“Hey!” yelled one of the men, but Lilah ignored him. She’d seen no firearms on them. They could wait.
A cold hand closed on her shoulder, knotting her shirt in dead fingers as it sought to pull her backward toward its bloody teeth. Lilah went with the pull, but as she did so she spun her body in a violent pirouette. The torsion bent the zom’s arm backward so fast that bones splintered and the creature lost its grip. Lilah rammed the shaft of her spear across its throat and drove it into the last of the zoms, knocking them both to the ground. She thrust the blade into the neck of one, severing the spinal cord; then tore the blade free, twirled the spear again, and brought the heavy knob down on the last zombie’s skull. There was a pulpy whack and then the trail was still.
She turned toward the two reapers, who stood where they had been, their eyes goggling, mouths hanging open in total shock.
Lilah smiled at them.
And charged.
It had taken her five seconds to destroy the six zoms.
It took two seconds to cut both reapers down.
They reeled away, each of them clutching identical red lines across their throats. They gagged. They tried to speak, perhaps to protest the impossibility of everything that had just happened; but neither of them would ever speak their confusion. They dropped to their knees. One fell forward onto his face. The other toppled backward.
In the trees above them, the monkeys screamed in panic at the smell of death and blood.
Lilah stood above the dead reapers, her chest heaving, sweat glistening on her cheeks and throat.
Her heart sank, though. Without wanting to, she had taken sides in the war between the reapers and the people they called heretics. Which meant it was her war now.
Would it get her killed?
Would it get Chong killed?
She looked down at the two men, wondering if they would reanimate. Or had the zombie plague truly changed?
Then a cloud moved above, and fresh sunlight blazed on the big white thing behind her on the edge of the cliff. She turned and stared at what she had thought was a line of white rocks.
“God,” she murmured. This was going to really kill the others.
Between this and the thought that she had dragged her friends into someone else’s war, her entire mind was in turmoil.
She never saw the shape that stepped out of the woods behind her.
It, however, saw her, and its lips peeled back from jagged teeth as it charged at her. Not in a slow, shambling gait—death raced at Lilah at incredible speed.
23
“DO AS SHE SAYS,” GROWLED A VOICE BEHIND THEM, AND BENNY, NIX, and Chong wheeled around to see a man come stalking out of the woods beyond the bristlecone tree. He was tall and middle-aged, with black hair tied back in a ponytail and bloody bandages around one thigh and his forehead.
He stopped forty yards away and raised a shotgun to his shoulder, the barrel pointed at Benny’s head.
“Riot,” barked the man, “take their weapons and gear.”
The slingshot girl—Riot—gave a short, harsh laugh. “Y’all heard the man. Drop all the goodies and maybe y’all will still be sucking air come sundown.”
Benny did not drop his sword, but instead moved to stand in front of Eve.
“Ry-Ry!” cried the little girl.
Riot looked past Benny. “You okay, squirt?”
“Ry-Ry . . . where’s—?” Then the little girl saw the man and shrieked with joy. “Daddy!”
Chong said, “‘Daddy’?”
The man’s face went white, but his eyes hardened. “Take your filthy hands off my daughter!”
“Whoa, mister!” said Benny. “Everything’s cool here and—”
“I won’t tell you a second time,” growled the man as he took a threatening step forward.
Nix swung the pistol toward him and met his eyes with her own uncompromising stare. “You pull that trigger, mister, and I’ll kill you where you stand.”
The man snorted. “You’re at a long range for a pistol, girl.”
“And you’re at a long range for a shotgun. Let’s see who’s left standing to take the next shot.”