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They were on a slope that led up to a shadowy ht There were far fewer zo However, that was not what Nix was pointing to A figure stood at the top of the path Benny had to blink the stinging smoke out of his eyes to make it out At first it looked like a tall shrubbery, but then it asped

Froure to be a man, but otherwise it was i a s coat onto which leaves and pinecones had been sewn His face was entirely covered by a round mask made up of oak leaves Benny kneho it was, even in the dark He knew him from Tom’s description and from his own Zogering out of the forest; a few even burassy path The Greener to the "lips" of his mask

Benny and Nix fell silent and stood as still as statues Below the the fire toward the fall of rocks It was not spreading into the hills, and Benny was grateful for small mercies He didn’t want to cause even more problems for Tom, and he certainly didn’t want to start a forest fire

It took a long time for the zoms to pass Benny tried to count off the seconds and ather Nix in his arh to make them both screa but as all around them

Then it was over The last of the zos of a house painter’s coveralls--tottered past He had a butcher knife buried in his chest, but the blade was pitted with rust The creature turned an e moment, and despite all the terror that still crouched in his chest, Benny felt sorry for him He almost said as looed his sleeve, and Benny looked up to see that the Green them with slow movements of his hand Then he turned and walked toward the woods without waiting to see if Benny and Nix were following

"Who is that?" Nix asked "Is that Lilah? What’s she wearing?"

Benny shook his head "It’s the Greenman"

"Why’s he dressed like that?"

"Tom says that he found some way to blend into the forest Even the zoms don’t see him" He lowered his sword and reached out his hand "Co him one of her fierce squeezes "Where’s Lilah?" she asked

"I don’t know I saw her run … but then I lost her"

"Do--do you think she got out?"

"Absolutely," he said carefully "Lilah’s used to taking care of herself" Though as he said it he was re the mad, desperate look in her eyes He wondered about his own sanity After all, he had just set an enormous fire and was pretty sure he had seen Charlie Pink-eye standing alive but unharmed in the middle of a field of zoms Benny debated for less than half a millisecond about whether to tell Nix about this now, and realized that it was soht At the moment they needed safety and time to check for injuries The burn on Benny’s shoulder felt white hot, and he was not 100 percent positive that the carpet coats had saved the dead They could both be infected, and that thought nearly dropped Benny in his tracks

Nix grabbed his arm and pulled him "Come on," she said, and they hurried up the hill after the Greenot to the top of the hill and entered the forest path, the strange figure was gone

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Zoht, they say that they used fire to scare off the zoms They say that zoms won’t cross a line of fire, that they’ll retreat from a torch They say that if a zo

He says that a zoh fire He says that they are attracted to its light andzoms walk as far as a hundred yards before the heat did so e to muscles and tendons that they couldn’t walk any cities, waves of radioactive zo, and people sometimes died from the intense radioactivity before the zoms could bite them

What ARE they?

40

"SOMETHING’S COMING!" WHISPERED SALLY TWO-KNIVES

Toers curled around the handle of his sword They were huddled together under the eaves of an olive tree that grew ae of the largest boulder, To one of her knives He tuned that out and focused on the darkened woods beyond Before setting up their tes and scattered the had brought them both to full alertness

There was a second snap And a third Whoever was out there didn’t care about s Either the person was traveling with a party that was so heavily ar the attention of the living dead; or they were the living dead To part of the rock, the shadows, and the forest He had reluctantly accepted some of Sally’s cadaverine only because it would have been virtually iht With one injured arm and a bad stab wound, Sally would be lucky if she could walk Forget cliure stepped out froer, possibly thirteen when he died Now immortal in the cruelest sense of the word His eyes roved across the gap between the boulders and the olive tree but did not linger on To slack, the lips were rubbery The boy wore a grieles Lakers T-shirt and what looked like swier’s feet were bare, and the bloodless skin was so badly torn that Tom could see tendons and bones He wanted to close his eyes or look away, but the boy was still a zom and he was still a threat

To the trail and vanished into the glooo back inside the circle of rocks when he paused and straightened Was the southeastern sky … red? The canopy of leaves was too thick to allow limpse of the sky, but it seelow Was it a trick of the light? He couldn’t tell

Tom relaxed and moved back into the protection of the rocks

"Zoreed Tom

"You quiet hied Everyone who knew Tom are that he wouldn’t kill a zom unless it was part of a closure job or self-defense This zom had not been aware of him or Sally and was therefore no immediate threat

Tom settled down and passed her his canteen She drank and handed it back

"Been a lot more zoms in these woods lately," she said "Last week, ten days Getting so you can’t take two steps without tripping over one"

"Really?" Tom said, surprised "This was always a quiet section It’s why I brought the kids up here What’s drawing the zo out of the east lately Weird stuff I saw a same trail as some elk Bunch of monkeys, too Haven’t seen a o Zoo a o, but I’ve seen a slew of them lately"