees—scrub pines, oaks, poplars, maples—rising above the sea of waving grass. The trees made it impossible to tell if the meadow was free of zoms, an assessment further spoiled by the constant breeze that made everything sway and shift.
A bird cawed, and Benny turned to see a threadbare crow perched on the broken vane of the downed helicopter.
“Which way do we go?”
“That’s the problem,” said Tom. “We need to cut across this road if we’re going to catch them before they reach their camp. God knows how many of their cronies they have there. If we cut the road here and then cross that big meadow, we can get ahead of them. On horseback … Yeah, we can get ahead of them. ” He nodded toward the northeast corner of the big meadow where a mountain rose, green and gray. “Charlie’s camp is on the other side of that mountain. There’s half a dozen trails—man-made and game trails. I’m pretty sure I know which one they’d take. You know, the second time I saw Lilah was right over there. Halfway up the mountain. Rob Sacchetto and I were out here together. I wanted him to do sketches of some zoms I thought might be related to folks in town. We were up on the catwalk of that old ranger station, and I had a big high-powered telescope with me this time. I’d picked up Lilah’s trail that morning, and I left him there and went through the woods. I found her, and it took me half the day to first convince her that I didn’t want to hurt her and the rest of the afternoon convincing her that she didn’t want to hurt me. ”
“You talked with her?”
“I talked. She didn’t say much, and just when I thought that she was going to open up, something spooked her and she vanished. God only knows where she went, because I lost her trail. ”
“You found her twice around here,” Benny said. “She must live near here. ”
“Maybe. She might have moved on since then. But let’s deal with first things first. We have to get the horses across this road. ”
“But how?” Benny walked up and down the row of cars. There were some spots where he could squeeze through, and certainly he and Tom could climb over the vehicles … but he did not see one spot where a horse could pass. “Can we go around?”
“We’d lose half a day. ” There was an overturned panel truck jammed at a right-angle to a big car that was riddled with bullet holes. “Escalade” was written on the fender in tarnished silver letters.
In the cleft formed by the two vehicles, there was a shaded spot big enough for the Imura brothers and their horses. They dismounted, and Tom looped the reins around the rear axle of the truck. “Stay here. I’m going to find us a way through. Keep your eyes and ears open. Watch for zoms, but more importantly, watch for Charlie Pink-eye and his crew. ”
But Tom hadn’t gone a dozen steps before he suddenly stopped and crouched.
“Benny!” he hissed, and Benny ran over to see what Tom had found. On the blacktop, drying in the hot sun, was a small puddle of water. It was no larger than a dinner plate, but it was clear from the faded edges that it had been bigger and was shrinking in the heat. Tom touched it, sniffed his fingers.
“It’s not rainwater. Last night’s rain had a bit of a saltwater smell. This doesn’t smell at all. I think this is filtered drinking water. ”
Benny could see it now—someone stopping in the sweltering afternoon to gulp down some water, letting the cold liquid splash on his throat and chest and fall to the ground. Tom stood and held his own canteen out at about six feet, tilted it, and let a little fall. The splash pattern was just about the same, even to how far the rebounding drops fell from the main impact point.
“Tall man. Charlie or the Hammer,” said Tom. “The Mekong brothers are both short. ”
Benny was impressed, and he looked around for other evidence and immediately saw something that snapped wide his eyes. “Tom!”
On the ground ten feet away, there was half of a wet footprint, drying quickly under the sun’s glare. Not a man’s foot. This print was made by a small, delicate foot that wore no shoe.
“Nix,” Benny said.
“Has to be,” Tom confirmed, but he looked uneasily from the print back to the puddle.
“What’s wrong?”
“Distance is too far. If she stepped in the water, there should be a print closer to the puddle. ” He quickly paced it off, shortening his stride to approximate that of a girl who stood barely five-two. “This is wrong. Even if she stepped in the puddle with only one foot, the distance is too far. The wet print should be here. ” He tapped a spot on the blacktop with his toe.