1 NIX My name is Phoenix Riley. My friends call me Nix. Six months after I was born, the world died.

A plague turned everyone into zombies. Actual living dead. No one knows where it started. Or how. Or why. It spread fast, though. By the time people realized that there was a problem, the problem was biting them. Then everything went crazy. There was a day the survivors call First Night. That was the point at which no one could ignore the problem. No one could say that it wasnt really happening, or if it was, it wasnt happening here. It was happening everywhere. The year I was born the United States Census Bureau estimated that there were 6,922,000,000 people alive on planet Earth. My mom says that probably a billion people died on First Night. And over the next few days and weeks nearly everybody died. They used to have something called the Internet. Before that went down, the estimates of the

global death toll were at four billion and climbing. After that there were no more news reports. There was no one left to report it. Everyone was dead . . . or they were running. Mom ran. She took me with her. I used to have a dad, and brothers. I never knew them. I was too little, and when Mom ran . . . she was running from them. Or from what they had become. Mom doesnt talk about that. I dont think she can. I grew up in Mountainside. It isnt a real town, or at least it didnt used to be. Before First Night it was a reservoir built against a mountain wall in Mariposa County in Central California, not too far from Yosemite National Park. A bunch of people who were on the run found it. The reservoir had a fence, and that kept the people alive. Then more and more people found it, and when the big panic started to settle down, the people sent out teams to raid local houses and towns and stores for building materials, food, beds, clothes, and all sorts of stuff. They found a construction supply company a few miles from here, and they brought back miles of chain-link fence. Pretty soon they had a kind of town. That was fourteen years ago. Since then people have built eight other towns along these mountains, the Sierra Nevadas. According to the New Years census, the total population of the nine towns here in Central California is 28,261. Moms friend, Tom Imura, says that there are maybe five hundred to a thousand people living outside of the towns. Out in the Rot & Ruin. Out where the zoms are. Loners, scavengers who raid towns for supplies, bounty hunters, and a bunch of crazy monks who live in old gas stations and who think the zoms are the meek who were supposed to inherit the earth. Add them with the people in the towns, and there are still fewer than thirty thousand people left.

Thirty thousand of us and nearly seven billion zoms. Ive never been outside the fence-line. Neither has my mom or most of the people in town. People here hardly even talk about whats out there. They talk about the other towns as if theyre in different countries. We get news from them, and once in a rare while a traveler goes from one town to another. But everything else is the Rot & Ruin. My mom wants me to live here. To be content because Im safe and alive. Behind the fences. In a cage. Sometimes I think the fence isnt just for keeping the zoms out. I think its to keep us in. We built it and we locked ourselves in. I hate it. I cant live in a cage. I wont. But . . . I dont know how to escape the cage when everything outside is the Ruin. Out there, everything wants to kill you. Everyone says that. Still . . . if I have to live my whole life in a cage, then I know Ill go crazy. There has to be a way out. There has to be.

2 Tom Imura First Night. Tom Imura ran and the night burned around him. The darkness pulsed with the red and blue of police lights; the banshee wail of sirens tore apart the shadows of the California night. The child in his arms screamed and screamed and screamed. Tom clutched little Benny to his chest. He could feel his brothers tiny heart beating like the flutter of dragonfly wings. His own felt like a bass drum being pounded by a madman. Sweat ran down his chest and mixed with the toddlers tears. Tom turned once and saw them. He saw her first. Standing in the window, her arms reaching toward him. She was so pale, so beautiful. Like a ghost in a dream. Her dark eyes were wide with terror, her mouth shaped words that were lost in all the noise. He knew what those words were, though. Just one word really, said over and over again. Go! Tom ran. He felt like a coward. Tom Imura, the police cadet. Tough, top of his class. Tom the martial artist, with black belts and trophies and certificates. Tom, the fighter. Tom the coward. Running. Im sorry! he yelled, but he was sure Mom didnt hear him.

And then he saw the other figure: paler, larger, infinitely stranger, coming out of the shadows of the bedroom, reaching as Mom had reached, but not reaching for Tom and Benny. Those pale hands reached for her. For Mom. Reached for her, and dragged her back into darkness. With all of the sirens and gunfire and the pounding of his own heart, Tom could not have heard her screams. He could not have. And yet they echoed in his head. In his arms, Benny kept screaming. Tom screamed too. Pale shapes lurched toward him from the shadows. Some of them were victims bleeding, eyes wide with shock and incomprehension. Others were them. The things. The monsters. Whatever they were. Tom had weapons in his car. His pistolwhich he wasnt even allowed to carry yet because he didnt graduate from the police academy until tomorrowand his stuff from the dojo. His sword, some fighting sticks. Should he risk it? Could he risk it? The car was at the end of the block. He had the keys, but the streets were clogged with emergency vehicles. Even if he got his gear, could he find a way to drive out? No. Buildings were on fire. Fire trucks and crashed cars were like a wall. But the weapons. The weapons. Benny screamed. The monsters shambled after him. Go! his mother had said. Take Benny . . . keep him safe. Go! Just . . . go.

He ran to the parked car. Benny was struggling in his arms, hitting him, fighting to try and get free. Tom held him with one arman arm that already ached from carrying his brotherand fished in his pocket for the keys. Found them. Found the lock. Opened the door, popped the trunk. Gun in the glove compartment. Ammunition in the trunk. Sword in the trunk. Shapes moved toward him. He could hear their moans. He turned a wild eye toward one as it reached for the child Tom carried. Tom shouted in terror. He lashed out with a kick, driving the thing back, splintering its leg. It fell, but it was not hurt. Not in any real sense of being hurt. As soon as it crashed down it began to crawl toward him. It was unreal. Tom understood that this thing was dead. It was Mr. Harrison from three doors down and it was also a dead thing. A monster. Benny kept screaming. Tom lifted the trunk hook and shoved Benny inside. Then he grabbed his sword. There was no time to remove the trigger lock on the gun. They were coming. They were here. He slammed the hood, trapping the screaming Benny inside the trunk even as Tom ripped the sword from its sheath.

Three terrible minutes later, Tom unlocked the trunk and opened it.

Benny was cowering in the back of the trunk, huddled against Toms gym bag. Tears and snot were pasted on his face. Benny opened his mouth to scream again, but he stopped. When he saw Tom, he stopped. Tom stood there, the sword held loosely in one hand, the keys in the other. Tom was covered with blood. The sword was covered with blood. The bodies around the car . . . more than a dozen of them were covered with blood. Benny screamed. Not because he understoodhe was far too young for thatbut because the smell of blood reminded him of Dad. Of home. Benny wanted his Mom. He screamed and Tom stood there, trembling from head to toe. Tears broke from his eyes and fell in burning silver lines down his face. Im sorry, Benny, he said in a voice that was as broken as the world. Tom tore off his blood-splattered shirt. The T-shirt he wore underneath was stained but not as badly. Tom shivered as he lifted Benny and held him close. Benny beat at him with tiny fists. Im sorry, Tom said again. He gathered up what he could carry, turned, and with Benny in one arm and his sword in his other hand, Tom ran into the night as the world burned around him.

3 Pastor Kellogg It rained the night the world ended. A hard, bitter, soaking rain, as if God and all his angels were weeping. Fanciful, sure, but to John Kellogg, pastor of the Pittsburgh Three Rivers Church, it seemed likely that heaven should mourn the end of all those years of living, of building, of crafting laws and striving to refine the humanity of the race. The whole process, ever since dropping out of the trees to the mapping of the human genome, should have amounted to something more substantial, something not so easily smashed flat and brushed away. But it didnt, and the steady rain felt like tears to him. Gods tears. It was a strangely religious moment for a man who had been gradually losing his faith, year after grinding year. Caring for the homeless. Running shelters for abused women and runaways. Watching people drop out, one by one, from the twelve-step meetings held in the church basement. Trying to comfort mothers of sons killed in deserts half a world away for reasons even the politicians couldnt quite agree on. That morning, John Kellogg had argued with his wife about it. He told her that he just couldnt do it anymore, that whatever spiritual reservoir hed once possessed was now used up. Molly had a simpler faith, one whose unshakable nature Kellogg had always envied. Give it another year, she said. Go talk to the Bishop. Get some help before you throw away everything youve worked for.

It had been a troubling conversation. Their son, Matthew, did not believe anything. Or said that he didnt. Hed sat at the breakfast table, head bowed over his Cheerios, and took no sides. Matthew thought it was all silly. Religion, spirituality, the whole works. On the other hand he was too smart to risk siding with his father on this one. Not against Moms iron will. That was this morning. Now Pastor John Kellogg sat in his office behind the church and watched the rain falling through the open windows. Behind the noise of the storm, threaded through the steady hum of the downpour and the detonations of thunder, he could hear the gunfire. And the screams. Kellogg looked out at the rain, silver droplets flickering downward against the purple-black sky, and as the heavens wept he continued to slowly, methodically, and carefully sharpen his knives. They were kitchen knives, but they were all he had. Kellogg did not own a gun and had never even handled one. He loved to cook, though, so knives were more comfortable in his hands. Or . . . had been more comfortable. Comfort of every kind, he judged, was over. He took his time, even as time melted away in the storm. He tried not to listen to the sounds coming from inside the church. There were no more screams. Those had faded a long time ago. Now it was just moans. Low and constant and hungry. And the slow shuffle of clumsy feet. He ran the edges of the knives along the whetstone. Kellogg was not really sure if the knives would work. Hed had to use a golf club earlier. That was terrible. Loud and messy and awful. Maybe the knives would be quicker and cleanerfor everyone. Kellogg was careful with the whetstone, needing to get it right.

Because it was almost time to start the killing. The moans were constant. And there was a dull, slack pounding on the door. Limp hands beating on the wood. Whose hands? Mrs. Kulp? The choir director? Molly? Matthew? God help me, whispered Pastor Kellogg. The only answer he heard, though, were the moans.

4 Benny and Chong Happy Birthday, said Chong, and he handed Benny a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. Benny grinned. Hey, thanks, dude! They sat in the shade of Bennys porch with cold glasses of iced tea and the crumbling debris of Mrs. Rileys corn and walnut muffins. Overhead the summer sun was a fireball, but there was a breeze off the reservoir that was damp and cool. Hows it feel to be fifteen? asked Chong, who would pass the same milestone in ten days. Same as being fourteen, eleven months and thirty days. What I figured.

Chong said, We have to get jobs. Yeah. They both sighed. The town regulations were inflexible. All teens had to get a job within two months of turning fifteen or theyd have their rations cut by half. Chong was no more enthusiastic about it than Benny. Fifteen had always seemed a million years off. Im probably going to get a job at Laffertys, said Benny. Work inside. All the pop I can drink. Laffertys isnt hiring. I asked. Crap. What about that erosion artist? asked Chong. You can draw pretty good. Bounty hunters always need good erosion portraits. It was true. Erosion portraits were a solid business. Artists painted pictures of how people might look if theyd been zommed out. Bounty hunters used the portraits to try and find the zom in question and put them down. Tom called it giving closure, but Benny thought that was a sissy way to phrase it. Charlie Pink-Eye and his buddy, the Motor City Hammer, had cooler names for it. Bag and tag jobs. Shutdowns. Drops. Things like that. Maybe, Benny said uncertainly. Could be fun. Could be boring. Better than shoveling horse poop at the stables. Good point. They sipped their tea. Open it, prompted Chong, changing the subject. Benny grinned and tackled the knots. Just to be devious, Chong had tied a series of bizarre sailors knots in the twine. Stuff theyd learned in the Scouts. It took Benny five

minutes to solve them and he stuffed the twine down the back of Chongs shirt. Then he unwrapped the parcel paper to reveal six packs of brand-new Zombie Cards. Dude! cried Benny, grinning hard enough to sprain his face. I get your doubles, warned Chong. Yeah, yeah . . . dude! This is soooo cool. Benny tore open the first pack and immediately struck gold. The very first card was of a man with a scarred and ugly face, short dark hair, and pistol butts sticking out of every pocket. Niiiiice! said Chong. Read the back. Benny flipped the card over and read the text aloud The Bounty Hunters #95: The Motor City Hammer. The Hammer is half of the most famous and successful team of Bounty Hunters to work the Ruin since First Night. With his partner, Charlie Matthias, the Hammer has racked up more confirmed kills than anyone and hes rumored to have amassed a fortune from all the heads hes taken! Benny turned and gave Chong a high-five. Oh, man, I have soooo wanted this card. Now I have both Charlie and the Hammer. Chong was grinning too. Just remember, I get the doubles. Yeah, cool, no problem. They stared at the card for a long time. The Motor City Hammer was so dangerous, so tough, so everything that Benny wanted to be. Not like Tom. Nothing like Tom, even if they both did the same thing. It made Benny laugh to think that Tom considered himself a bounty hunter. As if he could ever be as tough or cool as the Hammer. What a joke. Tom the Coward couldnt hold a candle to the Hammer. Or Charlie.

Never in a million years. Benny turned over the next card, which was a double he already had, and he handed it to Chong. The Bride of Coldwater Creek. One of the most famous of the zoms still active in the Ruin outside of town. He flipped over the next card, and the next, thinking about Charlie and Hammer. How insanely outstanding would it be to get a job with them? To apprentice to the two toughest bounty hunters in the entire Ruin? Benny kept grinning and nodding to himself. Yeah, he thought, thats what Im going to do. Im going to be exactly like them.