Benny stopped trying to get away and instead put one foot on the wall and used it to launch himself at the zom, hitting it high on the chest and driving it backward with both hands. The monster’s heels hit the other zom and he toppled backward, with Benny holding onto its shirt all the way to the massive thump! The zombie never stopped grabbing for him, and the creature was immune to the shock of the impact beyond a shudder that rippled through its layers of dead fat. The creature bit down on Benny’s ragged shirtsleeve and began shaking it the way a terrier shakes a rat. Benny hammered at it with the hatchet until he tore through the remaining tendons of the zom’s face and the lower jaw simply fell off.
Benny gaped at the monster for a moment, then threw his weight sideways and went into a sloppy roll that nonetheless brought him to his feet. As he turned he saw Nix working her hatchet back and forth to free it from the dead zom’s eye socket. It came free with a dry glup sound, and then the two of them were running again.
Nix threw him a single, crazy smile of triumph as they ran.
Is she… enjoying this? The impossible thought banged around inside Benny’s head.
The crowd was going crazy up there, but mostly applauding now. People threw stuff down at them-unshelled peanuts, cigarette butts, balled-up betting slips. White Bear was laughing with a deep-chested rumble, thoroughly enjoying the show. As they ran past another opening, Benny shot a quick look up and saw Preacher Jack. He did not know the man well enough to be able to read the subtleties of his expressions, but what Benny saw at that moment required no interpretation. It was a look of pure, malicious joy.
Why? Benny wondered. We’re winning.
When they rounded the next bend, that question was answered in the most horrible possible way. The next corridor was a dead end that ran twenty feet into a blank wall.
There were at least a dozen zoms in there. But that wasn’t what made Benny slam to a halt and stare in abject terror. It wasn’t what pulled a scream from the deepest pit of Nix’s soul.
The thing that plunged the world into absolute nightmare was the huge creature that rose up before them in the dark. A great and terrible zombie. Bigger than any they had faced. It was massive, corded with muscle and covered with scars from countless battles as a human. It wore a leather vest from which the tips of hundreds of sharp steel nails jutted out like a terrible cactus. Iron bands studded with steel points circled its neck and wrists, and a skullcap of gleaming steel covered its head and tapered down the neck to prevent any injury to the brain stem. When its lips curled back, Benny and Nix could see that someone-some madman-had filed its teeth to razor spikes.
Even all that, from its size to its fearsome armament, was not the worst thing about it. It was Nix who spoke the word that made it all beyond horrifying.
She spoke its name.
“Charlie…”
75
OUTSIDE THE HOTEL…
Lilah found a shed filled with old sporting equipment. Deflated balls, old fishing rods, Frisbees. She stared at the junk… and smiled.
Yes, she thought, this is perfect.
Inside the hotel…
“Tom!” Chong called from the hallway. He had just come back from escorting all the captive children into another room.
“I told you to stay with the kids,” barked Tom.
“Um… the kids are fine. Really.” Chong wore a quirky and bemused smile. “But… there’s something else. You’d better come.”
Tom turned from the guard. The man had collapsed into a weeping, cringing pile, and looking at him disgusted Tom. He jabbed the guard with a toe. “Stay!”
The man nodded and held his hands up, palms out.
Tom crossed to the door and stepped out into the hall. His hand flashed toward his sword, and a war cry almost tore itself from his throat. Then he froze in total shock.
The hall was full of people. All of them were heavily armed. Tom’s mouth hung open. One of the people reached out a hand and gently pushed on Tom’s chin to close his mouth.
“You’re going to catch flies with that,” said Sally Two-Knives with a wicked grin.
Tom looked around, seeing faces that could not be here. “I don’t-I mean-”
“You owe me two ration dollars,” said Fluffy McTeague to Basher. “I told you he wouldn’t know what to say.”
Farther down the hall, J-Dog and Dr. Skillz were removing the dog collars from the kids. They looked up and grinned.
“Kahuna!” said J-Dog.
“Yo, brah!” said Dr. Skillz.
“How are you here?” exclaimed Tom.
Sally and Solomon filled him in on the discussion they’d had in the woods. “We started gathering everyone up,” said Solomon, shaking Tom’s hand. “You’re a popular guy, brother. Everybody’s either looking to warn you or looking to trade you to White Bear for serious cash money.”
“I saw the bounty sheet. Not just me… they want my brother and his friends. Dead or alive.”
“Worth more alive,” said Hector Mexico. “Dead? Eh, not so much.”
“We don’t want you to leave, boss. End of an era,” said Basher. “No way we were going to let White Bear write the last chapter of Fast Tommy’s story.”
Tom frowned. “So… this is a rescue party?”
“Par-teeee!” chanted J-Dog and Dr. Skillz.
“But this isn’t even your fight.”
Solomon Jones answered that. “It’s always been our fight, Tom. And with you gone-dead or gone east-then it’s going to be our war.”
Tom shook his head.
“Son,” Solomon said with a smile, “don’t you know when the universe cuts you a break?”
“Not lately, no.”
“Well, get used to it, ’cause the cavalry has arrived.”
“Only downside,” said Sally, “is that there are twenty of us and about four hundred of them. And I’m not going to be much good in a fight once I run out of bullets.”
Now it was Tom’s turn to smile. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you guys see what was in the front room?”
Basher shook his head. “No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs.”
“Then you may be the cavalry,” said Tom, “but I’m Santa Claus. Let’s go downstairs and open some presents.”
76
CHARLIE PINK-EYE LOOMED IN FRONT OF BENNY AND NIX. SIX FEET SIX inches of him. One eye was a milky pink, the other one-once as blue as his father’s-was black and dead. His skin, once the creamy white of an albino, had turned the color of a mushroom: gray-white and blotched with fungus and decay. Flies buzzed around him, and maggots wriggled through flaps of his dead flesh. He snarled and took a lumbering step forward. And now Benny understood what he had seen out in the field by the way station. It hadn’t been Charlie leading an attack of zoms… Charlie had been a zom himself, part of a swarm led there by Preacher Jack. Led there… and led away before the fire could consume him. When Benny had seen Charlie smile, it wasn’t a smile at all but the snarl of a hungry zombie.
It was grotesque. It was bad enough that Charlie had not fallen a thousand feet to smash himself to ruin at the base of the mountain. It was worse still that he had become one of the monsters that he and the Motor City Hammer used to hunt. What was far, far worse was that Charlie’s own father and brother had kept him alive as a zom, armored him like a gladiator, and put him down here in the shadows to be their pet monster. Their Angel of Death for a new and corrupt Eden. Even though Benny understood few of the mysteries of any religion, he knew with perfect clarity that this was a sin that could never be forgiven. This was blasphemy.