“I know that,” she said irritably, and it was only when she heard the sound of her own voice that she realized the other voice had not spoken aloud.

Her eyes snapped open, and with a start she realized that she was awake. She remembered falling asleep, or at least she remembered the darkness folding around her. She liked the darkness; it was soft and gentle and sweet.

Waking was none of those things.

Pain seemed to be part of everything. Even opening her eyes hurt. The sun was directly overhead, and she squinted up through a gap in the trees.

You have to stop the bleeding.

The voice was a familiar one, but it was not one that had ever spoken to her before. Not when she was alone. Not out here in the Ruin.

George? Sure, she heard his voice all the time. Annie, too.

But not this. Not him.

“Tom—?” she asked.

The only answer was the soft rustle of the wind in the trees.

Her heart instantly began hammering as the full awareness of where she was flooded back into her mind with ugly clarity.

“Help me, Tom.”

There was a reply to that, but it wasn’t Tom’s voice. It was the hungry grunt of the monster. Somehow it had found its way down from the cliff and was below her now.

The boar.

The impossible boar.

She looked down and gasped in horror. She was suspended in the interlocking boughs of two pine trees, but she wasn’t sure how far off the ground she was. Below her was a wild boar that had somehow become infected with the zombie plague, but she did not know how to cope with it. She had no spear. That was lost, probably somewhere on the cliff or down there with the pig.

She heard a second grunt, and for a moment she strained to tell whether it was the same boar making shorter grunts or—

No, there it was again. Two grunts overlapping. Then a third. A fourth.

Then two more.

Six of them.

Somewhere below her was an entire pack of the dead boars.

She closed her eyes for a moment and listened inside her body. She could not feel any cuts, but she could feel the warmth of blood inside her clothes.

She gingerly wiggled her fingers. They worked fine. She tried her toes. Also fine. There was pain in the backs of her legs, but she was comforted by the fact that she could feel her legs. After the first boar had hit her and she landed on the rock, Lilah was sure she’d broken her back. Not so.

It was a comfort, but it was not the end of her troubles.