It was in the sky, flying west, almost in the direction of home. Then it turned and flew back toward the east.

I know that if I’d been alone when I saw it, I wouldn’t have believed it. And no one would believe me if I told them. But Benny saw it too. And Tom.

We knew we’d have to go find it. I mean, how could we not?

That’s why Tom started the Warrior Smart program. To get us ready for whatever we’d find. So far it’s saved our lives more times than I can count.

Now . . . finding the jet is the only thing that matters.

Chapter 7

7

AS HE RAN, BENNY COULD FEEL THE LITTLE GIRL’S FLUTTERING HEART BEATING against his chest. It called up an old memory—the oldest memory he owned, a memory born in horror on First Night. It was a memory of being held just like this when he was a toddler less than two years old, being held tightly in Tom’s arms while his brother ran away from the thing that had been their father. And the weeping, screaming figure of their mother, who had used the last moments of her life to pass Benny through a window to Tom and beg him to run.

To run.

As Benny ran now.

Through darkness and horror, with death pursuing and no certain knowledge of a way out of the moment.

For most of his life Benny had misunderstood that memory, thinking that Mom had been abandoned by Tom, that his brother had been a coward who fled when he should have stayed to rescue her, too. But then he learned the truth. Mom was already dying, already becoming one of the living dead. She had pushed both her sons out of the window, saving them from the terror inside. And Tom had honored that sacrifice by keeping Benny safe—that night and all the other nights and years that followed.

Now Tom was gone too.

He, too, had died to save others. He, too, had sacrificed himself so that life could continue even in a world ruled by the dead.

The little girl Benny carried wept and screamed, but she also clung to him. And he to her. Even though she was a total stranger to him, Benny knew that he would die to save her.

Was it like this for you, Tom? he wondered. Was this what you felt when you carried me out of Sunset Hollow on First Night? If you were really the coward I used to think you were, you would have run off and left me. Wouldn’t you? You would have saved yourself. Alone, without having to carry me, it would have been easier for you to slip away. But you didn’t. You carried me all the way.