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“She’s never had a boyfriend,” corrected Chong. “Because she is a feral zombie killer. She’s killed everyone who ever tried to get near her.”
“She didn’t kill me.”
“Hope springs eternal,” murmured Chong.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” demanded Benny.
Chong began ticking items off on his fingers. “Being beaten viciously about the head and shoulders. Comprehensive humiliation. Thrusting of sharp objects through my flesh . . .”
Benny made loud clucking sounds.
Chong stared at him through narrowed eyes. “I said I was afraid of Lilah,” he said evenly. “I never said I was afraid of you. In fact, some recreational Benny-maiming might take the edge off the day.”
“Ha! I’m a professional zombie hunter now. My body is a weapon, my arms are spears, my legs are swords.”
He faked a kick at Chong, but the motion knocked Benny off his crate, and he crashed down onto the tower floor.
“Yes, a living weapon. I see,” observed Chong drily.
Benny came off the floor and tackled him, and they wrestled from one end of the guard tower to the other, making loud fighting sounds like they had in old comic books. POW! and KRUNCH!
Chong was pretending to bash Benny’s head against the wall when the shift supervisor bellowed up at them in a leather-throated voice. “What the bloody ’ell you two monkey-bangers doing up there? Do I have to come up and teach you how to act like adults?”
“We’re not adults,” Benny yelled, but before the words could get out, Chong clamped a hand over his mouth. All that escaped was a muffled nothing.
“Sorry!” Chong called down through the ladder hole. “There . . . um . . . was a wasp up here, and we were trying to swat it and—”
“Yeah, yeah,” growled the supervisor. “Whatever you two delinquents are doing—don’t.”
He stalked away, and the boys peered over the edge of the tower to watch him go.
“Thanks for getting me in trouble,” complained Chong.
“Happy to help.”
They got to their feet, and Chong dug a couple of apples out of his backpack, which hung on a wooden peg. He and Benny ate them noisily as they watched the cloud shadows sweep with dark majesty across the field of tall grass and silent zoms.
After a long time, Chong asked, “How are things with you and Nix?”
Benny took his time with that. “She’s going through some stuff. Her mom. Getting kidnapped. The fight. She’s . . .”
He let his words drift away with the clouds.
Beside him, Chong nodded. He had not been with Benny and Tom when the brothers had gone out hunting for the men who had murdered Nix’s mother and kidnapped Nix. Chong had stayed in Mountainside and spent a lot of time with Morgie Mitchell, who had been badly injured trying to protect Nix. Morgie had a skull fracture and concussion and was unconscious for four long, terrible days. All that time, Chong sat beside Morgie’s hospital bed and read to him. Adventure stories from old books. The Mortal Instruments, Harry Potter, The Maze Runner. Books Chong knew that Morgie liked.
The stories filled the still air of the hospital room, but Morgie slept through most of it, and when he finally woke up, he said that he couldn’t remember anything from the last few days. All of it was a blank, he insisted.
Chong looked in Morgie’s eyes when he asked if his friend truly did not remember the bounty hunters taking Nix. Morgie swore that he did not, but there was a frightened, furtive look in his eyes that made Chong wonder.
That was a few days ago, and the world seemed to have changed since then.
“Benny?” Chong asked after a few moments.
“Yeah.”
“About Nix. You falling in love?”
Benny didn’t answer. Chong nodded to himself.
