zoms moving with nearly human speed, he wasn’t stunned to immobility.
“Whoa,” said Dr. Skillz. “That’s new.”
J-Dog stepped toward the rushing creatures and swung the ax low and wide. The big blade sheared through the knee of the first zom and the calf of the second, and they both went down in a snarling tangle. Dr. Skillz darted past him and with two lightning-fast swings crushed their skulls with the iron ball on the end of his spear.
“Dog,” said Dr. Skillz, adjusting his shades, “these land-sharks are seriously truckin’.”
“Chyeah,” snorted J-Dog. “What’s that all about?”
There were eight zoms left.
“Dude-four on the left,” said J-Dog. “Go agg.”
Dr. Skillz grinned. “Always aggro.”
They waded in, ax and spear whirling and striking and smashing and cleaving. Benny and Nix stumbled backward from the carnage as pieces of desiccated flesh and brittle bone pelted them.
“Dude!” called Dr. Skillz, and J-Dog pivoted as one of the zombie children jumped at him, trying to bite his thigh. J-Dog twisted out of the way and quieted the little zom with a stomp of his steel-reinforced boot. And then, suddenly and inexplicably, it was all over. Not one of the zoms was moving, and not one of them was whole. J-Dog and Dr. Skillz stood in the center of a circle of gory detritus. Dr. Skillz looked around, nodding to himself. “Dude,” he said.
J-Dog nodded in agreement. “Totally, dude.”
They turned to Nix and Benny, pulling off their helmets. Dr. Skillz had long brown hair and a soul patch under his lower lip; J-Dog had long black hair and a goatee. They were both very tan, and when they smiled, their teeth were eye-hurtingly white.
Benny cleared his throat.
“Dude?” he suggested.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
My mom said that everyone who survived First Night has PTSD-post-traumatic stress disorder. Chong says it should be called PFNSD, post-First Night stress disorder, which he insists is PTSD plus something called “survivor’s guilt.”
Some people pretend like everything is okay with them, as if they aren’t messed up from what happened. Mom said that this is just a symptom of damage. There has never been a trauma as bad as First Night. Even if you combined all the wars and plagues together, they wouldn’t be as bad, so everyone has to be affected.
Other people seem to know that they’re supposed to be a little crazy, so they take the craziness and make it work for them. Tom says that’s why so many people, especially those who deal with zoms out in the Ruin all the time, took weird nicknames. He says, “It’s easier to be like a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.” It took me a long time to understand that.
Tom’s friends J-Dog and Dr. Skillz are like that. After I met them, I could see in their eyes how hurt they are. And how scared. But they play a kind of game. The “surfer dude” game, and that insulates them against reality. It’s like wearing a carpet coat. A bite will still hurt, but it won’t kill you.
It makes me wonder in what way I’m crazy.
54
THE TRAIL OF PRINTS LEFT BY CHONG AND HIS CAPTOR WAS EASY FOR TOM to follow, but the direction was confusing. Instead of heading straight to high ground, where bounty hunters preferred to make their camps, this trail was circling around to head almost due east. That troubled Tom. Could Gameland have been moved to Yosemite? Or was this man taking Chong somewhere else?
Tom heard male voices farther up the path, and he cut quickly behind a line of thick brush and crept toward them in silence. The men spoke with the uncaring loudness of people who were not afraid to be heard. There were three of them, standing in a clearing formed by the crossroads of two well-used trails.
Tom recognized one of them: Stosh-the surviving partner of the two men Sally had killed. His fashioned Arab scimitar was slung from his waist. The others were strangers; big, brutal-looking men. One was a redhead who wore a necklace of finger bones; the other was brown-skinned and wore matched.45 automatics in shoulder holsters. Tom edged closer to listen to their chatter.
“I still don’t get why you want to try and sell him to the Bear,” said the gunslinger.
“Yeah, why risk it?” agreed the redhead. “Bear don’t want to make deals with you, Stosh. He wants to feed you to the zoms and be done.”
“Nah, you guys got it wrong,” insisted Stosh. “If I bring him Fast Tommy, then it’s gonna be forgive and forget. You’ll see.”
“We’ll see the Bear nail your scalp to a tree with you still wearing it,” said Gunslinger, and Redhead laughed with him.
“Seriously, man,” said Gunslinger, “you ought to cut your losses and head north. Go up to Eden or Fort Snyder. Get outside of Bear’s backyard, ’cause even if you managed to bring in Fast Tommy or his puke brother, Bear’d just take them from you and do to you what he did to Bobbie Talltrees. Stake you out and feed you to the swarm. We tried to tell Bobbie the same thing-but did he listen? Nope. Now look what happened.”
“I know,” said Stosh softly. “That was ugly. Bobbie wasn’t a bad guy. And it’s not fair for White Bear to blame us for what happened to Charlie. Me and my crew were all the way the heck up Hillcrest when that happened. Nothing we could have done.”
“Uh-huh. Bobbie tried to run that by the Bear, and look what it got him,” agreed Gunslinger. “The same thing you’re gonna get if you don’t put a lot of gone between you and the Bear’s territory.”
“No way,” said Stosh stubbornly. He produced a piece of paper from a pocket and shook it at them. “I know how much the Bear wants Tom. You see the prices on this thing? You ever saw bounties like that? No! The Bear wants the whole bunch of them, and he’ll kiss my butt if I bring them in. All of ’em. Tommy, that skank Riley chick, the Lost Girl, and Tom’s rat-meat brother.”
Redhead took the paper and read it, nodding. “Yeah… a man could retire off of this.”
“If you’re lucky,” said Tom as he stood up from behind the bush, “it’ll cover your funeral expenses.”
The three men spun toward him. The black gunslinger made a grab for his twin.45s, but Tom drew and fired in a single smooth move that was too fast for the eye to follow. Gunslinger pitched backward, a neat round hole punched into his forehead above the left eyebrow. It was the kind of kill the bounty hunters called a “one and done.” Head shot, no need to quiet the body later.
That left Stosh and Redhead standing on either side of the corpse, both of them gaping in wide-eyed horror. “Holy jeez,” whispered Stosh. “Tom!”
Redhead sneered. “I know who it is.” He narrowed his eyes to feral slits. “You just shot an innocent man, pardner. You don’t know what kind of trouble you’re-”
Tom put a bullet in the dirt between the man’s feet.
“Save it for someone who cares,” he said quietly. “Lose the hardware.”
The smoking barrel of the gun offered no option for debate. Weapons clanked as they fell to the ground.
“All of it,” warned Tom.
They looked disgusted but began removing knives, two-shot derringers, strangle-wires, and brass knuckles from hidden pockets.
“Kick them away. Good. Now, listen to me,” said Tom, his eyes flat and hard. “You guys have one chance to walk out of this alive.”
“What are you offering?” demanded Redhead warily.
“Straight exchange. You answer my questions and I let you walk out. If you know anything about me, you’ll
