better come.”
Tom turned from the guard. The man had collapsed into a weeping, cringing pile, and looking at him disgusted Tom. He jabbed the guard with a toe. “Stay!”
The man nodded and held his hands up, palms out.
Tom crossed to the door and stepped out into the hall. His hand flashed toward his sword, and a war cry almost tore itself from his throat. Then he froze in total shock.
The hall was full of people. All of them were heavily armed. Tom’s mouth hung open. One of the people reached out a hand and gently pushed on Tom’s chin to close his mouth.
“You’re going to catch flies with that,” said Sally Two-Knives with a wicked grin.
Tom looked around, seeing faces that could not be here. “I don’t-I mean-”
“You owe me two ration dollars,” said Fluffy McTeague to Basher. “I told you he wouldn’t know what to say.”
Farther down the hall, J-Dog and Dr. Skillz were removing the dog collars from the kids. They looked up and grinned.
“Kahuna!” said J-Dog.
“Yo, brah!” said Dr. Skillz.
“How are you here?” exclaimed Tom.
Sally and Solomon filled him in on the discussion they’d had in the woods. “We started gathering everyone up,” said Solomon, shaking Tom’s hand. “You’re a popular guy, brother. Everybody’s either looking to warn you or looking to trade you to White Bear for serious cash money.”
“I saw the bounty sheet. Not just me… they want my brother and his friends. Dead or alive.”
“Worth more alive,” said Hector Mexico. “Dead? Eh, not so much.”
“We don’t want you to leave, boss. End of an era,” said Basher. “No way we were going to let White Bear write the last chapter of Fast Tommy’s story.”
Tom frowned. “So… this is a rescue party?”
“Par-teeee!” chanted J-Dog and Dr. Skillz.
“But this isn’t even your fight.”
Solomon Jones answered that. “It’s always been our fight, Tom. And with you gone-dead or gone east-then it’s going to be our war.”
Tom shook his head.
“Son,” Solomon said with a smile, “don’t you know when the universe cuts you a break?”
“Not lately, no.”
“Well, get used to it, ’cause the cavalry has arrived.”
“Only downside,” said Sally, “is that there are twenty of us and about four hundred of them. And I’m not going to be much good in a fight once I run out of bullets.”
Now it was Tom’s turn to smile. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you guys see what was in the front room?”
Basher shook his head. “No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs.”
“Then you may be the cavalry,” said Tom, “but I’m Santa Claus. Let’s go downstairs and open some presents.”
76
CHARLIE PINK-EYE LOOMED IN FRONT OF BENNY AND NIX. SIX FEET SIX inches of him. One eye was a milky pink, the other one-once as blue as his father’s-was black and dead. His skin, once the creamy white of an albino, had turned the color of a mushroom: gray-white and blotched with fungus and decay. Flies buzzed around him, and maggots wriggled through flaps of his dead flesh. He snarled and took a lumbering step forward. And now Benny understood what he had seen out in the field by the way station. It hadn’t been Charlie leading an attack of zoms… Charlie had been a zom himself, part of a swarm led there by Preacher Jack. Led there… and led away before the fire could consume him. When Benny had seen Charlie smile, it wasn’t a smile at all but the snarl of a hungry zombie.
It was grotesque. It was bad enough that Charlie had not fallen a thousand feet to smash himself to ruin at the base of the mountain. It was worse still that he had become one of the monsters that he and the Motor City Hammer used to hunt. What was far, far worse was that Charlie’s own father and brother had kept him alive as a zom, armored him like a gladiator, and put him down here in the shadows to be their pet monster. Their Angel of Death for a new and corrupt Eden. Even though Benny understood few of the mysteries of any religion, he knew with perfect clarity that this was a sin that could never be forgiven. This was blasphemy.
“Nix,” Benny whispered, “
But Nix did not run. She couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot, staring with horror at a nightmare monster version of the thing that had murdered her mother.
“Charlie,” Nix murmured again. Benny looked at her, and his heart sank to see that the madness that had swirled in her eyes now owned her. This was what she had feared. Charlie, the monster who had murdered her mother. Charlie, alive or undead, but still moving through her world. Still hunting her. On some level Nix had come to believe that this would happen. This very thing.
When Benny had struck Charlie on the ridge and sent him tumbling into the darkness, Nix had not been a part of it. Charlie had overpowered her and Lilah; and it was a combination of dumb luck and warrior rage that had guided Benny’s hand as he swung the Motor City Hammer’s iron club. Charlie had fallen, but they hadn’t found his body. He was never quieted. For Nix, there was no closure. In some twisted way Charlie had escaped. And that had broken something inside Nix’s head. Maybe in her soul, as well. And with a flash of insight Benny realized that Nix’s desire to leave Mountainside was as much about running away from the possibility of facing Charlie, alive or dead, as it was about finding a new life.
Charlie Pink-eye took a lumbering step toward them. Benny snarled and pushed Nix back.
“God…” Nix’s voice was small and fragile.
Benny let out a bellow of fury and swung his hatchet, trying for a killing shot through the eye socket. Instead the glass blade dug into the front of Charlie’s cheek, punching through the sinus. The zoms in the dead-end tunnel moaned with raw hunger and shuffled forward, but Charlie’s massive body blocked the way. With a feral growl Charlie lashed out and knocked Benny sideways into the wall. The glass blade of the hatchet snapped, and the handle fell from Benny’s fingers. The blow was so fast and strong that for an insane moment Benny wondered if Charlie was somehow still alive. It was impossible, though. No… no, this thing was dead. Still… it was fast. Too fast. And so powerful!
Benny slid to the floor. Charlie bent down, grabbed Benny’s vest, and pulled him off the floor. Razor teeth gleamed like daggers in the torchlight. As Charlie pulled him close, Benny could see the gleaming tips of the nails that covered the monster’s body like a porcupine. Benny raised a knee and managed to get the flat of his shoe against the zom’s lower stomach-the only area not covered by the nail vest. He kicked out, trying to squirm out of the grip with leverage, aiming blows to dislocate the jaw or break the neck. He tried every trick of combat and physics Tom had taught him. The nail heads scratched him, and soon Benny was bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts. Then two dozen. Blood flew from the injuries, and though none of them were serious, the smell of fresh blood in the air seemed to drive Charlie and the other zombies wild. They snarled and moaned and bit the air.
Charlie’s big head darted forward, and his razor teeth bit down with devastating force-but not on Benny’s flesh.
Suddenly Nix was there, squeezing in between Benny and the monster, and she rammed her hatchet up into its mouth. The rows of filed teeth chomped down on the weapon and crunched on glass and wood. Nail tips pressed into Nix’s vest. The canvas was sturdy, but it wasn’t designed for this kind of protection. Not even a carpet coat would work if she didn’t get out of there soon.
Charlie flung Benny away and grabbed Nix instead. Benny crashed to the ground again. Pain exploded in his shoulder, numbing him all the way to his fingertips. The other zoms tried to reach past Charlie to get to Nix. Wax-
