simplicity. It was vast and empty and incredibly beautiful. So many trees and birds that he had only read about in books. And… no people.
That was good and bad. The bad part was that there was no one they could ask about the plane. The good was that no one had tried to shoot them, torture them, kidnap them, or eat them in almost a month. Benny put that solidly in the “win” category.
This morning he’d left the camp to go alone into the woods, partly to practice the many skills Tom had taught him. Tracking, stealth, observation. And partly to be alone with his thoughts.
Benny was not happy with what was going on inside his head. Accepting Tom’s death should have been easy. Well, if not easy, then natural. After all, in Benny’s lifetime the whole world had died. More than seven billion people had fallen since First Night. Some to the zombies, the dead who rose to attack and feed on the living. Some to the mad panic and wild savagery into which mankind had descended during the collapse of governments and the military and society. Some were killed in the battles, blown to radioactive dust as nuclear bombs were dropped in a desperate attempt to stop the legions of walking dead. And many more died in the days after, succumbing to ordinary infections, injuries, starvation, and the wildfire spread of diseases that sprang from the death and rot that was everywhere. Cholera, staph and influenza, tuberculosis, HIV, and so many others — and all of them running unchecked, with no infrastructure, no hospitals, no way to stop them.
Given all that, given that everyone Benny had ever met had been touched by death in one way or another, he should have been able to accept Tom’s death.
Should have.
But…
Although Tom had fallen during the battle of Gameland, he had not risen as one of the living dead. That was incredibly strange. It should have been wonderful, a blessing that Benny knew he should be grateful for… but he wasn’t. He was confused by it. And frightened, because he had no idea what it meant.
It made no sense. Not according to everything Benny had learned in his nearly sixteen years. Since First Night everyone who died, no matter how they died, reanimated as a zom. Everyone. No exceptions. It was the way things were.
Until it wasn’t.
Tom had not returned from death to that horrible mockery of life people called “living death.” Neither had a murdered man they’d found in the woods the day they left town. Same thing with some of the bounty hunters killed in the battle of Gameland. Benny didn’t know why. No one knew why. It was a mystery that was both frightening and hopeful. The world, already strange and terrible, had become stranger still.
Movement jolted Benny out of his musings, and he saw a figure step out of the woods at the top of the slope eighty feet away. He remained stock-still, watching to see if the zom would notice him.
Except that this was not a zom.
The figure was slender, tall, definitely female, and almost certainly still alive. She was dressed in black clothes — a loose long-sleeved shirt and pants — and there were dozens of pieces of thin red cloth tied around her. Ankles, legs, torso, arms, throat. The streamers were bright red, and they fluttered in the breeze so that for a weird moment it seemed as if she was badly cut and blood was being whipped off her in ragged lines. But as she stepped from shadow into sunlight, Benny saw that the streamers were only cloth.
She had something embroidered on the front of her shirt in white thread, but Benny could not make out the design.
He and his friends had not met a living person in weeks, and out here in the badlands they were more likely to meet a violently hostile loner than a friendly stranger. He waited to see if the woman had spotted him.
She walked a few paces into the field and stared down the slope toward a line of tall bristlecone pines. Even from this distance Benny could tell that the woman was beautiful. Regal, like pictures of queens he had seen in old books. Olive-skinned, with masses of gleaming black hair that fluttered in the same breeze that stirred the crimson streamers.
Sunlight struck silver fire from an object she raised from where it hung on a chain around her neck. Benny was too far away to tell what it was, though he thought it looked like a whistle. However, when the woman put it to her lips and blew, there was no sound at all, but suddenly the birds and monkeys in the trees began twittering with great agitation.
Then something else happened, and it sent a thrill of fear through Benny and drove all other thoughts out of his mind. Three men stepped out of the woods behind the woman. Their clothes also fluttered in the wind, but for them it was because the things they wore had been ripped to rags by violence, by weather, and by the inexorable claws of time.
Zoms.
Benny got to his feet very slowly. Quick movements attracted the dead. The zoms were a dozen feet behind the woman and lumbering toward her. She seemed totally unaware of their presence as she continued to try and make sounds from her whistle.
Several more figures stepped out of the shadows under the trees. More of the dead. They kept emerging into the light as if conjured from nightmares by his growing fear. There was no choice. He had to warn her. The dead were almost upon her.
“Lady!” he yelled. “Run!”
The woman’s head jerked up, and she stared across the swaying grass to where he stood. For a moment all the zoms froze in place as they searched for the source of the yelling voice.
“Run!” yelled Benny again.
The woman turned away from him and looked at the zoms. There were at least forty of them, and more were materializing from the darkness under the trees. The zoms moved with the jerky awkwardness that Benny always found so awful. Like badly manipulated puppets. Their hands rose as they reached out for fresh meat.
However, the woman turned slowly away from them and faced Benny once more. The zoms reached her.
“No…,” Benny gasped, unable to bear the sight of another death.
And the zombies lumbered past her. She stood there as a tide of them parted to move around her. They did not grab her, did not try to bite her. They ignored her except to angle their line of approach to avoid her and continue walking down the slope.
Toward Benny.
Not one of them touched the woman or even looked in her direction.
Confusion rooted Benny to the spot, and the sword hung almost forgotten in his hand.
Was he wrong about her? Was she one of the dead and not a living person at all? Was she wearing cadaverine? Or was there something else about her that made the dead forgo the feast at hand for the one that stood gaping at them down the slope?
The word exploded inside his mind, and for a crazy moment Benny thought that it was Tom’s voice shouting at him.
He staggered as if punched, and then he wheeled around and ran.
3
He ran like hell.
This was no time to contemplate mysteries. He pounded down the slope faster than a jackrabbit as the mass of the dead growled out a moan of hunger and followed.
A zom rose up out of the tall grass directly in his path. There was no way to avoid the thing, not with all the momentum of the downward run, so he tucked his head and drove his shoulder into it like he was trying to bust through a line of offensive backs on the school football field. The zom went flying backward, and Benny leaped over the thrashing creature.
More zoms came at him, rising up out of the weeds and staggering out from behind tumbled boulders. Benny still held Tom’s sword, but he hated using it on zoms. Not unless he had no choice. These creatures were not evil,
