Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(5)

Another zom fell nearby, ribs and arm bones snapping with firecracker sounds. The sounds were horrible, and Benny dreaded one of those limp, fetid corpses landing on him before he could get free. Overhead more of the living dead toppled over the edge and plummeted toward him. A soldier slammed into the ground to his right, a schoolkid to his left, their moans following them down as they fell, only to be cut off with a dry grunt as they crunched atop their fellows. Farmers and tourists, a man in swim trunks covered in starfish, an old woman in a pink cardigan, and a bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt—all striking mercilessly down. The impact sounds of moistureless bodies filled the air with an awful symphony of destruction.

Another zom fell. And another.

The cheerleader, broken and twisted now by the impacts, still growled at Benny and clamped gnarled fingers around both his ankles.

Benny screamed and tried to pull his legs away, but the grip was too strong. He immediately stopped trying to wriggle free and sat up.

“Let me go!” he bellowed as he punched the zom in the face.

The punch broke the zombie’s nose and rocked its head back, but that was all it accomplished. Benny struck again and again. With pieces of broken teeth falling from between its pale lips, the cheerleader used its grip to pull itself forward, climbing along Benny’s legs; and all the time its mouth opened and closed as if rehearsing the feast that was now close at hand. The rotting-meat stench of the creature in this closed space was horrific.

The zom darted out and caught Benny’s trouser leg between the stumps of its teeth, pinching some skin as well. The pain was instantly intense. Benny howled. Other twisted and broken zoms clawed along the ground toward him, crawling over one another like maggots on a piece of bad meat.

While he fought, he could almost hear Tom whispering advice.

Be warrior smart.

“Go away!” Benny yelled, half to the zom and half to his brother’s ghost.

Benny . . . most people aren’t defeated—they lose!

It was something Tom had told him a dozen times during training, but Benny had barely paid attention, because it sounded like one of his brother’s annoying logic puzzles. Now he ached to know what Tom meant.

“Warrior smart,” Benny growled aloud, hoping that saying it would inspire understanding and action. It didn’t. He yelled it again, then followed it with every obscene word he knew.

Don’t fight an impossible fight. Fight the fight you can win.

Ah.

That time the lesson got through, and Benny realized that he was reacting rather than taking action. A rookie mistake, as Tom would say.

He hated it when his brother was right. It was even more irritating now that Tom was dead.

As the zombie climbed toward him, Benny stopped punching it and grabbed it by the filthy strands of its matted hair and the point of its withered chin. Then, with a shout of anger, he twisted the cheerleader’s head sharply on its spindly neck.

Crunch!

The zom immediately stopped moving; its biting mouth went slack, the cold fingers lost their hold, and the struggling figure sagged down into true dead-weight limpness.

Benny knew that it was always like that when a zom died. Break its neck, or use a steel sliver to cut the brain stem, and the effect was instant. All life, all animation, all aggression was gone. The zom was alive on one side of a thin second and totally dead as soon as that second was spent.

It was a small victory, considering the circumstances, but it put some iron back into Benny’s muscles. With another grunt he finally kicked his way out of the pile of dirt and crawled as fast as he could. A spill of dirt plumed down in front of him, and it was the only warning he had as a half dozen zoms toppled over a different section of the ravine. Benny threw himself sideways just in time.

He looked wildly back and saw that at least a dozen of the zoms had gotten to their feet. They would be on him in seconds. He scrambled to his feet too and took the sword in a two-handed grip.

“Come on,” he growled, baring his teeth as anger surged up in him.

The first of the zoms came at him, and Benny stepped into its lunge and swung. The wickedly sharp steel cut easily through dry tendon and old bones. The hands of the zom flew over Benny’s shoulder, and he ducked under the stumps, instantly straightened, and cut at the neck from behind the monster’s shoulder. He got the angle just right and felt almost no resistance as the katana cut through the bones of the neck. The zombie’s head toppled into the dirt five feet away, and its body collapsed in place.

Now two others were closing in, rushing at him shoulder to shoulder. Benny tried a single lateral cut to take two heads, but his angle was off by an inch on the first one, and even though he took that first head, his sword caromed off the cheekbone of the second zom and did no real harm. He corrected, and with his back-slash decapitated the zom.

He stepped back and gulped air. After running, then falling, and now fighting, he was already exhausted. He shook his head to whip sweat from his eyes.

“Okay, dumb-ass,” he told himself, “time to be warrior smart.”

He said it aloud, hoping that his voice would have all the strength and confidence he needed. It didn’t, but it would have to do.

The dead came forward, and Benny whirled and cut his way through the thinnest part of the circle of them. He jumped over the falling bodies and ran deeper into the ravine. As he did so he reached up and slid his sword back into its scabbard. His main supply of gear was in his backpack at the camp, but he had a few useful items with him. He dug into one of the bulky pockets of his canvas vest and removed a spool of silk cord. It was slender but very strong, and Tom had used it to restrain zoms before quieting them.