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Zoms!
There were at least a half dozen of the living dead—men, women, even a child. All newly dead, some of them glistening with blood that had not yet dried.
Lilah’s heart sank. Now she knew what had happened to the other people who had camped here. The zoms moaned in freshly awakened hunger. They staggered through the tall grass, hands reaching awkwardly toward her, completely ignoring the two reapers as they shuffled past.
“Hey, girl!” yelled one of the reapers. “Drop your spear and give yourself up to the darkness. It wants you. The darkness wants to open the red door in your flesh. Why fight it? The darkness is beautiful. The darkness is eternal. The darkness is yours if you stop fighting and allow it to enfold you.”
The words had a cadence like scripture, but they were from no holy book Lilah had ever read—and in her solitude, she had read most of them. These words were intended to coax, but instead they made the hands that held her spear tighten with anger.
“Come on, kid,” said the second reaper. “Accept the truth. The darkness wants to take you. The darkness wants to take us all. It’s the will of God.”
Lilah had never been much for profanity, but as the men continued to call for her to open herself to the darkness, she responded with a series of phrases she’d learned at Gameland. It shocked the men to silence.
The dead kept coming.
Fifteen feet away now.
Lilah debated pulling her Sig Sauer. She had no doubt that she could put all the zoms down as well as the two men with less than a full magazine.
It would be noisy, though, and Lilah liked the quiet.
Instead she gave her spear a single arrogant twirl and charged straight at the zoms.
And the dead rushed at her on stiff and clumsy legs. All but one. A tall woman whose throat had been slashed rushed ahead of the pack, arms outstretched, mouth wide, racing toward Lilah.
A fast zom.
The running zombie grabbed for her, and Lilah uttered a feral growl as she jumped left and used the short leap to channel power into a vicious cut that took the zom across the upper chest. The heavy blade sheared through one arm, part of the chest, and clean through the dead woman’s spine; and the shock of the powerful blow reverberated through Lilah’s entire body. The creature instantly dropped into a boneless heap that would never move again.
Lilah’s heart was racing as adrenaline flooded through her bloodstream.
The slower zoms had reached her now and attacked in a ragged line. Two reached her first.
Lilah spun and swept the spear low, cutting the first one’s leg off at the knee; then she continued the swing and brought the weighted opposite end around in an overhand sweep that crushed the second z
ombie’s skull. Before it even had a chance to fall, Lilah pivoted and used the same metal knob to end the torment of the child zom.
Three down in two seconds.
She kicked out at one zom as it tried to dive for her thigh, its teeth clacking in the air. The kick jolted it to a stop in a half crouch, and she swept the knob up under its chin so hard and fast that its head snapped back, breaking its neck.
“Hey!” yelled one of the men, but Lilah ignored him. She’d seen no firearms on them. They could wait.
A cold hand closed on her shoulder, knotting her shirt in dead fingers as it sought to pull her backward toward its bloody teeth. Lilah went with the pull, but as she did so she spun her body in a violent pirouette. The torsion bent the zom’s arm backward so fast that bones splintered and the creature lost its grip. Lilah rammed the shaft of her spear across its throat and drove it into the last of the zoms, knocking them both to the ground. She thrust the blade into the neck of one, severing the spinal cord; then tore the blade free, twirled the spear again, and brought the heavy knob down on the last zombie’s skull. There was a pulpy whack and then the trail was still.
She turned toward the two reapers, who stood where they had been, their eyes goggling, mouths hanging open in total shock.
Lilah smiled at them.
And charged.
It had taken her five seconds to destroy the six zoms.
It took two seconds to cut both reapers down.
They reeled away, each of them clutching identical red lines across their throats. They gagged. They tried to speak, perhaps to protest the impossibility of everything that had just happened; but neither of them would ever speak their confusion. They dropped to their knees. One fell forward onto his face. The other toppled backward.
In the trees above them, the monkeys screamed in panic at the smell of death and blood.
