It wasn’t Joe.
It was Nix.
She was beautiful even when she was furious, and right now she was absolutely furious. Her freckles glowed like hot embers and her green eyes were lethal. She pitched her voice into a low, fierce whisper that only he could hear.
“You listen to me, Benjamin Imura,” she snapped. “Captain Ledger is trying to help us.”
“I don’t want his help.”
“Don’t be stupid. We need his help. We need to keep training.”
“Tom trained us,” he fired back, his voice rising. “Tom was the best, and he trained us and we’ve been warrior smart. We survived everything because of Tom.”
Nix got right up in his face.
“Survived everything? Really? Why don’t you go tell that to Chong.”
It was worse than a slap across the face.
Chong.
God…
Benny tried to say something back, something witty and full of thorns, but the words caught in his throat; he couldn’t spit them out. Instead he turned, slammed his sword into its sheath, and stalked away.
Nix Riley watched Benny go. She was angry and hurt and sorry for what she’d said. Tears began burning the corners of her eyes. When she turned away from him, Captain Ledger was right there. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“He — he had to go and—” she began, but he stopped her with a smile and a shake of his head.
“Don’t make excuses for him.”
“He’s been through a lot,” she said quickly. “He’s not usually like this. It’s not his fault.”
“Fault?” he echoed as they rejoined the others. “No. But it is his responsibility. We’re at war, and we don’t have the luxury of letting our emotions get in the way of preparing for the fight.”
“No,” agreed Lilah, and Riot nodded too.
“Besides,” said Riot, “Benny don’t hold the only license on pain and grief.”
It was true enough. Each of them had suffered terrible losses.
And Lilah… she’d lost more than all of them. Lilah’s pregnant mother had died in an old farmhouse and Lilah, two years old at the time, had watched first her natural death during childbirth and then a second and more brutal death as the survivors defended themselves after she resurrected as a zom. A man named George became Lilah’s protector and guardian because he was the last survivor of that group of refugees in the farmhouse; but some years later he was murdered and his death made to look like a suicide. Around that time, Lilah and her little sister had been forced to fight in the zombie pits at Charlie Pink-eye’s Gameland. During an abortive escape, little Annie was mortally wounded and left to die on a desolate rain-swept road. Lilah found her just as Annie reanimated. And the Lost Girl did what had to be done. After that, Lilah lived alone in the wilds of the Rot and Ruin, fending for herself and killing zombies and bounty hunters and in the process becoming remote and strange. And perhaps a little crazy. She’d begun to come out of that shell after she’d been rescued by Benny, Nix, and Tom, and more so when she and Chong had fallen in love.
Now Chong was lost. Dying or dead. Or maybe a monster.
The people in the blockhouse on the far side of the trench wouldn’t tell them.
Benny had lost Tom. And that was hard enough. Tom was a bit larger than life, a man of great gentleness, wisdom, and power who ultimately saved the Nine Towns from the evil of Charlie Pink-eye and his family.
Nix cut a sideways glance at Captain Ledger, wondering what — and who — he’d lost; but the big ranger never spoke about himself. He didn’t even comment on the things he was said to have done to earn himself a place on the Heroes of First Night subset of the Zombie Cards.
Ledger caught her looking at him. “He’ll be back,” he said, misreading her thought.
Nix shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
The ranger smiled. “He’ll be back.”
The day burned away and Benny did not come back.
4
They perched in the tree like a flock of birds. Five silent shapes, crouched on branches, their bodies and weapons dappled with sunlight and shadow. Only the fact that no actual birds shared the same tree hinted that they were there.
The tree was a stout and twisted cottonwood with many crooked arms reaching in improbable directions. Spring had come early this year and the branches were thick with leaves, but the early season had brought drought with it, and the leaves were already curling for want of water. It was the hottest spring any of them could remember. The sky above the valley was as hard and blue as bottle glass. Only a few small clouds moved above them, pushed along by a brisk wind that offered no relief from the heat.
A shadow cast by the largest cloud sailed down the far side of the valley, moving like a dark stain across the fields of weed-choked grass. The five figures watched as several zombies staggered in pursuit of the cloud shadow.
The dead always followed movement. They were slow but relentless, walking on legs stiffened to sticks by withered tendons and nearly moistureless flesh. They would follow the shadow until it vanished or until the sun fell into the Pacific Ocean nearly four hundred miles away. They would chase it the way they chased anything else that moved, hoping for a meal they didn’t need to satisfy a hunger that was as bottomless as forever. And if they caught up to the shadow and found that it was nothing but an illusion, with no substance, they would not cry out in despair, because that is an expression of emotion, and the dead were empty.
Nothing but empty shells.
As the watchers sat on their perches, they saw that the dead began angling toward one another while still pursuing the shadow. Soon a dozen of them were lumbering along in a loose and awkward cluster.
“See?” whispered Samantha, the oldest of the girls, pointing with the tip of her short spear. “I told you, they’re moving in packs.”
A second group of dead came in from another angle, staggering out from the ruins of a small factory where they had probably worked and where they’d almost certainly died. Seven of them, stepping into the sunlight through different open doorways, hearing the moans of the other zombies and catching sight of the shadow. Without pause the seven dead formed a new pack and moved off in pursuit of nothing.
“They’re doing it too,” said Laura, who was on a nearby branch. She had spiked hair and her face was painted to match the dappled sunlight. A hunting bow was slung across her back. “They never used to do that.”
“I know,” agreed Samantha. “But they’re doing it now. Amanda and I saw a bunch of groups like that while we were hunting last week.”
Amanda nodded. She was generally the quietest of the group, deep and brooding, but fierce in combat. She wore a pair of matched hatchets tucked through her belt. “We saw one pack with nearly fifty of them in it.”
Michelle, the second archer of the group, shook her head. “No, that’s impossible.”
“That’s too many,” agreed Laura.
“Amanda’s right,” countered Samantha. “At least fifty. We both counted.”
The two packs out in the field followed the shadow for long minutes, but then it reached the top of the valley and vanished from sight. The packs slowed as confusion set in. They looked around, saw nothing else to chase, and one by one the dead slowed to a walk and then stopped.
And stood there.
The five girls knew that they would continue to stand there until something else drew their attention. Otherwise they had no reason to go anywhere.
Some of the dead, lacking an impetus to hunt, stood in fields with years of vines wrapped around them. Zombies like that were among the most dangerous. One of them could be lying on the ground covered by vines or fallen leaves or low-growing plants like pachysandra, and you’d never know until they smelled you. Or until you stepped on one.