Dead & Gone (8 page)

The echo of the sound bounced off all the cars. It drew moans from the dead—the closest of which were now no more than a dozen paces away.

Brother Andrew did not scream.

He stared at his shattered fist, and for a moment the only sound he made, the only sound he was capable of making, was a high-pitched whistle that approached the ultra-sonic.

Jolt rose to his feet and shoved Brother Andrew away from him. The big reaper staggered back, his face flushing scarlet as he fought to articulate his agony.

“Finish it,” cried Riot.

Jolt looked at her. “What?”

“Kill him!” begged Riot. “While you still have the chance.”

The young man glanced at Andrew, who reeled away from him, cradling his hand against his chest and making small keening sounds.

“No,” said Jolt. “It’s over; he’s done.”

“He’s
not
.”

“Yes, he is.” He looked past her at the two wounded reapers. “They all are.”

“No . . . you don’t understand. . . . There are more of them out there.”

Jolt pointed past her and she turned. Beyond the line of cars, near the town and coming hard in their direction, was a mass of people. Fifty of them. A hundred. More. Riding in front of them, his siren still wailing, was Gummi Bear.

Riot lowered her knife.

The dead were getting closer now, climbing over the locked bumpers of crashed cars.

Jolt walked over to Brother Andrew’s scythe, hooked his foot under the handle, kicked it into the air, caught it, and then spun his whole body and hurled the weapon as far away as he could. It arced over the cars and over the heads of the oncoming mass of zees. It fell out of sight, its clatter of impact lost beneath the moans of the dead.

Brother Andrew looked in the direction of his lost weapon and then turned slowly back to Jolt. His eyes were wet with unshed tears of pain, but his face was a mask of murderous fury.

“Jolt . . . ,” pleaded Riot, “please . . . you have to. . . .”

But Jolt shook his head. “I told you already, Riot. There’s been enough killing.”

Brother Andrew managed a small, tight smile. “She’s right, boy,” he wheezed. “This is your only chance.”

Jolt caught Andrew by the throat and stood him up, leaning in close to stare the man in the face. “Get your sick friends and get the hell out of here. You don’t belong around decent folks.”

He shoved the big reaper away from him and pointed to the only path through the cars that was not blocked by any of the living dead.

Andrew growled at the others to go, but he lingered at
the mouth of the narrow path.

“You think you did something smart and noble here,” he said. “But all you did was cry out for the wrath of god. The darkness will come for you. It will come for you and everyone you love . . . and I’ll be there to see it happen.”

Jolt just shook his head. “Go.”

Brother Andrew looked past him at Riot.

“This is on you, girl. You know that we’ll be back. You know what we’ll do.”

Riot pointed her knife at him. “If I ever see you again, Andrew, I’m going to kill you.”

The reaper smiled. “Ah . . . now that’s my girl.”

He turned and lumbered away, trailed by his bleeding companions.

Riot hurried over to Jolt and got right up in his face. “He’s not joking, Jolt; they
will
be back.”

“I guess they will.”

She studied him. “Y’all are barn-owl crazy.”

Jolt grinned. “Been told that.”

“Why are you doing this?” she demanded, her voice a fierce whisper. “Y’all are stepping into harm’s way here, and you don’t even
know
me.”

“Does that matter? How long does a person have to know someone before they do what’s right? You’re a girl out here, starving and fighting for her life. Am I supposed to just ignore all that? What kind of person would that make me? What kind of world would that make? Look, Riot, I wasn’t joking about what I said. How much killing is enough? How much pain is enough? When do we stop and say ‘that’s it, no more’?”

Riot opened her mouth to respond, but she didn’t know how to answer those questions.

“The world that died couldn’t answer those questions either,” he said, and gave a small shrug. “The people Gummi and I travel with—we don’t pretend to know
all
the answers, but we’re working on them.” His grin returned, brighter than ever. “And we’re having some fun while we work it out.”

“Y’all are definitely crazy,” said Riot, and she too grinned.

The dead, smelling blood on the air, moaned in hunger. They crawled over the cars toward the living meat.

“Time to go,” said Jolt, and he started to turn away. Then he paused and reached out a hand to her. “Want to come . . . ?”

She gave it a lot of thought. Maybe a full second.

Then she took his hand, and together they climbed onto the nearest car.

“Let’s go!” bellowed Jolt. He let out a huge whoop of sheer joy, took two running steps across the hood, and then jumped high and wide, sailing over the heads and mouths and reaching arms of the biters.

Riot watched him—his strong back, his lithe body.

What in tarnation have you got yourself into, girl?
she wondered.

Behind her the dead were massing, scrambling over the cars now like a swarm of wriggling worms. Off the road, hundreds of people were rushing toward her, coming to help her and Jolt. People she did not know. Orphans and refugees. Scavengers.

Friends?

Maybe. As strange as that concept was.

But what kind of friend could she be to them? Brother Andrew was right. He would be back. The reapers were out
there, and there were so many of them. If they came in force, what could a couple of hundred people do?

“Please,” she said to the hot air. But she did not know exactly what she was asking for. She watched Jolt run and leap and twist and land and run. “Please.”

Riot cast one last look behind her, to where Brother Andrew had gone.

“Please,” she begged.

The reapers would come for her.

No, that wasn’t quite right. They would come for Sister Margaret. They would come for the girl who once belonged to them, to the Night Church.

Maybe they would not find her. Maybe by the time they came back the scavengers would have moved on to another town. And another. Maybe if it took too long to find her, the reapers would give up.

She hoped so.

She desperately wanted them to understand that the girl they were looking for did not exist anymore. Not a trace of her.

The girl she had been, Sister Margaret, was dead and gone.

She turned and ran and leaped and followed, hoping that she was free.

T
HE
E
ND

Don’t miss the next exciting chapter in the world after First Night!

Reeling from the tragic events of
Dust & Decay
, Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists, then humanity itself must have survived . . . somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.

But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any of them can imagine. Something strange is happening to the zombies: Swarms of faster, smarter zoms are coming from the east, devouring everything in their paths. Has the zombie plague mutated, or is there something far more sinister behind this new invasion of the living dead?

B
ENNY
I
MURA THOUGHT
,
I’
M GOING TO DIE
.

The hundred zombies chasing him all seemed to agree.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES AGO NOTHING AND NOBODY WAS TRYING TO KILL
Benny Imura.

Benny had been sitting on a flat rock, sharpening a sword and brooding. He was aware that he was brooding. He even had a brooding face for when other people were around. Now, though, he was alone, and he let the mask fall away. When he was alone, the melancholy musings were deeper, more useful, but also less fun. When you’re alone, you can’t crack a joke to make the moment feel better.

There were very few moments that felt good to Benny. Not anymore. Not since leaving home.

He was a mile from where he and his friends had camped in a forest of desert trees deep in southern Nevada. Every time Benny took another step on the road to finding the airplane he and Nix had seen, every single inch forward, he was farther from home than he had ever been.

He used to hate the idea of leaving home. Home was Mountainside, high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California. Home was bed and running water and hot apple pie on the porch. But that had been home with his brother, Tom. It had been a whole hometown, with Nix and her mother.

Now Nix’s mom was dead, and Tom was dead.

Home wasn’t home anymore.

As the road had unrolled itself in front of Benny, Nix, Chong, and Lilah, and melted into memory behind, the vast world out here had stopped being something ugly, something to fear. Now this was becoming home.

Benny wasn’t sure he liked it, but he felt in some strange way that it was what he needed, and maybe even what he deserved. No comforts. No safe haven. The world was a hard place, and this desert was brutal, and Benny knew that if he was going to survive in the world, then he would have to become much tougher than he was.

Tougher even than Tom, because Tom had fallen.

He brooded on this as he sat on his rock and carefully sharpened the long sword, the
kami katana
that had once belonged to Tom.

Sharpening a sword was an appropriate task while brooding. The blade had to be cared for and that required focus, and a focused mind was more agile when climbing through the obstacle course of thoughts and memories. Even though Benny was sad—deep into the core of who he was—he found some measure of satisfaction in the hardships of the road and the skill required to hone this deadly blade.

As he worked, he occasionally glanced around. Benny had never seen a desert before, and he appreciated its simplicity. It was vast and empty and incredibly beautiful. So many trees and birds that he had only read about in books. And . . . no people.

That was good and bad. The bad part was that there was no one they could ask about the plane. The good was that no one had tried to shoot them, torture them, kidnap
them, or eat them in almost a month. Benny put that solidly in the “win” category.

This morning he’d left the camp to go alone into the woods, partly to practice the many skills Tom had taught him. Tracking, stealth, observation. And partly to be alone with his thoughts.

Benny was not happy with what was going on inside his head. Accepting Tom’s death should have been easy. Well, if not easy, then natural. After all, in Benny’s lifetime the whole world had died. More than seven billion people had fallen since First Night. Some to the zombies, the dead who rose to attack and feed on the living. Some to the mad panic and wild savagery into which mankind had descended during the collapse of governments and the military and society. Some were killed in the battles, blown to radioactive dust as nuclear bombs were dropped in a desperate attempt to stop the legions of walking dead. And many more died in the days after, succumbing to ordinary infections, injuries, starvation, and the wildfire spread of diseases that sprang from the death and rot that was everywhere. Cholera, staph and influenza, tuberculosis, HIV, and so many others—and all of them running unchecked, with no infrastructure, no hospitals, no way to stop them.

Given all that, given that everyone Benny had ever met had been touched by death in one way or another, he should have been able to accept Tom’s death.

Should have.

But . . .

Although Tom had fallen during the battle of Game-land, he had not risen as one of the living dead. That was incredibly strange. It should have been wonderful, a blessing that Benny knew he should be grateful for . . . but he
wasn’t. He was confused by it. And frightened, because he had no idea what it meant.

It made no sense. Not according to everything Benny had learned in his nearly sixteen years. Since First Night everyone who died, no matter how they died, reanimated as a zom. Everyone. No exceptions. It was the way things were.

Until it wasn’t.

Tom had not returned from death to that horrible mockery of life people called “living death.” Neither had a murdered man they’d found in the woods the day they left town. Same thing with some of the bounty hunters killed in the battle of Gameland. Benny didn’t know why. No one knew why. It was a mystery that was both frightening and hopeful. The world, already strange and terrible, had become stranger still.

Movement jolted Benny out of his musings, and he saw a figure step out of the woods at the top of the slope eighty feet away. He remained stock-still, watching to see if the zom would notice him.

Except that this was not a zom.

The figure was slender, tall, definitely female, and almost certainly still alive. She was dressed in black clothes—a loose long-sleeved shirt and pants—and there were dozens of pieces of thin red cloth tied around her. Ankles, legs, torso, arms, throat. The streamers were bright red, and they fluttered in the breeze so that for a weird moment it seemed as if she was badly cut and blood was being whipped off her in ragged lines. But as she stepped from shadow into sunlight, Benny saw that the streamers were only cloth.