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Chong said, “Something’s dead out there.”
“I’d better get Nix,” said Benny.
16
LILAH ANGRILY FISTED THE TEARS FROM HER EYES AND GLARED AROUND AS IF ready to bash anyone who happened to be a witness to those tears. She detested weakness of any kind. It was something she could barely tolerate in her friends and would not allow in herself.
Especially after what had happened a month ago. After Tom led them out of town, their group had gotten separated. Chong, torn by guilt for having inadvertently caused Nix’s face to be slashed, and generally feeling like the town boy he was, had run away, requiring that Tom go and find him. That night, while Nix, Benny, and Lilah waited for Tom’s return in a deserted monk’s way station, the place was overrun by a sea of zoms. Thousands upon thousands of them; more zoms than anyone had seen in one place since First Night. In the moments before the attack, Lilah had been arguing with Benny, and he accused her of deliberately ignoring and mocking Chong’s feelings for her. That hurt, because it was entirely true. Lilah cared for Chong, but he was the weakest and least hardy of their team. He was not suited for the Ruin; not at all. When the zoms attacked, Lilah panicked and ran. It was the first time she had ever panicked since that terrible night when she had escaped from Gameland and was forced to quiet Annie. She’d thrown down her spear and run blindly into the dark. Even now she could not remember what her thoughts had been in those moments. Or even if she’d had any thoughts. All she remembered was running through the blackness, inside and out.
Awareness came back to her much later. She found herself curled on the ground, totally vulnerable and totally lucky to be alive. The zoms had not found her; but a strange mountain loner named the Greenman had. He hadn’t attacked her—just the reverse; he showed her kindness and patience, and helped her discover where she’d left her strength. He also spoke with her about love, about responsibility, about guilt, and about
the choices everyone makes.
Lilah had wept several times that day. And she wept even more bitterly that night, when the monster Preacher Jack shot Tom Imura in the back. It did not matter that Preacher Jack and Gameland both died that night. Tom Imura had died too. Lilah had clung to his hand as the last strength went out of it. Even now, a month later, thinking about it was like being punched in the heart.
She stood there in the forest and wept again. For Tom.
And for Annie.
God, how that little girl, Eve, looked like Annie. So much. Too much.
It was unfair.
It was cruel.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes and took as many deep breaths as she needed to in order to stop her chest from hitching with sobs. The forest waited for her. The day seemed to pause for her.
“Annie,” Lilah whispered to the forest. “Oh God, Annie, I miss you.”
She begged the forest to answer her. She begged for the ghost of Annie to speak inside her mind, like the ghost of Tom Imura sometimes did.
And suddenly the forest stopped being empty and silent.
She spun and faced the northern reach of the forest as noise filled the air. She frowned. This was not a forest sound. It was a sound she had only ever heard once, back in Mountainside.
It was the sound of a machine.
No . . . machines. At least two, coming from different directions.
The sounds rode the breeze toward her from different directions. Motor sounds, clearly mechanical, like the hand-crank generators in the town’s hospital.
Lilah ducked behind a tumble of rocks, going low and still, melting into the landscape as the motor sounds grew from a growl to a roar.
The leaves of the forest wall parted, and Lilah beheld something that shocked her. Something she’d believed belonged only to a world that no longer existed.
Two men came out of the woods, one on either side of the stream. They moved fast, but they were not running, nor were they astride horses, and suddenly she understood the nature of the cart tracks she had seen. These men sat on the backs of machines.
They were riding four-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 name or anything like that. They appear to be mindless, but that can’t be true. Some zoms can turn a door handle. All of them remember how to walk, climb stairs, and get back to their feet after they’ve been knocked down. They know how to use their hands for things like grabbing, tearing, pulling, or holding something or someone. Most of them can recognize the difference between a blank wall and one with a window or door, because they try to get through those. And all of them remember how to bite, eat, and swallow.”
But . . . do they remember anything else? Maybe something that we don’t know they remember?
That thought sometimes keeps me up at night.
