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"Lady!" he yelled "Run!"

The worass to where he stood For a moment all the zoms froze in place as they searched for the source of the yelling voice

"Run!" yelled Benny again

The woman turned away from him and looked at the zoms There were at least forty of the from the darkness under the trees The zoms moved with the jerky aardness that Benny always found so awful Like badly manipulated puppets Their hands rose as they reached out for fresh meat

However, the woman turned sloay from them and faced Benny once asped, unable to bear the sight of another death

And the zombies lumbered past her She stood there as a tide of therab her, did not try to bite her They ignored her except to angle their line of approach to avoid her and continue walking down the slope

Toward Benny

Not one of them touched the woman or even looked in her direction

Confusion rooted Benny to the spot, and the sword hung al about her? Was she one of the dead and not a living person at all? Was she wearing cadaverine? Or was there soo the feast at hand for the one that stood gaping at them down the slope?

Run!

The word exploded inside his ht that it was Toered as if punched, and then he wheeled around and ran

3

HE RAN LIKE HELL

This was no time to contemplate mysteries He pounded down the slope faster than a jackrabbit as the er and followed

A zorass directly in his path There was no way to avoid the thing, not with all the momentum of the doard run, so he tucked his head and drove his shoulder into it like he was trying to bust through a line of offensive backs on the school football field The zo creature

More zo out from behind tumbled boulders Benny still held To it on zoms Not unless he had no choice These creatures were not evil, they were dead Mindless Unless he could co at the He knew they couldn’t feel pain and wouldn’t care, but Benny felt like some kind of malicious bully

On the other hand, there was that whole survival thing As three zoh, the hand holding the sword ht The blade swept upward through one set of reaching ar but air With a deft twist of his shoulder, he flicked the blade sideways and a zo into the bushes Another cut left the third zo froh

"Sorry!" Benny yelled as he burst through the now disintegrating line of three zoms

But there wereat hiers fued and dodged and dove through theround

His foot hit a rock and he sprawled forward; the sword flew from his hand and clattered thirty feet down the slope

"No!" he cried as the sword vanished in the tall, dry grass

Before Benny could get up, a zorabbed his cuff

"Get away!" Benny yelled as he thrashed and kicked and fought his way free He scrambled to his feet, but his balance was bad and the slope was steep, so he ran like a sloppy dog on hands and feet for a dozen paces until he could get fully upright again

More and ered down the hill after him Benny had no idea where they had come from, or why there were soin packs rather than alone as they’d always done before A e by thousands of the behavior was happening was another of the mysteries that no one had an answer for

"To his brother’s name as he ran He didn’t knohy he spoke the nauidance from the best zombie hunter who had ever worked the Ruin Or ht hi beyond the lessons Torowled as he ran, and he tried to ree The ways of the salitter on metal ten paces downslope, and Benny leaped at the fallen sword, grabbing it by the handle with his left hand, switching it into a two-handed grip even while his legs continued to run at full speed Zoms came at him, and the sword sees and heads flew into the hot sunlight

I aht I am an Imura I have Toht

You’re about to be lunch, you moron, muttered his inner voice For once Benny could not ument

Everywhere he looked he saw another withered figure lurching toward hi trees or from between tall shrubs He knew--he knew--that this was not a coordinated trap Zoms couldn’t think It wasn’t thatHe must have simply had the bad luck to run into a swarm of them that was spread out across the whole width of the slope

Run! yelled his inner voice Faster!

He wanted to tell his inner voice to stop offering stupid advice andthat didn’t involve ending up in the digestive tracts of a hundred zoht Good plan

Then he saw that the tall grass twenty yards down the slope hid the dark cleft of a small ravine It ran the entire width of the slope, which was bad news, but it was less than ten feet across, which was good