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"That whatever caused the zo to an end?" Benny thought about it "That would be pretty a"
"If it’s true …," Nix said dubiously "Then there’s the big weirdness at the way station Brother David, Shanti, and SarahAnd all the stuff Tom sent for our road trip"
"And the zoms," Benny added "Tom told , like a herd of wild horses or a running bear He called it ‘flocking’ Is thatlast night?"
"No way," Nix said firht was no accident It felt like a planned attack I think someone drove them down out of the ry Forest"
They ate their apples in silence for a while
"Nix," Benny said tentatively, "there’s … so I didn’t want to say last night"
"Is it about Lilah?" Nix said quickly
He turned and looked at her
"Lilah? What about her? Because she ran off?"
Nix colored "No, neverto say?"
He took a breath "Last night … ere in the field with all those zoms? Before I started the fire? I … um … saw someone"
"Who?"
Benny cleared his throat "It was dark I was scared There were azo, but … I think I saw Charlie Pink-eye"
She whipped around and grabbed his sleeve with her s fists She shook hiainst the stones"
Nix abruptly stopped shaking him, but her fists stayed knotted in his sleeve "You saw him?"
"No, I said I wasn’t sure The dark and the zoms and all--"
"Was he alive or a zom?"
"I … don’t know"
"Don’t lie to me, Benny Imura!"
"I’ht have been alive, but the zo him"
"He could have had cadaverine on, Benny, just like we did"
"I know But soht not even have been hi tiot up and walked a dozen paces away, her arhtly around her chest as if she stood in a cold wind Benny got up more slowly but stayed by the wall
He watched her as she worked it through Every angle of her body seeed with tension Benny could only i out in Nix’s mind The man who had beaten and ht that somehow Charlie had orchestrated the zombie assault on the way station was horrible It also made a queer kind of sense, since a swarm of zombies had been used to destroy Charlie’s tea stiff and tre sun Benny waited for her Three rees, the harsh lines of tension drained from Nix’s shoulders and back When she turned around, Benny could see unshed tears in the corners of her eyes She looked at him blankly for a moment, and then her eyes snapped wide
She screa was a half second too late, as cold hands claed him backward over the stone wall Benny twisted wildly around and saw the face of the zom who had him A tall, thin man dressed in a tunic that looked like it had been made from an old bedsheet
"No!" Benny cried
It was Brother David
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Notes from Mrs Griswold’s science lecture on how cadaverine is made:
The cadaverine used in the Rot and Ruin is actually a mixture of cadaverine, putrescine, spermidine, and other vile ptoh they can be easily diluted in water or ethanol (but not really diluting the aro these compounds is not a project for a holassware, equipe level or industrial labs, and that equipht to Mountainside
The originalback to about 1890 Thisdichloropropane with sodium cyanide (a deadly poison) followed by reaction with zinc powder and hydrochloric acid This gives cadaverine Yuck
51
TOM KNELT BY A COLD CAMPFIRE AND STUDIED THE GROUND THIS WAS the second place where he’d found Chong’s footprints and signs of violence The first time had been the spot where Sally Two-Knives had tried to rescue Chong There were indeed two deadand Patch Lewis, bounty hunters of the low-life variety who usually ran with a third man named Stosh Lowinski These were two of the threezoms on their first trip into the Ruin Stosh, a beefy man who used a replica Arabian sciiven theh justice, but justice of a kind
Toed Roller-Derby blocker with one of the Rat City Rollergirl teaed the world Sally had been the ht her way across Seattle to her s April and Toby By the ti, the lobby was splashed with blood It took her a couple of years to tell Tos, and when she reached her tenth-floor apartle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>