Flesh-&-Bone(25)

What if the dead started thinking? There were seven billion of them, and barely enough humans to fill a small city.

They stood in the silence of their own thoughts for a long time. The zombies watched them with unblinking eyes. Birds sang in the trees on Benny’s side of the divide, but there was movement in the sky above the zoms. Benny shielded his eyes from the glare and peered at a dozen large black birds drifting in slow circles high above the far side of the field. Chong noticed him looking and cupped his hands around his eyes too. He turned and saw even more of them over the forest behind them.

“Turkey vultures,” observed Chong.

“I know.”

They watched the dark, ugly birds glide without sound on the thermal currents above the endless miles of pinyon pines.

“There are a lot of them out today,” Chong said. “Seem to be everywhere.”

Benny looked at him. He could feel the blood drain from his face.

“Oh, crap . . .”

“Yeah. Carrion birds don’t eat zoms . . .”

“ . . . so what are they circling?” Benny finished.

It was one of the great mysteries of the Ruin that vermin did not feed on the zoms, even though they smelled of decay. No one understood it, and as Mr. Lafferty at the general store once said, “Kind of a shame, too, ’cause in about a month we’d have had a zillion fat crows and no zoms at all.”

Chong said, “Something’s dead out there.”

“I’d better get Nix,” said Benny.





16

LILAH ANGRILY FISTED THE TEARS FROM HER EYES AND GLARED AROUND AS IF ready to bash anyone who happened to be a witness to those tears. She detested weakness of any kind. It was something she could barely tolerate in her friends and would not allow in herself.

Especially after what had happened a month ago. After Tom led them out of town, their group had gotten separated. Chong, torn by guilt for having inadvertently caused Nix’s face to be slashed, and generally feeling like the town boy he was, had run away, requiring that Tom go and find him. That night, while Nix, Benny, and Lilah waited for Tom’s return in a deserted monk’s way station, the place was overrun by a sea of zoms. Thousands upon thousands of them; more zoms than anyone had seen in one place since First Night. In the moments before the attack, Lilah had been arguing with Benny, and he accused her of deliberately ignoring and mocking Chong’s feelings for her. That hurt, because it was entirely true. Lilah cared for Chong, but he was the weakest and least hardy of their team. He was not suited for the Ruin; not at all. When the zoms attacked, Lilah panicked and ran. It was the first time she had ever panicked since that terrible night when she had escaped from Gameland and was forced to quiet Annie. She’d thrown down her spear and run blindly into the dark. Even now she could not remember what her thoughts had been in those moments. Or even if she’d had any thoughts. All she remembered was running through the blackness, inside and out.

Awareness came back to her much later. She found herself curled on the ground, totally vulnerable and totally lucky to be alive. The zoms had not found her; but a strange mountain loner named the Greenman had. He hadn’t attacked her—just the reverse; he showed her kindness and patience, and helped her discover where she’d left her strength. He also spoke with her about love, about responsibility, about guilt, and about the choices everyone makes.

Lilah had wept several times that day. And she wept even more bitterly that night, when the monster Preacher Jack shot Tom Imura in the back. It did not matter that Preacher Jack and Gameland both died that night. Tom Imura had died too. Lilah had clung to his hand as the last strength went out of it. Even now, a month later, thinking about it was like being punched in the heart.

She stood there in the forest and wept again. For Tom.

And for Annie.

God, how that little girl, Eve, looked like Annie. So much. Too much.

It was unfair.

It was cruel.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes and took as many deep breaths as she needed to in order to stop her chest from hitching with sobs. The forest waited for her. The day seemed to pause for her.

“Annie,” Lilah whispered to the forest. “Oh God, Annie, I miss you.”

She begged the forest to answer her. She begged for the ghost of Annie to speak inside her mind, like the ghost of Tom Imura sometimes did.

And suddenly the forest stopped being empty and silent.

She spun and faced the northern reach of the forest as noise filled the air. She frowned. This was not a forest sound. It was a sound she had only ever heard once, back in Mountainside.