Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(69)

Joe was a strange man; and once again Lilah had the sense that she was looking at Tom, even though this man was bigger, older, and of an entirely different ethnicity. There was a sameness, a kinship between him and Tom that she could not yet identify. She had seen similar qualities in Sally Two-Knives, Solomon Jones, and a few of the other bounty hunters who had fought alongside Tom at Gameland. She wasn’t sure if it was a sign of moral goodness or merely a lack of obvious corruption. It was too soon to tell.

Joe watched her as she studied him, and he allowed it. He even gave what appeared to be an encouraging nod. Strange, strange man.

The dog, Grimm, suddenly got up and walked over to sniff her. Before he actually did so, he cut a look at Joe. The man gave a small gesture with one finger. A signal of some kind. The dog whuffed and bent close to sniff Lilah.

“Is he safe?” she asked.

“Safe as I want him to be,” said Joe. “Pet him if you want.”

As he said that, Joe made a small clicking sound with his tongue. Another signal.

Lilah tentatively reached out and touched the dog’s head. His fur was dark and coarse, but very soft. She ran her fingers along the top of his head, tracing the skull, and then gently rubbed one of his ears between thumb and forefinger.

Grimm turned his head and licked her fingers.

“You made a friend,” said Joe. “Grimm’s not easy to charm.”

“He’s a war dog,” she said, intending that to explain why the dog would understand her. Joe nodded and sipped his soup. Grimm flopped down next to Lilah, and she continued to stroke his head. The dog’s eyes rolled up as if he was in heaven.

“Who are you?” Lilah asked again. “I mean . . . what are you?”

“I’m a ranger,” he said after a short pause. “It’s a group of scouts. Most of us are former soldiers or SpecOps and—”

“SpecOps?”

“Special Operators,” he explained. “Soldiers who did special missions.”

“Oh,” she said, “like Delta Force and the SEALs. I read about them in books. Novels, mostly.”

“Like that. Our outfit’s been around for a few years now, working the southern states mostly, but a couple of us started going north and west to see how things had fallen out. I even spent a little time up your way.”

“My way? How do you know—?”

“You mentioned Tom Imura.”

“You knew him?”

There was the slightest pause before the man said, “Once upon a time.”

They sipped their soup and studied each other.

“Why are you here?” she said, indicating the forest.

He shrugged. “I poke my nose in here and there. Guess you could call me a professional troublemaker.”

As Lilah set her cup down, the injury throbbed and she hissed between clenched teeth. “How badly am I hurt?”

“Nothing that won’t heal if you take care of yourself,” he said. “You have a world-class collection of bruises and scrapes, and your left knee is puffy, so we might be looking at a sprain. You got thirty stitches down your side. Looks like you got clipped by the boar’s tusk. Wound’s clean, though, no sign of infection.”

Lilah chewed on a word for a few moments before she said it. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure. And I saw the way you handled yourself out there. You are one tough kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” she said.

“Fair enough. No offense meant.”

She let it go and changed subjects. “That boar was a zom.”

“Yup,” agreed Joe.

“How?”

“Darned if I know,” he admitted. “Only seen a few of those critters around these last few months, and I don’t mind saying that it scares the bejesus out of me.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“Yup. First one I saw was around Jericho Junction over in Utah. Then last week I saw a small pack of them chasing a bunch of other hogs. There’s been a population explosion of wild boars down south, all uninfected, at least as far as I know; but these were definitely walkers. Haven’t had a really good night’s sleep since. The thought that this plague has crossed the species barrier is . . . ” He shook his head, unable or unwilling to quantify the potential danger.

Lilah nodded. “It doesn’t make sense. Zoms are zoms. They’re people. The plague was never in the animals.”

“It is now.” He rubbed his eyes. “The plague’s been changing. Diseases do that. They’ve always done that. Before First Night there were new viruses every year, some of which were new strains of diseases we thought we’d beaten. It was simply good luck that most of the diseases of animals didn’t jump to humans, and that most human diseases didn’t jump to animals. That’s all past tense, though. The zombie plague, whatever it was, wiped out humanity, and now it’s moving into animals.”

“Other animals?”

He shrugged. “Let’s hope not. So far it’s only a small percentage of the boar population, and pig biology is pretty close to humans. That might account for it. If it gets into flies or insects, or birds, then we’re really screwed. We can’t build a fence to keep them out. Even so, those pigs . . . man, they give me the creeps.”