Flesh & Bone

REAPER PLAGUE

MUTATION SAMPLES

HANDLE WITH EXTREME CAUTION

The zoms kept coming, and Benny heard himself whimpering, making small cries and yelps, as he cut the last zoms free.

He scuttled backward, knocking over more crates.

The big stack of metal boxes fell next. A zom closed in on Benny, and he shoved one labeled LAW RKTS in its face. The zom flew backward into others. The container case slid off the stack and crashed down on its corner. The impact popped the hinges so the case flopped open. Benny glanced at it and saw something that vaguely resembled a gun, but it wasn’t anything he understood how to use. He ignored it and kept scrambling backward.

That was when Benny almost died.

He heard a sudden growl. Not a moan — a growl — and he looked up to see a zom climbing over the other zoms. Climbing fast. It was one of two zoms dressed in green jumpsuits — and Benny remembered too late the notations he and Nix had read on the clipboard, about the zoms in green.

This is an entirely new classification… able to negotiate obstacles… avoid many of the objects thrown at it… use simple tools. This reanimate appeared to be able to grasp certain concepts, particularly stealth and subterfuge.

The zom snarled at him. Its eyes were not dead eyes. They were more like those of the lions who had surrounded the camp. There was intelligence in them. If not human, then some new order of primitive intelligence.

A hateful intelligence.

The zom came clawing and scrambling its way over the others, howling out its hunger, racing straight at Benny.

Behind it, the second green-jumpsuited zom tore free of its bindings and hissed like a snake.

Benny backed away, his torch falling from his hand.

He spun and ran as fast as he could.

The zoms crawled over the others, dropped onto the metal deck, and ran after him.

Benny dove through the cargo bay hatch, across the narrow corridor, slammed into the cockpit door, jerked the handle hard, shoved his weight against it, jumped inside, slammed the door shut, and shot the handle back into place.

Then Tom spoke in his head for the first time in hours.

Some zoms can turn door handles.

Benny thought it was a slice of memory served up in a moment of need, but it still sounded like Tom was right there behind him.

He looked down at the handle.

It began to turn.

With a cry, Benny grabbed it and shoved it to the locked position. There was a shallow well around the handle so the whole door was flush.

The handle jerked and rattled with incredible force. This was not the fumbling of a zom, not according to everything Benny had seen. This was coordinated. This was powerful.

Benny thought he had already reached the limit of how high his terror could soar.

He was wrong.

He held on with one hand while he desperately scrabbled in his pockets for something he could use to wedge the handle in place. The only thing he had that was strong enough was his quieting knife.

Outside he heard the first screams as the freed zoms attacked the reapers.

With no choice left to him, Benny jammed the knife into the narrow slot between the handle and the steel door. He jammed it in hard until there was no give at all.

Instantly the zom gave up on the handle and began pounding on the door with insane fury.

Then nothing.

These memories replayed in Benny’s head in a second, and he heard the echo of Nix’s question.

“How?”

How had he let them out?

“Don’t ask,” he said, drawing his sword. “Come on… we have to get out of here and get these papers to Sanctuary.”

Together they edged away from the fight. They turned to make a dash for the safety of the woods.

Safety, however, was not theirs to have.

There was a zombie in the way.

He wore a bloody and torn green jumpsuit.

83

Riot drove the quad like she had a death wish.

The machine bounced and jounced and bucked as she pushed it to the limits of speed and maneuverability. Even belted in, Chong and Eve had to hold on for dear life.

Chong kept praying that they would pass through some kind of veil and cross from a day that could only be part of some mad nightmare and into yesterday, when the worst problem was knowing which berries wouldn’t give him diarrhea.

Then he heard the strangest sound.

A small burble of happy laughter.

He looked down at the child who clung to him. Her face was alight with sheer joy as the quad banged over fallen branches and leaped channels cut by rainwater.

Eve grinned up at him, and for the first time since he had first met her, Chong saw the uncomplicated purity of happiness. It was so odd, so totally out of keeping with everything that was happening, that even though he smiled back at her, Chong was deeply afraid for this child.

He did not for a moment believe that a kid who was borderline catatonic could simply “snap out of it.” No way. Chong kept his smile in place, but he felt that he was looking at the beautiful face of a horror deeper than his own infection.

God, don’t let her be all the way over the edge, he silently prayed. If I have any grace coming to me, then let’s agree that I don’t really need it anymore. Give it to the kid. Give Eve a chance.

Even his prayers were orderly, and Chong was good with it. He meant every word.

He closed his eyes for a moment as a fresh wave of motion-induced nausea wormed through his guts.

Lilah, he thought. Lilah...

Riot’s quad burst out of the forest and into the desert. “We’ll be in Sanctuary in less than—”

She screamed and slammed on the brakes.

Chong opened his eyes.

The desert was filled with reapers. More than a hundred of them.

One of them, a tall woman who — unlike the other reapers — had long flowing hair, drew a slender knife and pointed it at Riot.

Riot groaned and spoke a word that Chong knew would burn like acid on her tongue.

“Ma!”

She immediately spun the quad and plunged back into the forest.

Even over the roar of the engine, Chong could hear a hundred voices howl as the reapers gave chase.