No, the picture he held in his mind was that of a girl with honey-colored eyes and snow-white hair and a voice like a whisper. A crazy girl. A fierce and violent girl. A lost girl who didn’t even like him.
Lilah.
If he was going to die, then he was going to die as a warrior. If Lilah didn’t—or couldn’t—love the weak and intellectual Chong, then perhaps she would have a softer heart when remembering the warrior Chong who fought his way out of Gameland. As Lilah herself had fought her way out years ago.
And maybe … just maybe … he could save some of the other kids trapped here in Gameland. Like Benny and Nix and Lilah had done last year. If he couldn’t go with them on their journey, if he was to die sometime in the next few hours or days, then he wanted his life to mean something. He wanted to matter.
He reached and slid his fingers into the hole he’d just chopped, and pulled. His muscles screamed at him, but his mind screamed back at them. The rim of the pit was only three feet above him now.
One more hole to go.
67
THE DOOR TO THE DUSTY ROOM OPENED, AND DIGGER AND HEAP CAME in. The two thugs looked at the wires that had been torn down from the ceiling fixture and at the hole in the wall, which was bigger than it had been and revealed broken laths. Piles of torn plaster and broken lath littered the floor by the wainscoting. Benny and Nix were covered with plaster dust. The two men cracked up laughing.
“What’d you two morons try to do?” asked Digger between brays of laughter. “You try to chew your way outta here?”
“Yeah,” said Benny with a sneer. “We were hungry.”
Heap laughed, but Digger hit Benny across the face with a backhand blow. Benny saw it coming and turned with it, a move Tom had taught him to shake off some of the power of a hit. It made it look like Benny took the blow and shook it off.
Digger and Heap exchanged a look. “Tougher than you look, boy,” murmured Digger, getting up in Benny’s face. “You make it out of the pits with a whole skin, you and I might have to go out behind the barn and dance a bit. Bet you ain’t nearly as tough as you think you are.”
“Save it for later,” warned Heap, and they all turned as Preacher Jack entered the room, followed by a stranger who was taller than the old man and more massive than Charlie Pink-eye had been. The man’s face was a ruin of melted flesh. One eye was a black pit, and the other as blue as lake water. He wore heavy cloak of white bearskin. Even though Benny had never seen him before, he knew at once who this had to be. White Bear.
“So this is Tom Imura’s kid brother and Jessie Riley’s daughter,” said White Bear with a grin. “Well, I’ll be a dancing duck if they ain’t cute as puppies, the both of ’em.”
Heap and Digger chortled, and Preacher Jack smiled his ugly smile. “Figured you’d want to have a word with them before we get started,” murmured the preacher.
“Oh yes indeed,” said the big man, and he entered the room. Beneath the cloak of bear fur he wore hand-stitched leather pants and moccasins. His bare chest was marked with large burned patches too. He wore at least a dozen necklaces of oyster shells, beads, and feathers, and he had silver rings on every finger. He stood in the center of the room and exuded so much personal power that he appeared to fill the place, dwarfing the others. Only Preacher Jack seemed undiminished. The big man grinned at Benny and Nix. “You two know who I am?”
“White Bear,” said Nix.
“That’s right,” said the big man, obviously pleased. “But do you know who I am?”
They shook their heads.
“I am the spirit of the Rot and Ruin. I’m the old medicine reborn to save the world from itself. I’m the immortal White Bear, born in fire and born of fire.” He glared at them for a long moment, and then he cracked up laughing. The other men joined him, and the four of them howled at a joke neither Benny nor Nix understood. Finally White Bear dabbed at a tear at the corner of his remaining eye. “Okay, okay … so that’s the public relations line. That’s what we tell the rubes to get them all excited. Works pretty well, too. Misinformation and disinformation make the world go round.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Nix.
“Call it a campaign strategy,” replied White Bear. “You always need a good campaign strategy if you’re running for office.”
Benny narrowed his eyes. “Running for what office?”
“Chief badass of the whole damn Rot and Ruin,” supplied Digger.
“In so many words,” agreed White Bear. “Y’see, when we heard that your brother Tom was clearing out of the area, we figured it was a ripe moment to come in and make some changes. Time to stop screwing around with the silly rules they got in nowhere places like Mountainside and Haven and suchlike. Charlie was getting ready to do that too, but he was … um … reluctant to make his move with Tom in the mix.”
“That’s because he was afraid of Tom!” snapped Benny.
The smile flickered on White Bear’s face. “Boy, you don’t need teeth or both eyes to go into a zom pit. Say another word about Charlie and I’ll do you ugly before I feed you to—”
“Bear,” said Preacher Jack quietly. It was all he said, but it stopped White Bear for a moment. The big man nodded and took a breath.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, but he fixed his wicked eye on Benny. “Charlie wasn’t afraid of nobody on God’s green earth, you little snot. He was a man of honor, and he showed respect to your brother. Not fear … respect.”
Benny didn’t want to make things worse, so he said, “Okay. I understand that.”
White Bear gave a single, curt nod. “Tom Imura may be a pain in my butt, but he’s a warrior, and I won’t put the lie to it and say he isn’t.” Heap and Digger grunted agreement, and even Preacher Jack nodded. “But Tom’s leaving, and he’s as much as said that this area ain’t his concern no more. That means it’s fair game, and what was Charlie’s is mine by right, and so I’m moving in and taking over. I got big plans for this area. Big plans. Good plans, and you want to know the funny part? The real knee-slapper of a joke?”
“Um … sure,” said Benny.
“I’ll bet your brother would even approve of what I got in mind.”
Nix made a sound low in her throat, but White Bear didn’t hear it.
Benny said, “What do you mean?”
“It’s long past time for people to stop being afraid of the dead,” said White Bear. “The, um, Children of Lazarus.” He shot a sideways look at Preacher Jack, and Benny caught a flicker of disapproval on the older man’s face. “We have to share a world with them, but there’s room for everyone to have what they want.”
“How?”
“We’re going to reclaim the Ruin, kids. As much of it as we can. We’re moving the dead out of here. We’ll herd them all—”
“‘Guide’ them,” corrected Preacher Jack.
“Okay, guide them out of these hills. We’ll put people to work building new fence lines, but we’ll do it at rivers and gorges and natural barriers. We’ll take back farmable lands, we’ll run cattle again. Not just a few hundred head like they got in town—we’ll run tens of thousands of heads. We’ll plant a million acres of food. And we’ll figure out how to start the machines again. Mills and factories, tractors and combines. Maybe some tanks, too, to keep everything working smooth.”
“Who’s going to do all that labor?” asked Nix dubiously.
White Bear grinned. “There’s a lot of lazy people sitting behind the fences. Me and my crew have been working all these years, taking all the risks. Now it’s time that other people broke a sweat and got their hands dirty.”
“You’re talking slave labor,” said Nix.
“It’s not slave labor,” protested White Bear, trying to look innocent, “it’s cooperative labor. No different from the ration dollar system we got now. They want to eat, then they’ll work. They work, and we’ll protect ’em.”
Benny turned to Preacher Jack. “What about the Children of Lazarus? I thought you said that t
his world was theirs now?”
The preacher’s lips twitched. “Don’t confuse philosophy with practicality, child.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that the dead don’t need farmland and clean water,” said White Bear. “They’s already been raised up to the Lord, so to speak. All they need is to be. So … we’ll just herd—I mean guide—them to areas where they can be without chowing down on us. Hell, nobody’s using Utah and Arizona and New Mexico. Who needs fricking deserts? We’ll keep ’em there, and they won’t know or care.”
“Such is the will of God,” agreed Preacher Jack, and the two thugs with him murmured, “Amen.”
“How are you going to guide millions of—” Benny almost said “zoms” but caught himself. “How are you going to guide all those dead?”
“It was the dead who gave us the idea,” said White Bear. “’Bout a year ago they started moving in packs. Swarming, you might say.”
Nix frowned. “Flocking?”
“We call it swarming, but yes,” said the preacher. “It’s one of God’s mysteries.”
White Bear nodded. “It started down in Mexico and in some of the Nevada towns. Masses of the dead who had been standing around doing nothing for years just up and moved. Scared the stuffing out of some people. Bunch of settlements were completely overrun. Every week it gets worse. Or better, depending on how you see it. Something causes a couple of the dead to start walking, and soon all the others in the area do the same thing, hundreds—sometimes thousands of them—all shuffling in the same direction. Weird.” He chuckled. “The thing that’s going to make this work, kids, is that we figured out how to steer the swarms.”
Benny stiffened. “You led a swarm to Brother David’s last night!”
“I did that,” admitted Preacher Jack. “White Bear’s scouts said that Tom was heading there, so I sent some of my lay-preachers out to gather some swarms. It was wonderful, wasn’t it? I counted seven thousand of them.” His smiling face turned dark. “And then you burned them.”
Uh-oh, said Benny’s inner voice. “You, um, saw that, huh?” he asked, trying on a smile that didn’t fit.
“I saw everything.” Preacher Jack’s eyes were filled with dangerous light.
“I didn’t see you.”
“That’s because you did not look up.”
“Huh?”
“Until the fire reached me I was sitting very comfortably on a folding chair on top of the way station. A grand view to watch the Children of Lazarus come down the mountain slopes. It would have been a grand view to watch them drag you and this slut and the white-haired witch out of the station. I wanted to see them feast on your bones.”
“You really blame me for defending myself?” Benny said, standing straight. “You claim to respect Tom for being a warrior, and you blame me for defending myself when you attack me? I mean … what did we ever do to you?”
White Bear smiled at him with burned lips. “See this face? Tom did this when he set fire to Gameland. Nearly killed me.”
“Tom was—”
“Hush, boy,” snapped Preacher Jack. His smile had not returned, and the unsmiling version of him was even more frightening. “White Bear’s face is his face. Warriors have scars, and his scars are between him and Tom. That’s not the reason you owe us a blood debt. No … the reason you two and Tom and that witch Lilah are going to pay, indeed must pay, is because you tricked the Children of Lazarus—God’s own sacred swarm—into attacking Charlie and his men. That alone is crime enough to flay the flesh from your bones.”
“But he—”
White Bear suddenly stepped forward and grabbed a fistful of Benny’s vest and with a flex of his huge biceps lifted him completely off the floorboards. He breathed right into Benny’s face. “You killed Charlie. I don’t understand it, because Charlie was a powerful man and a great warrior, but somehow you blindsided him and you killed him. You!” He spat full in Benny’s face. “You killed my brother.”
Benny stared in absolute shock. “I—I—”
White Bear swung around and slammed Benny against the wall. Nix screamed and rushed the big man, tried to claw his face, but Heap and Digger each grabbed an arm and pulled her back.
“And then two days ago we get news from town,” said White Bear in a deadly whisper, “that my other brother, Zak, and his boy are dead … and guess who was involved in that?” He pulled Benny off the wall and slammed him into it again. The thin laths cracked as Benny’s shoulders and head crunched through the plaster. “Both of my brothers are dead because of you and your puke brother and your puke friends. My only nephew is dead! Zak Junior is dead. Killed by you and this redheaded daughter of Judas!”
With that he flung Benny across the room so that he crashed into the far wall and slid down into a heap. Nix tore free of the bounty hunters and ran to him. Benny coughed and moaned softly. Blood trickled from his hairline and left ear.
White Bear stood above them, his chest heaving, his face alight with hatred. Worse still was the look on Preacher Jack’s face. It was as if his features were lit from within; his eyes burned with fire and an absolute madness that was more frightening than anything Benny had ever seen. He and Nix huddled together and stared up at the preacher as he stalked across the room and bent over them.
“You killed Charlie Matthias and you killed Zachary Matthias,” whispered Preacher Jack. And then the man whispered four words that made the whole world spin into red lunacy.
“You killed my sons.”
The words hit Benny harder than the battering White Bear had given him.
“W-what … ?” he stammered.
“How would justice survive in the world if I let you go unpunished?” said Preacher Jack icily. “How would that make the world right again?”
Benny tried to say something, anything that would make those words untrue; but then Preacher Jack straightened and turned away.
“Enough,” he said. “Take them to the pits.”
PART FIVE
FUN AND GAMES
Understand death? Sure.
That was when the monsters got you.
—STEPHEN KING, ’SALE M’S LOT
68
CHONG REACHED UP FOR THE EDGE OF THE PIT. HIS LEGS TREMBLED AND threatened to collapse, his knees were like rubber, his muscle like jelly. People roared and applauded somewhere else, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before someone came back here. He was never a lucky person, so he had long ago learned to use what fragments of luck came his way.
He reached and reached, his fingers clawing at the edges of the pit, but the dirt there was looser, the edges scalloped from shovel blades and weakened by the weight of people leaning over to look at the pit fights. He dug his fingernails into the dirt, scrabbling, sending showers of soil down onto his face. He sputtered and coughed and spit it out; he shook his head like a dog to get the dirt out of his eyes.
Then something closed around his wrist. It was sudden, immediate, and as hard as iron. And abruptly he was being pulled out of the pit.
He opened his mouth to cry out, but a second hand clamped down over his mouth.
Chong was caught!
69
LILAH CROUCHED ON THE LIMB OF A TREE AND STARED AT THE STARLIT facade of Gameland. For two hours now she had watched people arriving on horseback and in armored trade wagons. Townsfolk and people who lived rough out in the Ruin. Coming for the Z-Games. Coming to wager on the lives and deaths of children in the zombie pits. She ached to run wild among them with her spear, to show them what it felt like to be hunted. All the way here she had hoped to come upon Benny and Nix, but all she’d found were their footprints … and later signs of a scuffle near the front of the hotel. She was sure they had been taken.
It hurt Lilah to know that this place had been taken over by bad people. Tom had been sure that it was a safe place for them to rest. To prepare for the road trip.
What would Tom do when he found out? Where was he?
And … C
hong.
Back in the forest the Greenman had given her a map and pointed out the fastest way and led her to the edge of the field that ran along the road to Wawona, but he refused to go with her.
“There’s going to be a fight,” Lilah said. “Won’t you come with me?”
He smiled at her with eyes that seemed ancient and sad. “No. I’m done with fighting. It tore away too much of who I was. It took me a long time to find myself again. I made a choice never to fight again.”
“But—I need you.”
“No, honey, you need you. You were lost, but now I think you’ve found you again. If it’s your choice to go and help your friends, then that is your choice. Not mine.”
Then he had kissed her on the head and vanished into the woods. Lilah stood watching the trembling leaves, wondering if he was even real or if her visit with him had been part of some fantasy that she had pulled from one of her books. Then she’d turned and began hunting along the trail to Gameland. She evaded a dozen guards and slipped past ditches and over fences and finally found the tree that overlooked the hotel. This was a different Gameland from the one where she and Annie had been forced to fight. Different, but still the same.
For several painful minutes she thought about what she could do, weighing it against what the Greenman had told her, and what she had confessed to him. His words echoed in her head, not louder than the words of the madmen in the arena, but in gentle ways that she could hear with greater clarity and understanding.
Let me tell you a truth, little sister, the Greenman had said. No matter what choice you make, it doesn’t define you… . what choice do you want to make now?
As she crouched there, Lilah looked into her own future. Without Benny and Nix, Chong and Tom, there was nothing. She could return to her cave and exist, but she now knew that such a life was no life at all. It was empty, and the thought of returning to that loneliness was beyond unbearable.