and then out of Turk’s body. Benny watched as the person behind him cocked a leg, placed a foot on the bounty hunter’s body, and shoved him forward, so that he landed face-down, inches from Skins.
The figure stood there in the harsh morning sunlight. Tattered jeans and hand-sewn leather moccasins, a shirt that had once been bright with a wildflower pattern, with a leather pouch slung across her body on a thin strap. Hair the color of newly fallen snow swirled around her tanned face, and she stared at them with cunning hazel eyes. In her tanned hands she held a spear crudely made from a long piece of quarter-inch black pipe wrapped in leather and topped with the blade from a Marine Corps bayonet.
The Lost Girl.
42
“WHO ARE YOU?” NIX ASKED, BUT AT THE SAME TIME BENNY SPOKE her name.
The girl stiffened, and the bloody spear swung around in his direction. Her hazel eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
Benny held up his hands. “No, wait… I’m Benny Imura.”
She showed no sign of recognition.
“I’m Tom Imura’s brother.”
The girl said nothing.
“My brother, Tom… He knew George!”
If he had struck her across the face, he could not have changed her expression more quickly. The suspicion vanished to be replaced by shock.
“G-George?”
She spoke the name, as if her throat was dusty from disuse, and Benny realized that in a very real way it probably was. Almost immediately her suspicions returned, and the tip of the spear rose another inch, level with his eye.
“Where?” she demanded. “George.”
Nix glanced at Benny, putting things together very quickly. “Is this
“George!” the Lost Girl prompted with a shake of her spear. Her voice was still a husky whisper, and Benny remembered that horrible story that Rob Sacchetto had told him of how Lilah had started screaming when the men in that little cottage had been forced to kill her mother after she’d reanimated as a zombie.
God.
“I… don’t know where he is,” Benny said quickly. “My brother knew him. He helped George look for you.”
“Look? For… me?” It was clearly hard for the girl to form sentences. It was a skill that she’d lost over time. Benny could not imagine going for years without speaking to anyone. In some odd way that was as bad as living out here in the zombie wasteland.
“When the bounty hunters took you and your sister from George, he started looking for you.” Benny risked taking a slight step toward her, despite the threat of the deadly spear. “He never stopped, Lilah. George never stopped looking for you. And for Annie.”
At the mention of her sister’s name, Lilah’s eyes filled with tears, but her mouth tightened into a bitter line.
“Lilah, listen to me. The men who hurt you, the men who hurt Annie and George…”
“Benny,” Nix said softly. “Don’t…”
“Those same men hurt Nix’s mother.” He turned his head for a second to indicate Nix. “They hurt her… and she died.”
Lilah held her ground, eyes boring into his.
“And they killed my brother.” Benny licked his lips. “Those men took the people we all loved. They took from each of us.” As Benny said it, he realized that he did love Tom. As troubled and confused as their relationship had once been, Benny felt an ache that went all the way to the core of his heart. “They hurt all of us, Lilah. Do you understand? All of
“Us,” he repeated. “You… Nix… me. Us.”
Benny waited for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, and then took another step forward. The tip of the spear was inches from his face now. Moving very slowly, hands open, eyes fixed on Lilah’s, he reached up and touched the point where the Marine Corps bayonet was attached to the shaft of the spear. He pushed it aside, and the Lost Girl allowed it.
After a moment she stepped back and lowered the weapon.
“Us,” she said.
“Us,” agreed Benny.
After a moment Nix said, “Us.”
Abruptly the Lost Girl stiffened and looked over the rail. Benny and Nix looked as well, but if there was something to see, they didn’t see it. Lilah, however, did.
“Go,” she snapped. “Now. Now!”
Without waiting to see if they followed, she spun around and climbed down the ladder as quickly and smoothly as a monkey. Nix followed, but Benny lingered for a moment, looking at the man he’d killed.
“Benny!” Nix called.
“Wait. Give me a second,” he said. “I have work to do.”
He took the weapons from the dead men, stripping off Turk’s gun belt and buckling it around his narrow waist. The gun was heavy, but the weight was comforting. He left the shotguns. They were big and clumsy, and he had never fired one before. Now didn’t seem like the time to fool around with unfamiliar weapons. However, he took Skins’s knife. It was not as good as Tom’s double-bladed dagger or the hunting knife Benny had lost back at the field, but it would do.
Benny knelt beside the corpse for a second, the naked blade in his hand.
“This is probably cutting you a break,” he muttered, “but we may need this place again.”
With that he plunged the tip of the blade into the back of the man’s neck, right below the skull. Quieting him. He pulled the blade free, lips curled in disgust, and then repeated the process with Turk. Then he wiped the blade clean on Turk’s shirt, slid the knife into the sheath on the gun belt, and climbed down to catch up with Nix and Lilah. His mind churned with what he had just done. Closure, of a kind, although it felt more like taking out the garbage than giving peace to the dead. Either way it was necessary work.
All part of the family business.
43
BENNY AND NIX FOLLOWED THE LOST GIRL INTO THE WOODS THAT surrounded the ranger station. She led them thirty yards up a crooked path that had been carved by rain runoff, making sure to step on rocks or fallen logs, leaving no footprints at all. Nix noticed that first and pointed it out to Benny, and they imitated her careful ways, though it meant that they went more slowly and with far less grace than the lithe Lilah.
Lilah suddenly stopped with her head cocked to listen.
“Hide!” she hissed with quiet urgency, and immediately she appeared to vanish into a tangle of wild roses. Nix pulled Benny down behind an ancient rhododendron, and they huddled together, trying to make themselves as small as rabbits.
“What is it?” Benny whispered, but Nix jabbed him in the ribs and pointed.
