be something?”
Chong shook his head but said nothing.
“On t’other hand, if you die… well then, we got lots and lots of other kids who’d kill to have something like a nice piece of black pipe for when it comes to be their turn.”
Chong finally managed to squeeze three words through his gritted teeth. “Go to hell.”
The men all laughed, and the big man hardest of all. “Hell? Boy-ain’t you been paying attention? We’re already in hell. The whole world’s been in hell since First Night.”
He stood up and nodded to the other men. They vanished, but almost immediately other faces appeared around the edges of the pit. Men and women. Hard faces with hard eyes and mouths that smiled with icy cruelty. A small rat-faced man and a boy who was clearly his son shoved their way to the edge of the pit and started calling numbers and taking money.
Bets, Chong knew with growing horror.
The crowd fell into an expectant hush, and every eye turned in the direction where the two companions of the Burned Man had disappeared. When they came back, both of them were wearing carpet coats and football helmets with plastic visors. Between them was a pale figure that snarled and twisted and tried to bite the air.
“Welcome to Gameland,” said the Burned Man.
And then they pushed the zom into the pit with Chong.
43
BENNY WAS CHASED OUT OF HIS DREAMS BY MONSTERS.
From the moment he’d fallen asleep, he had gone running through a nightmare landscape where gigantic trees rose on black trunks that towered a thousand feet above him, their leaves burning with intense yellow fire. Benny ran through a field of blackened grass, and with every step a withered white hand would shoot up through the soil to grab him. He dodged and jagged and stumbled as hand after hand burst through the charred topsoil to claw at him.
No zoms emerged… just the reaching hands with their broken nails and bloodless skin.
As he ran he called Nix’s name, but the hot wind snatched her name away and tore it to soundless fragments. He could not see her anywhere. He ran and ran.
He saw Tom walking slowly away from him among the sea of clutching hands. Benny ran to him and grabbed his arm and spun him around. Tom stared at him with dusty black eyes. Tom’s face was the color of old wax, and his teeth were broken stumps. When Tom opened his mouth to speak, all that escaped was the starving moan of a zombie.
“NO!” Benny yelled, and backed away. Pale hands grabbed his ankles and held him as Tom took one unsteady step toward him, and then another. And another. Benny screamed again and kicked his way free just as Tom’s dry fingers brushed his face. Benny ran as ash drifted down from the burning trees.
“NIX!” he cried, but still his voice had no volume. No power.
There was movement and color off to his left, a flash of red, and Benny cut that way. He saw Morgie Mitchell sitting cross-legged on the hood of a burned-out car, his face screwed up with concentration as he tried to repair the broken pieces of his father’s fishing rod. Lying slumped against the side of the car was a slender figure covered with bright red blood.
Chong!
Benny hurried to him and knelt down, trying to figure out where his friend was hurt. “Chong! Chong… can you hear me? C’mon, talk to me, you skinny monkey-banger.”
Chong’s eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. There was still life in his eyes, a wet glimmer deep in the brown irises. Chong tried to smile. He began speaking very slowly and softly, and Benny had to bend close to hear.
“Everything out here wants to kill you, Benny,” Chong said.
“Chong! Where are you hurt?”
Chong lifted a hand, and with one bloody finger he tapped his temple. “It hurts in here, Benny. Nothing in here works anymore.” Then the hand fell limply away, and Chong slumped over sideways, his last breath rattling from his throat.
Benny fell backward, kicking himself away from Chong. More hands burst through the dirt and clamped around his wrists.
“No!” Benny bellowed, and he twisted and kicked and bit the fingers until they broke apart and became hot ash. He spat out the ashes and scrambled to his feet. Tom was still coming toward him.
“You should have stayed home,” Morgie said without looking up from what he was doing. “’Cause you know that you’re all gonna die out here.”
“Where’s Nix?” Benny demanded.
Morgie looked up. Instead of eyes he had two empty black holes in his face.
“She’s gonna die too, Benny… and it’s your fault.”
Anger and revulsion warred in Benny’s heart, but he backed away. Suddenly hands grabbed him. Not the cold hands of the buried dead, but two small, warm hands. They touched his back, then his shoulders, and finally the sides of his face. Benny turned slowly, gratitude and relief flooding his heart.
“Nix… God! Where were you?”
His voice trailed away. Nix Riley was a withered thing. Her red hair hung like limp red strings from a scalp that was patchy and blotched. Her skin was leached of color and there were clear signs of bites on her cheeks and shoulders and arms. Worst of all, her eyes… her beautiful green eyes… were wrong. They were a diseased confusion of green and gold and black. The effect was dreadful, the eyes of a thing rather than a girl.
“Benny,” she said, and then she smiled. Rotting lips peeled back from jagged teeth. “Kiss me.”
• • •
Benny screamed himself awake.
He sat up, gasping, heart pounding, his body drenched in sweat. Cold starlight filtered through the leaves, casting the world into a blue-white strangeness, as alien as the dreams-cape from which he’d just escaped.
Benny turned to Nix, surprised that his scream hadn’t startled her awake. Or had the scream been part of the dream too? He touched her arm to gently shake her.
But her skin was as cold as ice.
“W-what…?” Benny’s voice was hollow and brittle.
He turned her over and she moved stiffly, her limbs already freezing into the rigidity of rigor mortis.
“No!” He fumbled at her throat, trying to find her pulse, needing to find at least the thread of it. All he found was slack skin beneath which nothing moved. “NO!”
Benny grabbed her and pulled her to him, a new scream rising like volcanic lava in his chest. How could this be? How was it possible? Was it the cut on her face? No… that was just a cut. Had she been bitten? Where? When?
And that fast he knew the answer. On the field. In the dark. As the fire raged and the smoke obscured everything, one of the shambling monsters had bitten her. In their panic and flight, maybe Nix hadn’t known. Or maybe she had and didn’t dare tell him.
She was like a block of ice in his arms, and Benny cried out her name over and over again. It was impossible. The world could not allow this. It could not be true.
Nix stayed cold and dead in his arms.
Until she moved.
Benny recoiled from her, staring at her, his splintering mind scrabbling for that last bit of hope.
Nix Riley opened her eyes.
They were the green and gold diseased eyes of a zom.
With a snarl of impossible hunger, she lunged at him.
