Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(100)

Then he heard the strangest sound.

A small burble of happy laughter.

He looked down at the child who clung to him. Her face was alight with sheer joy as the quad banged over fallen branches and leaped channels cut by rainwater.

Eve grinned up at him, and for the first time since he had first met her, Chong saw the uncomplicated purity of happiness. It was so odd, so totally out of keeping with everything that was happening, that even though he smiled back at her, Chong was deeply afraid for this child.

He did not for a moment believe that a kid who was borderline catatonic could simply “snap out of it.” No way. Chong kept his smile in place, but he felt that he was looking at the beautiful face of a horror deeper than his own infection.

God, don’t let her be all the way over the edge, he silently prayed. If I have any grace coming to me, then let’s agree that I don’t really need it anymore. Give it to the kid. Give Eve a chance.

Even his prayers were orderly, and Chong was good with it. He meant every word.

He closed his eyes for a moment as a fresh wave of motion-induced nausea wormed through his guts.

Lilah, he thought. Lilah...

Riot’s quad burst out of the forest and into the desert. “We’ll be in Sanctuary in less than—”

She screamed and slammed on the brakes.

Chong opened his eyes.

The desert was filled with reapers. More than a hundred of them.

One of them, a tall woman who—unlike the other reapers—had long flowing hair, drew a slender knife and pointed it at Riot.

Riot groaned and spoke a word that Chong knew would burn like acid on her tongue.

“Ma!”

She immediately spun the quad and plunged back into the forest.

Even over the roar of the engine, Chong could hear a hundred voices howl as the reapers gave chase.





84

“I GOT THIS,” SAID NIX, RAISING HER BOKKEN.

“No!” warned Benny as he moved away from it, using his body to push Nix back. “It’s one of those smart fast ones from that scientist’s report.”

The zombie began stalking them, and immediately Nix and Benny knew they were in dangerously unknown territory. This wasn’t the slow, relentless shuffle of the zoms they knew. The creature in the green jumpsuit seemed to be assessing them as it stalked slowly forward. Its milky eyes flicked from Nix’s bokken to Benny’s katana.

The creature—and Benny could no longer think of this thing as a zombie—bent forward and bared its teeth, its face wrinkling with feral animal hate.

“Oh God,” whispered Nix.

The creature snarled in pure fury and rushed at them.

Benny was caught in a dreadful moment of indecision.

Run or fight?

He could feel Nix’s whole body trembling beside him.

The fight and the slope were behind them.

The choice was made for him, because the creature raced at them far too fast for any chance of escape.





85

BROTHER ALEXI SWUNG HIS HAMMER AND THE HEAVY WEAPON, POWERED by the giant’s massive muscles and all his mounting terror, slammed into the first zombie to reach him.

The zom’s head exploded, and the lifeless body flopped to the ground.

Alexi used the force of the blow to turn his body in a pirouette, and as the hammer came around again he smashed it into the second zom. The blow caught the dead thing on the shoulder, but the force shattered its spine.

Alexi checked the swing and brought the hammer over and down onto a third zombie, and a fourth.

He laughed out loud, and his fear melted away to become diluted in battle joy.

“Come on, you rotting buggers!” he bellowed.

The zoms rose from the twitching bodies of the chosen ones, their empty eyes seeking out the author of that challenge, their mouths dripping red.

“Come on!”

They came.

Eighteen of them came.

His laughter died in his chest.

Some of them were in jumpsuits, some were in bloodstained black—with angel wings on their chests.

Something small and round sailed past Alexi’s face, and he flinched reflexively away from it. It looked like a metal baseball, and it hit the ground in front of the leading wave of zoms, bounced once, and exploded.

The blast was huge.

Pieces of zoms were flung in every direction. Blood splashed against the white plane.

Alexi spun around, shielding his eyes.

Then the air was fractured by gunfire and the combat howl of a huge dog.





86

BENNY HAD NO CHOICE.

He and Nix were too close to each other to swing their swords—they were breaking one of Tom’s cardinal rules about battlefield combat.

But she seemed frozen in place.

“I’m sorry!” Benny said, and shoved her backward as he jumped forward to meet the creature.

He heard Nix’s scream as she hit the edge of the slope—and fell.

Benny had no time to process that.

The creature was on him, and Benny lunged in low and to the left, swinging the sword in as powerful a lateral cut as he could manage. The shock of impact jolted him, but the katana was sharper than a razor. It sliced through dead flesh and brittle bone.

The creature fell past him and Benny turned, controlling the erratic postimpact swing of his blade. As he pivoted, he saw the zom scramble to a stop at the top of the slope and wheel around. The sword had cut completely through the right side of its chest, from front to back. Muscle and bone were destroyed, and the monster’s right arm sagged down. It did not even pause. There was no reaction to damage; there was no pain.