Chong opened his eyes.
The desert was filled with reapers. More than a hundred of them.
One of them, a tall woman who—unlike the other reapers—had long flowing hair, drew a slender knife and pointed it at Riot.
Riot groaned and spoke a word that Chong knew would burn like acid on her tongue.
“Ma!”
She immediately spun the quad and plunged back into the forest.
Even over the roar of the engine, Chong could hear a hundred voices howl as the reapers gave chase.
84
“I GOT THIS,” SAID NIX, RAISING HER BOKKEN.
“No!” warned Benny as he moved away from it, using his body to push Nix back. “It’s one of those smart fast ones from that scientist’s report.”
The zombie began stalking them, and immediately Nix and Benny knew they were in dangerously unknown territory. This wasn’t the slow, relentless shuffle of the zoms they knew. The creature in the green jumpsuit seemed to be assessing them as it stalked slowly forward. Its milky eyes flicked from Nix’s bokken to Benny’s katana.
The creature—and Benny could no longer think of this thing as a zombie—bent forward and bared its teeth, its face wrinkling with feral animal hate.
“Oh God,” whispered Nix.
The creature snarled in pure fury and rushed at them.
Benny was caught in a dreadful moment of indecision.
Run or fight?
He could feel Nix’s whole body trembling beside him.
The fight and the slope were behind them.
The choice was made for him, because the creature raced at them far too fast for any chance of escape.
85
BROTHER ALEXI SWUNG HIS HAMMER AND THE HEAVY WEAPON, POWERED by the giant’s massive muscles and all his mounting terror, slammed into the first zombie to reach him.
The zom’s head exploded, and the lifeless body flopped to the ground.
Alexi used the force of the blow to turn his body in a pirouette, and as the hammer came around again he smashed it into the second zom. The blow caught the dead thing on the shoulder, but the force shattered its spine.
Alexi checked the swing and brought the hammer over and down onto a third zombie, and a fourth.
He laughed out loud, and his fear melted away to become diluted in battle joy.
“Come on, you rotting buggers!” he bellowed.
The zoms rose from the twitching bodies of the chosen ones, their empty eyes seeking out the author of that challenge, their mouths dripping red.
“Come on!”
They came.
Eighteen of them came.
His laughter died in his chest.
Some of them were in jumpsuits, some were in bloodstained black—with angel wings on their chests.
Something small and round sailed past Alexi’s face, and he flinched reflexively away from it. It looked like a metal baseball, and it hit the ground in front of the leading wave of zoms, bounced once, and exploded.
The blast was huge.
Pieces of zoms were flung in every direction. Blood splashed against the white plane.
Alexi spun around, shielding his eyes.
Then the air was fractured by gunfire and the combat howl of a huge dog.
86
BENNY HAD NO CHOICE.
He and Nix were too close to each other to swing their swords—they were breaking one of Tom’s cardinal rules about battlefield combat.
But she seemed frozen in place.
“I’m sorry!” Benny said, and shoved her backward as he jumped forward to meet the creature.
He heard Nix’s scream as she hit the edge of the slope—and fell.
Benny had no time to process that.