She pounded on Lilah’s shoulder. “Stop… stop for a sec. Look!”
Lilah slowed the machine and turned. And gaped.
A full block behind them was a sight that made absolutely no sense to either of them.
The zoms were fighting each other.
It was like watching a riot. The fast ones seemed to have totally forgotten about the two teenage girls on the quad, and were instead hurling themselves at the mass of shuffling dead. Spitting and biting, all the time howling loud enough to scare legions of pigeons and grackles from the empty windows of the burned buildings.
Slow zoms reeled away from their attackers, twitching and convulsing. Some fell; others staggered clumsily into other zoms, or walked into dead cars and brick walls.
“What… ?” Lilah began.
“I don’t…,” said Nix, but that was as far as she could get. Whatever this was, it was beyond the experience or understanding of either of them. But it was a chance.
Nix used the side of her fist to lightly hammer on Lilah’s back. “Go, go.”
They left the small city, regained the highway, and headed west at high speed.
41
THEY DROVE AND DROVE.
When the tank ran low on gas, they stopped and filled it quickly and nervously. When something moved toward them in the tall grass, they turned in terror, expecting it to be the fast monsters.
The stalks parted and a cow came ambling onto the road, trailed by a calf. The girls began to laugh with the release of the terrible tension, but it died in their throats. The calf had four eyes and bleated like a screaming child. The mother turned, and they saw that her flanks were covered with fleshy nodules that looked like stubby fingers. Lilah drew her pistol and aimed it at the animals, but Nix touched her arm and shook her head.
The cow and calf, deformed and hideous, bent their heads and began munching the grass. Sickened and scared, Nix and Lilah finished refueling.
Before they mounted the quad, Nix tried the satellite phone. She got static, as if the whole world was dead.
“Nothing?” asked Lilah as she screwed on the gas cap.
“No.”
They stood for a moment, looking at the mutated animals. A soft, cool wind blew out of the north and stirred the grass. In the distance were the blackened bones of a city whose name they didn’t know. The cow and her baby munched noisily.
“I thought it would be different out here,” said Nix softly.
Lilah wiped her hands on her thighs. “Different than what?”
“Different than home. Back west there were the reapers and Charlie Pink-eye and Preacher Jack. But we beat all of them, and we paid so much to win.”
The Lost Girl nodded.
Nix gave a sour laugh and shook her head. “I thought that after war there was peace. Like… a real peace. Something that would last. That’s what I was hoping for. How stupid am I?”
She turned away and leaned heavily on the quad, head hanging low. Lilah came over and put a hand on Nix’s shoulder; then, after a moment, she laid her cheek on her friend’s head.
“No,” she said in her hoarse whisper of a voice, “it’s not stupid. Hope is what we have left.”
Nix straightened, and Lilah stepped back. “Hope? What good is that?”
Lilah pointed to the west. “After my sister and George both died, I lived in a cave for five years. Alone. Everyone I ever loved was dead. Murdered. It was just me and my books and the people I hunted and killed. The zoms and the bounty hunters. That was my world. Hope was all I had.” She gave a ghost of a smile. “And you know what hope did?”
Nix said nothing.
“Hope sent me you and Benny. You found me. You fought beside me. Then you invited me back to your town. To your homes. That’s where I met Chong. That’s when I fell in love. Hope proved that the world wasn’t just death and hiding and pain and all that bad stuff. Hope saved me.” She slapped the metal handlebar. A sharp, hard sound. “Hope isn’t stupid, Nix. Hope is the best weapon we have.”