“Let’s keep moving,” he said. “Another ten minutes, and we’ll be able to ride again.”
Benny nodded, although again he touched Nix’s book in his pocket to ward off bad luck.
Tom picked up the thread of his story. “It was about eight years after First Night when George first found a living person. It was a man walking through the woods near where we are now. The man was dressed like a hunter and smelled like a corpse, and George nearly attacked him, thinking he was a zom.”
“The guy was wearing cadaverine?”
Tom nodded. “George followed him and watched him make a kill with a pistol, and then he knew the man was alive. For George it was like getting hit by a thunderbolt. He started yelling and ran down the hill toward the man, crying and babbling because he thought that the presence of this man meant that the long nightmare was over. The man spun and fired a shot at George, almost hitting him, but George hid behind a tree and yelled, telling him that he wasn’t a ghoul.”
Benny grunted at the word “ghoul.” It was what some of the older people called the zoms.
“The hunter, realizing that George wasn’t one of the dead, told him it was safe to come out. George ran to him and hugged him and shook his hand and-as he put it to me-‘acted like a total damn fool.’ The hunter was pleasant and kind. He gave George some food and told him that there was a whole town full of people not too far away, who were alive and thriving, and there were other towns all up and down this part of California. He offered to take him back to his own camp, saying he was part of a group of a dozen men who were clearing the zoms out of this region in order to allow people to reclaim it and rebuild.”
“But I thought-?”
“Wait, hear the rest of it. George told them about the two little girls, and the hunter got excited, saying that it was God’s own miracle that two children had survived for so long. He encouraged George to take him to where the girls were, so they could all go to the camp where it was completely safe. George agreed, of course. After all, this was the answer to years and years of prayers. They hurried through the woods to a farmhouse where George had been living with the girls for the last year. At first, the girls were terrified of the man. Lilah hadn’t seen another living adult since she was two, and Annie had never seen one. Lilah almost attacked the man, but George restrained her and took her weapons away. It took a long time to cajole and convince the girls that it was safe, and all the time the hunter sat on the floor and smiled and waited patiently, making sure to do nothing threatening.”
“He sounds like a good guy,” said Benny.
“Does he? Yes… I suppose that from this part of the story he does. Anyway, the hunter told George to gather up anything valuable and go with him to his camp. George brought the wheelbarrow filled with food, books, and other things that were useful or precious to them. It took four hours to follow the winding country roads to the camp, which had been set up in a big cornfield. The men in the camp all looked very hard, and everyone had weapons-and that much was okay, because of the nature of the world and what they were doing-but he didn’t like the way they smiled at him and his wheelbarrow or the way they looked at the girls. Even though he was delighted to see so many people, George began to get suspicious.”
“Wait. Were these guys bounty hunters?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?” Benny asked with a sinking feeling.
“Things went wrong pretty much right away. The hunter made some remark about the girls looking tough, and when George explained they had both hunted and killed zoms, the hunter really perked up. He said that the girls were worth their weight in gold for ‘the games,’ and when George turned to him to ask what that remark meant, someone hit him from behind. George woke up hours later, but the cornfield was empty and everyone was gone. He had no weapons or food and no idea what had happened to the girls. He searched every inch of that field and the woods beyond, but the girls were gone.
“He found horse tracks and footprints, but the best he could determine was that when the camp broke up, the men went in different directions. He said he went a little insane, and I can’t blame him. His whole life had been built around protecting those girls, and at the moment when he thought that they were really and truly saved from the monsters, it was
“What happened to the girls?”
“George looked everywhere, and along the way he met more and more people. He met the way-station monks and told them what had happened, and they started spreading the word. He started to hear rumors. One set of rumors talked about a place called Gameland that a bunch of bounty hunters and travelers had built in the mountains. The things people said about that place really tore George apart. When he described the girls and the men who had taken them, a lot of people suddenly stopped talking to him. Their fear of the men who ran Gameland was greater even than their compassion for a couple of lost children. Soon people were actively shunning George. Only the monks tried to help him, and some of those who went out to try to find the girls went missing.”
“And you don’t think it was zoms who got them?”
“Do you?”
Benny shook his head.
“By the time I ran into George, he was worn out. I told him that I’d spotted one girl, and when I described her, he said that it was Lilah. He begged me to say that I’d also seen Annie, but I didn’t… And when I found the spot where I’d seen the girl standing, there was only one set of prints.”
“What happened to Annie?”
“I don’t know for sure. Some of the travelers I met were more willing to talk to me than they were to George. A few of them told me that there was an old rumor about a couple of girls who had been taken to Gameland and that something bad had happened and only one little girl escaped.”
“No…,” Benny said softly. “Were Charlie and the Hammer involved?”
“George gave me pretty good descriptions of several of the men in the camp. He wasn’t clear about which one hit him or who actually took the girls, but Charlie and the Hammer were definitely there.”
Benny nodded. The respect he once had for Charlie had transformed into a murderous hatred.
“What happened to George?”
“I don’t know. Brother David said there was a rumor that George had hanged himself, but I don’t believe that. George might be dead, and he might have hanged, but I don’t believe for a minute that he would have killed himself. Not as long as Lilah was still out there.”
“Somebody killed him?”
“Murder is easy out here.”
They walked on. The horses were looking better, less haggard, and Benny hoped that they’d be able to ride them again and make up the distance he felt they were losing with every minute they stayed on foot. “If we find Lilah… what do we do?”
“Try to get her to come to Mountainside with us. The kid needs a life, needs people.”
Benny took the card out of his pocket and stared at it, trying to imagine that wild creature going to school, being
“Come on,” Tom said tersely. “The horses are rested enough. Let’s ride… Let’s see if we can catch those animals.”
32
BOTH HORSES WERE SPITTING FOAM AGAIN BY THE TIME THEY REACHED the top of the mountain; then the ground leveled out, and they found the fire access road. Like all roads in the Ruin, it was badly overgrown, but Benny could see footprints, wheel ruts, and dried horse dung that looked recent.
“Is this the route the traders take?”
“Yes. This is the same area where I first saw the Lost Girl,” Tom said. “This is where I found the first couple of zoms that Lilah killed. I told you they were all similar in size and look.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “Like she was hunting one person over and over again. Hard to believe that a little girl could do that.”
