Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(15)

“I am leaving,” she said.

“You just got here.”

“No, I am going to find Annie’s parents.”

“Eve’s,” he corrected.

Her eyes flashed with irritation. “That’s what I said.”

“Okay,” said Chong.

Lilah sat there with an expectant look on her face.

“Yes?” asked Chong.

“Well—?” she said.

“Well . . . what?”

“I said I was leaving.”

“I know. Did . . . you want me to go with you?”

She laughed. “This is a hunt.”

“I know.”

“I will be moving fast. Tracking.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

“You’re a—”

“A town boy. Yes, I know that, too.” He smiled. It was a fact she reminded him of a dozen times each day. “And this town boy would slow you down, get you eaten by zoms, and otherwise bring about the downfall of what’s left of humanity.”

“Well . . . yes.” Lilah studied him, clearly unsure of how to respond. Humor was the bluntest tool in her personal skills set.

“Then if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay here and manfully defend this tree.”

Lilah narrowed her eyes. “That is not a funny joke.”

“No,” he admitted. “Just mildly silly.”

They sat for a moment, she looking at him and Chong pretending to look at nothing.

“I am leaving,” she said again.

“Okay,” he said.

She lingered, waiting.

“What?” he asked again.

“I am leaving,” she replied, leaning on the word.

“Okay. Good-bye. Be safe. Come back soon.”

“No,” she said.

“Good hunting?”

Lilah growled low in her throat, grabbed his shirt with both hands, and hauled him toward her. Into a kiss that was fierce and hot and instantly intense. After several scalding seconds, she shoved him roughly back.

She got to her feet and snatched up her spear, then looked pityingly down at him. “Stupid town boy,” she muttered, then turned and jogged into the forest.

Chong lay sprawled, eyes glazed and face flushed.

“Holy moley . . . ,” he gasped.





13

CHONG LOOKED UP AS BENNY’S SHADOW FELL ACROSS HIM. BENNY WAS grinning like a ghoul as he softly chanted, “Chong and Lilah sitting in a tree . . .”

“Although I’m a moral person,” began Chong as he climbed to his feet, “I would have no compunction about killing you in your sleep.”

“Just saying . . .”

Chong squatted down in front of Nix, who held a sleeping Eve. The little girl twitched every now and then, as if flinching away from shadows in her dreams.

Chong reached out to stroke Eve’s silky hair. “I’ll sit with her for a while if you want.”

“You sure?” asked Nix.

“Sure, you know me and kids.”

Nix nodded. Unlike Benny, who was often clumsy around kids and old people, Chong was completely comfortable with them. His inner calm seemed to work magic on the little ones, and he told the best stories. Chong knew all of Aesop’s fables, Mother Goose, Oz, and Narnia, and a huge number of silly, funny stories culled from the countless books he’d read.

With a grateful sigh, Nix handed Eve to Chong, who took her with such care that the little girl never even stirred. Chong crossed his legs and sat back against the tree.

Benny touched Nix’s arm. “Want to take a walk?”

She nodded, and they set off at a slow stroll toward the forest and then turned just before the line of junipers and walked north in the shade.

The forest itself was a strange holdover from before First Night. It had once been an elaborate golf course that someone had plunked down in the middle of an inhospitable desert. Wind-driven turbines had been erected to pump in water from some distant place in order to keep the grass green; but after First Night, the wind turbines began to fail. Benny and his friends had passed a line of them on the way here. Of the fifty they counted, only three still turned sluggishly, and they must have been enough to allow some trees and plants to flourish. But there was clear evidence that the more water-hungry vegetation was dying and the more desert-hardy junipers and pinyons were taking over. Soon only the desert plants would be left, and another of man’s structures that had been imposed on the land would be reclaimed by nature.

They walked in silence through the green trees, leaving the stench of the crowd of zoms behind. A few small white butterflies fluttered past. A black-tailed jackrabbit sat shoulder-deep in the grass, munching on a stem, and paused to watch them with a nervous eye, but soon went back to its foraging. All around them the desert birds flitted and sang. Benny loved birds and pointed out some of his favorites to Nix.

“That one there’s a sage grouse,” he said. “And see, on that branch? That’s a horned lark. And I think I saw a meadowlark earlier and . . .”

His voice trailed off as he realized that she wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even giving him the usual courtesy nods and grunts people give when they’re pretending to listen. Nix was deep inside her own thoughts, and Benny was on the other side of that wall. He lapsed into silence, and they walked without talking for ten minutes.