“She’d have to be,” said Nix.
“Living out here? Fighting zoms and dodging guys like Charlie every day? Yeah, if it was me, I’d have gone buggy a long time ago.”
Nix dropped down on the far side of the rocks and waited for Benny to scramble down. They moved along up the trail, side by side.
“The thing is,” Benny said, “what if I was wrong about Tom all this time?”
“What makes you ask now?”
“Stuff that’s happened. Seeing how he was out in the Ruin the first time he took me out here. He was smart and skillful. He knew things and could do things that I never knew about.”
“That’s true of most people until you get to know them,” she said. “And sometimes even after you think you know them really well.”
He nodded. “Then there’s the way people talk about him. They act like he was all Joe Tough. I think the Hammer and Charlie were even a little scared of him outside of Mr. Sacchetto’s house. Well … maybe the Hammer was scared, and Charlie was just cautious, but why? Tom wasn’t big, and he wasn’t strong like those two guys.”
“My mom said she saw him fight once, but she would never tell me under what circumstances.”
Benny guessed that Mrs. Riley had probably been referring to the time Tom rescued her from Gameland.
“Yeah, and I saw him face down Vin Trang and Joey Duk while all those zoms were closing in on us. Tom was figuring it out. Maybe he was stressed, but I kept looking for him to be afraid, because that’s what I expected to see when the chips were down.”
“But … ?”
“But all he did was fight. He died fighting.”
“There’s another thing,” Nix said, her eyes sad. “Charlie and the Hammer went over to Mr. Sacchetto’s and killed him. They broke into our house. But … they didn’t attack Tom directly.”
Benny sighed and trudged along beside her for a while, lost in a sick depression. “It sucks,” he said eventually. “Tom died, thinking that his brother, the only relative he had left on Earth, thought he was a piece of crap coward.” He shook his head. “But I stopped thinking that the first time he took me out here. I’d give a lot to change things between us.”
Nix took his hand and squeezed it. There was a whole world full of things they both wished they could change.
44
THEY FOLLOWED LILAH THROUGH A FOREST OF ANCIENT OAKS THAT WAS SO lush that the canopy of leaves cast everything below into a twilight darkness. Morning mist clung to the mossy ground, and the trunks of the trees rose, like ghosts in the humid gloom. After only a few steps into this nightmare landscape, the wind settled and died, leaving behind a dreadful stillness.
It was Nix who first heard the moans of the dead.
“Wait!” she hissed, dropping into a crouch. “Zoms!”
Benny pulled the big hunting knife he’d taken from the dead bounty hunter.
The moan was a wordless cry of hunger that drifted to them through the pillars of oak trees, like the plaintive call of a wandering ghost.
“Where is it?” Nix whispered.
“There,” said Benny, pointing. “I think it’s coming from over there.”
Lilah bent and ran quickly in that direction, her feet making no sound on the mossy ground, her body bent, spear ready.
“Um … Benny?” said Nix. “She’s running toward the zombies.”
Fifty yards up the trail, Lilah stopped and waved to them.
“And she wants us to follow.”
“Oh crap.”
“Well,” said Nix, “she’s your object of obsession.”
“Very funny.”
Reluctantly and slowly, they followed.
The closer they got, the louder was the moan of the zombie. It was different from other zom voices that Benny had heard, although he couldn’t yet put his finger on what was different. Whatever it was, it made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up.
They reached Lilah, and together they crept around a bend in the path. A zombie stood right in front of them. He had once been a great brute of a man, and even withered and dead he had a massive chest and broad shoulders, and hands that looked big enough to snap Benny in half. He was wearing a mechanic’s coveralls, and there was a line of gaping black bullet holes across his chest and stomach.
Nix yelped in fear. Benny cried out and brought up his knife, ready to make a fight of it. He crowded Nix backward, willing to sacrifice himself for her.
The moan of the zombie changed to a growl of immediate need, and his wrinkled lips curled away from rotted yellow teeth.
The forest around them erupted into a chorus of other hungry moans as an army of the undead began to howl for their flesh. Benny and Nix turned and saw that there were, indeed, hundreds of zombies—men and women, children and adults—and they were everywhere. Lilah had taken them the wrong way. Instead of leading them to safety, she’d stumbled into a terrible trap.
Lilah stood inches from the massive zombie. She turned to Benny and Nix … and laughed.
“What … ?” Nix said, blinking as if it was her eyes and not her mind that needed clearing.
“You bitch!” Benny snarled. “You betrayed us!”
45
THE MOANS OF THE DEAD FILLED THE ENTIRE FOREST.
Benny and Nix stood back-to-back. Without realizing it they had already passed dozens of the zoms as they followed Lilah into the woods, and looking back they could see them standing there, dead eyes turned their way.
Lilah put her hand on the center of the big zombie’s chest.
The Lost Girl was still laughing. The big zombie tried to grab her, tried to bite her. But it couldn’t do either.
“What … ?” Benny said softly. His mind was struggling to understand this moment.
And then he saw it.
The zombie was tied to the tree. A length of sturdy rope was wrapped around its waist, and shorter lengths anchored each hand. It could move its hands a few inches, but that’s all.
Benny turned and saw that the zombie by the next closest tree was similarly bound. And the next.
“They’re all … tied up,” said Nix, turning in a slow circle.
It was true.
The forest was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of zombies, and every one of them was tied to a tree. In some places three or four were tied to the trunks of massive oaks.
“I … don’t understand,” said Nix, but Benny did. He suddenly remembered something Tom had told him about Charlie rounding up zoms and tying them to trees, so that he could find them more easily if he got a bounty.
He knew where they were.
The Hungry Forest.
Nix wheeled on Lilah. “You think this is funny?”
Lilah’s eyes twinkled. “Yes. Very funny. Your faces!” She laughed, and the sound of it drew another series of long moans from the dead.
“What is this place?” Nix demanded.
Benny told her. Lilah listened and nodded, and Nix looked horrified. Lilah pointed out a few trees where the ropes had been cut and the zoms taken.
“God …,” Nix said, “Charlie’s harvesting them.”
“Sometimes,” Lilah said, “I come here. Cut some loose. Let them go.”
“Why?”
“I do it when I think Charlie is coming.”
“An ambush. Sweet,” Benny said with a grin. “Sick and twisted … but sweet. Oh, and … sorry for calling you a bitch.”
She shrugged. “Been called worse. Don’t care much.”
Nix could not take her eyes off of the legions of living dead. “How many of them are in here?”
Lilah considered, shrugged. “Three thousand. More.”
“It’s horrible.”
Lilah shrugged again and turned to Benny. “You think it’s horrible?”
“I’m not sure what I think about it,” he said.
To Nix, Lilah said, “Two times I came here and let them go. Cut all ropes.”
“Why?”
“To free them. They followed me to the field. By the water.”
“Geez,” Benny said, “those were the zoms we ran into by Coldwater Creek. You let them go?”
Lilah nodded. “Sometimes … seeing them. Tied. Makes me sad. I untie and lead them away.”
“You lead them? How do you do that without getting chomped?” Benny asked.
She looked at him as if he was a moron. “They’re slow. I’m not slow.” Then she pinched the skin of her forearm. “They follow flesh.”
Benny swallowed hard, trying to imagine a horde of zombies, shambling along after this beautiful and crazy Lost Girl.
Lilah looked up through a small opening in the canopy of leaves at the position of the sun. “Time to go.”
With that, she turned and walked deeper into the Hungry Forest. Each zombie she passed craned its neck and tried to bite her, but the Lost Girl did not appear to notice. Or care.
Benny and Nix lingered a moment longer, caught up in all of the different ways in which this place was wrong. Whether the zoms were tied to the trees or taken for bounties or freed to wander, the horror of it was overwhelming.
The zombies closest to them moaned incessantly, biting the air, as if aching to feed on just the smell of living flesh.
“Your girlfriend is deranged,” said Nix.
“She’s not my girlfriend, thank you very much. And I believe Tom said the expression was ‘touched by God.’”
“She’s touched all right. Come on, this place is way beyond creepy. Let’s get out of here, Benny,” Nix said. “Right now.”
“With you on that,” he agreed, but as they hurried along the path to catch up, Benny kept looking back, compelled to lock this image in his mind. There was something about it that was starting to shove ideas around in his head. Weird and wicked ideas.
Nix caught the look on his face. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he lied. The thoughts running through his head were not thoughts he wanted to share with her. Not yet.
46
THEY CAME TO A SHELTERED CLEARING BY A ROCK CLIFF, THROUGH WHICH a million years of erosion had cut a waterfall that fed all the streams that ran down to Coldwater Creek. It was a strange place. The woods were overgrown with vines and scrub pines, the ground was covered with a thick carpet of pine needles. At the base of the cliff was a pool of threshing water that looked as clear as glass. However, all around the clearing, there were dead animals in various stages of decomposition. The stink was ungodly, and the air was thick with flies.
Nix gagged, and Benny dug the bottle of mint paste from his pocket, showing her how to dab it below her nose to kill the smell. As he did so, he marveled at the restraint with which she’d managed to put up with his smell since last night. He realized that his clothes were probably still ripe with the stench of cadaverine.
Lilah stood at the point where the path reached the clearing.
“Here,” she said, pointing to the waterfall.
“What, through there?” Benny asked.
She nodded, then pointed to the open ground in front of them. “Feet where my feet go.”
Benny didn’t immediately understand what she meant, and when she set off across the clearing in a weird zigzag pattern, he started walking straight toward the cool water. Lilah turned abruptly. “Stop!”
She hurried back, following the same twisted route.
“Stupid?” she asked harshly, then knelt in front of him and dug her fingers under the covering of pine needles and lifted a section of ground that proved to be a very thin, woven screen with needles and other debris cleverly sewn onto it. Beneath the screen was a hole that was filled with the pointed ends of wickedly sharp sticks.
“Oh my God!” Benny said.
Nix gestured to the clearing. “Is the whole clearing like that?”
“Yes,” said Lilah in her graveyard whisper of a voice. “So, watch my feet. Where I walk only. Yes?”
“Absolutely,” agreed Benny weakly.
In single file they followed Lilah around the clearing toward the cliff wall. There was no way anyone could have picked out a safe route through without knowing exactly where to step. Benny was impressed.
Along the wall was a screen of bushy pine trees, and it wasn’t until they’d all reached them that Benny and Nix could see that there was a narrow path behind them, which led to a depression behind the waterfall. The water cascaded out and away from the wall, and there was a cave mouth five feet high and seven feet wide. The whole mouth of the cave was covered with multiple sheets of heavy industrial plastic that Lilah had scavenged from somewhere. She pushed through, and they followed her into a short, damp chamber. Another set of plastic was hung ten feet in, and behind that was a thick layer of heavy drapes. Benny was blown away by how smart this was. The plastic kept the water out and the drapes kept light in, and together they muffled the roar of the waterfall. Lilah went in first and Benny followed, with Nix holding the drapes open to allow diffused light in. Lilah apparently didn’t need it, because she went into the darkest depths of the cave, and soon there was the scrape and smell of a sulfur match. Lilah lit an oil lantern, and a comfortable yellow glow expanded out to fill the huge inner chamber.
Benny and Nix were speechless. The cave was a treasure trove. There was a comfortable chair and a small table, a wire rack of dishes, barrels filled with canned food, some old toys, and books. Thousands and thousands of books. Technical manuals and novels, anthologies of short stories and collections of poetry, biographies of great thinkers and joke books, magazines and comic books. There were stacks of books on every surface, heaped against the walls. Even in the town library, Benny had never seen so many books. Nix looked dazed, her mouth open in a silent “oh.”