Dust & Decay (20 page)

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“I can’t believe I said that to her.”

Nix punched him in the chest. Not hard, but hard enough to make her point. She turned and walked away.

Benny’s inner voice said,
Smooth
.

“Shut up,” he muttered.

It was nearly full dark before Lilah came back into the house. She ignored Benny completely and went to the table and continued with the process of cleaning her gun as if nothing had happened. Nix locked the door and pulled the curtains over the window.

They built a small fire in the stove. They made and ate some food. They drank water from their canteens.

They slowly went crazy from waiting.

Lilah and Nix barely spoke to Benny. At first he felt bad about that, but as the evening wore on he began to resent them for it. An hour crawled by. Outside crickets pulsed in the grass, and a dry wind began to disturb the treetops.

They listened to it as they ate more of the beans and rice. Nix was the cook, and she added some onions, garlic, and spices from Brother David’s meager stores. Lilah could cook, but no one alive wanted to eat what she prepared; Benny could cook too, but he had no sense for seasoning. To him spices began and ended with salt and hot sauce.

Another half hour limped by them. Lilah gathered up every knife in the way station and began cleaning them. She placed them in a neat row.

“Are we just going to sit here?” Benny griped as he glared across the table at Lilah.

Nix gave him a cold look and flapped her hand. “There’s the door. No one’s forcing you to stay here.”

“Very funny.”

Lilah kicked the table very hard. “Nix is right. You are welcome to leave if you think you can do something useful.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Maybe you should,” Lilah agreed, getting in his face.

“Maybe
you
should,” Benny fired back. “We probably wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for you.”

Lilah looked totally perplexed. “What?”

“Oh, come on. You think this is all Chong’s fault, and maybe a lot of it is, but he wouldn’t even have come along on this dumb camping trip if it wasn’t for how he felt.”

Lilah blinked in surprise. “What?”

“You heard me. If you weren’t here, then there’s no way Chong would have come along. He’d be home safe.”

“Benny!” warned Nix, but Lilah cut in.

“Me? Why? What do I have to do with what he does?”

“Because he’s head-over-freaking-heels in love with you, Lilah. How can you be so freaking observant and not know—”

“Benny!” Nix jumped to her feet. “Cut it out.”

Shut up!
snarled his inner voice. Benny ignored both warnings. “It’s the truth.”

Lilah stared at him with a mixture of confusion and anger. “You should shut up.”

He pointed a finger at her. “And you should open your damn eyes, Lilah. He’s been mooning over you since you moved in with him. He can’t take his eyes off you.”

“Shut up!”

“You talked with him back on the road. I’ll bet he told you how he feels and you just threw it back in his face.”

“Shut up!” Lilah yelled.

“Are you denying it? Didn’t he say anything back there?”

“Go away.”

“What did you two talk about?”

Lilah glowered. “He asked me if this was all his fault and
I told him the truth. I told him that he was a town boy … he isn’t strong enough to be out here.”

“You told him that? Were you trying to make him run away?”

“No!”

“What did he say to you?”

“It’s none of your business, so shut up!” barked Lilah, banging her fist on the table hard enough to make one of the knives roll off and clatter to the floor. In the ensuing silence she bent and picked it up.

Benny knew that he should shut up, that he should leave this alone, but he couldn’t keep the words from spilling out. “What happens if I don’t shut up? You going to threaten me again? I’ll bet you can’t wait for the chance to quiet me. And Chong. And maybe Nix, too.”

Lilah’s face went dead pale. Tears, as small as chips of diamonds, glistened in the corners of her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but Nix beat her to it.

“Benny,” yelled Nix, “so help me God—”

THUD!

Something hit the front door. They froze, mouths open but silent, eyes staring at the door, ears straining to hear. The wind tossed the treetops. There was no other sound, not even the crickets.

“What was that?” demanded Benny.

Nix held a finger to her lips. Lilah tightened her grip on the knife.

Benny licked his lips. “Oh, crap,” he said softly.

Nix picked up both bokkens and handed one of the swords to Benny. They listened to the night. The crickets had
stopped. They did that when they were startled, Benny knew. When they were afraid. When there was something there.

They waited, listening for sounds. Hoping to hear Tom call out. Or Chong.

Thud!

Another blow against the door. The sound was both heavy and soft. Muffled. Like a fist wrapped in a towel. Or …

Thud! Thud-thud!

Or a hand flung loosely, without purpose or conscious control.

Thud
—
thud
—
thud
.

Whatever was beating on the door was not Tom. Or Chong. Or anyone alive.

Then they heard the moan.

“T
HERE’S A ZOMBIE OUT THERE,” WHISPERED
B
ENNY.

“I know,” murmured Lilah is her ghostly voice. She used her free hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. “It must have heard you.”

“Heard us,” answered Benny, but his defense was weak and he knew it. Lilah snorted.

Thud.

“What’s it doing?” Nix asked in a horrified voice. “Is it knocking to get in?”

Lilah shook her head. “Not knocking. Pounding. It wants to get us … the door is in the way.”

Somehow that chilled Benny more than the thought that the creature was knocking. Even though he couldn’t see the zom, the thought of its limp, dead hand striking over and over again, following some impulse that existed in a brain that had otherwise died was intensely creepy. How could science ever explain that? How could anything make sense of it?

The pounding continued. There was no rhythm to it, but each blow carried the same dead-weight force.

“What should we do?” asked Nix.

Lilah’s answer was as cold as the flesh of the monster outside, and there was a weird light in her eyes. She looked more than a little crazy. “We kill it.”

They gaped at her.

Benny pointed at the door. “You want us to go out there? To open the door and actually go out?”

“If you’re afraid,” she sneered, “stay here.”

Benny suddenly felt like an idiot. “Look … about before—”

“Shut up,” warned Lilah. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Benny felt humiliated, so he tried to stand straighter, and he put what he hoped was a tough–guy, bounty-hunter, zombie-killer glare in his eye.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Lilah asked. “Are you going to throw up?”

“No, I—”

Lilah pushed him out of the way. “When you open the door, I’ll shove him back. Close the door behind me. When he’s quieted I’ll knock. Be ready to let me in.”

“We will,” promised Nix, “but shouldn’t you at least put on a carpet coat?”

Lilah sneered at the suggestion. “For one zom?”

Benny cleared his throat. “Look … Lilah … are you sure you want to do this?”

The Lost Girl gave him a funny look. “What does ‘want’ have to do with anything? The dead will keep trying to get us. Pounding can be heard.”

As if to punctuate her remark, the limp hand struck again. And again.

“Now,” she said softly. She held her knife with the easy competence that only came with years of practical experience.

“Now,” Lilah said again, and Benny jumped.

“Sorry,” he said, and reached for the handle. Lilah gave him a disgusted look.

“Wait!” snapped Nix. She looked at Lilah. “The cans.”

Lilah stiffened. “Oh,” she said softly.

“Oh, man …,” Benny breathed. “How could a zom get through them without …” He didn’t finish the sentence because there was nowhere to go with it.

“We’re in trouble,” whispered Nix. “Someone else is out there. Someone alive.”

“I know.” Lilah stepped back from the door.

Nix closed her eyes for a second. “Brother David and the Sisters didn’t just walk away.”

“I know,” Lilah said again. She slid the knife into its sheath and reached for her spear.

“Wait,” said Benny, shifting to block the door. “You’re not actually going out there, are you? Not now!”

“Yes.”

“Look … I’m sorry for what I said, but you don’t have to—”

She cut him off by suddenly leaning so close that they were nose to nose. Her golden eyes were fierce and hurt at the same time. “I want to throw you out there.”

That shut Benny up.

Thud! Thud!

“Right now, though,” Lilah said, turning away from him, “we need to stop the zom from making so much noise. Noise carries at night.”

“Lilah,” said Nix, “maybe you shouldn’t go out there. It could be something a lot more dangerous than a zom.”

Lilah’s voice was cold. “I’m a lot more dangerous than a zom. Open the door.”

“Lilah,” whispered Benny, “it could be Charlie Pink-eye out there.”

Lilah showed her teeth in a deadly smile. “That would be perfect.”

Outside, the zom continued to pound and pound and the endless wind blew like a black ocean. Nix closed the door on the stove and blew out the candles, plunging the room into total darkness except for a faint outline around the door etched by starlight. Benny fumbled for the door handle. He counted down from three and then pulled the door open as he leaped back out of the way.

The zombie was right there, framed by starlight. Tall, thin as a stick, and pale as wax, with black eyes and a gaping mouth. It lurched forward, reaching for Benny, but Lilah suddenly jump-kicked the zom in the chest, driving it backward out of the doorway. She went through the door like a flash of lightning. She caught up with the zom before it could fall, pivoted and slashed at the back of its knee with the bayonet at the end of her spear . It was her signature move, taught to her as a child by George, the man who had raised her after Lilah had been orphaned on First Night. With the tendon cut, the zom immediately dropped to its knees. Lilah kicked it between the shoulder blades, and as it fell face-forward onto the ground, she whirled her spear and bent forward in a powerful two-handed thrust that drove the spear point unerringly into the narrow opening at the base of the skull. The zombie instantly stopped thrashing and twisting and became completely still. Dead … for real and forever.

The whole process, from jumping kick to final thrust, had taken less than four seconds.

Benny and Nix crowded the doorway, stunned as always by how fast and efficient Lilah was. And how ruthless. They understood it, but it left them breathless.

“God …,” breathed Nix.

“I know,” said Benny.

“No,” Nix said, rising and pointing. “LOOK!”

Benny squinted to see what she meant. Lilah whirled, bringing her spear up as if expecting a sudden attack. She, too, stared in that direction.

There was plenty of starlight. More than enough to bathe the swaying trees in an eerie blue-white glow. Enough to see the lines of tin cans lying on the ground, the ropes cut and the cans carefully placed upright in neat rows. Somebody else was out here. Somebody smart and careful enough to disable the booby trap. But that was not the worst of it. Not by a long shot. What was truly eerie … no, truly terrifying … was how that cold moonlight reflected on the pale white faces of the living dead.

On the hundreds of living dead.

“God …” Benny’s mouth was too numb to say anything more. They were everywhere, an army of lifeless killers that shambled and limped and twitched as they emerged from the utter blackness of the forest. Benny spun and looked left and saw more of them, some walking, a few crawling, all of them moaning louder than the wind. He looked right, going as far as the edge of the station. He could see the long, pale line of tumbled glacial rocks. They were black with the crawling bodies of zombies. The closest of them was a hundred yards away, but they were advancing steadily toward the way
station. Benny could not count the dead. They were coming. In minutes they would be here, and there was no way out.

“Please tell me I’m not seeing this,” said Benny. “This can’t be happening.”

“We’re dead,” whispered Nix. “Oh God … oh God …”

Lilah turned to them, and in the moonlight Benny and Nix could see that her iron self-confidence had crumbled to reveal a face as bloodless and empty of emotion as the monsters who closed in on all sides. She lowered her spear and it hung from her fingertips, ready to fall.

“We’re dead,” Nix said again, her voice rising to a hysterical pitch.

“Yes,” said the Lost Girl. “We’re dead.”

T
OM
I
MURA WAS AT HOME IN THE
R
OT AND
R
UIN
. H
E LOVED THE WOODS,
even as night came cascading down to turn the green world into an almost impenetrable black gloom. Ever since that terrible night fifteen years ago, Tom had spent nearly a third of his life in these woods. Unlike Mountainside, with its stifled boundaries and pervasive fear, the Ruin was a simpler place. You knew where you stood.

Tom reckoned that it was no different than the way the world had been before humans settled the first cities. Back then there had been predators of all kinds, and life was hardscrabble at best. Every day was a fight for survival, but it was that struggle that had inspired humans to become problem solvers. The inventiveness of the human race was one of the most crucial tools of survival, and it was the cornerstone of all civilization. Without it, man would never have turned fire into a tool, or carved a wheel from a piece of wood.