Bits & Pieces (39 page)

“You survived,” said Rags.

“Sure. A bunch of us did,” agreed Rachael, “and I think I know why.”

Rags said nothing.

“We were
heroes
,” explained Rachael. “That's what did it. Now . . . I know that sounds nuts.”

Rags raised her hand and waggled it back and forth. “Just a bit. I've heard stranger stories.”

Rachael told her what happened. How after the initial shock she and Brett rallied several other cosplayers on their floor of the hotel and they began working together—
fighting
together—as if that was something they'd always done. As if it was something they were used to doing for real. Together they cleared their floor, and as the night wore on and the outbreak spun out of all control, they invaded the other floors, saving who they could, killing the infected.

“It was like we were really superheroes. We weren't even all that afraid. Not really,” said Rachael. “Being in costume
while everything was falling apart, it kept us all together. And it made us want to stand with each other, you know? Like we were a real team. A few people split off, but a lot of people stayed with us. We blocked off the fire stairs and turned six floors of the hotel into our . . . um . . . headquarters. We even called it Avengers Tower.” She paused, but when Rags made no comment and offered no criticism, the woman continued. “Later, when we realized that no one was going to come to rescue us, and when food started running low, we began taking over the lower floors. Our room was on the thirty-ninth floor. It took us two weeks to fight our way down to the street level.”

“How many got out?”

Rachael looked away for a moment. The last fireflies of the season were drifting through the bushes. “When we left the thirty-third floor, we had forty-eight people. Seventeen cosplayers, and the other thirty-one were civilians.”

Rags echoed the word. “Civilians.”

“By the time we reached the street, there were only eight cosplayers left.”

“How many civilians?”

Rachael smiled. “Thirty-one.”

“You didn't lose any of them?”

She shook her head. “No. Not one. It was horrible—what happened, I mean—but it was also pretty amazing. Some of the cosplayers sacrificed themselves to save the rest. They stood up and fought the monsters so everyone else could run. Even though they
knew
they were going to die.”

“Like heroes,” said Rags softly.

“Like heroes.”

They watched the fireflies.

“It took us three years to get back to Pennsylvania,” said Rachael. “And when we did . . .”

She shook her head and didn't explain. It wasn't necessary. After three years, there would be nothing to come home to. Only heartbreak and horror.

“So it's just you guys now?” asked Rags. “You're still playing dress-up and pretending to be superheroes?”

“Pretty much,” said Rachael, but there was an odd quality to her voice. “We recruit some more when we can. And I try to teach them how to fight.”

“Do you have training?”

Rachael shook her head. “No, but I watched a lot of movies. Played a lot of video games.”

“That's hardly the same thing.”

Rachael shrugged. “I know. But it's what we have.”

The fireflies danced and danced.

“How many of the civilians are still alive?” asked Rags. “Or . . . are any of them alive?”

Rachael turned to her and took a long time before answering. “We usually don't let people into town. If Donnie hadn't been . . .
taken
 . . . he'd have rung the alarm and we'd have swarmed you.”

Ghoulie growled softly. Rags said nothing.

“We'd have tried,” said Rachael, hooking her long hair behind her ears. “We don't let people see what's going on here.”

“If you want me to turn around and leave,” said Rags, “just say the word. I'm not here to spy.”

“I know. Or, at least I'm pretty sure you're not. But you're
an amazing fighter. Better than anyone I've ever seen. Better than me, and better than Iron Fist. He knows some kung fu, but it's more fancy than anything.”

“You're pretty good with that sword,” said Rags, nodding to the weapon at Rachael's hip.

“Pretty good is nice. I'd like to be better.”

Rags nodded.

“Do you know how to use a sword?” asked Rachael.

Rags shrugged. Nodded. Shrugged again.

“You can fight. You've been trained. Anyone can see that. And the way you stepped in tonight? That was so cool. You're a real hero.”

“No, I'm not. I had a good teacher, though,” said Rags. “Captain Ledger. He's an actual hero. He was Special Ops before the Fall. I trained with him for four years.”

“Is he still alive?”

“I don't know. Maybe. Probably. Somewhere.”

“Are you . . . looking for him?” asked Rachael.

“No.”

“What are you looking for?”

Rags didn't answer. She shrugged again.

Rachael chewed her lip for a moment and made a soft, thoughtful noise as she watched the fireflies. Then she abruptly pushed off the fence and walked a few paces.

“Let me show you something, okay?” she asked.

“Show me what?”

“You'll see. It's . . . well, it's what we've been doing since we got here.”

She led the way, and after a moment Rags followed. Ghoulie trotted along behind, huffing and clanking.

They passed through another gate—this one properly manned—and then turned and walked nearly half a mile down what had once been a broad street lined with big stores and automobile dealerships. They stopped at the top of a hill and stared at what lay beyond.

Rags gasped.

She took two clumsy steps and then sat down hard on the ground.

“How—how—how many—?”

Rachael knelt beside her, and they looked at the lights. Cooking fires and bonfires.

Hundreds of them, stretching along both sides of the road and then spreading back toward the distant gloom of nightfall. At the fringes of the fires were rows of tents, campers, RVs, trailer homes, and plywood shacks. Beyond those was farmland. Corn and wheat, pumpkins and apple groves. And more that Rags could not identify from that distance.

Her eyes, though, were drawn to the lights. To the fires.

There were hundreds of them.

Thousands.

And around each of them were people.

“At last count,” said Rachael, “we had eleven thousand civilians. And I have two hundred and fifty-six heroes in training.”

Tears burned in Rags's eyes and fell down her cheeks as a sob burst in her chest. Ghoulie whined and licked her face.

“So many people . . .”

“We're finding more all the time,” said Rachael. “And once we train enough people, we'll send out more scouting parties. To find more. And to clear out the farmlands. Every
year we take more of it back. Every year we get more of the world back.”

“My God . . .”

Rachael leaned close to Rags. “We need to get tougher so we can save more of them,” she said. “Tough like you. Like that man you mentioned, Captain Ledger. If we're going to save the world, then we need to become real heroes.”

“You already are,” said Rags thickly. “God . . . you're already heroes.”

“Not yet,” said Rachael. She touched the fighting sticks that were thrust through Rags's belt. “I'm not sure what you're out here looking for . . . but maybe it's this.”

Rags put her face in her hands and wept.

Ghoulie howled.

Rachael placed her hand on Rags's shoulder.

Down the hill there was bright firelight and the sound of laughter. Of people.

Of life.

My mom believed in a lot of stuff. Ghosts and spirits. God, too. And angels.

I'm not sure what I believe in. I used to go along with her, with what she believed in. That's changed now. She's dead and I'm alive, and now I have to believe what I believe in.

But I don't know what that is.

Out here in the Ruin, especially late at night, when it's dark but the world isn't quiet because the night's never really quiet, sometimes I think I believe.

I keep thinking I see Mom's ghost. Standing just outside the light from
our campfire. Not trying to scare us or anything. Just there.

There have been so many times when I know I should have been killed. In the pits at Gameland. Fighting zoms. Fighting Preacher Jack and his sons.

I didn't die, though.

Is Mom's ghost protecting me?

Or am I imagining it?

How will I ever know?

(Between the events of
Flesh & Bone
and
Fire & Ash
)

Area 51

Benny Imura stood at the edge of a concrete trench that was all that separated him from the reaching hands and hungry mouths of half a million zoms.

Half a million.

The dead stood there, pale and silent, most of them as unmoving as statues. They looked like tombstones to Benny, their moldering flesh marking the only grave the wandering dead would ever know.

None of the creatures could reach him; the trench was too wide. Those that tried fell down to the concrete floor and could never hope to climb up the sheer sides. Benny was safe.

Safe.

Such a weak and stupid word.

A year ago that word actually meant something to him. Safe was a concept he could grasp. Safe was his town of Mountainside. Safe was the chain-link fence, the tower guards, the armed men of the town watch. Safe was a sturdy oak door and good locks. Safe was shutters on the windows.

Safe was an illusion.

That illusion had been shattered when death came to town on a stormy night as a lightning-struck tree smashed
part of the fence down. The concept of safety was battered by a zombie coming for him inside his own house.

The last fragments of the lie of safety had been ground to dust by the heavy boots of evil men—living men, not zoms—who'd brutalized Morgie Mitchell, one of Benny's best friends, when he tried to protect Nix Riley and her mother.

The men had killed Mrs. Riley and kidnapped Nix.

Benny and his brother, Tom, had gotten her back, but not easily. Not in any way that rebuilt the walls of safety, or that put a fresh coat of paint on the illusion that everything would be okay again.

It wouldn't be okay again.

It couldn't be.

Mrs. Riley was dead.

Morgie was gone too. In a way. He and Benny had traded hard words on the day Tom had left town. Benny and Nix had gone with him, along with Lou Chong and Lilah, the Lost Girl. All of Morgie's friends left town, and Morgie sent Benny on the road with a wish that they'd all die out here in the great Rot and Ruin.

Benny knew that Morgie was talking from a hurt place, not from his heart. But it was the last thing that had been said; it was the last memory.

Not even lifelong friendships were safe.

Not in the real world.

Not anymore.

Nothing was safe.

Tom was gone now too. Gone forever and for good.

His smile, his wisdom, his power.

Gone.

Benny looked beyond the closest ranks of zoms to a squat white blockhouse of a building that rose into the hot Nevada air. In there, behind those featureless walls, another of his friends was gone too.

Chong.

Infected, dying. Maybe already dead.

Maybe already returned from death as something inhuman. Something that, despite all their years of friendship, would try to kill Benny.

Try to eat his flesh.

No,
he thought as tears burned in his eyes,
nothing is safe
.

He felt the weight of the sword he wore slung across his back. It was Tom's
kami katana
, a perfectly balanced weapon. It
had been
Tom's.

Had been.

Then, in a moment that was unavoidable and terrible and wild, Tom had used the last of his strength to try to draw that sword in order to stop a madman from slaughtering everyone. But Tom was already dying, and his strength failed him at last—but in that instant Benny reached for the handle, taking it from Tom, brushing his brother's fingers, drawing the weapon, completing the action. Doing what had to be done. Fighting the monster.

Saving Nix and Chong and Lilah.

Losing Tom.

And, in the act of killing to save lives—even with all the moral and cosmic justification that carried—Benny lost a little of himself. That blade cut more than the flesh of an evil man. It sliced away a piece of Benny's childhood and left it to die in the bloody grass around where Tom knelt.

Benny squatted down on the edge of the trench, took a handful of hot sand, and let it pour slowly out of his fist. The wind whipped it away from him.