Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

Nix and Chong took too long to answer.

“Guys . . . ?”

“Too many,” said Nix.

She went over to the window at the other end of the office. Benny stood up to follow but swayed and would have fallen if Chong hadn’t caught him. Nix whirled

and rushed over to take his other arm. Together they walked Benny to the window so he could look out.

The sun was lower in the sky than he thought it should be, which told him that he’d been unconscious for a while. That was scary, and his head felt bruised and wrong. A concussion, almost certainly.

Then he looked out through the tough wire mesh that covered the windows, and all concern for his own pain dried up and blew away. His mouth went dry too, and inside his battered head he could hear his pulse hammering and hammering.

Outside he could see the field and all the way back to the road.

“Oh no . . . ,” he whispered.

There were zoms out there.

There were thousands of zoms out there.

Interlude Three

KICKAPOO CAVERN STATE PARK

ONE WEEK AGO

The hunter did not move. Not a muscle, not an eyelid.

“I want you to use two fingers to take your sidearm out of its holster and place it on the ground,” said the man who held a gun to the hunter’s neck. “You’re going to keep your other hand on your head and do everything with your left. We clear on this, sparky?”

“Yes,” said the hunter, lifting the Sig Sauer gingerly.

“Good. We’re doing fine here. Place it on the ground.” He repeated the process with the hunter’s other weapons—hunting knives, a bayonet, and a slender steel strangle wire. He missed absolutely nothing, and that both impressed and frightened the hunter. It also reinforced the hunter’s belief that this soldier was not a member of a ravager wolf pack. A ravager would have shot the hunter or cut his throat.

“I’m going to take three steps back,” said the soldier. “You move, you’re dead. You so much as sneeze, you’re dead. Are we communicating here?”

“Yes,” said the hunter.

The gun barrel moved and the hunter heard three quiet steps. The steps were uneven, confirming the hunter’s guess that the man was walking with a limp.

“Hands on your head, fingers laced. Do it now.” The hunter did as ordered. “Turn to face me. Pivot on your knees. Stay down.”

The hunter turned very slowly in the soft mud. He did not look at the gun, but instead looked past it. The man was tall, muscular, fit, and covered in dirt and blood. He wore black military fatigues, but the clothes were torn and scorched, with flaps hanging down to expose burned skin. Gray-blond hair was pasted to the man’s head by crusted blood and dirt, and one eye was bloodshot and the other puffed nearly closed. A long, shallow cut ran from mid-cheekbone through both lips and along the chin. Two pieces of metal were strapped to either side of the stranger’s left leg, held in place with what looked like pieces of a seat belt.

The hunter took in all the details about the man. That he was military was obvious. The trick he’d used—walking backward in his own prints in order to double back and lay a trap—was a classic. On reflection, the bloody handprint had probably been a trick too—something to suggest that he was either very injured or unskilled at woodcraft, or both. It worked, too, fooling even the hunter.

The man smelled of sweat and blood and dirt and smoke. All of that made sense. What he did not smell like was rot. Los muertos stank. The half-zombie ravager mutations stank. And his clothing, except for recent damage, looked new.

“Who are you?” asked the hunter. “Where are you from? What was that sound I heard this morning?”

“Hey, how ’bout I ask the questions?” said the man. “Okay with you, sparky? Good. Let’s start with the obvious one. Why are you tracking me?”

“What makes you think that’s what I was doing?”

“If I shoot you in the leg, will I get a straight answer to my question?”

The question, although said in a joking manner, was no joke, and the hunter knew it.