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"You have to be warrior smart," Tom once told them "And a smart warrior looks ahead Watch for the wind as it coein If you want to hide in its sound andto move as the wind reaches you Don’t chase the wind--let it push you"

Don’t chase the wind, thought Chong That was exactly what he was hearing

He held his position

Then he caught a whiff of so that it was the rotting stench of a zom, but he shook his head and took another sniff at the odor on the breeze It was similar to the spoiled-meat smell of cadaverine or putrescence

The sounds were louder now Whoever was sneaking through the woods was coht it down He looked around and studied the woods for a couple of good choices for escape routes if the stranger caht, a stony path shaded by chokeberry and bitterbrush shrubs He edged toward it, ready to bolt

A ed fro the other way Chong froze and stared at the stranger

And strange he was

The e biceps like soccer balls, a freakishly overdeveloped chest, and almost no neck at all He wore the same black clothes as the people on the ish breeze

Theslipped soundlessly behind a bush, certain that he hadn’t been spotted

A pair of angel wings had been carefully embroidered on the man’s shirt, and around his neck was a chunky steel chain fronized it at once

A dog whistle Benny was right

What drew Chong’s eye, though, and sent a thrill of icy fear through hi, twisted wooden handle froon

A scythe

Chong remembered the word Riot had used

Reapers

Histo the forest, rim, but then a s," said the reaper as he brought the scythe up andwill only make it hurt more"

28

SHE DRIFTED IN DARKNESS

Lost

The Lost Girl

That hat people called her

Lost

For years the travelers in the Ruin believed that she was a host

In the towns, she was a cahten children

There were a dozen versions of the Lost Girl story, and in each one of theot her Sometimes it was crazed loners Sometih, in every version of the legend

When Benny, Nix, and Toht her to Mountainside and she learned about those stories, she laughed They were stupid stories Silly

A teenage girl, living alone? With no one to protect her?

No, they all said Couldn’t happen She would die

The Lost Girl Dead according to everyone who spun a tale about her It was iirl to survive out in the Ruin alone Everyone knew that There were too ers Zoms and wild animals and bounty hunters There were crazed loners and cannibals and a thousand different kinds of disease

Stupid stories, she told herself Except at night, when she thought about them in the private darkness of her bedrooh to be weak That hen she cried That hen she believed that she was living on borrowed tinificant to pause long enough to collect

Except that death collected everyone Death is like that Relentlessly efficient

Borrowed time is no place to live

Lilah had often feared that they were right

Now she was sure they were

That was the only thought that would fit into her head as she lay suspended in darkness

She remembered the boar Feral, massive Four hundred pounds at least

Both dead and deadly

But animals can’t become zoms It doesn’t work like that

Unless, somehow, it does

The Lost Girl should not be alive

Unless, so and yet not falling Pinpricks of pain held her aloft, and for a long time she could not understand that

Little points of pain all along her body Except for her hands, which hung down into the black well of nothingness

Above her, she heard the grunt of the boar and the scuff of its hoof on the edge of the rocky shelf Then dirt and loose stones tuhs She heard a rustling sound as the debris fell past her It sounded like foliage, like pine boughs and vine leaves being pelted by rain

She forced one eye to open It was sh red She blinked and blinked until tears ran pink from the corners of her eyes Above her--thirty feet at least--the snout of the dead boar protruded over the edge of the stone shelf That ht with it a fresh burst of adrenaline, and with adrenaline came clarity

She knehere she was

She was suspended in a tangle of dense trees and tall shrubs, caught in thefor her to wake up and pay attention as death made his call to collect her

Lilah tried to move, to lift her arms, and suddenly the whole assembly of branches shifted with her Pinecones rained down on her Angry birds fled the trees

How far doas the ground? The cleft was so choked with foliage that she had not been able to see the bottom It could be six feet below her It could be sixty She wished she kne badly she was hurt Or where