Benny looked from them to the sword he held, and he thought about what it would be like to be dead. When these zombies killed him and ate him, would there be enough of him left to reanimate? Would he join their company of wandering dead? He looked around at the ravine. There was no visible way out of this pit. Would he and all these dead be trapped down here, standing silently as the years burned themselves out above?

Yes.

That was exactly what would happen, and Benny’s heart began to break. The helplessness was overwhelming, and for a horrifying moment he watched his own arms sag, allowing the sword to dip in defeat before the battle had even begun.

“Nix,” he said one last time.

Then a single spark of anger popped like a flare in his chest. It did not chase away Benny’s pity and grief—it fed on it.

“Tom!” he yelled. “You left me! You were supposed to be there. You were supposed to keep the monsters away.”

Despite the anger, his voice was small. Younger than his years.

“You weren’t supposed to let me see this.”

Tears ran like hot mercury down his cheeks.

The dead reached for him.

Chapter 6

6

THEN SUDDENLY THE AIR ABOVE HIM WAS SHATTERED BY A HIGH-PITCHED scream of total terror.

Benny whirled and looked up.

The zoms—their fingers inches from Benny’s face—looked.

There, wavering on the edge, fighting wildly for balance at the brink of destruction . . . was a little girl. Maybe five years old.

Not a walking corpse.

A living child.

And all around her were the ravenous living dead.

Benny stared at the child in absolute horror.

A hundred questions tried to squeeze through a crowded doorway in Benny’s dazed brain. Where had she come from? Why was she here?

The little girl could not see Benny down in the pit.

“Get away from here!” he yelled as loud as he could, and the little girl’s scream froze as she twisted to look down with wild eyes. “Get away from the edge!”

“Help!” she screeched. “Please . . . don’t let the gray people get me!”

She backed away from the zombies, who closed around her, and Benny screamed out a warning a half second before her retreating foot came down on empty air. With a shriek so loud that Benny was sure every zom for miles could hear it, the girl pitched into the pit. Her tiny hands darted out and caught the crooked roots under the lip of the edge and she hung there, legs kicking, her scream unrelenting. The zoms in the pit moaned and reached for her.