twig to measure the man’s shoe impressions. “Good-quality hiking shoes,” murmured Tom. “Pre-First Night, which means they’re either scavenged or purchased for a tidy stack of ration dollars.”
Benny nodded and bent low to study the pattern of the shoes, just as Tom had taught him. The tread was pretty well worn, and there was a crescent-shaped nick out of the right heel.
“That nick is pretty distinctive,” Benny said, earning him an approving nod from Tom.
“It’s as good as a fingerprint. Remember it.” Then Tom called the others over to look at it too, pointing out the unique elements of each sole.
“Why bother?” asked Chong. “Is he our enemy?”
“I don’t know what he is,” admitted Tom, “but out here it’s a good idea to observe as many details as you can. You never know what’s going to be useful.”
“Was that really Preacher Jack?” asked Nix.
Tom rose and squinted down the game trail. “Well… he fits the description Dr. Skillz gave me. At least physically.”
“Is it okay if I say that he was the single creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been face-to-face with decaying zoms?”
Tom nodded. “Yeah, Nix, you can say that and mean it.”
“I don’t like him,” growled Lilah, her fists clenched tightly around the shaft of her spear. “If I see him again…” She let the rest hang in the air.
“I think it’s a good idea if we all watch our backs,” suggested Tom.
“Are you sure he’s really a preacher?” asked Chong.
Tom shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything about him. Not one thing.”
He looked up at the sky.
Benny started to ask something, but Tom shook his head.
“We’re burning daylight,” Tom said. “We need to get to the way station, and I need to think while we’re doing it. We’ll talk then. For now, we’ll go at Scout pace. That means we walk two hundred paces, run three hundred, walk two hundred. It’ll chew up the miles.”
“Nix-this is up to you. Can you handle the pace? No screwing around: yes or no?”
“Yes,” she said with real fire. “And I promise to tell you if I can’t keep up.”
Without another word, Tom turned toward the southeast and set off.
The others followed. Running and walking and running. They didn’t have time to ask questions, but about ten thousand of them occurred to Benny, and he knew that the same questions would be occurring to Nix.
Who was Preacher Jack?
Was he connected to the dead man? Who had killed the man? And why? Could Charlie Pink-eye still be alive? Was he out in these same hills? Did he know they were out here?
And, maybe more important than any of those questions: How come the dead man had not reanimated? Since First Night, everyone who died, no matter how they died, came back to life.
Why hadn’t he?
What did it mean?
The questions burned in Benny’s mind as he ran.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
How many people are still alive out there?
Tom says that there’s a network of about five hundred bounty hunters, traders, way-station monks, and scavengers in central California. And maybe as many as two hundred loners living in isolated and remote spots. Sounds like a lot, but it’s not. Our history teacher said that California used to be the most populous state and that there used to be almost forty million people living here.
28
THEY LEFT THE OLD ROAD AND FOUND WHAT USED TO BE A HIGHWAY, so they turned and followed that. Despite the fact that his toe was hurting like crazy and his clothes were thoroughly soaked with sweat, Benny still mustered the energy to look left and right, left and right, checking every shadow under every tree for some sign of movement that could be either zoms or worse.
He cut looks at Nix, who was also sweating heavily and yet seemed able to keep going, despite the pain and the injury. It wasn’t the first time that her strength amazed and humbled him.
They ran and walked, ran and walked.
During one of the walking times, Benny leaned to Nix. “What the heck was that?”
“Preacher Jack,” she said, and shivered. “I feel like I need a bath.”
Benny counted on his fingers. “We know-what-seven religious people? I mean people in the business.”
“You mean clerics? There’s the four in town, Pastor Kellogg, Father Shannon, Rabbi Rosemann, and Imam Murad…”
“… and the monks at the way station: Brother David, Sister Shanti, and Sister Sarah. Seven,” finished Benny. “Except for the monks, who are a little, y’know…” He tapped his temple and rolled his eyes.
“Touched by God,” Nix said. “Isn’t that the phrase Tom uses?”
“Right, except for them, everyone else is pretty okay. I mean the monks are okay too, but they’re loopy from living out here in the Ruin. But even with different religions, different churches, they’re all pretty much the kind of people you want to hang with during a real wrath-of-God moment.”
“Not him, though,” said Nix, nodding along with where Benny was going with this. “He’s scarier than the zoms.”
“‘Zoms’ is a bad word, girlie-girl,” Benny said in a fair imitation of Preacher Jack’s oily voice.
“Eww… don’t!” Nix punched him on the arm.
They walked another few paces as the road bent around a hill.
“Weird day,” Benny said.
“Weird day,” Nix agreed.
Around the bend were dozens of cars and trucks that had been pushed to the side of the main road, which left a clear path down the center. Some of the cars had tumbled into the drainage ditch that ran along one side. Others were smashed together. There were skeletons in a few of them.
“Who pushed the cars out of the way?” asked Chong.
“Probably a tank,” said Tom. “Or a bulldozer. Before they nuked the cities, back when they thought this was a winnable war.” He gestured to the line of broken cars, many of them nearly invisible behind clumps of shrubbery. “This is a well-traveled route. Traders and other people out here. All these cars have been checked for zoms a hundred times.”
Nix wasn’t fooled, and she gave Tom a sly smile. “Which doesn’t mean they’re safe. We have to check them every time, don’t we?”
Tom gave her an approving nod. “That’s the kind of thinking-”
“-that’s going to keep us alive,” finished Benny irritably. “Yeah, we pretty much get that.”
To Tom, Nix said, “He’s cranky because he didn’t think of it first.”
“Yes, I did,” Benny lied.
They moved on.
As the sun began edging toward the western tree line, they crested a hill and looked down a long dirt side road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.
“Take a closer look,” suggested Tom, handing Benny a pair of high-power binoculars.
