Dust & Decay (27 page)

“Don’t even try, Tom. It’s kind of you to be nice to a lady—if we can suspend disbelief long enough to use that word for me—but you need to go find that boy, and I need to go find your brother and the girls.”

Tom had no argument for that. “Thanks, Sally. Can I do anything for—”

“Get your ass in gear, boy. You’re burning daylight.”

He smiled. It was only barely bright enough to see the path. Tom nodded and was about to step back when Sally grabbed him by the front of the shirt with her good hand and pulled him in for a whopper of a kiss. When she finally pushed him back, he gasped and blinked like a trout on a riverbank.

“Wow!”

“In case I don’t ever see you again, Tom,” she said, giving him a wicked little smile. “I don’t want you to forget me.”

“Um … not a chance. Wow.” He gave her a last smile, turned, and vanished into the forest.

Sally watched him go. In the brief moment between his smile and his departure, as he turned away, she saw the smile fall away from his handsome face to be replaced by the face of the hunter. She repeated what she’d said the night before.

“God help anyone who gets in your way.”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Zom 101

Zom: What just about everyone calls the living dead.

Zom: Nomadic zoms. Ones that walk around but aren’t actually following prey. (Most zoms don’t move unless they are following something.)

Walker: Another name for a Nom, though some people call all zoms walkers.

Sliver: A thin piece of metal with a sharpened tip used to “quiet” a zom. It’s inserted at the base of the skill in order to sever the spinal cord.

Quieting: What people call it when a zom is “killed” permanently.

B
ENNY LET
N
IX SLEEP UNTIL THE WHOLE FOREST WAS INFUSED WITH A
pink light. He studied the woods, looking for any signs of zoms. Or of Lilah. Or Tom. No sign of the Greenman, either. For the moment it appeared as if they had the forest all to themselves.

Benny touched Nix’s face with his thumb, caressing her cheek very gently. He lifted the edge of the bandage and studied the long cut and the delicate stitchery. The wound was a little red and puffy, but it wasn’t bad.

Nix made a soft sound and opened her eyes. Green eyes. Not green and gold and black.

“Hey,” she said almost shyly, smiling up at him.

“Hey yourself.”

“What time is it?”

“Half hour past dawn.”

Nix stretched against him and then sat up and yawned so hard her jaws creaked. Then she held her palm up and breathed against it. “Gak! I have monkey breath.”

“Mine’s closer to one of the great apes,” he said.

Their backpacks and gear were back at the way station.

Or in the ashes of it. All they had was what they’d carried in their vests and jeans pockets. Matches, first aid kit, sewing kit, knives, cadaverine. No toothbrushes. Nothing to eat.

Benny handed her his canteen and she rinsed and spat. Then she told him to take off his vest and open his shirt. He was shy about it—not from modesty but because he didn’t really want to know how bad the burn was. It hurt less this morning, but his mind conjured images of charred ends of bone sticking out of gangrenous flesh.

The actual wound was almost disappointing. Three lines of blistered skin, each no wider than a pencil and each less than an inch long. The skin around the burns was puffy, but there was no sign of infection.

“You’ll live,” Nix declared as she finished cleaning the burns with a piece of bandage.

“Doesn’t even hurt,” he said, but he was sure she didn’t believe him.

His stomach suddenly growled as loud as a hungry zom. “We need to find some food.”

They removed the bokkens from Benny’s carpet coat and climbed carefully down from the tree. It was a slow and painful process; they were both stiff and sore. As they dropped to the grass they both froze.

There was something at the base of the tree. Someone had placed several fist-size stones in a tight circle to act as a base on which was placed a large hand-carved wooden tray. Large, clean leaves covered the tray, and a wonderful aroma drifted out from beneath them. Nix lifted the leaves and gasped. Benny’s mouth fell open. The wooden plate was piled
high with fat yellow mounds of scrambled eggs, thick fried potatoes, and a mound of fresh strawberries.

“What?” Benny asked, looking around. “Who—?”

“Who cares?” Nix said as she scooped a handful of eggs off the plate. “God … there’s enough here for ten people.”

“We are awake, right?”

Nix laughed and shoved eggs into his mouth. He chewed. It was cold but delicious.

“Does this make any sense?” he asked as scooped up more eggs with his fingers.

Nix shook her head, then shrugged. “Maybe. Possible sense, anyway. Think about it.”

It took two mouthfuls of eggs and three potatoes before he caught up with her. “Man, I’m slow!”

“Gee, that’s a news flash,” she said, her cheeks filled like a squirrel.

“The Greenman!”

“Question is,” Nix said, swallowing, “why?”

“He’s a friend of Tom’s.”

She nodded. “Wonder why he didn’t hang around to say hi?”

“No idea. Wish I knew where he lived. Tom said it’s around here somewhere. Probably pretty well hidden, though. Guy’s not supposed to be very social.”

They ate for a while, then Nix said, “God … there are so many questions. What’s happening with Tom and Chong? Where’s Lilah? Who took the cans down last night? Why did all those zoms attack us? And what’s with that freak Preacher Jack?”

Benny smiled. “Since when did you think I knew what the heck was going on?”

“Always a first time.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but today isn’t that day.” He rubbed his hands briskly over his face. “Okay … so, what’s the plan?”

“Plan?” she replied. “Don’t you have one?”

“Um … what makes you think the ‘no answer’ guy is the ‘I have a plan’ guy?”

“’Cause I don’t have a plan either,” she said.

“Ah.” They looked around, watching the woods as if answers would magically appear. “We could wait here and see if the Greenman comes back.”

Benny shook his head. “I don’t think he will. He didn’t wait for us last night, and he didn’t stick around to have breakfast with us this morning.”

Nix sighed. “Maybe we should go back and take a look at the field and the way station. From a distance, I mean. See what’s what.”

“Sure,” he said, brightening. “That’s very plan-like.”

They shared the last of the eggs and potatoes and stuffed their pockets with the strawberries. They wiped the plate clean with leaves and left it at the base of the tree. Benny wrote “Thanks!” in big letters in the dirt.

He turned and caught her watching him, her smile faint and her eyes distant.

“What?” Benny asked.

She blinked, and he thought he saw shutters close behind her eyes. “Nothing.”

Back in town Benny would have let that go, but in a lot of ways he felt like he had left behind the version of himself who was afraid to ask these kinds of questions. So he said, “No … there was something. The way you were looking at me. What is it?”

Birds sang in trees for almost five seconds before she answered. “Back in town … on your roof … I asked you if you loved me. Did you mean it?”

Benny’s mouth went dry. “Yes.”

“You haven’t said it since.”

A defensive reply leaped to his lips, but instead he said, “Neither have you.”

“No,” she admitted, her voice small. She squinted into the morning sunlight. “Maybe … maybe if leaving town had been easier …”

He waited.

“… it would be easier to say,” Nix finished. “But out here …”

“I know,” he said. “I feel it too.”

“Do you understand it?” she pleaded. “I’ve been trying to, but I can’t put it into the right words.”

Go for it,
whispered the inner voice.
Tell her the truth.

Benny nodded. “I think so. At least … I understand why I haven’t said it. Since we left town, we’ve been in trouble. Our ‘road trip’ hasn’t exactly been a load of fun. Saying ‘I love you’ out here … don’t laugh, but it would feel like taking off my carpet coat and walking out into a crowd of zoms. Saying it out loud just makes me feel vulnerable. Is that stupid?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not stupid.”

“My turn to ask a question,” Benny said, and even though Nix stiffened, he plowed ahead. “Do you wish I hadn’t said it? At all, I mean?”

Strange lights flickered in the green depths of her eyes. “When you think the time is right,” she said, “try it again and see what happens.”

Benny’s insecurities wanted to read her comment in all the wrong ways, but his inner voice whispered a different suggestion to him. He said, “Count on it.”

She held out her hand. “So … want to go for a walk?”

“Well … it’s that or clean my room, but since my room is a tree …”

He took her hand, and they walked under the canopy of cool green leaves. Birds sang in the trees, and the grass beneath their feet glistened with morning dew. The first of the day’s bees buzzed softly among the flowers, going about their ancient and important work, collecting nectar and taking pollen from one flower to another. Cyclones of gnats spiraled up from the grass and swirled through the slanting sunlight. The loveliness of the forest was magical and fresh, but it was also immense. Neither of them spoke, unable to phrase their reactions to the rampant beauty and unwilling to trouble the air with the horrors that haunted their hearts.

Despite the warm reality of each other’s hands, they felt incredibly alone. Desolate. Even though they knew that Tom and Lilah and Chong were somewhere in this same forest, it was as if everyone else was on a different planet. Mountainside—home—was a million miles away. The jumbo jet could well have been on the far side of the world, or something from an old dream.

The rocky path wound down among trees and shrubs, and most of the way there was no evidence of what had happened last night except the smell of ash on the breeze. Then they rounded a bend, and all that changed.

“God …,” Nix said in a hollow whisper.

The field was a massive ruin. Trees had burned to stumps,
bushes had been reduced to ash. The way station was nothing more than a blackened shell.

However, that was not the worst of it. Not by a long shot. Everywhere—on the field, collapsed over the glacial boulders, twisted into bony knots on the concrete slab by the station—were corpses. Last night they had been the living dead; now they were merely dead, the life force burned out of them by the conflagration Benny had set loose with a tiny match.

It was all so still. A blasted expanse of ash and cracked bones. Nix turned away.

Benny lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Nix touched his arm. “This isn’t your fault. You didn’t mean—”

“Yes I did, Nix.” He turned to her and brushed a strand of curly red hair away from her face. “I started the fire because I didn’t know what else to do. I killed all those …”

“Zoms, Benny. They’re zoms. You can’t kill them.”

“I know … but …”

She looked puzzled. “What?”

“They were people once.”

“I know.”

“What if …” He stopped and took a breath, thinking of the terrible heat and of the flames spreading so rapidly on dry skin and old clothes. “What if they could feel it?”

“They can’t, Benny,” said Nix softly. “They’re dead.”

“We don’t know what they are. The dead are dead, they don’t move, they rot and turn to dust. The zoms … they move around. Sure, they attack people, but that’s the point. Dead people can’t do that … so what are they really? Why do they
moan? Are they trying to communicate somehow? Are they trying to say something? Or … does being a zom hurt?”

“Hurt?”

“From what’s happened to them, and what’s still happening. The wounds that killed them, the decay … can they feel it?”

“They’re rotting, Benny. Their bodies move around, but there’s no intelligence.”

He shook his head. “We don’t really know that, Nix, and don’t pretend we do. Tom’s seen them turn door handles and climb steps. He says that some of them pick up stuff to use as weapons. Sticks and stones. The one last night beat on the door. That says something. That says there’s something going on inside.”

“Benny, a squirrel will pick stuff up. A cat will swat at stuff. It doesn’t mean—”

“That’s just it!” he cried. “Even if they’re only like a squirrel or a cat, or even if they’re only as smart as a bug, Nix … even bugs feel pain.”

She shook her head and looked at the twisted wreckage of zombie corpses lying in the ash. “No,” she said. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy thinking like that. Tom’s quieted thousands of zoms. He never said anything about them feeling pain.”

“How would he know?”

“Tom would know,” she said firmly. Benny listened to her words, but he also heard something in her voice. A tremor of doubt.

Let it be,
whispered his inner voice.
Now’s not the time.

He nodded and Nix looked relieved, thinking that he was agreeing with her. Benny stepped onto the ash and walked slowly over to the way station. The building was a total loss. Only the front wall still stood; the rest lay in heaps. Benny touched a finger to the outside wall. It was almost cool and covered with a thin film of soot. He nodded again, considering things very carefully, and then used his finger to write a message.

T / L / C
W
E’RE FINE.
H
OPE YOU ARE TOO
.
H
EADING ON
. Y
OU KNOW WHERE TO
LOOK FOR US.
W.S.
B / N