Flesh and Bone (Benny Imura 3)

He told Nix about her.

“You sure she wasn’t a zom?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh? Oh, and I heard a strange sound while I was down in the ravine.” He described the motor noise. “Did you hear anything like that?”

“A motor?” Nix brightened. “I didn’t hear anything, but . . . could it have been a jet?”

Benny thought about it and reluctantly shook his head. “No. It didn’t soun

d anywhere near big enough.”

Nix looked crestfallen, and Benny felt bad. Although he was out here in the Ruin to look for the jet too, it was clear to everyone that the search for the jet was Nix’s mission. Her quest. Benny wanted to find it, as did Lilah and Chong; but Nix needed to find it. Benny thought he knew why she was so obsessed by it, but he didn’t dare say it to her. Not now, anyway.

He let her sort through her own emotions for a moment. She chewed her lip thoughtfully, then grunted. “Hmm. Motors . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but it makes me wonder what sound those ‘growly horses’ made.”

He paused with a handful of berries halfway to his mouth. “Wow,” he said quietly.

“Wow,” she agreed. “Mr. Lafferty said once that just because the EMPs blew out all the motors, there was no reason why someone couldn’t repair some of them. I mean . . . we did see that jet.”

“Yes, we did.”

“So . . . maybe the growly horses are some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . car or truck or something.”

Benny nodded. “Not sure I want to find out.”

Nix looked away and didn’t answer. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she asked, “Do you regret it?”

“Regret . . . what?”

“This,” she said, gesturing to the forest. “Leaving town, coming out here. Are you sorry we came?”

Benny tensed. He loved Nix, but he knew that she was not above setting verbal traps for him to put his foot into. She’d done it enough times, and he’d stumbled numbly into them more times than he could count. It wasn’t a very likable quality, but it wasn’t any kind of deal breaker for them. He was pretty sure there were things he did that annoyed her, too.

So he relied on one of his favorite stalling tactics. “What do you mean?”

“What I said,” Nix replied, parrying deftly. “Are you sorry we came?”

Benny stuffed his mouth with berries to buy another second to think, and he rather hoped another ravine full of zoms would suddenly open up in the ground directly in front of them.

When that did not happen, he swallowed and braced himself and said, “Sometimes.”

“Why?”

“We haven’t found the jet,” he said. “And until today we haven’t even seen any people. We don’t know if we’re going in the right direction. We’re low on supplies, and now we’ve run into a horde of zoms.” He paused, wondering how far off the cliff of “said too much” he’d already gone. He tried to fix it, but the wrong words came out. “I guess it isn’t what I expected.”

“I thought so,” Nix said, and Benny did not at all like the way she said it.

They walked in silence for another full minute.

“Okay,” he said when he could no longer bear it, “what’s going on?”

“With what?” she asked, not looking at him.

“With us.”