pitched backward, dead before they hit the ground. Benny craned his neck to see who was firing and had a brief glimpse of the Mohawk and intense face of Sally Two-Knives peering along the barrel of a high-powered sniper rifle.
“Where’s Tom?” asked Nix again. Then she grabbed Benny’s arm and pointed. “There!”
“TOM!” Benny whirled and yelled, but if Tom heard him, he had no time to respond. A wave of guards and bounty hunters were closing in on him. They were armed with spears and swords and knives and pitchforks. Benny saw Tom smile.
Benny had seen his brother fight before, back in Charlie’s camp seven months ago, but even that battle was tiny compared to this. At least a dozen men closed in on Tom, and he smiled. Then his body became a blur of movement. As a man with a reaper’s scythe came at him, Tom lunged in and down and his blade whipped a silver line across the man’s midsection. Without even watching to see the effect, Tom rose and parried a pitchfork thrust and cut the man through arms and throat in a single move. A burly bounty hunter ran at him with two yard-long blades, but Tom darted forward between the weapons, and his blade rose through chest and chin and skull. The cuts were fast and elegant, worlds away from the awkward hacks and slashes of Benny’s moves with the bokken, but Benny knew the cuts. He practiced them every day. Benny was very good, but Tom was a master.
Tom moved like a dancer, seeming to skim along the surface of the ground, turning gracefully to evade, using each turn to put incredible power into his cuts. It was ugly and beautiful at the same time, a ballet of destruction that pitted Tom’s lifetime of dedication to swordplay against brute strength and seemingly overwhelming odds. Yet with each flickering second of time the odds became less and less, as it seemed that Tom was building around himself a castle of corpses.
Then a shout tore Benny away from the scene. He turned to see Heap charging toward him, but then a monstrous pink shape stepped into his path. Benny almost laughed at the sight of Fluffy McTeague in a pink carpet coat with a multicolored ruff and dangling diamond earrings. He looked silly, but he grabbed Heap by the throat and belt and heaved him all the way over his head, and with a bull roar threw him into a knot of the living dead. The big thug was instantly swamped by white hands and yellow teeth, and Benny could find no splinter of sympathy in his heart.
“Saves me the trouble,” Benny said to himself.
Fluffy caught him watching and gave Benny and Nix a charming smile and a comical wink. Then he reached inside his voluminous coat and produced two sets of brass knuckles. He was still smiling as he plowed into the melee.
“This is nuts,” Benny said. Nix simply shook her head and then looked past him and screamed. Benny whirled and saw Preacher Jack pulling off aluminum siding on one of the wagons. He was seconds away from escaping. Without even thinking what they were doing, Benny and Nix launched themselves that way. Nix held Benny’s sword; Benny had the jagged stump of hers. Would that be enough against one old man?
It was one of the living dead who changed everything.
Had Preacher Jack’s own men not reanimated, he might never have seen Benny and Nix, and everything would have ended there. But just as the preacher tore off the last piece of siding, a hand clamped around his ankle. The old man looked down in mild surprise and irritation. He jerked his foot free, turned to reach for his saber, and saw the two teenagers running straight at him. He picked up the saber and quieted his guards with two quick thrusts. Vegas Pete began to twitch a moment later, and Preacher Jack finished him. Little Bigg, however, sprawled there in the dust and did not move. Preacher Jack grunted. It was not the first time he had seen this. He shrugged, turned, and strode forward to slaughter Tom’s brother and the Riley girl.
Chong got to the top of the bleachers by leaping over the people who had been burned by Lilah’s attack. He stepped through the screen of smoke. And Lilah’s body was not there. He looked over the edge to see where she had fallen. But she was nowhere.
Then something hit him on the side of the head with such shocking force that he sagged to his knees and tumbled onto the burning bodies. He screamed and twisted away from the flames and went rolling onto the next bleacher with a jarring thump.
Chong felt warmth on his face, and when he touched the side of his head, his fingers came away red with blood. He lifted his aching head to see a massive form come lumbering toward him. It wasn’t a zom or a guard.
It was White Bear.
“Well, well, little man,” grumbled the man with the melted face. “If it ain’t dead man walking.” White Bear was splashed with blood, though Chong didn’t think that any of it was his, and he carried two improbable weapons: a heavy wrench in his left hand and a crowbar in his right. Behind him was a trail of destruction-crushed and broken bodies, human and zom. “Get up, boy… at least have the stones to die on your feet.”
Chong tried to rise, but the blow he’d taken to the head made the whole world spin sickeningly. His knees buckled. Blood ran down his face and into his mouth.
“Then take it on your knees, boy,” seethed White Bear. “I’m going to wear your skull on a chain around my neck so everyone will know you don’t mess with White Bear.”
Chong fumbled for his fallen bokken. “Tom will kill you,” he said with a bloody smile.
“Not a chance.”
Chong shook his head. “No… Tom will kill you. You’re going to die out here tonight, and the best you can hope for is to come back as a zom. You and your fruitcake of a father.”
“Watch your mouth, little man.”
Chong spat blood on White Bear’s shoes. “Or what? You’ll kill me?” He turned to show his injured shoulder. “I’m already dead, remember? I got bitten in the pit. You killed me, and if I can’t kill you, then Tom will. Or Solomon Jones or Sally. You and your father are vermin… and your time is over.”
“Go to hell,” growled White Bear as he raised his crowbar high over his head. Chong raised his bokken, but they both knew how this moment was going to end.
“Lilah,” Chong said, and he wanted it to be the last word he ever spoke.
As White Bear’s arm reached the top of its lift there was a loud, wet
“What?” said Chong.
But White Bear had no answer. He shuddered and abruptly dropped to one knee, the crowbar falling harmlessly to the dirt. Then a slender figure rose up behind him. The figure was wild-eyed and covered with soot and blood and sweat. She had hair as white as snow and eyes the color of honey, and in her strong brown hands she held a spear made from black pipe, the blade buried to the hilt between White Bear’s shoulders.
Lilah placed her foot on White Bear’s back, and with a snarl of disgust she kicked him face-forward into the dirt and tore her blade free. Chong, who had spoken her name a hundred times in the last few minutes, could not make a single sound.
• • •
Tom Imura saw White Bear fall, and a tiny smile touched his mouth. He would rather have handled that maniac himself, but there was justice in what had just happened.
The fight was going both well and badly. The good news was that Gameland was disintegrating around him. At least half of White Bear’s men were down, and an equal number of spectators. The bad news was that when he’d told J-Dog and Dr. Skillz to let a few zoms loose to liven things up and provide a distraction, he had meant just that: a few. Not all of them. The zoms were like a tidal surge that was gradually pushing the living across the arena. People were falling into the pits, and so were zoms, and at this point Tom didn’t think anyone was coming back out of those holes alive. At this rate the zoms were going to turn this whole place into an all-you-can-eat buffet, and that was definitely not part of Tom’s plan.
A pair of guards rushed at him, both armed with woodsmen’s axes. Tom parried one ax swing and slashed high, ducked under another and cut low, and the two men were down. Behind them were six zoms, and Tom realized that he was caught with an open pit to one side and the dead on the other. He’d have to fight. He did. But this kind of slaughter burned layers off his soul. He knew that. Why hadn’t the people here in the arena taken his offer and walked away? Not one of them had gone. Why?
