Dust & Decay(83)

Then he kissed her. First, very lightly on the line of stitches that crossed her brow, and then more firmly on the lips.

She kissed him back, and it wasn’t merely reflex. She kissed him like she meant it. Then she stepped back and looked him with green eyes that were filled with a thousand mysteries. For once Benny felt like he understood some of them.

He smiled and held out his hand, and Nix took it. Together they turned away from the charred graveyard of the dead and headed east. The road before them was tangled in weeds, but the sun glimmered like a promise on every blade of grass.

As they walked away they did not see the figure that stepped from behind a stand of fire-blackened pines. It was a tall man. Thin as a scarecrow in a black coat, with white hair that fluttered in the hot wind. He watched the two teenagers as they walked along the road.



The man moved as silently as a shadow as he crossed the field to the way station. He stopped and those cold eyes read the message written in the soot. His lips moved as he read the words, and then he chuckled softly to himself.

He stood for a long time with his lips pursed, considering the words. Then he used the hard, flat palm of his hand to wipe them out. All that remained was a smear of soot. The figure turned and looked at the road. Nix and Benny were tiny dots now, and as he watched they vanished into the far woods.

The man smiled and, quiet as death, followed.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Tom on Quieting Zoms





Tom Imura: “Put a bullet through the brain stem and you switch off your zombie. The same holds for a sword or ax cut, or sufficient blunt force trauma. However, if you inflict minor damage to the brain stem, you may remove some of the zombie’s functions … he might be unable to bite or unable to maintain balance. The bottom line here is that the real off buttons for a zombie are the brain stem and the motor cortex.”





47


LILAH CROUCHED BENEATH THE SHELTERING ARMS OF A MASSIVE OAK TREE. Cool green darkness wrapped around her. Her white hair was tangled with moss and bits of leaves. There were long rips in her shirt. She had no memory of what had torn the fabric. Sharp branches or broken fingernails. Her pistol was gone. Her knife was gone. She’d left her spear buried in the chest of a zom back at the edge of the burned field. It was hours before she realized that she was no longer carrying it.



She had no memory of most of the night. Her head felt broken. As broken as her heart. When she touched her face she was surprised to find fresh tears, but an hour later the surprise turned to panic when she realized that she was still crying. That she could not stop crying. There were no sobs. Just tears. Cold against the fevered heat of her skin.

From where she crouched she could see Benny and Nix enter the field. She saw what Benny wrote on the wall, and she watched them walk away to the east. She saw the tall man with the snow-white hair follow them. Three times she almost rose to her feet, almost waved. Almost called out their names.

Each time she did not. Each time she felt that her whole body was one lump of useless muscle. Nothing seemed to work, none of the muscle and bone seemed to be connected to her brain. Her body squatted there under the tree, and her mind merely looked out through the prison windows of her eyes.

Tears broke and rolled and fell in a terrible silence.

Lilah had barely known her mother. She had been a toddler on First Night. She remembered screams and pain. She remembered being carried. Sometimes by a woman—probably her mother—and sometimes by other people. She remembered her mother dying as she gave birth to Annie, Lilah’s sister. Those memories were a million years ago. Lifetimes ago.

It had not been her mother who raised Lilah and Annie. It had been George Goldman. He wasn’t her father. Lilah never knew who her father was. George was another survivor of the zombie plague, the last of the adults to survive out of a group that had fled from Los Angeles. George hadn’t known Lilah’s mother except for a few desperate hours. They hadn’t swapped life stories. Lilah’s mother had died, and then she’d come back. As everyone came back. George and the other survivors had done what was necessary.

Lilah remembered that. She’d seen it, and she’d screamed and screamed and screamed until her throat had been torn raw, leaving her with a whisper of a voice.

For years after that George had been the only adult Lilah and Annie knew. He raised them. Taught them to read. Fed them, and protected them, and taught them to fight. Then Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer had found them. They beat George and took the girls to Gameland.