Flesh-&-Bone(27)

Chong nodded. “Lilah can take care of herself; and she won’t appreciate you second-guessing her like this.”

“A warning isn’t second-guessing,” replied Benny. “She doesn’t know what’s out there.”

“Neither do we,” said Chong. “I mean, let’s have a little perspective here. A few vultures is a mystery, not a certain catastrophe.”

“Maybe,” Benny said dubiously, but he did not ask Nix for the gun. For her part, Nix did not seem anxious to give it over. She stroked Eve’s fine blond hair and studied the sky.

Chong opened his mouth to say more, but instead he froze and stared past Benny and Nix. For the second time in a little over five minutes, Chong’s face lost all color, and he suddenly whipped his bokken out of its canvas sheath.

Benny and Nix spun too, their reflexes honed by months of training with Tom and weeks of dangerous travel in the Ruin. Benny’s sword flashed in the sunlight, but then it jolted to a halt as his whole body became rigid.

“Oh my God,” breathed Nix in a terrified whisper.

There were no zoms behind him.

Zoms—even a lot of them—might have been something they could handle.

This was different. This was much worse.

Instead, standing fifty yards away, huge and powerful and incredibly deadly, was a lion.





18

LILAH STARED SLACK-JAWED AT THE MOTORCYCLES.

She had read about such vehicles in books, had seen abandoned ones on the roads, their bodies rusted and their drivers gone to wander the world as living dead. She had never imagined she would see one still in operation—let alone two of them. Yet here they were, mud-smeared and battered, but clearly in working condition. How had these men gotten them to work? How had they kept them working this long after First Night? Where did they find fuel that was still chemically sound after fourteen years? Unless it was in tightly sealed containers, most forms of gasoline broke down over time.

Lilah ducked down behind a bush. The motorbikes zoomed past her, and as they went she winced at the stink of the thick exhaust fumes. It was a terrible and unnatural smell.

Each of the men carried a weapon slung across his back. The one on the left bank wore a heavy fire ax in a sling; the other man had a big two-handed sword in a leather scabbard. Lilah thought that such a weapon must have been looted from a museum or private collection. She’d seen bounty hunters with similar ancient weapons. They were clumsy in the age of guns before First Night, but practical in the world of the dead, because a sword is quiet and does not need to be reloaded.

Lilah left her place of concealment and began following the vehicles, running as quickly as caution would allow. Half a mile melted away, then a mile. More. Lilah enjoyed running, and she could travel at a jog trot all day long. Even so, the four-wheeled vehicles quickly outpaced her and vanished into nothing more than a distant engine whine.

She kept going, following their tire tracks for two more miles, and then she heard the engines again. They were stationary now, their grumbling motors idling somewhere around a bend in the stream. She faded into the woods and circled to come up on the stream from the far side, using a line of broken boulders as cover.

Then she heard more engines, and she slid into a hollow formed by several tumbled rocks. Five more of the four-wheeled vehicles came racing out of the woods and went splashing along the shallow streambed to join the others. One by one the engine roars coughed and fell silent as the motorcycles were switched off. In the ensuing silence she could hear the chatter of at least a dozen voices, and as she watched, she saw people moving through the forest on foot, alone and in small groups of two or three.

Lilah wormed her way forward to get a better look.

The gathering was a mix of men and women of all ages—but they were all dressed alike in black pants and shirts, with bloodred ribbons tied around their arms, legs, waists, and necks. On each person’s chest, whether rendered in chalk, paint, or fine stitchery, was a similar design of stylized wings. Angel wings.

Lilah immediately thought back to what little Eve had said.

I was running after Ry-Ry, and I lost my way ’cause there were angels in the woods.

Every person’s head was shaved bald, and their scalps were covered in complex tattoos. Most of them had patterns of wildflowers, green vines, autumn leaves, and thornbushes. A few had images of chains and barbed wire inked among the flowers. The art ranged from very crude to exquisitely rendered.

All the people were armed, and every one of them showed signs of recent trauma. Bruises, stitched wounds, crusted cuts, and stained bandages.