Page 33 (1/2)

Pain was sewn through the fabric of his heart and stitched deep into his sides as they ran and ran and ran

38

BENNY HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG THEY RAN A MILE, MAYBE TWO His legs felt like lead and his chest burned, but he held onto Nix’s hand on every jump and never once let her fall With every step, his heart lifted with the knowledge that Nix was alive and safe And then it fell as he thought of To him to a stop on the roof of a Chevy Suburban She pointed to a path that wound like a snake and vanished into the tall grass "It’s eht The last of the zoms were hundreds of yards behind them In their panic they’d far outrun the immediate threat

"What about Charlie?" Benny stood on his toes and looked back the way they’d come, but the bounty hunters were nowhere to be seen

"I don’t know," she said "But let’s get off these cars"

They ju forward and backward for any sign ofstill, whose appetites would be triggered by their ownbut erass, and the bones of a thousand dead people

Benny dragged a forear aeat or tears

"Let’s go," he whispered "Move slowly Follow me, do what I do, move when I move, stop when I stop"

They were Tom’s words on his lips, and it hurt hi his brother had showed hiether, still holding hands, they moved slowly from the shelter of the endless line of cars Benny waited for the wind to stir the grass and tall stalks of heat, and when they bent to the left, he rasses stood back up again, heit right It took thehway to the path and then they were inside the tall grass The shadows of early twilight cast the trail in shades of purple, and in that velvet gloom Benny and Nix vanished entirely

They lost track of how long or how far they ran Benny took every upward sloping road, re fewer zoh mountain passes They passed burned-out houses and houses where zombies stood in the yard, but when Nix and Benny saw thee and moved without a sound Terror made them cautious, and with each encounter, they refined the skills of not being seen and not being hunted

By the ti into shadows, Benny realized that it had been more than an hour since the last tiet away from them?" he asked Nix

"I kicked one of the other bounty hunters in the groin and ran"

Benny grinned at her "You are one tough chick"

"Call h I aave her a big grin, and they headed higher up the rabbed his ar Benny looked up Just ahead was a building on stilts that rose a hundred feet above a steep rocky slope Sunlight still touched its eaves They raced to the foot of the ladder

"Can you climb?" he asked Nix didn’t have the breath to answer, but she nodded and they grabbed the rusted rungs and began to ascend After the long uphill run it was torture to scale the ladder Their muscles burned and their limbs trembled, but they never stopped, never faltered

The ladder rose to a narroalk that surrounded the boxy wooden structure of the ranger outpost The catas red with rust and littered with old birds nests and anirime, and Benny couldn’t see in He pulled his bokken out of his belt,

"Stay here," he told Nix, and she crouched down at the top of the ladder She had no weapon, and Benny thought that her eyes looked terrified and maybe a little crazy He couldn’t bla she’d been through?

With the bokken poised to thrust or strike, hethe catwalk Darkness was closing its hands around the from the peaked roof of the tower The walls and ere pitted from weather, and none of it looked safe, and here and there were sht have been so else

At the corner he paused and looked around the edge, but the catas eood thing or a bad thing? He didn’t know

He crept forward, breathing shallowly, sweat running down his hot face

Three soft steps took him to the door, and he paused, drew a breath, and then kicked the door open The ancient hinges squealed, as if they were in pain, and the door swung inward and stopped, ja soft that crunched like leaves Benny waited for an attack, for

He moved inside and looked quickly around … and then lowered his sword

Except for leaves and branches froosticks of furniture, the place was en erly opened it The light was so bad that he couldn’t see a thing, so he took a match from his pocket and scraped the sulfur on the doorfralow, Benny saw that the tiny cubicle held only a toilet and sink, but the water had long ago evaporated, and the corners were filled with trash and rags

Benny froze He held the flickering s It was crammed into the corner between the wall and the toilet Leaves and other debris covered it, and the chitinous carcasses of dead bugs were littered around

The leamed dully frole of old twigs

No … not twigs Bones

He set his sword down and used his thuer to lift a bit of the fabric, and as he did, he understood what this was The rags were the reold cord An old flat-brie was pinned to the crown Benny had never ers in books This was the ranger Had he been bitten and crawled in here to die? No … that made no sense He’d have turned Then Benny considered the pistol, and he understood The man had been bitten, and he’d come in here to do as necessary to keep hih Benny knew this sort of thing had probably happened hundreds of thousands of ti it here, firsthand,down, but he had enough light left to poke a

M Horwitz