of birds and animals out there, weird stuff that had escaped zoos and circuses, and Benny had read about exotic animal sounds. Was that what he’d heard?
Suddenly there was a soft sound from above, and a huge pile of loose dirt cascaded down on Benny, burying him almost to the neck. He began fighting his way out, but then he heard another sound and he looked, expecting to see more of the wall collapsing on him, but what he saw was far, far worse. The leading wave of pursuing zoms had reached the edge of the ravine, and the land had crumbled under their combined weight. Four zombies pitched over the edge and fell into the darkness with jarring crunches, the nearest one landing only six feet away.
Then another zombie — a teenage girl dressed in the rags of a cheerleader outfit — dropped right in front of Benny, striking the ground with a thud that was filled with the brittle crunch of breaking bones. The cheerleader’s gray and dusty eyes were open, and her mouth bit the air.
Broken bones wouldn’t kill a zom. Benny knew that all too well, and he dug through the loose dirt to find the hilt of his sword.
The zombie lifted a pale hand toward him. Cold fingertips brushed his face, but suddenly a second body — a huge man in coveralls — slammed down on top of her. The impact was massive, and it shattered even more bones.
Benny cried out in horror and disgust and began digging his way out like a mad gopher, clawing at the dirt, kicking his feet free.
Another zom fell nearby, ribs and arm bones snapping with firecracker sounds. The sounds were horrible, and Benny dreaded one of those limp, fetid corpses landing on him before he could get free. Overhead more of the living dead toppled over the edge and plummeted toward him. A soldier slammed into the ground to his right, a schoolkid to his left, their moans following them down as they fell, only to be cut off with a dry grunt as they crunched atop their fellows. Farmers and tourists, a man in swim trunks covered in starfish, an old woman in a pink cardigan, and a bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt — all striking mercilessly down. The impact sounds of moistureless bodies filled the air with an awful symphony of destruction.
Another zom fell. And another.
The cheerleader, broken and twisted now by the impacts, still growled at Benny and clamped gnarled fingers around both his ankles.
Benny screamed and tried to pull his legs away, but the grip was too strong. He immediately stopped trying to wriggle free and sat up.
“Let me go!” he bellowed as he punched the zom in the face.
The punch broke the zombie’s nose and rocked its head back, but that was all it accomplished. Benny struck again and again. With pieces of broken teeth falling from between its pale lips, the cheerleader used its grip to pull itself forward, climbing along Benny’s legs; and all the time its mouth opened and closed as if rehearsing the feast that was now close at hand. The rotting-meat stench of the creature in this closed space was horrific.
The zom darted out and caught Benny’s trouser leg between the stumps of its teeth, pinching some skin as well. The pain was instantly intense. Benny howled. Other twisted and broken zoms clawed along the ground toward him, crawling over one another like maggots on a piece of bad meat.
While he fought, he could almost hear Tom whispering advice.
“Go away!” Benny yelled, half to the zom and half to his brother’s ghost.
It was something Tom had told him a dozen times during training, but Benny had barely paid attention, because it sounded like one of his brother’s annoying logic puzzles. Now he ached to know what Tom meant.
“Warrior smart,” Benny growled aloud, hoping that saying it would inspire understanding and action. It didn’t. He yelled it again, then followed it with every obscene word he knew.
Ah.
That time the lesson got through, and Benny realized that he was reacting rather than taking action. A rookie mistake, as Tom would say.
He hated it when his brother was right. It was even more irritating now that Tom was dead.
As the zombie climbed toward him, Benny stopped punching it and grabbed it by the filthy strands of its matted hair and the point of its withered chin. Then, with a shout of anger, he twisted the cheerleader’s head sharply on its spindly neck.
The zom immediately stopped moving; its biting mouth went slack, the cold fingers lost their hold, and the struggling figure sagged down into true dead-weight limpness.
Benny knew that it was always like that when a zom died. Break its neck, or use a steel sliver to cut the brain stem, and the effect was instant. All life, all animation, all aggression was gone. The zom was alive on one side of a thin second and totally dead as soon as that second was spent.
It was a small victory, considering the circumstances, but it put some iron back into Benny’s muscles. With another grunt he finally kicked his way out of the pile of dirt and crawled as fast as he could. A spill of dirt plumed down in front of him, and it was the only warning he had as a half dozen zoms toppled over a different section of the ravine. Benny threw himself sideways just in time.
He looked wildly back and saw that at least a dozen of the zoms had gotten to their feet. They would be on him in seconds. He scrambled to his feet too and took the sword in a two-handed grip.
“Come on,” he growled, baring his teeth as anger surged up in him.
The first of the zoms came at him, and Benny stepped into its lunge and swung. The wickedly sharp steel cut easily through dry tendon and old bones. The hands of the zom flew over Benny’s shoulder, and he ducked under the stumps, instantly straightened, and cut at the neck from behind the monster’s shoulder. He got the angle just right and felt almost no resistance as the
Now two others were closing in, rushing at him shoulder to shoulder. Benny tried a single lateral cut to take two heads, but his angle was off by an inch on the first one, and even though he took that first head, his sword caromed off the cheekbone of the second zom and did no real harm. He corrected, and with his back-slash decapitated the zom.
He stepped back and gulped air. After running, then falling, and now fighting, he was already exhausted. He shook his head to whip sweat from his eyes.
“Okay, dumb-ass,” he told himself, “time to be warrior smart.”
He said it aloud, hoping that his voice would have all the strength and confidence he needed. It didn’t, but it would have to do.
The dead came forward, and Benny whirled and cut his way through the thinnest part of the circle of them. He jumped over the falling bodies and ran deeper into the ravine. As he did so he reached up and slid his sword back into its scabbard. His main supply of gear was in his backpack at the camp, but he had a few useful items with him. He dug into one of the bulky pockets of his canvas vest and removed a spool of silk cord. It was slender but very strong, and Tom had used it to restrain zoms before quieting them.
Working very fast, Benny snatched up a thick branch, broke it over his knee, and rammed one end deep into the closest wall slightly below waist height. He spun away and repeated the action with the other half of the branch on the opposite wall. Then he tied the silk cord to one stick and stretched it to the other and pulled it taut, tying it off as tightly as he could.
The zoms reached the silk cord and it stalled them for a moment. They rebounded and collided. Some reached for him with some residual cleverness, fingers trying to snag his clothes.
Most of the zoms were still twelve feet away, their progress slowed by the uneven surface and the broken bodies of their fellows over whom they had to step.
Benny had to smack and bash at the reaching hands, but he managed to slip free of their grasp. As he staggered away, he ran a few yards down the ravine, searching for more branches. There were none thick enough. He cursed under his breath but then found a chunk of broken rock about twice the size of a baseball. He snatched it up and turned back to his enemies.
Benny dashed forward and slammed downward with the rock.
