Benny let his head drop back with a thump. He felt Nix crawl up beside him and collapse. They lay there, defeated.
Finally, Lilah gasped out a single word. A statement and a question.
“Quad?”
Benny thought it was Riot who started laughing first. He had his eyes closed and couldn’t tell. First her, then Lilah’s creaking ghost of a laugh, then Nix. Then him. They burst out laughing as they lay on the withered brown grass.
44
WHEN THEY COULD WALK, THEY fetched Benny’s quad, tied the end of the rope onto the back of the Honda, gunned the engine, and pulled Sergeant Ortega out of the ravine as easy as pulling a carrot out of soft soil. Four other zoms came up with him. Lilah and Riot were waiting for them, and blades flashed in the sunlight. Withered hands clutched at the big sergeant, but they were no longer attached to anything.
As Benny dragged Sergeant Ortega away from the ravine, Nix trotted beside the zom, her Monster Cutter sword raised to deliver a quieting blow.
But she didn’t have to.
The soldier lay still and silent on the grass.
Benny killed the engine and ran back to stand beside Nix. Riot and Lilah trotted up. The sergeant lay in a loose-jointed tangle of arms and legs. His face was placid in that slack rest of final death. At a glance, he looked like any other zom. Less comprehensively withered than the people who’d died on First Night, but still leathery from the Nevada sun. The only thing that was noticeably wrong with him was his neck.
It was too long.
Inches too long.
Between the pull of the quad and th
e drag of the other zoms clinging to him, the bones of the dead man’s neck had separated, and the spinal cord had stretched too far and snapped. Had the strain been a little heavier, or the process of pulling him up taken a few seconds longer, the envelope of skin and muscle that comprised his neck would have torn and all they would have pulled out of the ravine was a head.
They stood around him, their shadows falling over the zom like a shroud.
“I’m glad we don’t have to quiet him,” said Nix. The others, even Lilah, nodded.
Benny knelt down and lifted the satchel strap. He had to raise the total slack weight of the sergeant’s head in order to pull the satchel off. He winced but did it anyway. As soon as he had it off, Nix and Riot knelt down and began going through the sergeant’s pockets and laying the items out on a clear patch of dirt. Lilah sorted the items.
They found a rusted multipurpose tool, a Las Vegas poker chip that Ortega was probably carrying as a good-luck charm, a plastic pocket comb, a pencil with a tip that looked like it had been sharpened with a knife, and several folded pieces of paper money of a kind none of them had ever seen. Instead of a picture of a president, the central image was a star, and Benny saw a phrase in Latin: POPULUS INVICTUS.
Nix, reading over his shoulder, translated it. “A Nation Unconquerable.”
Unlike Benny, she had paid attention in language arts.
“I think that’s the motto of the American Nation,” suggested Benny.
Lilah nodded her agreement, but Riot snorted.
“What?” asked Benny, shooting her a look. “You don’t think so?”
“Close to three hundred million Americans have died, son, during the Fall and in the years after,” said Riot. “How many have to croak before y’all consider it game over?”
“All,” said Lilah.
“Absolutely,” agreed Nix. “We’re still fighting.”
“Yeah,” said Benny, nodding. “Besides, it wasn’t our generation who was defeated when the dead rose. I still believe there’s a future, and I intend to be there to see it.”
Riot considered him, and a slow smile spread over her face. “Well look at you, Captain Hero.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Benny, but he was grinning.
The last thing they found was a folded slip of paper with a series of numbers written on it: