Flesh-&-Bone

Flesh & Bone by Jonathan Maberry




This one’s for the librarians everywhere.

(Okay, I’ll go sit in the back and read quietly now.)

And—as always—for Sara Jo.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Special thanks to some real-world people who allowed me to tap them for advice and information, lean on them for support, and in some cases shove them into the middle of the action. My agents, Sara Crowe and Harvey Klinger; my editor, David Gale, and all the good people at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; Ashley Davis, Nancy Kiem-Comley, Tiffany Fowler-Schmidt, Rachel Tafoya, Greg Schauer, Rigel Ailur, Bubba Falcon, Jaime Noyola, Bob Clark, Jim McCain, Colin Madrid, and Dustin Lee Frye for technical advice; Michael Homler of St. Martin’s Griffin; Dr. John Cmar of Johns Hopkins University Department of Infectious Diseases; Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex (Simon & Schuster); Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books); Chris Graham, David Nicholson, and John Palakas of the History Channel documentary Zombies: A Living History; and the King of the Zombies George A. Romero.





AUTHOR’S NOTE

This novel deals in part with the phenomenon of grief. Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong each have a reason to grieve; each has lost something they could not bear to lose. The people they left behind in Mountainside were all traumatized by loss, as are the people they meet out in the Ruin. Grief, in its many forms, is one of the themes that tie all four books of this quadrology together.

While I was writing this book, a great and dear friend of mine died. Leslie Esdaile Banks (aka L. A. Banks), a prolific author of romance, crime fiction, thrillers, and paranormal novels, lost her battle with a rare form of cancer. I’ve known Leslie since middle school, and we were colleagues in the Liars Club, a group of writers dedicated to promoting literacy and the love of reading. Leslie was a humanitarian, a fierce intellect, and one of the most joyful people I have ever had the great good fortune to have known.

Around the same time my brother-in-law, Logan Howe, also died. He was a good and decent man.

After they died, I found it painful and difficult to accept that the sun shone, the birds sang in the trees, and the world turned without them. Grief is like that. To resist or deny grief does no good. It hurts us to pretend that we are not hurt. Sounds strange, but it’s true.

I know that many of the readers of this book have experienced grief, or will. It’s human to hurt, but all hurts eventually heal. The best path through grief is to celebrate all those things that made the departed person alive. That’s the light to follow. That’s what my friends and I did after Leslie died. We cried, but we also threw a party and told tall tales and we laughed. I know—I absolutely know—that Leslie was laughing right along with us.

And . . . talk about it. As Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong talk about grief in these pages. Find someone who will listen. There are always people willing to listen. Always.

If you are having trouble dealing with personal loss, please reach out. To parents, relatives, friends, teachers, coaches, or someone at your place of worship. People will listen, and grief is something that we all share. Don’t let yourself be alone with it.





PART ONE

A FALL OF ANGELS

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

—JOHN BRIGHT

(FROM A SPEECH TO PARLIAMENT, FEBRUARY 23, 1855)





1

BENNY IMURA THOUGHT, I’M GOING TO DIE.

The hundred zombies chasing him all seemed to agree.





2

FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO NOTHING AND NOBODY WAS TRYING TO KILL Benny Imura.

Benny had been sitting on a flat rock, sharpening a sword and brooding. He was aware that he was brooding. He even had a brooding face for when other people were around. Now, though, he was alone, and he let the mask fall away. When he was alone, the melancholy musings were deeper, more useful, but also less fun. When you’re alone, you can’t crack a joke to make the moment feel better.

There were very few moments that felt good to Benny. Not anymore. Not since leaving home.

He was a mile from where he and his friends had camped in a forest of desert trees deep in southern Nevada. Every time Benny took another step on the road to finding the airplane he and Nix had seen, every single inch forward, he was farther from home than he had ever been.

He used to hate the idea of leaving home. Home was Mountainside, high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California. Home was bed and running water and hot apple pie on the porch. But that had been home with his brother, Tom. It had been a whole hometown, with Nix and her mother.