When he moved, he seemed to melt into the darkness.
66
LOU CHONG HEARD A SCREAM. NOT A WARRIOR’S CRY. IT HAD BEEN high and wet and filled with pain; and it had ended abruptly. Laughter and shouts rose up immediately and washed the scream away. Chong knew what it meant. Someone else had been fighting a zom, and had lost.
The thought threatened to take the strength out of his arms, but he set his jaw and held on. Literally held on. For the last two hours he had been using the Motor City Hammer’s black pipe club to chop divots out of the packed earth walls of the pit. It was grueling work, and to do it he had to gouge divots deep enough for his feet so he could stand in them and reach high to chop fresh holes. His muscles ached. Sweat poured down his body. His toes were numb with cold from standing in the holes, and his arm trembled between each strike.
He never stopped, though. Every time pain or exhaustion or fear tried to coax him down the wall and away from what he was doing, he held a picture in his mind. It wasn’t a picture of himself fighting another zom. It wasn’t even a picture of running free from this place. Chong knew that he had been bitten. He knew that he was going to die.
No, the picture he held in his mind was that of a girl with honey-colored eyes and snow-white hair and a voice like a whisper. A crazy girl. A fierce and violent girl. A lost girl who didn’t even like him.
Lilah.
If he was going to die, then he was going to die as a warrior. If Lilah didn’t-or couldn’t-love the weak and intellectual Chong, then perhaps she would have a softer heart when remembering the warrior Chong who fought his way out of Gameland. As Lilah herself had fought her way out years ago.
And maybe… just maybe… he could save some of the other kids trapped here in Gameland. Like Benny and Nix and Lilah had done last year. If he couldn’t go with them on their journey, if he was to die sometime in the next few hours or days, then he wanted his life to mean something. He wanted to matter.
He reached and slid his fingers into the hole he’d just chopped, and pulled. His muscles screamed at him, but his mind screamed back at them. The rim of the pit was only three feet above him now.
One more hole to go.
67
THE DOOR TO THE DUSTY ROOM OPENED, AND DIGGER AND HEAP CAME in. The two thugs looked at the wires that had been torn down from the ceiling fixture and at the hole in the wall, which was bigger than it had been and revealed broken laths. Piles of torn plaster and broken lath littered the floor by the wainscoting. Benny and Nix were covered with plaster dust. The two men cracked up laughing.
“What’d you two morons try to do?” asked Digger between brays of laughter. “You try to chew your way outta here?”
“Yeah,” said Benny with a sneer. “We were hungry.”
Heap laughed, but Digger hit Benny across the face with a backhand blow. Benny saw it coming and turned with it, a move Tom had taught him to shake off some of the power of a hit. It made it look like Benny took the blow and shook it off.
Digger and Heap exchanged a look. “Tougher than you look, boy,” murmured Digger, getting up in Benny’s face. “You make it out of the pits with a whole skin, you and I might have to go out behind the barn and dance a bit. Bet you ain’t nearly as tough as you think you are.”
“Save it for later,” warned Heap, and they all turned as Preacher Jack entered the room, followed by a stranger who was taller than the old man and more massive than Charlie Pink-eye had been. The man’s face was a ruin of melted flesh. One eye was a black pit, and the other as blue as lake water. He wore heavy cloak of white bearskin. Even though Benny had never seen him before, he knew at once who this had to be. White Bear.
“So this is Tom Imura’s kid brother and Jessie Riley’s daughter,” said White Bear with a grin. “Well, I’ll be a dancing duck if they ain’t cute as puppies, the both of ’em.”
Heap and Digger chortled, and Preacher Jack smiled his ugly smile. “Figured you’d want to have a word with them before we get started,” murmured the preacher.
“Oh yes indeed,” said the big man, and he entered the room. Beneath the cloak of bear fur he wore hand- stitched leather pants and moccasins. His bare chest was marked with large burned patches too. He wore at least a dozen necklaces of oyster shells, beads, and feathers, and he had silver rings on every finger. He stood in the center of the room and exuded so much personal power that he appeared to fill the place, dwarfing the others. Only Preacher Jack seemed undiminished. The big man grinned at Benny and Nix. “You two know who I am?”
“White Bear,” said Nix.
“That’s right,” said the big man, obviously pleased. “But do you know who I am?”
They shook their heads.
“I am the spirit of the Rot and Ruin. I’m the old medicine reborn to save the world from itself. I’m the immortal White Bear, born in fire and born of fire.” He glared at them for a long moment, and then he cracked up laughing. The other men joined him, and the four of them howled at a joke neither Benny nor Nix understood. Finally White Bear dabbed at a tear at the corner of his remaining eye. “Okay, okay… so that’s the public relations line. That’s what we tell the rubes to get them all excited. Works pretty well, too. Misinformation and disinformation make the world go round.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Nix.
“Call it a campaign strategy,” replied White Bear. “You always need a good campaign strategy if you’re running for office.”
Benny narrowed his eyes. “Running for what office?”
“Chief badass of the whole damn Rot and Ruin,” supplied Digger.
“In so many words,” agreed White Bear. “Y’see, when we heard that your brother Tom was clearing out of the area, we figured it was a ripe moment to come in and make some changes. Time to stop screwing around with the silly rules they got in nowhere places like Mountainside and Haven and suchlike. Charlie was getting ready to do that too, but he was… um… reluctant to make his move with Tom in the mix.”
“That’s because he was afraid of Tom!” snapped Benny.
The smile flickered on White Bear’s face. “Boy, you don’t need teeth or both eyes to go into a zom pit. Say another word about Charlie and I’ll do you ugly before I feed you to-”
“Bear,” said Preacher Jack quietly. It was all he said, but it stopped White Bear for a moment. The big man nodded and took a breath.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, but he fixed his wicked eye on Benny. “Charlie wasn’t afraid of nobody on God’s green earth, you little snot. He was a man of honor, and he showed respect to your brother. Not fear… respect.”
Benny didn’t want to make things worse, so he said, “Okay. I understand that.”
White Bear gave a single, curt nod. “Tom Imura may be a pain in my butt, but he’s a warrior, and I won’t put the lie to it and say he isn’t.” Heap and Digger grunted agreement, and even Preacher Jack nodded. “But Tom’s leaving, and he’s as much as said that this area ain’t his concern no more. That means it’s fair game, and what was Charlie’s is mine by right, and so I’m moving in and taking over. I got big plans for this area. Big plans. Good plans, and you want to know the funny part? The real knee-slapper of a joke?”
“Um… sure,” said Benny.
“I’ll bet your brother would even approve of what I got in mind.”
Nix made a sound low in her throat, but White Bear didn’t hear it.
Benny said, “What do you mean?”
“It’s long past time for people to stop being afraid of the dead,” said White Bear. “The, um, Children of
