57

TOM CRASHED BACKWARD INTO THE BRUSH WITH BOTH MEN CLAMPED around his body. There had been no chance at all for him to avoid the hit, but as they fell he wrenched his hips and shoulders around so that he wouldn’t land first. They hit hard, with Tom on top, Stosh landing on his left side, and Redhead taking the full brunt of his own weight and most of the mass of the others. Redhead’s back struck a stone the size of a football, and the bounty hunter screamed so loud that it chased the birds from the trees. The scream was almost loud enough to mask the sound of his spine shattering. His arms flopped limply away from Tom, and he lay gasping and dying under the weight of the man he had tried to kill.

Tom ignored the man’s screams. Without a moment’s pause, he twisted sideways and hammered Stosh on the ear with the side of his balled fist. Stosh let go of Tom’s legs and tried to block, but Tom twisted around and kicked Stosh in the chest hard enough to spill him five yards down the slope. Tom back-rolled down after him and came out of the roll in a near handspring, driving both of his feet into Stosh’s face. The man’s head jinked sideways on his neck, and there was a sharp, wet snap! Stosh collapsed into a lifeless sprawl.

Tom relaxed. People with broken necks don’t reanimate. Another one and done.

Up the slope Redhead was still screaming. With a grunt of anger and disgust, Tom scrambled up the slope. The crippled man saw him coming, and his scream changed to a whimper. He tried to scramble away, but his legs were dead and his arms barely flapped.

Tom squatted down and assessed the man’s condition. Then he put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.” The other man fell silent, though he stared with eyes that were huge and filled with terror. “Your back’s broken.”

Redhead began to cry.

“Listen to me now. You’re done. You know that. I can leave you here like this and you can spend your last hours screaming. Lot of zoms in these woods. With your back broken, you might not even feel it when they start tearing chunks out of you. After that … well, you’ll reanimate, and then you’re going to lie here for the rest of time. Crippled and undead and useless.”

Redhead was blubbering, mouthing unintelligible words. Tom leaned toward him. “Or … you can buy yourself some grace. You square things with me and I can ease you down. You’ll never feel it, and you won’t come back. It’s your call.”

The reality of it all hit Redhead, and he stopped mewling. He stared at Tom with eyes that suddenly possessed a dreadful wisdom about the nature of his world. Tom could see the understanding blossom in the man’s eyes.

“Okay …,” Redhead whispered, then hissed in pain.

Tom nodded. He didn’t gloat. That never occurred to him. He removed his canteen and gave the man a sip. “Who took the boy from Stosh’s buddies after they were ambushed?”

“W-White Bear. They were Charlie’s guys. White Bear’s tearing up everyone from Charlie’s crew, ’cause of what happened to Charlie.”

“Why? What does White Bear care about what happened to Charlie?”

Redhead almost smiled. “Are you … kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding you? What’s the thing between Charlie and White Bear?”

“Jeez, man … you can see it when you look at him.”

“I never met White Bear.”

“Yeah, you did. He was there when you burned down Gameland.”

“What? There was no one there like him.”

“He … wasn’t calling himself White Bear then. That was something he came up with after he got hurt.”

“You’re not making sense,” Tom said, “and you’re beginning to piss me off.”

Redhead looked instantly afraid. “God … please don’t leave me like this!”

“Shhh, shhh,” Tom soothed. “Just tell me about White Bear and Charlie.”

“It’s all about Gameland,” said the man, and Tom noticed that his voice was beginning to fade. Shock was setting in, and the man didn’t have long. “When you burned down Gameland, Charlie lost a lot of people, a lot of friends. You know that. But what you don’t know is that someone close to him was burned in that fire. Used to go by the name of Big Jim.”

Tom grunted. “Big Jim Matthias? Charlie’s brother? He was at Gameland that day?”

“Yeah. He got messed up pretty bad, too. Face all burned, lost an eye. Almost died. Charlie sent him way over into Yosemite, to a place he has there. Big Jim got real sick. They say he died for a while, but he didn’t come back as a zom. They say that while he was dead he had a vision of some old Indian medicine man, and that when he came back he wasn’t Jim Matthias anymore. He was—”

“White Bear,” Tom finished, shaking his head. “White Bear is Charlie’s brother. I’ll be damned. That’s why he wants me.”

“You … and your brother and his friends. He wants you so bad that it’s made him even crazier. When he heard you were leaving Mountainside, maybe for good, he put everyone he has out into the Ruin. There’s a hundred pair of eyes looking for you, man. You won’t make it off this mountain.”

Tom didn’t comment on that. Instead he asked, “Why’s he killing Charlie’s men?”

“Not all of them. Just the ones he thinks should have been with Charlie when you hit his camp last year. Blames them, says they should have died protecting Charlie.”

“That’s crazy.”

“White Bear is crazy, man. Plays it cool … but he’s totally out of his mind. Makes Charlie look like Joe Ordinary Citizen.”

“Swell. Okay, now tell me one more thing. Where’s Gameland?”

“If I tell you … will you do what you promised? Make it easy? Keep me down?”

“I promise.”

“Swear it, man. I … I used to be Catholic. Swear on the baby Jesus.”

Tom sighed and held his hand to heaven. He swore.

The man told Tom where Gameland was. Tom swore again, much louder.

The man tried to smile, but he was fading like a setting sun. “You know, man … I almost wish I could see you go up against White Bear and Gameland.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you’d like to see me fed to the zoms, too.”

Redhead gave him a strange look. “No … you … don’t have to believe me, man, but I’d kind of like to see you kick that crazy son of a bitch’s ass. Him and his whole damn family.”

A terrible coughing fit hit him, and he hacked and coughed until blood mottled his lips and his face turned the color of sour milk. Then his eyes flared wide and his mouth formed a small “Oh” and he stopped moving. His eyes stared upward into the vast blue forever. The forest was silent except for the buzzing of insects.

Tom’s face and body were as still as the dead man’s, but inside his heart was hammering with fear. “Gameland,” he murmured. “Oh God …”

He looked down at the dead man and drew his quieting dagger. Reanimation could take as long as five minutes, but not with traumatic injuries. They were always faster. Redhead’s face was slack, his eyes half-closed, and there was no sign at all of the jerks and twitches that signal reanimation. Tom counted out sixty seconds. Then another sixty. The man stayed silent and still. And dead. Inside Tom’s head the pounding was getting louder.

He was curious, though. After the man he’d found on the road, he needed to know if that was a total fluke or part of a pattern. It was crucial to understand as much as possible about the living dead.

But Gameland was waiting, and he knew that he had to go, and go now.

Tom counted out another sixty seconds. And another.

Go! Go! Go! screamed his inner voice.

“Damn it,” he snarled, and rolled the man over. He drove the blade in to sever the brain stem. He wiped the dagger clean and got to his feet, thinking, He was going to come back. It was just taking longer for some reason.

He thought it, but he wasn’t sure that he believed it.

With that burning in his mind, he turned in the direction of Gameland. There was no need for tracking now. It was no longer a hunt. It was a trap, and he was heading straight into it. But he had no choice.

He ran.