Benny glared up at him for a very long time. Finally, when his voice was under control, he said, “That’s one thing. You said there were two. What’s the other? Was there something else you wanted to say about my brother?”
Joe gave Benny the coldest smile Nix had ever seen on a human face.
“Yes,” said Joe. “Tom’s dead. I’m alive. After all these years, I’m still alive. That makes a statement. Learn from the survivors or go the hell home.”
That had been the end of the discussion. Benny had stormed off and spent the rest of the afternoon stewing about it.
The next day he was back, with his sword, his gear bag, and his apologetic pride.
Joe never said a word about the argument, never acknowledged it. They picked up where they’d left off, and Joe drilled them mercilessly. And well.
Both of them had improved quite a lot. They were faster, trickier, stronger, and far more devious.
Now, though…
Nix felt clumsy and stupid. Lilah got through her guard again and again and again.
“I–I’m sorry…,” said Nix in a tiny voice.
“Sorry?” Lilah withdrew her spear, raised it over her head, and with a savage grunt drove it down. The blade bit inches deep into the sand right beside Nix’s face, chopping off several strands of curly red hair. “Sorry? Are you training for combat or practicing for your own death, you silly town girl?”
Nix covered her face with her hands and shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.
Lilah straightened and stood over Nix for a while. Then she threw her spear down in disgust and sank onto the ground beside the weeping girl.
“What is it?” Her voice was always a ghostly whisper.
Nix rolled toward her and wrapped her arms around Lilah, clinging to her as a child might. Clinging to her as a drowning person might.
They never heard the zoms coming until white fingers clamped like iron around their flesh.
CHAPTER 16
When Riot couldn’t bear to stare at her mother any longer, she went to the playground to find Eve. They sat together on a blanket, with sewing gear scattered all around them: needles, spools of thread, balls of colored yarn, thimbles, and all sorts of fabric scraps.
As Riot watched, Eve used a pair of scissors to cut a piece of pink felt into the shape of a blouse. Almost the shape of a blouse. Currently it looked more like a blob or a three-legged pink turtle. Eve’s little pink tongue tip stuck out from the corner of her mouth as she worked.
Overhead, a pair of capuchin monkeys that had long ago escaped from a private zoo in Las Vegas capered among the leaves. The nuns had named them Charity and Forbearance. The children called the monkeys Chatty and Foobear.
“There!” said Eve proudly as she held out the finished piece.
“That looks pretty,” said Riot. The blouse still had three arms. “Is… one of those the neck hole?”
Eve considered the shirt, frowning slightly. “Oops,” she said, and trimmed one of the sleeves. “Better?”
“Way better,” agreed Riot. “That’s as pretty as a rainbow after a spring rain.”
Eve giggled.
They found some blue fabric for a skirt and little bits of brown for shoes, and Riot helped Eve glue and sew the pieces onto a burlap rag doll one of the nuns had made. As they worked, Chatty and Foobear crept down the tree and sat the edge of their blanket, watching with luminous dark eyes.
When the doll was nearly finished, Eve leaned over and began sorting through the supplies until she found a nearly empty ball of bright red yarn. She held it against the doll to examine the color, and then nodded to herself. Riot watched as Eve cut off a few small pieces and began tying them around the doll’s neck. For one horrible moment Riot was afraid that Eve was making something like the red streamers that all the reapers wore tied to various places around their bodies. The streamers were symbolic of the red mouths opened in the flesh of the “heretics” that the reapers sent on into the eternal darkness. They were also dipped in a chemical mixture concocted by Sister Sun, which emitted a strong scent that discouraged the dead from attacking.
But that was not what Eve was doing.
She strung the red yarn around the doll’s throat.
“What’s that?” Riot asked, her smile broad and forced.
“A necklace.”
“Oh… nice. What kind of necklace? Is it a ruby necklace like a princess would wear?”
Eve looked at the red loop of yarn around the burlap throat of the doll. Then she slowly turned her face to Riot. The smile was so bright and happy.
“No, silly,” she said, “it’s like the one mommy wore. Remember? Her necklace was all bright and shiny.”
“Necklace…?” Riot murmured. The heart in her chest turned instantly to ice.
Eve’s mother had indeed worn a necklace of shining red. She’d worn it the very last time Riot and Eve had seen her. It was not a necklace of rubies, of course, or even of garnets. The reaper Andrew had cut Eve’s mother down with a scythe. The blow had taken the woman across the throat, and the red that had glistened there had been her own bright blood.
Riot looked at the doll and then at Eve. The little girl smiled and smiled, bright as the summer sun, and behind those innocent blue eyes something shifted and moved.
Something very dark and very wrong.
CHAPTER 17
There was no time to scream.
Four cold hands grabbed Nix from behind and tore her away from Lilah.
The Lost Girl started to yell, but then a red-mouthed thing ran at her.
Ran.
It came so fast, hands reaching, lips peeling back from cracked and jagged teeth. The zom slammed into Lilah, caught her off guard, knocked her backward. They fell over and over down the slope, hung for a moment at the edge of a sheer six-foot drop into an arroyo, and then toppled out of sight.
There was no way for Nix to tear free of the hands that grabbed her from behind. Teeth snapped inches from her neck and shoulders and ears. The angle was impossible for swordplay, so she did the only practical thing she could: She opened her hand and let Monster Cutter clatter to the ground. Then Nix threw herself backward as hard as she could, using all the power of the zombies’ pull along with the strength of her own legs. The extra momentum spoiled what little balance the awkward creatures had, and the two zombies fell hard onto the ground, with Nix’s body landing slantwise across them. With humans, a fall like that would have jolted the air from their lungs, but these were dead things. Luckily, Nix made herself exhale on impact — as both Tom and Joe had taught her. The exhale relaxed her body for the impact, but the jolt was still heavy enough to explode fireworks in her head.