say.”
Sally made a face. “Nice.”
“I was looking for Tom,” said Solomon. “Ran into Fluffy McTeague over by Coldwater Creek, and he said that Tom was bugging out. Looking for that jet. I thought that wasn’t until next week.”
“He changed his mind. Wanted to get out of Dodge. Why were you looking for him?” she asked.
“To talk him the heck out of going,” said Solomon. “I’ve been hitting the wall trying to get the militia idea to go anywhere.”
“So has Tom.”
“So has everyone who’s tried to do it alone. I wanted to get Tom to agree to be the spokesman for a committee. Make a case to the towns, one after the other. Campaign for it.”
“Might have worked, Sol,” she said, “but it’s about two days too late. Besides, Tom’s got enough to worry about right now.”
“With Gameland, you mean? Is he really going to tear it down again?”
“Don’t know about tearing it down, but he’s going to get that kid back. His brother and the other kids are waiting for him back at Brother David’s and-”
“No, they’re not,” said Solomon firmly. “I just came through there. Somebody torched it. Turned a couple thousand zoms into crispy critters. No trace of Brother David or the girls.”
Sally swore. “God… you don’t think Tom’s brother was burned up, do you?”
“Hope not, but I don’t think so. There were tracks leading off into the field, off toward Wawona. The kids probably went that way. If I’d known that it was only kids, I’d have gone after them. Bad stuff’s happening in the east.”
“I know.” Sally narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “You said you saw Fluffy? Anyone else around?”
“With all that’s going on? Everybody’s around, and I have half a dozen people out looking for Tom.”
Sally narrowed her eyes. “How fast could you get them together?”
“Pretty fast. But it’d have to be for a good reason. Why?”
“I’m starting to have a thought here.”
“What kind of thought?”
“A dangerous one.”
He grinned. “Tell me, girl.”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Why do zoms eat only living creatures?
Firsthand accounts of zoms say that they will attack and eat any living creature. Humans, animals, birds, insects, and reptiles. No one knows if they will attack fish.
It has been speculated that it is warm, living flesh that attracts the zombies’ appetites, but then how do you explain zoms who eat insects? Insects don’t have much body heat.
Heat alone can’t be what attracts them, because if that was the case they’d continue to feed on the recently dead. But they don’t. Once something has died, zoms lose interest pretty quickly. (It takes hours for a body to cool to room temperature.)
If zombies are attracted to warm flesh, then they should logically be compelled to feast longer on victims in warmer climates and less so on victims in cooler climates.
Zoms don’t attack people who are wearing cadaverine. Is it smell that attracts them? That doesn’t make sense, because a freshly killed person or animal doesn’t smell like decaying flesh, but zoms stop eating it.
THIS DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, AND IT’S DRIVING ME CRAZY!
50
“HOW FAR IS IT TO YOSEMITE?” BENNY ASKED, PEERING AHEAD TO the hazy mass of dark green in the distance.
Nix fanned a cloud of gnats away from her face. “Not sure. How far do you think we’ve come?”
Benny glanced at the sun. “We’ve been walking for three hours. With this terrain, figure about three miles an hour. Maybe a little less. Call it two and a half, which means we’ve come about seven to eight miles since we left the way station.”
Nix tugged her journal out of its pocket and flipped open to one of the pages of maps she’d painstakingly copied. There was one map that showed the eastern side of Mariposa County, with the town of Mountainside circled. A strip of cardboard with incremental mile marks measured onto it was clipped to the page. Nix removed it and found another circled spot marked BD/WS. Brother David’s way station. “Tom said he wanted to take us to Wawona, over near the Merced River.” She did some math in her head and announced, “We could be as close as eight miles to Wawona.”
The thought of the big hotel, with its frequent travelers and patrolled woods, was comforting. Maybe if they regrouped there, they could actually make a decent start on the trip to find the jet. “Someone at the hotel might have seen the jet,” Benny said. “Tom says that there are travelers through there all the time.”
“Like Preacher Jack,” Nix reminded him, then added under her breath, “Freak.”
Benny nodded and pulled out his canteen for a drink. “We’ll be careful. Besides, Tom will know that’s where we went.”
She took the last of the Greenman’s strawberries and gave Benny half of them. “I would love one of Tom’s Sunday dinners right about now. A big steak so rare it would moo when I stuck my fork in it. Spinach and sweet corn. And those honey biscuits he makes from my mom’s recipes. And one of his apple pies with raisins.”
“With raisins and walnuts,” corrected Benny. “It’s important.” They walked, thinking about a feast. “They’ll have plenty of food at the hotel.”
“If they don’t, I’m going to bite your arm off.”
The joke conjured an image of her from his dream. “Come on, Nix,” he said quickly. “We can be there in a couple of hours.”
She looked back the way they’d come. “They will find us, won’t they?”
“Sure,” he said, and for the first time today he actually meant it. “And we’ll be okay until they do.”
The fields, valleys, and meadows through which they’d walked had been clear of serious threats. They’d spotted a few zoms, but each time, Benny and Nix circled around them and kept moving. Neither of them felt any desire to attack zoms unless there was no choice. Last year, on his first trip into the Ruin, Benny and Tom had spied on a trio of bounty hunters who were beating and torturing zombies for fun. The men were laughing and having a good time; however, Benny was instantly sickened by the sight, and the memory was like an open wound in his mind.
“Let’s go,” Nix said, and they began walking again. Even though it was early April and they were in higher elevations, the sun was hot. Most of the clouds had burned off, and neither of them had a hat.
“Wow,” gasped Benny, reaching for his canteen again, “we should sit some of this out and start again when the sun’s not four inches from the top of our heads.”
“I’m for that,” Nix agreed glumly, then brightened and pointed. “Look! Apples.”
They left the road and cut through a field to an overgrown orchard. They collected an armload of apples and settled down with their backs to a bullet-pocked stone wall. The stones were cool, and the apples were sweet. There was a burned-out farmhouse nearby, and beyond that was a barn that had once been painted bright red but that fourteen years had faded to a shade of rust resembling dried blood. A line of crows stood along the peaked roof, dozing in the afternoon heat.
