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“No!” cried Benny.
And the reaper said, “Unnh . . .”
It was a soft, surprised grunt.
The scythe trembled in the air and then fell backward as the reaper’s fingers uncurled from it. It landed hard.
The reaper’s knees began to bend. Slowly, slowly . . . until he dropped down into a kneeling position directly in front of Benny.
He said, “Unhh . . .” again.
Then the reaper fell flat on his face and did not move.
The other reapers stared in shocked horror.
Not at the fallen body. Nor at the leather-wrapped handle of the knife that stood up from between the reaper’s shoulder blades.
They stared past their leader’s corpse.
As did Benny.
A man stood there.
Tall. Grizzled. A scarred and tanned face and the coldest blue eyes Benny had ever seen. Beside the man stood a monster of a dog. Two hundred and fifty pounds of mastiff, but with armored plates all over him and a spiked helmet.
Joe Ledger said, “Sic ’em.”
Benny could swear the dog laughed as it leaped forward to attack the reapers.
And they, armed and in greater numbers, stood no chance at all.
16
South Fork Wildlife Area
Southern California
Hard miles broke slowly under their feet as they ran.
The woods all around them were filled with the dead, though, and every way they turned they encountered teams of reapers leading packs of zombies. Some packs had only a dozen of the dead, but the farther west they went, the larger the packs grew. Once they had to stop for ten minutes as a swarm of at least a thousand of the dead shambled by.
Samantha and Heather shared out the tassels among the girls, and there were enough for each of them to tie half a dozen to their clothes. For a while they worried whether that would be enough, but as the afternoon burned toward sunset, it became clear that the dead were not drawn to them. Either they could not smell living flesh through the chemical stench, or the stench deceived them into thinking the girls were other zombies.
All the time that they were running and hiding Samantha was trying to understand what she’d done back in the clearing. She could have given the reaper a chance to run, could have left her with at least a tassel. She could even have cut her throat and given her the quick death the woman apparently wanted.
Instead she’d left her to be consumed by monsters.
Please . . .
Even though the reaper’s screams had faded into nothingness hours ago, Samantha knew that they would echo inside the caverns of her soul forever.
Like all the girls, Samantha had grown up hard and along the way had been forced to spill blood many times. Human in defense, animals when hunting. Zombies constantly.
But never once had she been cruel.
Never once had she treated life without regard.
Never once had she been as much of a monster as the things that haunted and hunted her.
