Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(7)

“Nix,” he said, feeling a wave of wretched guilt because he knew how much his death would hurt her. And how much it would disappoint her; but there did not seem to be anything he could do about that.

All of the zoms were close now. A knot of dead-pale faces fifteen feet away. Monsters coming for him in the dark, and yet the faces were not evil. Merely hungry. The mouths worked, but the eyes were as empty as windows that looked into abandoned houses.

“Nix,” he said again as the dead came closer and closer.

Each face that Benny saw looked . . . lost. Blank and without direction or hope. Farmers and soldiers, ordinary citizens, and one man dressed in a tuxedo. Beyond him was a girl in the rags of a dress that must once have been pretty. Peach silk with lace trim. She and the zom in the tuxedo looked like they had been about Benny’s age. Maybe a year or two older. Kids going to a prom when the world ended.

Benny looked from them to the sword he held, and he thought about what it would be like to be dead. When these zombies killed him and ate him, would there be enough of him left to reanimate? Would he join their company of wandering dead? He looked around at the ravine. There was no visible way out of this pit. Would he and all these dead be trapped down here, standing silently as the years burned themselves out above?

Yes.

That was exactly what would happen, and Benny’s heart began to break. The helplessness was overwhelming, and for a horrifying moment he watched his own arms sag, allowing the sword to dip in defeat before the battle had even begun.

“Nix,” he said one last time.

Then a single spark of anger popped like a flare in his chest. It did not chase away Benny’s pity and grief—it fed on it.

“Tom!” he yelled. “You left me! You were supposed to be there. You were supposed to keep the monsters away.”

Despite the anger, his voice was small. Younger than his years.

“You weren’t supposed to let me see this.”

Tears ran like hot mercury down his cheeks.

The dead reached for him.





6

THEN SUDDENLY THE AIR ABOVE HIM WAS SHATTERED BY A HIGH-PITCHED scream of total terror.

Benny whirled and looked up.

The zoms—their fingers inches from Benny’s face—looked.

There, wavering on the edge, fighting wildly for balance at the brink of destruction . . . was a little girl. Maybe five years old.

Not a walking corpse.

A living child.

And all around her were the ravenous living dead.

Benny stared at the child in absolute horror.

A hundred questions tried to squeeze through a crowded doorway in Benny’s dazed brain. Where had she come from? Why was she here?

The little girl could not see Benny down in the pit.

“Get away from here!” he yelled as loud as he could, and the little girl’s scream froze as she twisted to look down with wild eyes. “Get away from the edge!”

“Help!” she screeched. “Please . . . don’t let the gray people get me!”

She backed away from the zombies, who closed around her, and Benny screamed out a warning a half second before her retreating foot came down on empty air. With a shriek so loud that Benny was sure every zom for miles could hear it, the girl pitched into the pit. Her tiny hands darted out and caught the crooked roots under the lip of the edge and she hung there, legs kicking, her scream unrelenting. The zoms in the pit moaned and reached for her.

The zombies choked the narrow ravine, and Benny knew that if he held his ground, their sheer numbers would crowd him to the point where he could no longer swing the katana. Attack was the only option, and that meant carving a pathway through them, impossible as that seemed. It was reckless and crazy, but it was the only choice left to him.

Suddenly Benny was moving.

The katana snapped up and flashed outward, and the head of one zom fell to the dirt. Benny spun away from the corpse and cut once, twice, again and again, lopping off dry arms and heads. He ducked and chopped, taking off legs and sending zoms crashing to the ground. If his weary arms ached, he ignored them completely. Rage and urgency filled him.

The undead fell before him, but they did not fall back. Retreat was an impossible concept. They crowded forward on both sides, their attention shifting back and forth between the prey above and the prey at hand.

“Mommmeeeeeee!” shrilled the girl. “The graaayyyy peeeepuuuull!”

He slashed back and forth to clear some room and then attacked the nearest zom with a jumping front kick to the chest that sent it staggering backward into two others. The three of them went down. Benny ran straight at them, running over their bodies, his feet wobbling uncertainly as he stepped on thighs and stomachs and chests. He pivoted and slashed again as a massive zom in the burned rags of a soldier’s uniform came lumbering at him. Benny crouched and aimed a powerful cut across its legs. It was a move he had seen Tom do several times, a fierce horizontal sweep that literally cut the legs out from under an attacker. But when Benny tried it, he aimed too high, and his blade struck the heavy thighbone and stuck fast!

The jolt tore the handle out of his hands and sent darts of pain shooting up his arms.

Even with the sword blade notched into his femur, the big zom came relentlessly on.

Above Benny, the little girl screamed. Her fingers were slipping through the roots. Cold hands reached down from the edge and up from the pit.