Right into one of the zombie pits. Into the Pits of Judgment.
Benny saw the white faces and white hands reaching up for the man as he pinwheeled down toward them, his sword slashing uselessly at empty air.
“I saw you get shot!” Chong exclaimed. “I saw you fall.”
Lilah held up the spear. A big chunk of the blade was missing, and the remaining portion was twisted at a weird angle.
“They shot this. It knocked me down.”
“Thank God!” Chong said. He wanted to grab her and hug her, but instead Lilah grabbed him, and for a delicious moment he thought she was going to kiss him. Instead she slapped him across the face. Hard.
“Ow!” he cried, staggering back. “What was that for?”
Her face was an almost inhuman mask of fury. “I heard what you said,” she yelled as loud as she could with her raspy voice. “I heard! You were bitten?”
Chong turned his shoulder away and put his hand over the bite, not wanting her to see it. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay?” she demanded. “How is it okay?”
Chong wanted to run and hide, but he held his ground. “I… it’s my fault.”
“Did you let yourself get bitten?”
“No… I mean-everything. All of it, since we left town. It’s my fault. You were right. I’m a town boy. I have no business being out here.” He sighed and let his hand fall away from the bite. “And I guess this is proof. I’m no good out here.”
Lilah threw down her spear and grabbed his shoulder, using both hands to squeeze the edges of his bite until drops of blood popped up. “How long ago?” she yelled, and when he didn’t answer right away, she screeched at him. “How long ago?”
“Ten hours ago. Maybe twelve.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” he said. “It could have been longer…”
Lilah let go of his arm and jammed her fingers under his jaw to feel his glands, then pressed her hand to his forehead. There was a moan behind her as a zombie lumbered out of the smoke; and with a grunt of irritation at being disturbed, Lilah whirled, grabbed the creature by chin and hair, and snapped its neck with a vicious sideways twist. Then she turned back to Chong, grabbed his hair, and pulled him close so she could examine his eyes.
“Tell me what happened,” she screamed. “Exactly what happened.”
“What-now? There’s a big freaking fight going on and-”
“Now!”
Chong shook his head and told her in quick terms how the big zom had clamped teeth on his skin just as Chong hit him with a pipe. Lilah made him repeat that part.
Then she slapped him again. Harder than the first time. It rocked his head sideways, and he almost fell.
“OW! What the hell?” Chong demanded, reeling.
“You stupid town boy,” she said harshly. “You’re not dying.”
“Wait… what?”
“The zom had your skin pinched between his teeth but you fell away from him. It tore a flap of skin off. That’s all… the infection is in the zom’s mouth, not in its teeth… you did not get bitten!”
Chong stared at her.
“You aren’t allowed to die!” she growled, and her eyes seemed to radiate real heat.
Chong’s mouth opened and shut several times without sound. “I-I-” And then he suddenly dropped onto his knees. Lilah knelt in front of him and there were tears in her eyes, sparkling like diamonds in the firelight.
“I-,” Chong said. “God… I thought I was…”
She took his face in both her hands and stared at him with almost lethal intensity. “You are not allowed to die!” she said fiercely, growling the words with her graveyard voice. “Not now! Not ever! Promise me or I’ll kill you.”
Chong almost smiled. “I promise,” he said.
Then, despite fire and gunplay and screams and the living dead, Lilah did what she had never once done in her entire life. She kissed a boy.
“We have to get out here,” barked Tom as he raced to intercept Benny and Nix. “Right now!”
“How?” asked Benny, looking around. The zoms were everywhere. Before Tom could reply there was a huge explosion, and they turned to see several of the wagons that formed one of the walls of the arena disintegrate into a fireball that knocked down at least a third of the surviving people in the place. Zoms were flung halfway across the gaming floor, and a dozen spectators and guards fell screaming into the open pits.
“That’s our cue,” said Tom. “This whole place is about to blow itself into orbit. We have to go now!”
“But we can’t go! Chong…”
“Here,” came a painful reply, and they turned to see a bloody, limping Chong running alongside Lilah-who looked strangely distracted despite the carnage. Nix ran to embrace Chong and Lilah, but Benny looked from Tom to the burning wagons to the hotel.
Chong asked, “Did I hear something about this place blowing up?”
“All to hell and gone,” said Tom, grabbing them and shoving them toward the smoking hole in the wall of wagons. “There’s five hundred pounds of C4 in the hotel lobby, and I rigged it. MOVE!”
And they were running. As they raced Benny cut a last look around. Many of the bounty hunters were down; the rest were already leaping over flaming wreckage.
Tom yelled, “Go… GO!” They ran into the smoke and through flaming wreckage and out into the cool darkness of the big field. Behind them the last of the guards and spectators were still fighting the zoms. Benny wondered if they were all crazy. Did they think they could win? Or were they so locked into the moment that violence was the only response they were capable of? He hated them and pitied them and ran from them.
Benny ran with his arm wrapped around Nix. Lilah dragged Chong with her. Fluffy McTeague ran with Sally Two-Knives in his arms like a baby doll. J-Dog and Dr. Skillz were racing each other and laughing; and a whole phalanx of the surviving bounty hunters followed them off to the left, into the woods. Tom was heading right, straight for the hedgerows and the road.
Benny opened his mouth to shout at Tom, to ask him if he was sure that he knew how to rig an explosion, when the world seemed to detonate around them and the entire Wawona Hotel leaped high into the night sky. A massive glowing fireball punched hundreds of feet into the air, igniting the surrounding trees, vaporizing the water in the ponds, and flinging the armored wagons far out into the fields. Benny and Nix zigged and zagged as flaming debris crashed down all around them with the force of a meteor shower. The grass caught fire and superheated winds pursued them like a host of demons.
Benny heard Tom cry out in pain and saw him stumble, but his brother picked himself up and staggered on. Debris struck the ground all around them.
“Go!” Tom growled through bared teeth.
They ran all the way to the gates and beyond, and down the road into darkness. Debris continued to fall for a full five minutes, as if the ghosts of Gameland were hurling artillery at them. They ran and ran until they could not run any more. They were all spread out across a mile of firelit landscape, Benny and his friends in the field, the bounty hunters deep in the forest.
80
TOM SLOWED TO A WALK AND THEN A SHAKY STAGGER AND FINALLY stopped, waving at the rest to stop. Chong and Lilah stumbled and collapsed to their knees, shocked that they were alive. Tom bent forward and rested his hands on his thighs. He looked totally spent. Benny sank to his knees and hugged Nix, and she clung to him. She smelled of smoke and blood. He kissed her face and hair and the tears on her cheeks.
Then Benny heard a sound and saw Tom walking slowly toward them.
“We made it!” said Benny, fighting a crazy laugh that threatened to break from his chest.
“Yes,” said Tom in a whisper of a voice. “We made it.”
“Benny…,” Nix said softly, and he turned as Chong and Lilah came walking toward him. They both looked like they’d been through a war, and Benny figured that was a pretty fair assessment. There was an awkward moment when the four of them stood and stared at one another. Everything that had happened since they’d left town-could it really only be two days ago?-floated like embers in the air between them.