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Chong just gave her a wan smile. Then he looked around. “What happened? I… can’t remember much.”
They told him about the attack in town. Chong looked horrified and saddened by the carnage.
“What happened here?” asked Ledger.
Chong’s face clouded as he picked through tangled memories. “I heard a sound. A crash, like a broken window. Abdul went to look, and then suddenly there were a bunch of zoms running down the hall.”
“Running?” echoed Nix. “Fast ones? Like R3’s?”
“I… guess,” said Chong, frowning. “It’s a little blurry.”
R3 zombies were one of several recent mutations the kids from California had fought. The R3’s had been exposed to experimental compounds that were intended to accelerate the life cycle of the parasites and essentially burn the infection out. The problem was that before that happened, those zoms became faster and, in many cases, smarter. Gutsy wondered if this was similar to what Collins and Morton had used on the soldiers who’d become ravagers.
“Weird thing is,” said Chong, “there seemed to be two different kinds of zoms, and I don’t think they liked each other all that much.”
“What do you mean?” asked Benny.
“Well… there were the ravagers like the ones we fought at the wall, all leather and chains. But there were some in regular clothes. Just people, you know? Except they were totally out of their minds. Actually raving and yelling.”
“Yelling what?” asked Gutsy.
“Just yelling. Not any actual words, just howls. Like people who are so angry they can’t even form words. These… yelling ones… they attacked two of the ravagers, but the ravagers put them down. It’s nuts, I know, but the ravagers seemed to be scared of them.”
“You must have seen it wrong,” said Alethea. “Ravagers aren’t afraid of anything.”
Chong shrugged. “Maybe. I did get hit pretty hard, so honestly I don’t know what’s real or not.”
“And maybe you saw what you thought you saw,” said Sam. “There are bodies back there dressed in street clothes. I didn’t see any obvious bites on them, now that I think about it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ledger, looking uneasy. “And their skin color was close to normal.”
“Wait,” said Spider. “Do regular people turn into ravagers, though? I thought those guys were all soldiers who’d been experimented on.”
“At this point,” said Ledger, “I don’t know. You got yourself a whole bunch of strange zombies down here in Texas. More mutations than I’ve ever seen. Tell you what, though—until now I haven’t been all that worried about the ravagers, because I figured, how many can there actually be? But if your average citizen can turn into one of them… Well, that’s a special kind of scary, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Spider, “it is.”
7
“HOW DID CAPTAIN COLLINS ESCAPE?” asked Benny.
Chong’s face turned bright red, and he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I… well… I guess I… um…”
“You let her go?” roared Alethea.
Lilah immediately got up in her face, but Alethea did not back down. Nix cut in between them and pushed them apart.
“He had to,” she said, then cut a look at Chong. “Didn’t you?”
Chong nodded, then hissed because nodding really hurt. “Yes. Ouch. Yes.”
They all understood it, even if they didn’t like it. Chong had been fighting a gang of fast ravagers or mutated shamblers. In a close-quarters battle, even a good archer wasn’t likely to win. Collins, however, was a tough military officer—and, despite being a vile murderer, she was alive, and their enemies were monsters. The battle lines were clear.
“She was incredible,” said Chong, his voice almost colored with admiration. “She grabbed a folding chair and just went ape on them. I went out in the hall to use my bow, and just as I got the last of them… bang. Next thing I know I’m waking up with you guys.”
“You’re lucky she knocked you out instead of taking a second to cut your throat,” said Sam, which earned him a glare from Lilah.
Then she shifted her anger to Chong. “She could have killed you, you stupid town boy.”
