Once he had found a measure of self-control, he scrambled down and helped Nix. Though she was a good climber, her injuries had taken a toll on her, and the horror and stress of the past hour had drained her last reserves. It took a lot for her to climb up, and she was totally spent when she finally reached the spot Benny had picked—a nook formed by four limbs growing outward from almost the same point.

Benny crawled down to the lower branch for a last comprehensive observation of the surrounding forest. There were no zoms, which was a huge relief; but also no sign of Lilah or the Greenman.

He removed his carpet coat and threaded his bokken through one of the sleeves and Nix’s through the other. The effect was to create a kind of sling that, while probably not strong enough to serve as a hammock, would at least give them some protection if they started to fall. He and Nix positioned it under them, and they settled back against the trunk of the tree. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was safe, and that was all that it needed to be to get them through this night.

They drank greedily from their canteens. Benny asked how Nix’s face was, and she said that it was okay; however, when he held his wrist to the line of stitches, he thought he could feel some heat. Was it from exertion or the fire? Or was the ugly monster of infection coming to haunt them?

He took his little bottle of antiseptic and a cloth and dabbed at her stitches as gently as he could. He knew that he was clumsy, but Nix endured it. Then he soaked a piece of clean bandage in water and placed it inside his shirt over the burn. It was too dark to see how bad it was, but it hurt worse than anything he could remember. When she asked how it was, he lied and said that it was nothing.

Gradually their panic seeped away. As it left, it was replaced by a wave of deep exhaustion. Nix leaned her head on Benny’s good shoulder and said, “How ridiculous is it that after everything that’s happened, we can actually say that this wasn’t the worst day of our lives?”

Benny knew that she was thinking of those three terrible days last year. The day her mother had been murdered, and the following days when Nix had first been a captive of Charlie and his men, and then had helped Benny, Lilah, and Tom lead an attack on the bounty hunters’ camp. Nix and Benny had both killed people that day. Even though there had been no choice at all, those dreadful actions haunted both of them. It had marked them, scarred them inside and out.

“I know,” Benny murmured, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice.

Nix found his hand in the dark and laced her fingers through his. “I guess,” she said, “that this does qualify as the worst camping trip in history, though.”

He laughed. “No question.”

They sat and listened to the woods. There was a constant and comforting trill of crickets.

“Lilah’s out there,” Nix said. “She’s somewhere safe. Right?”

“Absolutely,” said Benny.

“Tom, too. I’ll bet he found Chong and they’re in a tree somewhere up the mountains, waiting for dawn.”

“Yup.” The forest pulsed with the crickets and the soft swish of branches in the breeze. “Look, Nix,” Benny said, “I’m sorry about how I acted back at the way station. I guess I was freaking out, you know?”

“No kidding.”

“I was being a total jerk.”

“Yes you were.”

“And a major butt-wipe.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jump in any time now and stop agreeing with me.”

“Ha!” she snorted. “You ought to have your butt royally kicked.”

He sighed. Then Nix nudged him with her shoulder. “You’re pretty good in a crisis, Benny,” she said, “but you can’t take waiting at all, can you?”

“It’s not the waiting, Nix … it’s the not knowing. Drives me buggy.”

“Me too.”

“Doesn’t show,” he said. “You and Lilah were doing pretty good until I opened my big fat mouth.”

“You’re going to need to make it up to Lilah,” she said.

Nix was kind. She didn’t point out how easy a target Lilah was or how much Benny had probably hurt her. Somehow her kindness made Benny feel even more like a creep.

Sometime later Nix said, “It’s not how it’s always going to be.”

Benny wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question. Either way, his answer was the same. “No.”

She squeezed his fingers. He squeezed back. Then her hand relaxed, and Benny realized that Nix had drifted off to sleep. Just like that. Even though he could not see her in the dark, he listened to the slow, deep rhythm of her breathing. He settled back and listened to the night and began to deconstruct the day in order to make a plan for tomorrow, but three seconds later he was asleep too. Above and around them the night spun its web of darkness as the world ground on its axis toward dawn.

42

LOU CHONG WOKE UP.

He was still in hell … though he was immediately certain that he was now in one of the darkest rings of hell. They had taken his vest and shirt and shoes, leaving him shivering only in jeans. The ground on which he lay was hard-packed dirt. Cold and damp and smelling of decay. Chong sat up and wrapped his arms around his body. He had a lot of wiry muscle but no body fat at all, nothing to keep him warm down here in the clammy darkness.

There was enough light to see, but it was shadowy and gloomy. The walls were also made from dirt that had been pounded smooth. Chong raised his head and saw that the walls rose twenty feet above him, with no ladder, handholds, or rope.

He started to get to his feet but immediately cried out in pain and dropped to his knees. His whole body seemed to be composed of different kinds of aches stitched together into a tapestry of searing pain. The worst hurts were where he had been punched in the jaw, rammed in the stomach with the wooden stock of a shotgun, and kicked in the groin while he lay gasping on the ground. Chong tried not to cry.

Even as he huddled there, fighting the tears and fighting the pain, Chong’s mind was working. He knew where he was. Gameland. In a zombie pit.

He had never been here before, nor had he ever seen a zom pit before. It didn’t matter. Tom had described them to him and Benny and Morgie many times over the last few months. Tom had used the zom pit scenario as part of their training. One of Tom’s many worst-case scenarios. Part of the process of being warrior smart.

“So be warrior smart,” he told himself, speaking the words in a fierce whisper through gritted teeth. “What would Tom do? What would Lilah do?”

They wouldn’t take whatever was coming on their knees, he was certain of that. He thought about Nix having her face stitched without painkillers and without screams. Nix had to have dug deep to find the strength to deal with that. Just as she, Benny, and Lilah had found the courage to attack Charlie’s camp last year, even when they thought Tom was dead.

“Get up,” he snarled at himself.

The pain was enormous, and he dropped back onto his knees. A sob broke from his chest. Then another. While he knelt there, his mind did terrible things to him. It conjured images of Lilah standing over him, watching him kneel in sobbing defeat, and laughing.

Laughing at the weak, skinny kid. At the “town boy” who thought he could be a warrior.

At the fool who dared to think that he could ever in a million years win the love of someone as magical and powerful as the legendary Lost Girl. At the loser who had endangered the lives of his friends. At the coward who had run away. The images and the implications were like nails driven into his flesh.

But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace. He bit down on the pain, devouring it, accepting the hurt as something he deserved, and fueled by its energy he planted a foot flat on the ground, pressed the knuckles of his two balled fists into the cold dirt, and pushed himself up off his knees. It took a million years to get all the way to his feet. Straightening his body made it feel like every bruise was being stretched to the ripping point, but the shame would not let him stop until he was up and straight and at his full height.

“Warrior smart,” he said, but he loaded the words with scorn.

“Now ain’t that just a stirring sight?”

The words were like a bucket of cold water over Chong’s head. He jerked backward as if pushed, and he snapped his head upward to see three men looking down at him from the lip of the pit. One was the big one-eyed man with the flowing white hair who had brought him here. The man whose face was a melted ruin. The other two were strangers. They were smiling in ways that leached all the strength from Chong’s limbs.

“Who are you?” Chong demanded. It would have sounded better if his voice hadn’t cracked.

“’Who are you?’” mocked the big man. His voice made Chong’s skin crawl. It almost sounded like Charlie Pink-eye.

Could this be Charlie? When Benny had hit Charlie, had the bounty hunter survived and gone back into the burning camp? Or had the fires from that battle caught up to Charlie as he tried to crawl away? Was this Charlie Matthias? Or had some other monster descended into this already troubled and dying world?

“I’ll bet you have a lot of questions, little man,” said the Burned Man, as if reading Chong’s thoughts. “Well, think on this.”

He tossed something down into the pit that struck the dirt between Chong’s bare feet. It was a length of black pipe. One end was wrapped with black leather. There was old blood caked on the whole length of the weapon. Chong bent and gingerly picked it up.

“That there used to belong to a friend of mine,” said the Burned Man. “He used that there club to kill a thousand zoms. And near half that many folks who wasn’t zoms. Yeah … that piece of pipe’s got some history. It made my buddy famous all across the Ruin and in every town from Freehold to Sanctuary.”

The other two men laughed at this, giving each other high fives.

Chong gripped the object that had given the Motor City Hammer his nickname.

“My friend’s long since dead,” said the Burned Man, “but he’d be right pleased to know that his legend lives on.”

“I didn’t kill him,” said Chong, and then cursed himself for how cowardly and defensive that sounded.

“Maybe not,” conceded the Burned Man. “And then again, maybe you did. Or maybe you’re friends with those who did. Tiny Hank Wilson was one of the few who survived what happened at the camp last year. He said he saw what happened to the Hammer. Said it was a girl who killed him. That white-haired slut who’s been running these hills the last few years. But I don’t believe a little girl could take down the Hammer. No sir, I do not believe that. But a strapping kid like you, sneaking up behind him? Maybe clubbing him down when he wasn’t looking? That I can believe.”

Chong wanted to throw the club at him, but he held on to it. It was all he had.

“So, I think it’d please the Hammer all to hell to know that his favorite little toy wasn’t going to be forgotten. That it was still doing some killing.” The big man squatted down. “It won’t matter to him, or to me, if you live or die, little man. You live and you get to hold on to the hammer. Maybe one day you’ll be the Hammer. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Chong shook his head but said nothing.

“On t’other hand, if you die … well then, we got lots and lots of other kids who’d kill to have something like a nice piece of black pipe for when it comes to be their turn.”

Chong finally managed to squeeze three words through his gritted teeth. “Go to hell.”

The men all laughed, and the big man hardest of all. “Hell? Boy—ain’t you been paying attention? We’re already in hell. The whole world’s been in hell since First Night.”

He stood up and nodded to the other men. They vanished, but almost immediately other faces appeared around the edges of the pit. Men and women. Hard faces with hard eyes and mouths that smiled with icy cruelty. A small rat-faced man and a boy who was clearly his son shoved their way to the edge of the pit and started calling numbers and taking money.

Bets, Chong knew with growing horror. God … they’re taking bets.

The crowd fell into an expectant hush, and every eye turned in the direction where the two companions of the Burned Man had disappeared. When they came back, both of them were wearing carpet coats and football helmets with plastic visors. Between them was a pale figure that snarled and twisted and tried to bite the air.

“Welcome to Gameland,” said the Burned Man.

And then they pushed the zom into the pit with Chong.

43

BENNY WAS CHASED OUT OF HIS DREAMS BY MONSTERS.

From the moment he’d fallen asleep, he had gone running through a nightmare landscape where gigantic trees rose on black trunks that towered a thousand feet above him, their leaves burning with intense yellow fire. Benny ran through a field of blackened grass, and with every step a withered white hand would shoot up through the soil to grab him. He dodged and jagged and stumbled as hand after hand burst through the charred topsoil to claw at him.

No zoms emerged … just the reaching hands with their broken nails and bloodless skin.

As he ran he called Nix’s name, but the hot wind snatched her name away and tore it to soundless fragments. He could not see her anywhere. He ran and ran.

He saw Tom walking slowly away from him among the sea of clutching hands. Benny ran to him and grabbed his arm and spun him around. Tom stared at him with dusty black eyes. Tom’s face was the color of old wax, and his teeth were broken stumps. When Tom opened his mouth to speak, all that escaped was the starving moan of a zombie.