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"I--"

"I’m serious, Benny Unless we find where this plane ca for our lives Is that what you want? Is that why you came out here?"

He looked up at the cloudless blue sky and did not look at her "Nix, you know exactly why I came out here"

"Look, Benny," she said in the softest voice he’d heard her use in weeks "I know things have been bad"

He dared not turn This was hardly the first ti, or perhaps what he was feeling Nix was always e

"Give me time," she said

She did not wait for him to answer She turned away and walked down the slope to the piece of plastic sheeting that hung frohtly and watched as she began to climb

48

LILAH DID NOT SCREAM A WAR CRY AS SHE JUMPED DOWN TO FACE THE boars She did not need to hype herself up for the fight; every nerve in her body was already blazing with the anticipation of battle and pain

The pain in her side was a searing white-hot inferno, but she sed it, using the pain as fuel, knowing it would shotgun adrenaline into her systeressive, more vicious It would keep the fear under control And there was a lot of fear She never pretended to be fearless, not to others and never to herself

She did not fear her own death Not really

She feared not living, and to her that wasn’t the sa ain She would never see the exasperation he tried so hard to hide whenever she did or said so that wasn’t "acceptable" to the people in town She would never hear his soft voice as he recited poetry Dickinson, Rossetti, Keats She would never feel the war’s hands were alar outside

She would never kiss hiet to say the words that she ached to say

So she said them now, just in case Just to have them out there, to put the," she murmured quietly, "I love you"

It was unlikely that he would ever get to hear her say those words The thought of theseall that away fro mad

With a feral snarl that would probably have scared the life out of Chong, Lilah dropped froravity Her snohite hair whipped away from her face as she plummeted

She struck the closest boar feetfirst with a dead-weight ih it was nearly five tiht and ht shoulder, and the iash in her side However, Lilah bent her knees as she struck, letting the big ile knee joints

The impact knocked the boar sideways into a second animal, and Lilah fell backward away froht way, tucked, rolled, and came up onto the balls of her feet

All the boars squealed in a killing frenzy Lilah wasted no ti her ax in a high overhand blow that whistled through the air The blade sht into its brain The creature cried out and then instantly collapsed, dead for gone and forever

Lilah ith its fall, letting the creature’s oeight tear the blade free

She’d tiht The first boar was down between her and the others That bought her two seconds of time She needed one

Lilah whipped the ax over and around her head just as a second boar scrabbled over the dead one, and the blade struck it square in the eye socket The steel stabbed through one eye and out the other side

But the boar kept charging

The puncture had o was now fatal The boar tossed its head and tore the ax handle from her hands as easily as she could have taken a toy away froered back and nearly fell Her ax went flying into the weeds on the far side of the clearing It ht as well have been on the far side of the ood it would do her now

The boars that had fallen were back on their feet, and the whole pack charged at her

Lilah screa more of her wound open up as she rose once more to her feet She ran, and the pain chased her as surely as did the pack of boars

The clearing was covered in short, dry grass that had withered to a lusterless brown As Lilah ran across it, heading for the shelter of a boulder, she saw a darker brown alea Sauer pistol were right there!

But the boars were too close

Lilah ran past her gun and reached the boulder a split second before the pigs caught up She slapped the curve of the rock and launched her body onto it and then over it The boars slammed into the stone, one after another, their dead brains too dae They rebounded from the impact, and as Lilah ran around the far side of the rock, she saw that one of the it as a threat, the daed stuh her whole left side burned with fresh blood, then scooped up the holster, grabbed the butt of the pistol, racked the slide, skidded to a stop, whirled, and brought the gun up as the boars barreled straight toward her

And then everything went a little crazy

As she pulled the trigger there were two blasts

Not one

The lead boar pitched down and tu with their fellows, crashing into and over one another in a massive pile Only one boar reht at Lilah

Then so out of the woods and struck the third boar like ait sideways and down The new creature rattled with the sound of lireat horned hel Lilah had ever seen A ed down thethe undead creature to pieces It did not bite at all but instead smashed and tore with the blades welded to its armor

The last three boars rose from where they had fallen over the one Lilah had shot One took a single lurching step toward her, paused for a moment, and then fell over dead

As it landed, Lilah saw the black dilared at her They grunted with awful hunger and charged

Lilah brought her gun up, but a voice yelled, "No!"

And a second figure ca this tiht in the path of the charging boars The pale sunlight that slanted down through the trees glittered on the edge of a long sword the man raised above his head

Not just any kind of sword

A katana

The s and slashed low, left and right, and suddenly the ani on each sheared clean away Thewith incredible speed and precision so that it appeared as if the boars rated Then he pivoted andthe point of his sword through the weakest parts of the creatures’ skulls and destroying the spark of unnatural life that burned in their zo rose from the destroyed hulk of the other boar

Lilah froze, her pistol clamped in hands that now treh her nerve endings, and shadoere piling up inside her le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>