Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

Benny Imura pulled her to him, and they clung together in the heat of that awful shared awareness. “I could never hate you, Nix,” he said, his words muffled by her hair and by the pain in his heart.

She did not ask if he loved her.

Neither of them wanted to hear the answer to that question. There was no way—no matter how it was answered—that it would not cut like a sword.

89

COLONEL REID CLEARED HER THROAT, and Benny let go of Nix. She straightened and stood a few feet away.

“We need to get you on the chopper,” she said. Her eyes darted to Nix’s face, which was flushed and streaked with tears, and Benny’s, which he tried to turn away.

Nix held out her hand and helped Benny out of the chair. Dr. McReady had used a powerful local anesthetic on the knife wound, and it did, by Benny’s reckoning, nothing at all. But the pain was a marvelous distraction. It pulled his thoughts away from the even more savage wound in his heart.

They climbed onto the helicopter. Nix wanted to buckle Benny into a seat, but he shook his head, preferring to stay by the door. She reluctantly agreed and started to close the door, but Reid put her hand out to block it.

“You can still change your minds,” said the colonel. “You’re welcome to stay here. Once the American Nation realizes that our communications are down, they’ll send a team. They know we’re quarantined, but they’ll send helos to observe and report. It might only be a few days.”

“The reapers are marching on Mountainside,” said Nix. “For all we know, they could already be there. Saint John left here a month ago.”

“All the more reason to stay where it’s safe.”

Nix shook her head. “Nowhere’s safe. Not until we make it safe.”

Reid sighed and started to turn away.

“Don’t forget us,” said Nix. “Just because your people don’t see us, just because we’re inconvenient, it doesn’t mean that we don’t matter.”

Colonel Reid turned to her, and there was an indescribable look on the woman’s face. She didn’t say a word, didn’t nod or anything. Instead she slid the door shut. Benny and Nix watched through the window as the colonel and the doctor ran for the door back to the compound. It slammed shut and they were gone.

The engine fired up, and the big rotors began to turn. Joe’s voice rumbled out of the overhead speakers. “Okay, kids, here we go. If this whole thing goes into the crapper, just remember that it’s Benny’s idea.”

“Great,

” yelled Benny. “Thanks.”

Joe was laughing when he cut off the mike.

A heavy buzzer sounded a warning as the big hangar doors rumbled open, rolling apart on metal tracks.

The dead were right there, right outside. Too many to count. A sea of them.

“God,” said Chong, and Benny turned to see his friend standing right next to him. Lilah, too.

“They’re coming fast,” yelled Benny.

The helicopter trembled as it lifted from the ground. Benny was doing math furiously in his head. From skids to rotor the Black Hawk was sixteen feet high. If the zoms reached up to grab, the tallest of them could reach seven and a half feet. Reid told them that the hangar door was fifty-five feet high. That should give the helicopter thirty feet of clearance. More than enough, Benny told himself. Who cared if the pilot was half-dead and more than a little crazy?

“Come on . . . come on!”

They were all saying it, willing the helicopter to rise before the tide of living dead could clear the fifty feet of open concrete.

They weren’t shambling.

They were running.

Every last one of them.

“Come on!”