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“Benny,” cried Nix, “watch out!”
Benny twisted in his seat as something rushed at him from behind the corner of an overturned golf cart. There was a flash of milky-dead eyes and the snap of gray teeth, but he ducked under it and bashed his arm upward and back, knocking away the hands that tried to snatch him from the quad. The zom stumbled back into the path of Lilah’s machine, but the Lost Girl let go of her handlebars, raised her spear, and slashed as she cut sharply to the left. The empty eyes of the zom showed no trace of pain or surprise as the head leaped into the air. The body collapsed at once and the head rolled into the weeds.
The Lost Girl immediately released one hand from the weapon and grabbed for the handlebar, but it was too late. The right front wheel of her quad struck the edge of a thick, half-buried thigh bone and that side of the machine lifted, trapped by momentum. The engine roared as the quad leaned drunkenly over on two wheels. Lilah leaned hard to the right to try to save it, and Chong zoomed up and bumped his quad into the left rear of her vehicle. Lilah’s quad thumped down hard onto four wheels, but the jolt pitched her out of the saddle. She spun in the air, screaming, the spear pinwheeling over her. She crashed down between two of the dead, who spun toward her, reaching for the meal delivered to them with such unexpected force. The spear struck point-first into the ground and stuck quivering, ten feet too far away.
Benny saw all this over his shoulder, immediately jammed himself into a sliding, skidding, shrieking turn, and was blinded by his own dust plume. He jumped free of his quad and whipped his sword from its scabbard in an overhand draw that drew a line of silver fire through the dust. A hulking gray figure, naked except for one work boot, lunged for him and Benny cut through both arms below the elbow, then pivoted on the balls of his feet as he ducked low and sliced through both shins. The blade was razor sharp and Benny had trained hundreds upon hundreds of hours since inheriting the sword from Tom. The zom fell and Benny leaped over it. Quieting it could come later; Lilah was in danger right now.
As he burst out of the cloud and into the clear air, he saw how bad it was. Lilah was down in the weeds, wrestling with one zom and trying to fend another off with savage kicks of her sneakered feet. Blood completely covered one side of her face, and her mouth was twisted with pain and fury.
The truth of what was happening hit Benny like a baseball bat upside the head, and it meant that his earlier fear had come true. The cadaverine had worn off. The zoms came at them without hesitation and with a ravenous, unstoppable aggression.
Chong was nearby, fighting against a zom who must have been a basketball player before he died. Somehow he had lost his helmet, and his eyes were wild. The creature was nearly seven feet tall and moved with unnerving speed to not only try to grab Chong, but to evade counterattacks. Benny’s heart sank. This was one of the rare faster zoms, the ones either fully or partially infected with the mutagen. There was thought, planning, intelligence—however primitive—in its actions. Chong’s bow and arrows were still on his quad, and he fought with a bokken—a hardwood training sword. Unlike Nix and Benny, Chong preferred the wooden sword to sharpened steel.
Nix was fighting her way toward Chong, but there were zoms coming in from everywhere. Most were slow.
Some were not.
None, though, were as fast as the giant who was winning its fight against Chong.
The other quads were spaced out across the field. Riot and Morgie were way over to the right, more in line with the prison gate but farther back. Benny was torn between helping Lilah and rescuing Chong. He was sure they were both going to lose their fights.
“Nix!” he screamed as he peeled off toward Lilah. She was fighting two of them and was clearly hurt. As he tore across the bone-littered ground, Benny prayed that he hadn’t just killed his best friend.
Then he had no time for thinking.
There were three zombies closing in on the struggling form of Lilah. Of the two on the ground with her, she’d kicked one in the face so many times that its jaw hung loose and shattered, with rotted teeth falling all around. And yet it still tried to bite her.
The other zom had one handful of Lilah’s hair and with the other was pawing at her, trying to grab her throat.
Benny launched himself into a flying kick, catching the left-most zom square on the belt buckle. The impact propelled the zom backward and Benny landed on the balls of his feet, nearly fell face-first into the dirt, used his sword as a momentary brace, and turned a fall into a run. How he managed to keep hold of his sword he could never tell. He slashed with the blade, and the broken-jawed zom reeled back with the top three inches of its skull leaping up to expose a worm-infested brain. It collapsed down and Benny spun to try to take the other, but with her feet free, Lilah rolled onto her upper back, locked her ankles around the other zom’s neck, and snapped downward w
ith such force that the creature’s neck broke like a dry stick. Lilah got to her feet, snatched up the spear, and with a series of cuts so fast they were nothing but a blur, tore the zombies apart.
Then she screamed as she saw Chong go down behind his quad, crushed beneath a wave of the dead.
“If he dies,” she snarled at Benny as she broke into a run, “I’ll kill you.”
Fair enough, thought Benny, and ran to catch up.
The day, spinning downward, continued to fall.
34
LILAH ROARED OUT A SCREAM like a viking warrior from one of the old books Benny had read. Her clothes were in tatters, her face was painted bright red with blood, her pale hair whipped around her as she leaped into the air with her spear. The blade slashed down before she landed, the cut powered by her dropping weight and furious muscular strength. A zombie head flew and a zombie arm fell. Lilah spun the spear into a lateral cut that sent another undead monster toppling away, its jaw sheared off. Lilah kicked another in the side of the head, knocking it away from the struggling form beneath it.
The giant zombie fell back with a deep cut through the muscles and tendons of its right thigh, but it did not go all the way down. It swiped at Lilah, and there was a terrible light in its eyes as if the sight of someone so unprotected awoke the darkest of hungers. Lilah shifted away, engaging one of the zoms still trying to bite Chong, and the giant’s fingers closed—for the moment—on empty air.
Then Benny was there, and so was Nix, who seemed to come out of nowhere. They chopped at the living dead like fiends, like demons, and the dead fell before them. Benny cut a zom in half above the waist and shouldered another out of the way. He saw Chong’s face, gray with terror, eyes wild as he held his bokken like a barrier to push a snapping set of teeth way from him. Benny dared not cut again so close to Chong, so he kicked, and kicked again, and again until the weight pressing down on his friend shifted. Then he grabbed Chong by the tough collar of his carpet coat and heaved backward, aided by Chong’s frenzied kicks. Nix and Lilah tore into the zoms who tried to snatch at Chong’s ankles.
Benny caught Chong under the armpit and hauled him roughly to his feet.
“Where’s your helmet?” yelled Benny.
Chong looked around but couldn’t see it.
Suddenly Chong was snatched backward and up and Benny reeled in horror as he saw the giant, on its knees holding Chong in both hands, pulling the screaming teen toward a mouth filled with jagged, broken teeth.
Lilah and Benny both screamed as they rushed in, but another zom—smaller but just as fast as the giant—launched itself through the air and bore Lilah down. A fallen zom caught Benny by the ankle, using the grip to hold him while pulling itself forward for a bite. Benny let it bite, feeling the pain of teeth closing around his calf but trusting to the heavy indoor-outdoor carpet to protect his flesh. He used the pain of that bite to fuel his next slash, and the edge of the kami katana sheared through the giant’s leg above the knee. Cutting tendons wasn’t enough—he wanted to chop off the leg. That should do it. But the blade chunked into the heavy femur and jolted to a stop so abrupt it tore the handle from Benny’s grasp.
