Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(98)

Or she could lead them away from the plane and give Benny a chance.

If only Benny would do the smart thing and take it. If only he would stop thinking that he had to be Tom now that Tom was dead.

She ran.

Months of hard training in Tom’s Warrior Smart program had made Nix lean, toned her muscles, made her cat quick. She outpaced the reapers and was halfway up the slope before they were organized. Then the whole mass of them was racing along the length of the plane in murderous pursuit.

Nix climbed and climbed.

One of the reapers, faster than the others, came flying up the slope after her and dove to grab her ankles. Nix fell hard, but as she landed she twisted around and fired.

The reaper pitched backward down the slope and crashed into two others.

Nix scrambled on all fours to the top of the slope and flopped over the rim of hard-packed dirt. She rolled to her knees and clawed her bokken from its sling. She rose, turning to meet the charge.

She froze and stared.

In absolute horror.

The reapers gaped in horror too.

They screamed.

They tried to run.

But it was already too late.

From the open hatch of the airplane came a horde of zombies. Dozens of them in colored jumpsuits, boiling out of the broken plane like cockroaches, leaping down onto the reapers, heedless of whatever bones they broke in the fall. The reapers tried to turn, tried to flee, but they were in one another’s way. The zoms dove at them.

Most of them were lumbering monsters.

But not all.

Some were fast.

Some were very fast.

Brother Alexi roared in annoyance. “They can’t hurt you, you silly buggers. You’re all wearing the tassels. Get a damn grip.”

He strode toward the reapers, who were wrestling on the ground with the living dead. His look of annoyance lasted three steps. Then he saw blood geyser up.

The screams stopped him in his tracks.

The high-pitched, awful screams.

Nix saw the way doubt carved itself onto the giant’s face, and then those lines instantly eroded into outright fear.

These dead were not stopped by the chemical on the red streamers. They did not react to it at all.

Alexi snatched up the silver dog whistle he wore around his neck and blew fiercely. The dead—a few of them—looked up briefly. Then they returned to the meat that was fresh and close at hand.

The slaughter was appalling.

Nix, alone at the top of the slope, realized with sudden clarity what had happened. She whispered a single, shocked word. “Benny.”

And as if by magic, she heard him call her name.

“NIX!”





82

BENNY LEANED OUT THROUGH THE BROKEN WINDOWS OF THE COCKPIT.

“Nix!” he yelled.

Twenty feet away Nix Riley whirled and stared in all the wrong places first. Then she spotted Benny, and the smile that bloomed on her face was the brightest and most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Come on!” he cried.

She ran along the top of the mound toward him, cutting through the shadows cast by the three dead pilots writhing on their T-bars.

“Try to climb up,” he said.

Nix turned to watch the carnage at the bottom of the slope. She winced and turned away in disgust.

“No . . . we’ll be trapped in there. See if you can climb down here.”

Benny climbed onto the control panel, kicked out the last jagged shards of the shattered windows, and wriggled out into the fresh air. He slid awkwardly down the crumpled nose and dropped nine feet to the top of the slope, landing with a grunt. Nix caught him, but they lost their balance and fell backward. Benny caught something out of the corner of his eye, and before he could twist out of the way, he struck his head on one of the T-bars. The zoms moaned down at him, and snakes of fire writhed through the air all around him.

“Benny! Are you all right?” asked Nix.

He cursed and groaned as Nix pulled him to his feet.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

Benny dragged his forearm across his face, and it came away with a bright red smear.

“Swell.”

They looked down the slope at the mayhem. There was so much blood and movement that it was almost impossible to tell the living dead from the dying. They backed away and peered out from behind the nose of the plane.

“Did you let the zoms out?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How?”

Benny said nothing. He closed his eyes and was back in that darkened cabin, a new makeshift torch in one hand, his quieting knife in the other. The idea had been insane then, and it felt much crazier now.

He had to free the zom farthest from the door first, and for a terrible moment he had crouched there, staring into those dead eyes, trapped between the need to help Nix and his own horror. The zom’s eyes were milky, and even though Benny knew that there was no mind behind them—no personality, no humanity left—he felt like he was committing some awful sin.

“Nix,” he whispered as he slipped the point of the knife into the silver wire that held the zom’s mouth shut. The wire was thin and the blade was strong. The wire parted easily. All Benny had to do was cut a couple of loops, and the zom did the rest as it fought to open its mouth. And bite.

He debated pulling out the network of wires that covered its head, but decided not to. He had no idea what its purpose was, and this didn’t seem like the time to find out.