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Solomon did not move as the horde of the dead passed below him. He could handle himself against a small pack. He’d done it. More than once. But this was an army of the dead.
What was drawing them?
As he chewed on that, another th
ought occurred to him. Another question. An ugly, terrible question, and he rose slightly and looked out over the tops of the trees that covered the mountain slope down toward the farmlands.
Perhaps the question was not what was drawing them. Perhaps it was more frightening than that.
Maybe it was . . .
“What’s chasing them?” he murmured aloud.
Was there something out there in the east that was driving all these zoms westward?
If so . . . dear God, what could it be?
Solomon Jones tried to swallow, but his throat had gone dry. Below him the last of the zoms lurched past.
He waited five more minutes, and then he dropped to the ground, landing in a tense crouch, eyes cutting left and right, looking for stragglers.
But the forest had become deathly quiet.
There was a bounty job waiting to be finished, but that was up north. However, Solomon turned to the southwest. He had to tell someone about this. People had to know. The right people.
He nodded to himself and set out at a run through the forest.
Looking for Tom Imura.
2
Girls
(Mountainside)
Lou Chong wondered if throwing himself off the guard tower would be better than going home. If he jumped over the rail, the worst that could happen would be a crushing impact on the ground, after which he’d be devoured by zoms.
“You are a total chicken,” observed Benny Imura, who was sitting on a wooden crate in the far corner of the tower.
“Obviously,” agreed Chong. “What’s your point?”
Benny shook his head. “Dude, it’s so easy. She lives at your house. You see her every day. All you have to do is say something to her.”
“Really,” replied Chong as he folded his arms and leaned against the rail. “That’s all I have to do. I go up to a girl who is a year older than me; a girl who has lived alone for years doing nothing but killing zombies and rogue bounty hunters; a girl who knows more ways to kill me than I know how to die; a girl who fought in the zombie pits at Gameland when she was eleven; a girl—I might add—who is skilled with every kind of lethal weapon from handguns to swords . . . you want me to go up to that girl and just ask her to the summer dance? That’s what you think is easy?”
“Sure.”
“So, I was right all along. You are brain dead.”
“Hey, I—”
“I mean, are you trying to get me killed?”
“You have to admit that she’s hot.”
Chong cocked his head to one side. “No, I don’t think ‘hot’ is really adequate, do you?”
“And we both know that she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
