Page 1 (1/2)

PART ONE

A FALL OF ANGELS

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you s

--JOHN BRIGHT

(FROM A SPEECH TO PARLIAMENT, FEBRUARY 23, 1855)

1

BENNY IMURA THOUGHT, I’M GOING TO DIE

The hundred zoree

2

FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO NOTHING AND NOBODY WAS TRYING TO KILL Benny I on a flat rock, sharpening a sword and brooding He are that he was brooding He even had a brooding face for when other people were around Now, though, he was alone, and he let the s were deeper, more useful, but also less fun When you’re alone, you can’t crack a joke to make the moment feel better

There were very few ood to Benny Not any home

He was a mile from where he and his friends had camped in a forest of desert trees deep in southern Nevada Every ti the airplane he and Nix had seen, every single inch forward, he was farther from home than he had ever been

He used to hate the idea of leaving hoh in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California Ho water and hot apple pie on the porch But that had been home with his brother, Tom It had been a whole hometoith Nix and her mother

Now Nix’s mom was dead, and Tom was dead

Home wasn’t home anymore

As the road had unrolled itself in front of Benny, Nix, Chong, and Lilah, and melted intoso home

Benny wasn’t sure he liked it, but he felt in soe way that it hat he needed, and maybe even what he deserved No comforts No safe haven The world was a hard place, and this desert was brutal, and Benny knew that if he was going to survive in the world, then he would have to becoher even than Tom, because Tom had fallen

He brooded on this as he sat on his rock and carefully sharpened the long sword, the kaed to To a sas an appropriate task while brooding The blade had to be cared for and that required focus, and a focused h the obstacle course of thoughts and h Benny was sad--deep into the core of who he was--he found some measure of satisfaction in the hardships of the road and the skill required to hone this deadly blade

As he worked, he occasionally glanced around Benny had never seen a desert before, and he appreciated its simplicity It was vast and empty and incredibly beautiful So many trees and birds that he had only read about in books Andno people

That was good and bad The bad part was that there was no one they could ask about the plane The good was that no one had tried to shoot them, torture them, kidnap them, or eat theory

This o alone into the woods, partly to practice the , stealth, observation And partly to be alone with his thoughts

Benny was not happy as going on inside his head Accepting Tom’s death should have been easy Well, if not easy, then natural After all, in Benny’s lifetime the whole world had died More than seven billion people had fallen since First Night Some to the zo Soery into which overnments and the military and society Some were killed in the battles, blown to radioactive dust as nuclear boions of walking dead Andto ordinary infections, injuries, starvation, and the wildfire spread of diseases that sprang from the death and rot that was everywhere Cholera, staph and influenza, tuberculosis, HIV, and sounchecked, with no infrastructure, no hospitals, no way to stop theiven that everyone Benny had ever met had been touched by death in one way or another, he should have been able to accept Tom’s death

Should have

But

Although To the battle of Ga dead That was incredibly strange It should have been wonderful, a blessing that Benny knew he should be grateful forbut he wasn’t He was confused by it And frightened, because he had no idea what itto everything Benny had learned in his nearly sixteen years Since First Night everyone who died, no matter how they died, reanis were

Until it wasn’t

Tom had not returned fro death" Neither had a murdered man they’d found in the woods the day they left town Sa with some of the bounty hunters killed in the battle of Gameland Benny didn’t knohy No one knehy It was aand hopeful The world, already strange and terrible, had becoer still

Moveure step out of the woods at the top of the slope eighty feet away He re to see if the zom would notice him

Except that this was not a zoure was slender, tall, definitely female, and almost certainly still alive She was dressed in black clothes--a loose long-sleeved shirt and pants--and there were dozens of pieces of thin red cloth tied around her Ankles, legs, torso, arht red, and they fluttered in the breeze so that for a weirdwhipped off her in ragged lines But as she stepped froht, Benny saw that the strea embroidered on the front of her shirt in white thread, but Benny could not n

He and his friends had notperson in weeks, and out here in the badlands they were more likely to er He waited to see if the woman had spotted him

She walked a few paces into the field and stared down the slope toward a line of tall bristlecone pines Even from this distance Benny could tell that the woal, like pictures of queens he had seen in old books Olive-skinned, withblack hair that fluttered in the same breeze that stirred the criht struck silver fire fro on a chain around her neck Benny was too far away to tell what it was, though he thought it looked like a whistle However, when the woman put it to her lips and blew, there was no sound at all, but suddenly the birds and itation

Then soh Benny and drove all other thoughts out of his mind Three men stepped out of the woods behind the woman Their clothes also fluttered in the wind, but for thes by violence, by weather, and by the inexorable claws of tiot to his feet very slowly Quick movements attracted the dead The zo toward her She seemed totally unaware of their presence as she continued to try and ures stepped out of the shadows under the trees More of the dead They kept erowing fear There was no choice He had to warn her The dead were almost upon her