Free Dead & Gone by Jonathan Maberry

out a huge whoop of sheer joy, took two running steps across the hood, and then jumped high and wide, sailing over the heads and mouths and reaching arms of the biters.
    Riot watched him—his strong back, his lithe body.
    What in tarnation have you got yourself into, girl? she wondered.
    Behind her the dead were massing, scrambling over the cars now like a swarm of wriggling worms. Off the road, hundreds of people were rushing toward her, coming to help her and Jolt. People she did not know. Orphans and refugees. Scavengers.
    Friends?
    Maybe. As strange as that concept was.
    But what kind of friend could she be to them? Brother Andrew was right. He would be back. The reapers were outthere, and there were so many of them. If they came in force, what could a couple of hundred people do?
    “Please,” she said to the hot air. But she did not know exactly what she was asking for. She watched Jolt run and leap and twist and land and run. “Please.”
    Riot cast one last look behind her, to where Brother Andrew had gone.
    “Please,” she begged.
    The reapers would come for her.
    No, that wasn’t quite right. They would come for Sister Margaret. They would come for the girl who once belonged to them, to the Night Church.
    Maybe they would not find her. Maybe by the time they came back the scavengers would have moved on to another town. And another. Maybe if it took too long to find her, the reapers would give up.
    She hoped so.
    She desperately wanted them to understand that the girl they were looking for did not exist anymore. Not a trace of her.
    The girl she had been, Sister Margaret, was dead and gone.
    She turned and ran and leaped and followed, hoping that she was free.
    T HE E ND

Don’t miss the next exciting chapter in the world after First Night!

    Reeling from the tragic events of Dust & Decay , Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists, then humanity itself must have survived . . . somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.
    But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any of them can imagine. Something strange is happening to the zombies: Swarms of faster, smarter zoms are coming from the east, devouring everything in their paths. Has the zombie plague mutated, or is there something far more sinister behind this new invasion of the living dead?

B ENNY I MURA THOUGHT , I’ M GOING TO DIE .
    The hundred zombies chasing him all seemed to agree.

F IFTEEN MINUTES AGO NOTHING AND NOBODY WAS TRYING TO KILL Benny Imura.
    Benny had been sitting on a flat rock, sharpening a sword and brooding. He was aware that he was brooding. He even had a brooding face for when other people were around. Now, though, he was alone, and he let the mask fall away. When he was alone, the melancholy musings were deeper, more useful, but also less fun. When you’re alone, you can’t crack a joke to make the moment feel better.
    There were very few moments that felt good to Benny. Not anymore. Not since leaving home.
    He was a mile from where he and his friends had camped in a forest of desert trees deep in southern Nevada. Every time Benny took another step on the road to finding the airplane he and Nix had seen, every single inch forward, he was farther from home than he had ever been.
    He used to hate the idea of leaving home. Home was Mountainside, high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California. Home was bed and running water and hot apple pie on the porch. But that had been home with his brother, Tom. It had been a whole hometown, with Nix and her mother.
    Now Nix’s mom was dead, and Tom was dead.
    Home wasn’t home anymore.
    As the road had unrolled itself in front of Benny, Nix, Chong, and Lilah, and melted into memory behind, the vast world out here had stopped being something ugly, something to fear. Now this was becoming home.
    Benny wasn’t sure he liked