Dust & Decay(60)

On the hundreds of living dead.

“God …” Benny’s mouth was too numb to say anything more. They were everywhere, an army of lifeless killers that shambled and limped and twitched as they emerged from the utter blackness of the forest. Benny spun and looked left and saw more of them, some walking, a few crawling, all of them moaning louder than the wind. He looked right, going as far as the edge of the station. He could see the long, pale line of tumbled glacial rocks. They were black with the crawling bodies of zombies. The closest of them was a hundred yards away, but they were advancing steadily toward the way station. Benny could not count the dead. They were coming. In minutes they would be here, and there was no way out.

“Please tell me I’m not seeing this,” said Benny. “This can’t be happening.”

“We’re dead,” whispered Nix. “Oh God … oh God …”

Lilah turned to them, and in the moonlight Benny and Nix could see that her iron self-confidence had crumbled to reveal a face as bloodless and empty of emotion as the monsters who closed in on all sides. She lowered her spear and it hung from her fingertips, ready to fall.

“We’re dead,” Nix said again, her voice rising to a hysterical pitch.

“Yes,” said the Lost Girl. “We’re dead.”





34


TOM IMURA WAS AT HOME IN THE ROT AND RUIN. HE LOVED THE WOODS, even as night came cascading down to turn the green world into an almost impenetrable black gloom. Ever since that terrible night fifteen years ago, Tom had spent nearly a third of his life in these woods. Unlike Mountainside, with its stifled boundaries and pervasive fear, the Ruin was a simpler place. You knew where you stood.



Tom reckoned that it was no different than the way the world had been before humans settled the first cities. Back then there had been predators of all kinds, and life was hardscrabble at best. Every day was a fight for survival, but it was that struggle that had inspired humans to become problem solvers. The inventiveness of the human race was one of the most crucial tools of survival, and it was the cornerstone of all civilization. Without it, man would never have turned fire into a tool, or carved a wheel from a piece of wood.

Tom knew that there were zoms out here, but didn’t fear them. He respected and accepted them as a physical threat the way he respected and accepted the bears and cougars and wolves that roamed these hills. His philosophy was based on the natural order of things. If a problem came up, he would use every resource to handle it. So far he’d been successful with that strategy, which included saving Benny during First Night, burning the first Gameland to the ground a few years ago, and giving closure to many hundreds of zoms. If, on the other hand, a problem arose that was beyond his mental and physical abilities, and if he died as a result of it, he was at peace with that. It was the way of things. Survival of the fittest, and no one was “the fittest” all the time.

He ran lightly, ducking under branches, leaping small gullies, running no faster than his ability to perceive what the forest had to tell him. Tom had stopped calling out Chong’s name. The boy had clearly wanted to run, and calling him might make him hide. In this gloom the best hunter in the world couldn’t find someone deliberately hiding. It was getting hard enough to follow Chong’s trail. Luckily, the boy had tried that old trick of using a piece of brush to wipe out his footprints. Sure, it wiped out the prints, but it left behind very distinct striations in the dirt and moss. Tom almost smiled when he saw it.

Eventually he reached the point where Chong had stopped trying to cover his trail and his distinctive waffle-soled shoe prints were clear in the fading light.

There were other prints along the path too. Most were animal tracks that were of no concern to Tom. He found some human—or perhaps zom—prints, but most of these were days old, and Chong’s tracks overlaid them. One set of tracks made him freeze in place and even touch the butt of his holstered pistol. Old-world hiking boots with worn treads and a crescent-shaped nick out of the right heel.

Tom bent low and studied the prints. Preacher Jack’s without doubt, but it was clear that these had been made on his way to the encounter that had happened a few hours ago.

Tom continued his hunt. The forest was growing quiet, and he moved only as fast as he could go silently. It was a tracker’s trick: Never make more noise than what you’re tracking.

Crack.

There was a sound, soft and close, and within three steps Tom slipped into the shadows between two ancient elms. He listened. Sound was deceptive. Without a second noise it was often difficult to reliably determine from which direction the sound had come. Ahead and to the left? Off the trail?