DIGGER AND HEAP HERDED BENNY AND NIX INTO THE HOTEL, GUIDING them with slaps and kicks. Preacher Jack walked behind them, humming to himself. Benny was sure it wasn’t a hymn.
They entered the main lobby, which was piled high with crates of goods scavenged from local towns. Sturdy shelves had been erected on every inch of wall space, and these were crammed with canned goods, sacks of grain, jars of spices, and bottles of everything from extra-virgin olive oil to Kentucky whiskey. One wall had a rack of guns running from floor to ceiling: shotguns, rifles, automatic weapons, rocket launchers, and every kind of handgun. Most of these Benny had seen only in books. And there were barrels filled with bayonets, machetes, swords, spears, axes, and clubs. Against one wall were six crates labeled C4. Benny had never heard of it, but on each case, in big red letters, three words were stenciled: DANGER: HIGH EXPLOSIVES. He swallowed.
There were enough weapons to start a war… or to reclaim the wastelands from the living dead. Benny saw Nix staring longingly at the collection.
Digger noticed and slapped the back of her head. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nix said under her breath.
Benny ground his teeth and swore on the graves of his parents that he would make these men pay for touching Nix.
They pushed Benny and Nix through the hotel and up several sets of stairs until they stood in the doorway of a dusty attic. The room was empty except for cobwebs.
“Make yourselves comfy,” said Heap as he shoved them into the room. “Call room service if you want anything.” The men were laughing as they slammed the door shut and locked it.
Benny pressed his ear to the door and listened until he couldn’t hear their footfalls on the steps anymore. Then he tried the door handle. It jiggled, but the lock was tough and the door was too solid to kick open. With a sigh of resignation he turned to Nix.
“We’ll get out of this,” he promised.
She looked dazed and small in the dusty light. “How? Benny-they’re going to put us in the zombie pits! They did that to my mom!”
“I know… but she survived, Nix… and she wasn’t a fighter. We are. Warrior smart, remember?”
Nix sniffed. “I don’t feel like a warrior right now.”
Benny forced a grin. “Then we’ll have to concentrate on being smart. Remember what Tom said. ‘When you’re in a dangerous situation’-”
“-‘immediately assess your resources.’”
They looked around. The room was completely empty. Bare floor, bare walls with cracked plaster that had crumbled in places to reveal the thin wooden bones of the walls, a light fixture that hadn’t worked in fifteen years hanging from the ceiling, and a cracked window that looked out into the horse corral.
“Okay,” Benny said, “so… we’re not big on supplies.” But when he looked at Nix, she was smiling. “What?”
She told him. Then he was smiling too.
65
TOM IMURA STOOD JUST INSIDE THE SPILL OF SHADOWS CAST BY THE TALL willows that bordered the old hotel. Anyone standing three feet away would not have seen him. He might have been a ghost, or a layer of the deepening twilight shadows. Only his mind was in motion, and that was a howling firestorm of rage and frustration and self-hatred. Despite all logic to the contrary, his mind kept shrieking out that he was responsible for this. For all of this. For Chong. For Benny and Nix. For Gameland. All of it.
No, that wasn’t quite right. He had seen this coming. He had been warned. By Basher and Sally, by Captain Strunk and Mayor Kirsch. Warned that he could not just walk away, that perhaps it was his destiny to stop Gameland once and for all.
He was sure that Benny and Nix were being held inside. After he’d left the dead bounty hunters, he had gone racing back to the way station, found it in ashes, then saw footprints leading toward Wawona. Benny and Nix’s shoes, no doubt about it. And Preacher Jack’s following them. Tom had raced along the path and only paused a moment when he saw that Preacher Jack’s prints veered away from a straight pursuit and took a shortcut toward the hotel.
Tom had found the scene of slaughter by the barn, had read the tale in the scuff marks and knew that J-Dog and Dr. Skillz had been with Benny and Nix for a time. But he also saw that the two surfers had turned and gone back into the hills. Their path must have missed Tom’s by no more than half a mile.
Now Tom was at Gameland, and now he knew the full horror of things. White Bear had taken over the old hotel and transformed it into a killing ground. There were single zombie pits all around the building, and a cluster of larger ones out back in an enclosure made from a line of trade wagons and a circus tent. There were dozens of guards and hundreds of people-traders and others-so Tom had backed away and now stood watching from the edge of the woods.
Preacher Jack was here. The footprints had led right to a spot where they had encountered Benny and Nix again. There were clear signs of a struggle and drops of blood. Tom’s mind ground on itself, lashing him for not seeing this sooner. For not acting preemptively instead of going off on this road trip.
The Matthias clan was moving in because of Charlie’s death and because Tom was leaving. It was a double power vacuum, and White Bear was making his bid to fill it. Tom didn’t yet know how Preacher Jack fit into this, but he and White Bear would make a formidable team. The people of Mountainside were not going to do anything to stop it. That was obvious, but who else was there? Sally? J-Dog and Dr. Skillz? Basher? Solomon Jones? There were plenty of fighters who could make a serious stand against White Bear, but only if they were a unified front, and that was a million miles from likely.
Rage was building in his chest, and he could feel his body start to tremble. He wanted to scream. He needed to give a war cry, draw his sword, and go charging into the hotel and kill White Bear, Preacher Jack, and as many of their people as he could. That would feel good. It would feel right. It would also be suicide… and it probably wouldn’t save Benny, Nix, or Chong. Rage was sometimes a useful ally in the heat of a fight, but it was a trickster. It made everything seem possible.
He needed to go in there cold. So he closed his eyes and murmured the words he had drilled into his brother and the others. “Warrior smart.” He breathed in and out slowly, letting the rhythm vent the darker emotions from him. Guilt and rage, hatred and fear were pathways to weakness and clumsy choices. With each inhalation he made himself think of happier times, of things that had filled his heart with peace and hope and optimism. Benny and his future. That day last year when Tom realized that Benny no longer hated him, that maybe his brother understood him. Rescuing Nix. Finding Lilah. Training the teenagers. Laughing with them in the sunlight. Eating apple pie in the cool of the evening.
They were simple memories, but their simplicity was the source of their power. As Tom remembered smiles and laughter and Benny’s goofy jokes, the rage began to falter within him. As he recalled watching from afar as Benny and Nix fell in love, the reckless anger cracked and fell apart. And as he remembered the promise he’d made to Jessie Riley as she lay dying in his arms-that he would protect Nix-his resolve rose up in his mind like a tower of steel.
He stood in the shadows and found himself again. He found the Tom Imura that he wanted and needed to be. He took another breath and held it for a long moment, then let it out slowly. He opened his eyes. Then he made himself a promise. “I do this one thing and then I’m done. I do this and then I take Benny and the others and we go east.”
Tom adjusted his sword and checked his knives and his pistol. If there had been anyone there to see his face, they would have seen a man at peace with himself and the world. And if they were wise, they would know that such a man was the most dangerous of all opponents-one who fights to preserve love rather than perpetuate hatred.
