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Two men came out of the woods, one on either side of the strea, nor were they astride horses, and suddenly she understood the nature of the cart tracks she had seen Thesefour-wheeled motorcycles

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Can Zoms Think?

Tom said, "As far as we know, zoms have no memory of their previous lives They don’t respond to their na like that They appear to be mindless, but that can’t be true Some zoms can turn a door handle All of theet back to their feet after they’ve been knocked down They kno to use their hands for things like grabbing, tearing, pulling, or holding sonize the difference between a blank wall and one with aor door, because they try to get through those And all of them remember how to bite, eat, and s"

Butdo they re that we don’t know they reht

17

BENNY WOKE NIX UP AND ASKED HER TO COME TO THE EDGE OF THE ravine She carried Eve, as so thoroughly asleep that she drooped bonelessly in Nix’s arreen eyes studied the dance of black-winged birds in the sky She gave a slow shake of her head

"This is bad," she said "How long have they been circling?"

"I don’t know," said Benny "At least an hour, and there’s a lot more of them over the forest See?" He turned and pointed to the east There were at least twenty of the carrion birds, and ’s mouth slowly fell open He murmured, "Lilah"

"If she was in trouble, we’d have heard gunshots," said Benny "But someone else"

He trailed off as they all looked at Eve

"Oh,a different tack, "there could be so else dead out there We’ve seen half the anih Ever since the fall of civilization, wild animals from zoos and circuses had escaped to breed in the Ruin There were rumors of all kinds of exotic creatures, from rivers filled with hippos to herds of zebras Shortly after Tootten firsthand experience, chancing upon a cranky mother rhino that had tra her calf She nearly trampled Benny and his friends, too Since then they’d seen nize, and at least three species of deerlike animals with horns that none of thee and sht down either by zoms, disease, or the neilderness predators

Benny nodded at the pistol Nix wore in a nylon shoulder harness To two spaced shots exactly ten seconds apart was a signal they’d agreed on If any of them heard it, they were supposed to come back to camp as quickly--and cautiously--as possible Gunshots carried with the zombies, so they were only to be used in an absolute worst-case scenario The other consideration was that it wasted bullets Lilah had thirty-one rounds for the Sig Sauer automatic she carried, and there were fourteen for Tohtfully and made no move to set Eve down She carried the revolver, partly because she was a far better shot than Benny, and partly because Benny had a dislike and distrust of guns that had increased into an outright hatred since Gameland The psychopathic old un They were tools only, to be used--like the signal plan--as a last resort

"We don’t have a lot of bullets left," said Nix "Besidesgunshots make a lot of noise, and we don’t knonodded "Lilah can take care of herself; and she won’t appreciate you second-guessing her like this"

"A warning isn’t second-guessing," replied Benny "She doesn’t knohat’s out there"

"Neither do we," said Chong "I mean, let’s have a little perspective here A few vultures is a mystery, not a certain catastrophe"

"Maybe," Benny said dubiously, but he did not ask Nix for the gun For her part, Nix did not seeive it over She stroked Eve’s fine blond hair and studied the sky

Chong opened his mouth to say more, but instead he froze and stared past Benny and Nix For the second ti’s face lost all color, and he suddenly whipped his bokken out of its canvas sheath

Benny and Nix spun too, their reflexes honed by erous travel in the Ruin Benny’s sword flashed in the sunlight, but then it jolted to a halt as his whole body becaid

"Oh my God," breathed Nix in a terrified whisper

There were no zoht have been so they could handle

This was different This was e and powerful and incredibly deadly, was a lion

18

LILAH STARED SLACK-JAWED AT THE MOTORCYCLES

She had read about such vehicles in books, had seen abandoned ones on the roads, their bodies rusted and their drivers gone to wander the world as living dead She had never iined she would see one still in operation--let alone two of them Yet here they were,condition How had thesethis long after First Night? Where did they find fuel that was still chehtly sealed containers, asoline broke down over time

Lilah ducked down behind a bush The motorbikes zoomed past her, and as they went she winced at the stink of the thick exhaust fumes It was a terrible and unnatural s across his back The one on the left bank wore a heavy fire ax in a sling; the othertwo-handed sword in a leather scabbard Lilah thought that such a weapon must have been looted from a museum or private collection She’d seen bounty hunters with siuns before First Night, but practical in the world of the dead, because a sword is quiet and does not need to be reloaded

Lilah left her place of conceal as quickly as caution would allow Half a , and she could travel at a jog trot all day long Even so, the four-wheeled vehicles quickly outpaced her and vanished into nothingtheir tire tracks for two ain They were stationary now, their gru somewhere around a bend in the stream She faded into the woods and circled to co a line of broken boulders as cover

Then she heard ines, and she slid into a hollow formed by several tumbled rocks Fiveout of the woods and went splashing along the shallow streahed and fell silent as thesilence she could hear the chatter of at least a dozen voices, and as she watched, she saw people roups of two or three