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17
BENNY WOKE NIX UP AND ASKED HER TO COME TO THE EDGE OF THE ravine. She carried Eve, who was so thoroughly asleep that she drooped bonelessly in Nix’s arms. Nix’s intelligent green 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 more were drifting in on the thermal winds.
Chong’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, man,” said Chong.
“Or,” said Benny, trying a different tack, “there could be something else dead out there. We’ve seen half the animals from Noah’s Ark since we left town.”
It was true enough. 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 Tom led them from Mountainside they’d gotten firsthand experience, chancing upon a cranky mother rhino that had trampled an entire field of zoms while protecting her calf. She nearly trampled Benny and his friends, too. Since then they’d seen monkeys in the trees, giraffes, birds they did not recognize, and at least three species of deerlike animals with horns that none of them could name. And they had also found bones of animals, large and small, brought down either by zoms, disease, or the new wilderness predators.
Benny nodded at the pistol Nix wore in a nylon shoulder harness. Tom’s pistol. “Do you think we should warn Lilah?”
Firing 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 them the danger of attracting roaming 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 Tom’s .38 Smith & Wesson.
Nix chewed her lower lip thoughtfully 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 man, Preacher Jack, had shot Tom in the back with a gun. 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. “Besides . . . gunshots make a lot of noise, and we don’t know how many more zoms are in the forest.”
Chong nodded. “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 know what’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 seem anxious to give 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 time in a little over five minutes, Chong’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 months of training with Tom and weeks of dangerous travel in the Ruin. Benny’s sword flashed in the sunlight, but then it jolted to a halt as his whole body became rigid.
“Oh my God,” breathed Nix in a terrified whisper.
There were no zoms behind him.
Zoms—even a lot of them—might have been something they could handle.
This was different. This was much worse.
Instead, standing fifty yards away, huge 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 imagined she would see one still in operation—let alone two of them. Yet here they were, mud-smeared and battered, but clearly in working condition. How had these men gotten them to work? How had they kept them working this long after First Night? Where did they find fuel that was still chemically sound after fourteen years? Unless it was in tightly sealed containers, most forms of gasoline 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 smell.
Each of the men carried a weapon slung a
