“Catch!” Nix scooped up Benny’s sword and threw it to him. Benny snatched it out of the air as Big Zak took a lumbering step toward him. Nix jumped off the porch and ran to intercept Danny, her sword held high.
Big Zak was too close for a perfect swing, so Benny changed direction and hit him with the heavy handle of the wooden sword. The blow caught Big Zak on the point of his jaw, and the impact sent shocks up through Benny’s wrists. Big Zak staggered backward.
Benny cut a look at Nix just in time to see her swing at Mrs. Houser and knock her sideways, but at the same instant Danny rushed forward and grabbed a fistful of Nix’s red hair. Benny took a reflexive step toward her, but then Big Zak grabbed his sweatshirt and jerked him off his feet. The zom dragged him forward and up, first to his toes and then completely off the floor. Even dead, Big Zak Matthias was a powerful man. Benny dangled from the zombie’s fists and for a moment he stared straight into the unblinking eyes of the dead man.
There was a story kids told one another, that if you looked into a zom’s eyes you would see a reflection of what you would look like as one of the living dead. Benny had stopped believing that after that nightmare adventure last September; but now, staring into the empty eyes of Big Zak, Benny knew exactly how he would look as a zom. Small and washed-out and lost, with all trace of his humanity and personality snuffed out like a match.
“No!” he cried, and as the zom lunged in for a bite, Benny rammed the shaft of the wooden sword into the creature’s gaping mouth.
Big Zak bit down with a huge crunch that chopped splinters off the sword and snapped the tips off the zom’s incisors.
Then Big Zak flung Benny away as he pawed the bokken out of his mouth. The sword clattered to the floorboards. As the zom turned toward him, Benny pivoted on his hip and kicked out with both feet, slamming his heels into the zom’s knees. The impact knocked the zom backward so that Big Zak’s heels caught on Zak Junior’s fallen body, and the monster fell down with a huge crash. Benny scrambled to his feet, raised the wooden sword, and brought it down with every ounce of strength he had.
The wooden sword snapped in half right where Big Zak had bitten into it, but the blow itself shattered the zom’s skull. Big Zak dropped facedown on the boards, moaning and twisting and clutching at nothing. Benny stared at the eighteen inches of jagged hickory in his hands, then reversed it, raised it high in a two-hand grip, and plunged it down at the base of Big Zak’s skull. There is a narrow opening where the spine enters the skull. Tom called it the “sweet spot,” and it was where the brain stem was most vulnerable. Sever that and the zom was dead forever. Quieted.
He put everything he had into the blow.
And missed. The tip of the spike hit the hard back of the skull and skittered off and finally crushed itself flat on the floorboards beside the zom’s ear.
“Oh, crap,” Benny said.
Big Zak’s twitching fingers scrabbled for Benny’s ankles, but there seemed to be no strength left. Benny stepped backward out of reach. The zom moaned softly.
Immediately Benny whirled, looking for Nix. As he leaped off the porch he saw Danny Houser fall, his head tilting on a cracked-but not broken-neck. Nix backed away from him, her chest heaving with fear and exertion.
“Watch out!” Benny yelled as Mrs. Houser rushed at Nix from her blind side. Just as Nix spun, Benny knocked Danny’s mother over with a flying tackle that sent them both into a rolling, tumbling sprawl. The zom twisted and hissed like a cat and buried her teeth in his shoulder. He managed to shift as her jaws clamped shut, and all she bit off was a mouthful of soggy sweatshirt.
There was a sudden muffled thump and a shudder went through the zom; then another and another, and Benny realized that Nix was pounding on the monster with her sword, trying to distract or dislodge her.
“Nix!” yelled a voice. “Get back.”
The thumping stopped, and a second later the zom’s body was lifted off him and Benny looked up to see Tom there. He hooked one powerful arm around the zom’s throat, and though the creature thrashed and fought, she was helpless.
A dozen people came running between the houses and into the yard. Chong and Morgie were with them, and when they saw Benny down on the grass covered with blood, they stopped and froze in place. Nix stood apart, her bokken in her hands, winded and terrified but looking unharmed. Everyone looked at her for a second, and then all eyes snapped back to stare at Benny.
Benny started to get up, but suddenly Lilah was there and she had a glittering dagger in her hand. Before Benny could speak Lilah crouched over him and put the edge of the blade beneath his chin. Benny froze.
“Lilah!” growled Tom.
“Look at his shoulder! He’s been bitten,” she snapped back.
“No…,” Benny croaked. “No!” cried Nix.
Tom handed Mrs. Houser off to Captain Strunk and two other men from the town watch. They gagged and bound her with practiced ease, though their faces were twisted into masks of fear and revulsion. Tom moved to Lilah’s side and touched the arm holding the dagger.
“No,” he said more gently, looking from her to Benny and back. “If he’s bitten, then it’s mine to deal with. It’s a family thing.”
“I didn’t get bitten,” Benny insisted, but no one seemed to be paying attention to him.
Lilah had eyes the color of honey, but at that moment Benny thought they looked as cold as ice. There was no trace of compassion or humanity on her face. All he could see was the hunter, the loner. The legendary Lost Girl who had killed humans as well as zoms in the Rot and Ruin.
The knife felt like a branding iron against his skin.
Then it was gone, and she stepped back.
“Be sure,” she said to Tom. “Or I will.”
Benny sagged back against the grass, more exhausted by the last few seconds than by the fight with the zoms.
Nix edged past Lilah, her eyes hooded and angry, and she moved to stand between them. Morgie crept closer until he was shoulder to shoulder with Nix; after a slight hesitation, so did Chong. Their bodies formed a screen. Lilah looked at them with a calculating stare, as if she was sizing them up and deciding how much-or how little- effort it would take to get past them to Benny.
Benny got shakily to his feet.
“I didn’t get bit,” he yelled. To prove it he pulled off his shirt and flung it on the grass at Lilah’s feet. Anger was rising in him now, replacing his terror inch by inch. “See?”
“I see,” was all Lilah said. She lowered her knife and turned away. Everyone watched as she walked over to the porch, mounted the steps, and without a pause drove the tip of the blade into the back of Big Zak’s skull. Unlike Benny, she did not miss.
“Holy crap,” said Morgie.
“Uh-huh,” breathed Chong, pale and shaken.
Tom bent and picked up Benny’s shirt, examined the bite hole on the shoulder, and handed it back to him. “You sure you’re okay?”
Benny looked over to the porch, where Big Zak lay sprawled a few feet from his son. From the thing that had once been a boy the same age as Benny. A friend once. A victim recently.
“I said I wasn’t bitten,” Benny said, shaking his head slowly as he turned away, “but I’m a billion miles from okay.”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Before First Night the United States Census Bureau estimated that there were 6,922,000,000 people alive on planet Earth.
Tom said that news reports claimed that more than two billion people died in the first two days after First Night.
By the time the Internet went down, the estimates of the global death toll were at four billion and climbing.
