Flesh-&-Bone(76)

He knew that Nix had always wanted to leave Mountainside. He and Chong both considered her a visionary; she had big, but practical, dreams about going beyond the fence line to make a new home out here in the Ruin. But that was before her mother was murdered and Nix was abducted. It was before Nix had been forced to fight in the zombie pits at Gameland, where she’d encountered the reanimated zombie of Charlie Pink-eye. It was before Tom died.

After all those things, Nix had changed.

Now, standing in front of the crashed plane, with proof of ugliness and madness out here in the Ruin, Benny looked into those emerald eyes and did not see anyone he recognized.

All this, all these jumbled thoughts, crashed through his mind in the space of a second or two. Most of the thoughts were rehashes of issues that had been hanging unresolved on the walls of his brain.

Benny turned away from her stare, unable to look into her eyes any longer. The Nix he knew was not there, and he didn’t want this new Nix to see the agony that must be in his own eyes.

He walked to the base of the T-bars and looked up at the zoms.

He cleared his throat. “I think they were the pilots,” he said.

“Why?”

“The uniforms. There were pictures in some of the books.”

“Should we . . . quiet them?”

Benny looked up at the dead, who looked down at him with empty eyes and hungry mouths. Their hands pawed at the air, gray hands opening and closing on nothing.

“No,” he said. “They’re not hurting anyone.”

Benny felt her come to stand beside him.

“I’m going to climb up into the plane,” she said.

Benny cleared his throat. “It’s not safe.”

“Safe?” Nix echoed faintly. “When are we ever going to be safe?”

“I—”

“I’m serious, Benny. Unless we find where this plane came from, all we’re ever going to do is keep running for our lives. Is that what you want? Is that why you came out here?”

He looked up at the cloudless blue sky and did not look at her. “Nix, you know exactly why I came out here.”

“Look, Benny . . . ,” she said in the softest voice he’d heard her use in weeks. “I know things have been bad.”

He dared not turn. This was hardly the first time she’d tuned into what he was thinking, or perhaps what he was feeling. Nix was always empathic. Benny said nothing.

“Give me time,” she said.

She did not wait for him to answer. She turned away and walked down the slope to the piece of plastic sheeting that hung from the open hatch. Benny turned his head ever so slightly and watched as she began to climb.





48

LILAH DID NOT SCREAM A WAR CRY AS SHE JUMPED DOWN TO FACE THE boars. She did not need to hype herself up for the fight; every nerve in her body was already blazing with the anticipation of battle and pain.

The pain in her side was a searing white-hot inferno, but she swallowed it, using the pain as fuel, knowing it would shotgun adrenaline into her system. It would make her faster, more aggressive, more vicious. It would keep the fear under control. And there was a lot of fear. She never pretended to be fearless, not to others and never to herself.

She did not fear her own death. Not really.

She feared not living, and to her that wasn’t the same thing.

Death ended thought, ended knowing.

Not living meant that she would never see Chong’s face again. She would never see the exasperation he tried so hard to hide whenever she did or said something that wasn’t “acceptable” to the people in town. She would never hear his soft voice as he recited poetry. Dickinson, Rossetti, Keats. She would never feel the warmth of his hand in hers. Chong’s hands were always warm, even when it was snowing outside.

She would never kiss him again.

She would never get to say the words that she ached to say.

So she said them now, just in case. Just to have them out there, to put them on the wind. To make them real.

“Chong,” she murmured quietly, “I love you.”

It was unlikely that he would ever get to hear her say those words. The thought of these monsters taking all that away from her made Lilah mad.

Very mad.

Killing mad.

With a feral snarl that would probably have scared the life out of Chong, Lilah dropped from the branch.

She fell with all the silence and speed of gravity. Her snow-white hair whipped away from her face as she plummeted.