With that she turned and stalked away, her spine as stiff as a board. Benny stood openmouthed until she was almost back to the tree where Chong sat with Eve.

“What the hell was that all about?” he asked the elk.

The elk, being an elk, said nothing.

Dispirited and deeply troubled, Benny thrust his hands in his pockets and walked slowly over to the edge of the ravine to stare at the faces of the living dead. They looked at him with dead eyes, but in some eerie way Benny felt that they could see him and that they somehow understood all the mysteries that were sewn like stitches through the skin of this day.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

A lot of the stuff Tom taught us has nothing to do with zoms. Once, right after we started training, Morgie asked Tom why we bothered, ’cause after all, Charlie and the Hammer were dead. This was before we left town, before we met White Bear and Preacher Jack.

Tom said that we should never assume that we know what’s out there. He said, “People in town refer to everything beyond the fence line as the great Rot and Ruin. We assume that it’s nothing but a wasteland from our fence all the way to the Atlantic Ocean three thousand miles away. But we saw that jet, so there is something out there. We don’t know what it is, or whether whoever’s out there will be friendly. Or generous. Or open to us joining them. A smart warrior prepares for all eventualities.”

Tom also said, “Even before First Night there were all kinds of people who wanted to be on their own. Isolationists, religious orders, militant groups, back-to-nature groups, communes, military bases, remote research stations, and more. Some of these people will do anything to protect their privacy or their way of life. To them . . . we’re outsiders and intruders.”

Chapter 14

14

FOR LILAH, READING TRACKS ON THE GROUND WAS AS EASY AS READING words on a page. Her sharp eyes missed nothing, and as she moved deeper into the desert forest, she began cataloging the marks she found. Eve’s were easy to spot, and they wandered out of the east along a crooked path.

As for the rest, Lilah slowed from a run to a walk as she studied them.

The forest was denser than she’d expected. She knelt and pawed at the sandy soil and quickly found darker, wetter soil beneath. She sniffed it.

There was water here. An underground stream or some other source beyond what the wind towers pulled in. Eve had mentioned a creek; and the footprints seemed to be coming from the densest part of the forest. That made sense. People tended to camp near water. Especially in a climate like this.