But the boars were too close.
Lilah ran past her gun and reached the boulder a split second before the pigs caught up. She slapped the curve of the rock and launched her body onto it and then over it. The boars slammed into the stone, one after another, their dead brains too damaged to correct the angle of their charge. They rebounded from the impact, and as Lilah ran around the far side of the rock, she saw that one of them had shattered its big front tusks. Far from reducing it as a threat, the damage resulted in dagger-sharp jagged stumps.
She piled on the speed, bent almost double even though her whole left side burned with fresh blood, then scooped up the holster, grabbed the butt of the pistol, racked the slide, skidded to a stop, whirled, and brought the gun up as the boars barreled straight toward her.
And then everything went a little crazy.
As she pulled the trigger there were two blasts.
Not one.
The lead boar pitched down and tumbled over and over, its head blown to fragments. The boars behind it squealed and stumbled, colliding with their fellows, crashing into and over one another in a massive pile. Only one boar remained on its feet, and it drove straight at Lilah.
Then something huge and gray came flying out of the woods and struck the third boar like a missile, knocking it sideways and down. The new creature rattled with the sound of metal, and Lilah had a surreal glimpse of spiked steel bands, chain mail, and a great horned helmet. It was a dog, but it was like nothing Lilah had ever seen. A monstrous mastiff, armored like a tank. It dragged down the much heavier boar and began systematically slashing the undead creature to pieces. It did not bite at all but instead smashed and tore with the blades welded to its armor.
The last three boars rose from where they had fallen over the one Lilah had shot. One took a single lurching step toward her, paused for a moment, and then fell over dead.
As it landed, Lilah saw the black dime-size bullet hole in its temple.
The two others glared at her. They grunted with awful hunger and charged.
Lilah brought her gun up, but a voice yelled, “No!”
And a second figure came rushing from the woods. Not a dog this time, but a man.
He leaped over the dead hogs and landed right in the path of the charging boars. The pale sunlight that slanted down through the trees glittered on the edge of a long sword the man raised above his head.
Not just any kind of sword.
A katana.
The man stepped into the charge of the hogs and slashed low, left and right, and suddenly the animals were falling forward, one leg on each sheared clean away. The man spun and slashed, the blade moving with incredible speed and precision so that it appeared as if the boars merely disintegrated. Then he pivoted and made two massive downward stabs, ramming the point of his sword through the weakest parts of the creatures’ skulls and destroying the spark of unnatural life that burned in their zombie brains.
Behind him, the dog rose from the destroyed hulk of the other boar.
Lilah froze, her pistol clamped in hands that now trembled. The pain in her side was screaming through her nerve endings, and shadows were piling up inside her mind.
But for all that, she could not help staring at the man who stood ten feet away, his face and body hidden by deep shadows, the katana held in his powerful hands.
She stared in uncomprehending shock.
The last thing she said before blood loss and damage dragged her down into the darkness was, “Tom . . . ?”
49
“Y’ALL READY?” ASKED RIOT. SHE WAS CROUCHED BEHIND CHONG, HER fingers lightly touching the barbed head of the arrow.
“No,” he said through clenched teeth. Then a moment later he croaked, “Go ahead.”
“Take hold of that other end, and don’t you let it turn. Otherwise we’ll be doing nothing but reaming the hole.”