Flesh-&-Bone(118)

He cursed and groaned as Nix pulled him to his feet.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

Benny dragged his forearm across his face, and it came away with a bright red smear.

“Swell.”

They looked down the slope at the mayhem. There was so much blood and movement that it was almost impossible to tell the living dead from the dying. They backed away and peered out from behind the nose of the plane.

“Did you let the zoms out?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How?”

Benny said nothing. He closed his eyes and was back in that darkened cabin, a new makeshift torch in one hand, his quieting knife in the other. The idea had been insane then, and it felt much crazier now.

He had to free the zom farthest from the door first, and for a terrible moment he had crouched there, staring into those dead eyes, trapped between the need to help Nix and his own horror. The zom’s eyes were milky, and even though Benny knew that there was no mind behind them—no personality, no humanity left—he felt like he was committing some awful sin.

“Nix,” he whispered as he slipped the point of the knife into the silver wire that held the zom’s mouth shut. The wire was thin and the blade was strong. The wire parted easily. All Benny had to do was cut a couple of loops, and the zom did the rest as it fought to open its mouth. And bite.

He debated pulling out the network of wires that covered its head, but decided not to. He had no idea what its purpose was, and this didn’t seem like the time to find out.

Benny quickly slashed the bindings on hands and feet, but even in his panic he was no fool. His training was right there, burning like a beacon as he worked. He cut the ropes almost all the way through, leaving only threads.

He did this over and over again, working with a pace that crossed the line into frenzy. Terror was the whip that drove him. His knife slashed and cut, and sometimes it gouged chunks of dry flesh from the zoms.

As he went along row after row, the cabin filled with the dry rustle of zoms fighting to break the last threads.

The first ones tore free before Benny was done. They began shuffling toward him.

Benny bit back a scream and slashed at the nylon straps holding a stack of metal cases in place, and suddenly hundreds of pounds of dead weight crashed down on the zoms. One of them collapsed with a broken neck, but for the others the cases were nothing more than an obstacle to climb over to get to their meal.

In the flickering torchlight, Benny saw that there was a second row of cases behind the stack he’d toppled. They were made of heavy-duty blue plastic and marked with a design that everyone who had survived First Night knew all too well: a biohazard symbol. The cases were stenciled in white letters:





REAPER PLAGUE


MUTATION SAMPLES


HANDLE WITH EXTREME CAUTION


The zoms kept coming, and Benny heard himself whimpering, making small cries and yelps, as he cut the last zoms free.

He scuttled backward, knocking over more crates.

The big stack of metal boxes fell next. A zom closed in on Benny, and he shoved one labeled LAW RKTS in its face. The zom flew backward into others. The container case slid off the stack and crashed down on its corner. The impact popped the hinges so the case flopped open. Benny glanced at it and saw something that vaguely resembled a gun, but it wasn’t anything he understood how to use. He ignored it and kept scrambling backward.

That was when Benny almost died.

He heard a sudden growl. Not a moan—a growl—and he looked up to see a zom climbing over the other zoms. Climbing fast. It was one of two zoms dressed in green jumpsuits—and Benny remembered too late the notations he and Nix had read on the clipboard, about the zoms in green.

This is an entirely new classification . . . able to negotiate obstacles . . . avoid many of the objects thrown at it . . . use simple tools. This reanimate appeared to be able to grasp certain concepts, particularly stealth and subterfuge.

The zom snarled at him. Its eyes were not dead eyes. They were more like those of the lions who had surrounded the camp. There was intelligence in them. If not human, then some new order of primitive intelligence.

A hateful intelligence.

The zom came clawing and scrambling its way over the others, howling out its hunger, racing straight at Benny.

Behind it, the second green-jumpsuited zom tore free of its bindings and hissed like a snake.

Benny backed away, his torch falling from his hand.

He spun and ran as fast as he could.