While waiting for White Bear to come and take them to the pits, Benny and Nix had looked at what the room had to offer: an old light fixture, crumbling plaster walls, dry laths, a window. Now on the ground in front of them they examined what circumstance had provided. They had several lengths of broken lath—thin, narrow strips of some straight-grained wood; several yards of copper-cored electrical wire; and long pieces of jagged window glass wrapped in torn strips from their shirts—strips whose absence was hidden by their vests. All their pockets were filled with plaster dust.
There was a loud moan from around the bend. One of the zoms had reached the end of the first tunnel. The crowd began cheering. Benny hoped the wall of mattresses would confuse the zoms. Every second mattered to Benny and Nix.
“Hurry,” breathed Nix.
They worked as fast as they could. They placed layers of jagged glass between strips of lath and used the wire to bind it in place. Benny wrapped the wire around and around as tightly as he could. While he did that, Nix used another piece of glass to slash strips from their pant legs and then poured the white plaster powder into pouches made from those strips. When she was done, she and Benny swapped jobs. She took the makeshift glass-bladed hatchets and used more strips of their jeans to bind the laths from end to end, wrapping them the way an ancient weapons maker would wrap the haft of a war ax. Benny took the pouches and tied loose knots in them and began stuffing them in his pockets.
There was a soft thud as one of the mattresses fell into the main pit. A second later a white hand grabbed the corner of the mattress wall, and then a lifeless face moved into view. Black eyed and black mouthed, it moved past the temporary obstruction, then turned toward them and moaned. The sound was answered by other moans behind it.
Benny and Nix snatched up their weapons and began backing away. There was another chorus of moans. This time the sounds were behind them, coming from another tunnel. Benny turned sharply and saw three zombies stagger around the far bend, their dead faces painted yellow by torchlight.
Far above the crowd howled, and a commentator began calling out what was happening to those members of the crowd who couldn’t see. “Looks like we’re coming up on round one, folks,” he yelled in a fast-paced, high-pitched voice. “And oh! Here’s a twist: Somehow our two competitors have managed to sneak in some weapons.”
There were eight zoms shuffling through the main pit now, and more coming out of the side tunnel; but still only three in front of them blocking their easiest line of flight.
“Benny,” Nix whispered, “we have to try.”
“Okay,” he said, but his throat was dry. “Let’s go!”
Hatchets in hand, they raced forward, screaming at the top of their lungs. There were two men and a woman in the first pack. The closest one was a wild-looking man wearing the bullet-pocked remains of a carpet coat. He bared his teeth and lunged at Benny, but just as the white hands were about to close on him, Benny jagged right, parrying the grab with his left hand; then he pivoted and chopped down on the back of the zom’s head with the hatchet. The layered chunks of glass bit deep into the weak area at the base of the monster’s skull. It was a good hit, a solid hit, and for once Benny’s aim was right on the money. The zombie pitched forward.
At the same time, Nix broke left from behind Benny and threw herself into a tight shoulder roll right under the reaching arms of the second zom. She came straight up out of the roll, pivoted on the balls of her feet, and slashed her hatchet across the back of the zom’s knee. It was one of Lilah’s favorite combat tricks. The withered tendon parted like bad string, and the zom started to fall. Nix rammed it with her shoulder, and the creature crashed sideways into the third zom so that the two of them fell.
“Go!” Benny yelled, grabbing the shoulder of her vest and pulling her. One zom was down for good, one was crippled, and one would be able to get back up; but the most important thing was that for a moment the three of them sprawled in the middle of the tunnel, creating a temporary roadblock.
Above them the commentator was fumbling to explain this to the crowd, and his words were met by a mixed chorus of boos and applause.
“Freaks!” snarled Nix.
Benny saved his breath for running. They rounded the bend and skidded to a halt as two more zoms lumbered toward them. A side tunnel broke right, and Nix started to go that way, but Benny didn’t like it. There was no light at all down there.
The closest zom was an enormous fat man in the shreds of a blue hospital gown. He had almost no face left. Nix tried to dodge and kick, hoping to break the man’s knee, but her aim was off and her foot rebounded from the monster’s fat thigh. It swiped at her and she had to leap backward to keep from being caught. Benny tried the same kick attack and hit the knee, but the fat man’s leg wouldn’t break. As it wheeled on this new attacker, the second zom—a prissy-looking woman with gray hair in a bun and her intestines hanging out—threw herself on Nix.
Nix screamed and brought her feet up just in time, catching the zom on the chest and in the gooey mass of its entrails. The zombie scrabbled at Nix’s vest with white fingers and kept darting forward to try to bite.
Benny was too busy to help. The fat zom shambled toward him, its bulk blocking the narrow tunnel. It pawed at him as Benny chopped at it with the hatchet, knocking bloodless chunks of flesh from its face and chest.
With a final scream of wild rage, Nix swung her hatchet and buried the long glass spike in the zombie’s eye socket. The monster reeled back, shuddered, and then fell, tearing the handle out of Nix’s hand.
Benny stopped trying to get away and instead put one foot on the wall and used it to launch himself at the zom, hitting it high on the chest and driving it backward with both hands. The monster’s heels hit the other zom and he toppled backward, with Benny holding onto its shirt all the way to the massive thump! The zombie never stopped grabbing for him, and the creature was immune to the shock of the impact beyond a shudder that rippled through its layers of dead fat. The creature bit down on Benny’s ragged shirtsleeve and began shaking it the way a terrier shakes a rat. Benny hammered at it with the hatchet until he tore through the remaining tendons of the zom’s face and the lower jaw simply fell off.
Benny gaped at the monster for a moment, then threw his weight sideways and went into a sloppy roll that nonetheless brought him to his feet. As he turned he saw Nix working her hatchet back and forth to free it from the dead zom’s eye socket. It came free with a dry glup sound, and then the two of them were running again.
Nix threw him a single, crazy smile of triumph as they ran.
Is she … enjoying this? The impossible thought banged around inside Benny’s head.
The crowd was going crazy up there, but mostly applauding now. People threw stuff down at them—unshelled peanuts, cigarette butts, balled-up betting slips. White Bear was laughing with a deep-chested rumble, thoroughly enjoying the show. As they ran past another opening, Benny shot a quick look up and saw Preacher Jack. He did not know the man well enough to be able to read the subtleties of his expressions, but what Benny saw at that moment required no interpretation. It was a look of pure, malicious joy.
Why? Benny wondered. We’re winning.
When they rounded the next bend, that question was answered in the most horrible possible way. The next corridor was a dead end that ran twenty feet into a blank wall.
There were at least a dozen zoms in there. But that wasn’t what made Benny slam to a halt and stare in abject terror. It wasn’t what pulled a scream from the deepest pit of Nix’s soul.
The thing that plunged the world into absolute nightmare was the huge creature that rose up before them in the dark. A great and terrible zombie. Bigger than any they had faced. It was massive, corded with muscle and covered with scars from countless battles as a human. It wore a leather vest from which the tips of hundreds of sharp steel nails jutted out like a terrible cactus. Iron bands studded with steel points circled its neck and wrists, and a skullcap of gleaming steel covered its head and tapered down the neck to prevent any injury to the brain stem. When its lips curled back, Benny and Nix could see that someone—some madman—had filed its teeth to razor spikes.
Even all that, from its size to its fearsome armament, was not the worst thing about it. It was Nix who spoke the word that made it all beyond horrifying.
She spoke its name.
“Charlie …”
75
OUTSIDE THE HOTEL …
Lilah found a shed filled with old sporting equipment. Deflated balls, old fishing rods, Frisbees. She stared at the junk … and smiled.
Yes, she thought, this is perfect.
Inside the hotel …
“Tom!” Chong called from the hallway. He had just come back from escorting all the captive children into another room.
“I told you to stay with the kids,” barked Tom.
“Um … the kids are fine. Really.” Chong wore a quirky and bemused smile. “But … there’s something else. You’d better come.”
Tom turned from the guard. The man had collapsed into a weeping, cringing pile, and looking at him disgusted Tom. He jabbed the guard with a toe. “Stay!”
The man nodded and held his hands up, palms out.
Tom crossed to the door and stepped out into the hall. His hand flashed toward his sword, and a war cry almost tore itself from his throat. Then he froze in total shock.
The hall was full of people. All of them were heavily armed. Tom’s mouth hung open. One of the people reached out a hand and gently pushed on Tom’s chin to close his mouth.
“You’re going to catch flies with that,” said Sally Two-Knives with a wicked grin.
Tom looked around, seeing faces that could not be here. “I don’t—I mean—”
“You owe me two ration dollars,” said Fluffy McTeague to Basher. “I told you he wouldn’t know what to say.”
Farther down the hall, J-Dog and Dr. Skillz were removing the dog collars from the kids. They looked up and grinned.
“Kahuna!” said J-Dog.
“Yo, brah!” said Dr. Skillz.
“How are you here?” exclaimed Tom.
Sally and Solomon filled him in on the discussion they’d had in the woods. “We started gathering everyone up,” said Solomon, shaking Tom’s hand. “You’re a popular guy, brother. Everybody’s either looking to warn you or looking to trade you to White Bear for serious cash money.”
“I saw the bounty sheet. Not just me … they want my brother and his friends. Dead or alive.”
“Worth more alive,” said Hector Mexico. “Dead? Eh, not so much.”
“We don’t want you to leave, boss. End of an era,” said Basher. “No way we were going to let White Bear write the last chapter of Fast Tommy’s story.”
Tom frowned. “So … this is a rescue party?”
“Par-teeee!” chanted J-Dog and Dr. Skillz.
“But this isn’t even your fight.”
Solomon Jones answered that. “It’s always been our fight, Tom. And with you gone—dead or gone east—then it’s going to be our war.”
Tom shook his head.
“Son,” Solomon said with a smile, “don’t you know when the universe cuts you a break?”
“Not lately, no.”
“Well, get used to it, ’cause the cavalry has arrived.”
“Only downside,” said Sally, “is that there are twenty of us and about four hundred of them. And I’m not going to be much good in a fight once I run out of bullets.”
Now it was Tom’s turn to smile. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you guys see what was in the front room?”
Basher shook his head. “No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs.”
“Then you may be the cavalry,” said Tom, “but I’m Santa Claus. Let’s go downstairs and open some presents.”
76
CHARLIE PINK-EYE LOOMED IN FRONT OF BENNY AND NIX. SIX FEET SIX inches of him. One eye was a milky pink, the other one—once as blue as his father’s—was black and dead. His skin, once the creamy white of an albino, had turned the color of a mushroom: gray-white and blotched with fungus and decay. Flies buzzed around him, and maggots wriggled through flaps of his dead flesh. He snarled and took a lumbering step forward. And now Benny understood what he had seen out in the field by the way station. It hadn’t been Charlie leading an attack of zoms … Charlie had been a zom himself, part of a swarm led there by Preacher Jack. Led there … and led away before the fire could consume him. When Benny had seen Charlie smile, it wasn’t a smile at all but the snarl of a hungry zombie.
It was grotesque. It was bad enough that Charlie had not fallen a thousand feet to smash himself to ruin at the base of the mountain. It was worse still that he had become one of the monsters that he and the Motor City Hammer used to hunt. What was far, far worse was that Charlie’s own father and brother had kept him alive as a zom, armored him like a gladiator, and put him down here in the shadows to be their pet monster. Their Angel of Death for a new and corrupt Eden. Even though Benny understood few of the mysteries of any religion, he knew with perfect clarity that this was a sin that could never be forgiven. This was blasphemy.
“Nix,” Benny whispered, “run!”
But Nix did not run. She couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot, staring with horror at a nightmare monster version of the thing that had murdered her mother.
“Charlie,” Nix murmured again. Benny looked at her, and his heart sank to see that the madness that had swirled in her eyes now owned her. This was what she had feared. Charlie, the monster who had murdered her mother. Charlie, alive or undead, but still moving through her world. Still hunting her. On some level Nix had come to believe that this would happen. This very thing.