Jonathan Maberry - Flesh & Bone

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, it’s all right,” soothed Nix, “we’ll find her.”

Benny marveled at Nix’s patience. As sympathetic as he was to Eve, he could not stand the tears, the crying, the panic that emanated from the girl. It made him want to scream and run and hit things. Dead things. Or… anything. Trees, a rock wall. His fists were balled tight, and his whole body remained rigid as he tensed against a possible new wave of weeping.

“Sweetie,” said Nix to Eve, “where was your mommy when you last saw her?”

Eve’s face went blank as she thought about it. She glanced over Nix’s shoulder to the slope that rose above the jagged mouth of the ravine, then turned and scanned the entire terrain. “I was playing in the creek,” she said. “Mommy was doing the washing. And Ry-Ry was making breakfast and—”

Benny nodded. He leaned forward and said, “Eve… does your mom have black hair?”

Eve blinked at him like a confused turtle. “No. Mommy has yellow hair.” She said it as if everyone knew that.

Chong bent close and whispered, “Why’d you ask that?”

Benny shrugged. “Probably nothing. I thought I saw a woman in the woods right before the zoms started chasing me.”

“Was she—?” began Chong, and left the rest unsaid.

“I thought so,” Benny said, “but the zoms didn’t go for her.”

“Cadaverine?” suggested Chong.

“Maybe. I don’t know, it was all so fast.”

Chong nodded sadly. They both remembered Tom’s admonition about strangers. “A newly reanimated zom hasn’t had time to rot, so they’ll look like a living person right up to when they take a bite out of you.”

“Where was your camp?” Nix asked the little girl.

“I don’t know. When the gray people tried to get me, I ran and ran. We have to find Mommy and Daddy and Ry-Ry.”

“Who’s Ry-Ry?”

“A girl,” Eve said, as if that was obvious to anyone. “She was taking us to a new home where we could all be safe from the gray people and the angels.”

Lilah abruptly stood. “I’ll find them,” she said, and stalked off to begin preparing her gear for a hunt.

“Where’s the spear lady going?” asked Eve.

“She’s a very good hunter,” said Nix. “She’ll find your mommy and the others.”

“What about the gray people?” Eve asked in horror. “They’ll get her!”

Nix smiled. “No, honey. They gray people won’t get Lilah. She’s smart and really strong, and she’s quieted a lot of them.”

“Quieted?”

“Put them to sleep.”

“Pretend sleep or forever sleep?”

“Um… forever sleep,” Nix assured her.

Chong leaned close to Benny again. “This is fascinating,” he said quietly. “If there are other settlements out here, then they’re probably like islands or distant countries used to be in the days before the world was mapped. So isolated that their own phrasing and references — all the slang and jargon that we’ve used since First Night — is going to be different.”

“But… the way-station monks travel all over, don’t they?”

Chong shrugged. “Sure. Like the Irish monks did during the Middle Ages and the Jesuits did a few centuries later. The Shaolin did it in China, too. Traveling, recording, spreading information, and making connections among the learned. Kind of a theme with traveling monks.”

“The way-station monks don’t travel to spread their religion, though.”

“Not every monk or priest is an evangelist, Benny. Some were scholars and historians. Though, shocking as it is, you’re right about one thing. If we find people using the same post — First Night slang, then it’s probably going to be because of the monks.”

“Gosh, Encyclopedia Chong. Thanks for throwing me a bone.”

“It’s a small bone. Chew it well.”

Benny elbowed him in the ribs, but he did it discreetly. He didn’t want to scare the kid.

Eve eventually fell asleep. Nix waved everyone away so as not to disturb the child. Benny drifted off to stare at the zoms in the ravine.

Chong saw Lilah sitting on a fallen log, sharpening the blade of her spear in preparation for setting off to find Eve’s parents. Not feeling in the mood for another rebuke, he sank down with his back to a slender pine, closed his eyes, and began wandering slowly through the library of his mind. That was how he viewed it. A library, with shelves of books and rows of file cabinets in which his thoughts and memories and experiences were neatly filed.

The only mental file cabinet that was not as neatly and precisely ordered was the one labeled LILAH.

That one leaned with an awkward tilt, its sides were dented, and none of the drawers rolled smoothly out.

Lilah was the storm that swirled around Chong’s life, and he dwelt in its calm eye, awed by the power and beauty of it, but not at all sure he understood it. Chong was relatively sure he would die of old age before he ever understood her completely.

He conjured the image of her in his mind. She was easily the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Tall, lithe, with long, tanned limbs, eyes the color of honey, and snow-white hair. Since Tom’s death, it had fallen to Lilah to be the de facto leader of their expedition. Even though she’d never been to Nevada — or in a desert — she understood the logic and science of survival. From age eleven to sixteen she had lived alone in the Ruin, alternately running from zoms and bounty hunters and hunting them. Chong believed that Lilah could survive in any environment on earth in which she found herself. And although he could understand the skills she possessed on an intellectual level, he knew that he lacked her basic survival instincts.

His reverie ended abruptly with a sharp kick in the middle of his thigh.

“Ow!” he yelped, and loaded his tongue with the vilest insult he could construct for Benny… only it wasn’t Benny.

When Chong opened his eyes, it was Lilah standing over him. She had her leather hunting pouch slung slantwise across her body and the spear in her hand.

“Wake up,” she said.

“I am awake.”

Lilah dropped the spear in the grass and sat cross-legged, facing him.

“I am leaving,” she said.

“You just got here.”

“No, I am going to find Annie’s parents.”

“Eve’s,” he corrected.

Her eyes flashed with irritation. “That’s what I said.”

“Okay,” said Chong.

Lilah sat there with an expectant look on her face.

“Yes?” asked Chong.

“Well—?” she said.

“Well… what?”

“I said I was leaving.”

“I know. Did… you want me to go with you?”

She laughed. “This is a hunt.”

“I know.”

“I will be moving fast. Tracking.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

“You’re a—”

“A town boy. Yes, I know that, too.” He smiled. It was a fact she reminded him of a dozen times each day. “And this town boy would slow you down, get you eaten by zoms, and otherwise bring about the downfall of what’s left of humanity.”

“Well… yes.” Lilah studied him, clearly unsure of how to respond. Humor was the bluntest tool in her personal skills set.

“Then if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay here and manfully defend this tree.”

Lilah narrowed her eyes. “That is not a funny joke.”

“No,” he admitted. “Just mildly silly.”

They sat for a moment, she looking at him and Chong pretending to look at nothing.

“I am leaving,” she said again.

“Okay,” he said.

She lingered, waiting.

“What?” he asked again.

“I am leaving,” she replied, leaning on the word.

“Okay. Good-bye. Be safe. Come back soon.”