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“A real monster,” said Benny.
Dr. Skillz nodded. “For sure. There’s killing and then there’s murder. Brother Dave and the girls never hurt no one.”
“What … should we do?”
“Quiet them,” said J-Dog. “Put ’em to rest.”
“No,” said Nix and Dr. Skillz at the same time.
“It’s not what they would want,” said Benny.
J-Dog sighed, and under his breath muttered, “Son of a bitch must pay.”
“Word. But dude, we’d better roll,” suggested J-Dog. “Or we won’t have a choice.”
They turned and hurried away at a light jog, putting a mile of crooked road between them and the zoms. Soon Brother David, Sister Shanti, and Sister Sarah were out of sight. Benny knew that without prey to follow, the zoms would stop pursuing them. He wondered if they would stand in the road for years like so many zoms did.
They slowed and walked under the shade of a line of young white oaks. “Story time,” said J-Dog. “The kahuna said—”
“Who?” interrupted Benny.
“Tom, man. Tom’s the big kahuna. He’s a crusher, he’s the legend.”
“Okay … but can we just call him ‘Tom’?”
Dr. Skillz grinned. “You guys are rough.”
“We don’t speak surfer,” said Nix. “We’ve never even seen the ocean.”
“Yeah.” Dr. Skillz sighed. “And we ain’t seen it since First Night. Sucks.”
“Tom,” prompted Benny.
“Right … Tom said you guys were heading east to find the jet. Said to meet you at the way station, but we just came from there and it’s mosty-toasty. Someone had a luau supremo and roasted a lot of zoms.”
“That would be us,” said Benny uneasily. He and Nix explained what happened.
Dr. Skillz grinned. “Way to think outside the box, duderman.”
“We lost Lilah, though,” said Nix. “She ran away.”
“Spook girl got spooked?” J-Dog shook his head. “Lot of forest to get lost in. Anyway … Tom said you’d be hitting Brother Dave’s first and then cruising to Wawona, so we caught a wave and here we are.”
“Nice timing,” said Benny appreciatively. “Thanks.”
“Hey, our pleasure,” Dr. Skillz said with a grin. “Fast Tommy’s saved our butts enough times.”
“Totally,” said J-Dog. “Wawona’s not far from here. Good place to kick back.”
“Is that where you were coming from?” asked Benny.
Dr. Skillz removed his shades to clean them. “Nah. We ain’t been there in almost three months. Been doing a lot of guard work for the scavenge team way over at Lushmeadows Estates. Got hired to clear out all the zoms and then babysit the scavenger team.”
J-Dog gave an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah … made some nice green, too. We ran into Tom last week and told him we’d be crashing at Wawona, though. Still some snow high up, so we were gonna rest up, then go high and snowboard. It’ll be a powwow for sure. Saaaa-weeeeet!”
“Um. Okay,” said Benny uncertainly, not sure what a “snowboard” was.
“We were heading to Wawona,” Nix interjected, “but we don’t have to. I mean … there’s four of us now. Shouldn’t we go try and find Tom and Chong?”
