That's when the second zombie turned toward her.

Conal seemed stunned. He was getting to his feet, but he kept shaking his head. And the monster slumped toward her on a shattered leg, shedding bone splinters and pieces of jelly-like flesh and scuttling beetles and little fanged rodents as it came.

She threw the gun at it, wishing it was her mother's substantial Colt instead of the new, modern, lightweight type. It opened a gash on the zombie's cheek and worms poured out

She picked up the bed and heaved that. The zombie batted it aside.

She was going down now, unable to stop herself from flinching away.

She threw a lamp, a vase, the bedside table, and still it was getting closer. Conal was coming up slowly behind it but it loomed over her now, she was crouched in the corner and it was going to get her. Her hand groped for a weapon. Anything. She found something and threw it.

And the thing collapsed just as Chris came through the door.

She saw Chris kick it as it fell, saw him attack the thing ... and then stop. He frowned, and Nova wondered what was wrong, then realized he couldn't figure out why the thing wasn't fighting back. He kicked it hard again. The zombie was starting to fall apart. The silver snakes that had held it together, that had seemed to animate it, were limp and lifeless.

Chris knelt in front of her. She couldn't see him very well. He glanced at her arm and seemed satisfied that her wounds were not life-threatening, then put big hands on her shoulders and looked at her.

"Are you going to be all right?"

She managed to nod, and he was gone. She heard him say something to Conal, something about Adam, and she heard him leave.

It seemed there was nothing in the room but the dead creature. She couldn't take her eyes off it. It was only about three feet away from her. Without conscious thought her feet began to push her away. Her back slid along the wall and her feet kept pushing until she hit something soft. That was no good, soft hadn't been what she'd had in mind at all, hard walls and hard floors were much better. She squeaked. It was a timid, frightened little squeak, and she regretted it, but there it was. She already knew she had bumped into Conal. The rough texture of his coat scratched against her shoulder, and that was okay. Anything warm was okay. The thing, when it grabbed her, had been terribly cold, and she was terribly cold now.

She sat there, shivering, as Conal put the coat over her shoulders. She heard shouting from the other rooms, sounds of fighting, and knew she should be helping them. But she sat quietly as Conal ripped his shirt and bound it around her bloody forearm and hand. While he did that she heard the pounding of Titanide hooves and what might have been war-cries.

Then he was getting up and she found herself clinging to his arm with her good hand. He stopped, waited for her to get up, and led her from the room. She never took her eyes off the thing on the floor.

It didn't make sense that the zombie was dead.

Dead? Well, hell, Chris thought. Of course, it's dead, it was dead to begin with, but that had never slowed them up in the past.

He wanted to kick the vile thing until what was left would have to be scraped off the walls, but he didn't have time for that. He didn't have time to figure out what had killed it, either. He really didn't have time to check on Nova, but he did.

Conal looked woozy. Blood ran from a scalp wound and he had a swelling the size of an egg on the side of his head.

"Where's Adam? Conal. Can you hear me?"

"... stairs," he muttered. "Downstairs. Hurry, Chris ... zombies."

Out in the hall there was another dead-or unmoving-zombie. It had come from the direction of Cirocco's room. Chris ran down the stairs, around a corner, through the music room-and into the arms of another zombie.

This one fought him. It was not as far gone as the one in Nova's room; dead no more than a week or two, by the look of her. Chris lifted the zombie and threw it, hoping to gain some time. The only way to really deal with the things was with edged weapons. It also helped to have the steady rhythm of a lumberjack chopping wood, and the strong stomach of Conan the Barbarian. Hitting them or wrestling with them was a good way to get killed. They could soak it up almost forever, and even if you dismembered them they kept fighting. But severing enough of the deathsnakes that gave the zombies an obscene semblance of life would eventually do the trick.

They were incredibly strong. If they got in close, the deathsnakes would tear at your flesh.

As the zombie hit the wall he was already searching for an axe or a blade. There didn't seem to be anything. He picked up a chair, planning to use it to fend the zombie off while he made his way to the kitchen, when he noticed something. It wasn't getting up.

The zombie-it seemed ridiculous to use the female pronoun, though it had bloated and festering breasts-had collapsed on the floor, crushing a fine old silver trombone.

Once again Chris didn't pause to wonder or to question his luck. He had never intended to fight it; the zombie had simply been in his way. He hurried through the music room, made it to the kitchen, where he grabbed his biggest cleaver, and raced through the house in time to see Robin poised in a windowsill, her legs bent and her arms out in front of her.

He shouted at her, but she dived out.

Robin almost beat Chris to the doorway of the Copper Room-then almost got jammed with him, which would have hurt, as he had enough momentum by then to not really need a door; he could have just punched through the wall. She broke step enough to let him through, went through herself, and, running as fast as she could, gawked at the spectacle of Chris Major moving at full speed. She didn't get to watch long. He might have been flying.

Great Mother, but this was one huge tree.

It seemed to take forever, but finally she slammed in the back door and hurried through room after room, calling for Chris, Nova, Conal ... anybody. She never stopped moving. Once, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of some horror shambling through an empty room, but she didn't pause. Nothing was going to stop her until she found Nova, and the source of that scream. She knew her daughter well, knew it wasn't a mouse that had made her shout like that.

But something did make her stop. She looked into a room with a lot of pillows and toys on the floor. She heard Adam crying, and saw a man-shaped creature-there was something badly wrong with it, but she couldn't see what in the brief glimpse-diving through the window with Adam in its hands.

Stopping in one-quarter gravity is something that needs practice. Robin wasn't good at it yet, and had to bang into a wall, push off with her hands, and swing around into the room with her hand on the door-jamb. She ran to the window, looked out, and saw the creature swimming away, one-armed. The other arm was holding Adam out of the water.

She kicked off her boots, stepped up into the window, and jumped.

Later, she would deny that she had forgotten she didn't know how to swim. Once before she had been dumped into water over her head. Something had happened to her, and she managed to reach the shore. She was counting on that to work again. But it didn't.

She hit with a stunning splash, and then struggled toward the light.

Her head breached the surface and she took a deep breath, then tried to swim. The harder she worked at it the worse it got. Her head kept going under and she didn't know any better than to try to keep her nose high-an ambition she kept defeating with her windmilling stroke. The current was carrying her in the same direction as her goal, but that didn't help, as the kidnapper was swimming with the current, too, and in the brief glimpses she got he was always farther away. They were swirling through swift water now, with rocks here and there, but it was always deep, always cold, and before long she knew she was going to die in this river. She was getting her head above water less often, and for shorter periods, and more often than not taking in a lot of water when she gasped for air.