Rot & Ruin (10 page)

Benny said nothing. His fists were balled into knuckly knots at his sides.

“Well, as bad as that is … I’ve seen worse. A whole lot worse. I’m talking pit fights where they put some dumb-ass kid—maybe someone your age—in a hole dug in the ground and then push in a zom. If the kid’s lucky, maybe they’ll give him a knife or a sharpened stick or a baseball bat. Sometimes the kid wins, sometimes he doesn’t, but the oddsmakers haul in a fortune either way. And where do the kids come from? They
volunteer
for it.”

“That’s bull. …”

“No, it’s not. If I wasn’t around, and you lived with Aunt Cathy when she was sick with the cancer, what would you have done? How much would you have risked to make sure she got enough food and medicine?”

Benny shook his head, but Tom’s face was stone.

“Are you going to tell me that you wouldn’t take a shot at winning maybe a month’s worth of rations—or a whole box of meds—for ninety seconds in a zom pit?”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“No?”

“I’ve never heard about anything like that.”

Tom snorted. “If you did something like that … would you tell anyone? Would you even tell Chong and Morgie?”

Benny didn’t answer.

Tom pointed. “I can go back there and maybe stop those guys. Maybe even do it without killing them or getting killed myself, but what good would it do? You think they’re the only ones doing this sort of thing? This is the great Rot and Ruin, Benny. There’s no law out here, not since First Night. Killing zoms is what people do out here.”

“That’s not killing them! It’s sick. …”

“Yes, it is,” Tom said softly. “Yes, it is, and I can’t tell you how relieved and happy I am to hear you say it. To know that you believe it.”

There were more shouts and laughter from behind them. And another gunshot.

“I can stop them if you want me to. But it won’t stop what’s happening out here.”

Tears burned in Benny’s eyes, and he punched Tom hard in the chest. “But
you
do this stuff! You kill zombies.”

Tom grabbed Benny and pulled him close. Benny struggled, but Tom pulled his brother to his chest and held him. “No,” he whispered. “No. Come on. … I’ll show you what I do.”

He released Benny, placed a gentle hand on his brother’s back, and guided him back through the trees to the tall grass.

11

They didn’t speak for several miles. Benny kept looking back, but even he didn’t know if he was checking to see if they were being followed or looking with regret that they’d done nothing about what was happening. His jaw ached from clenching.

They reached the crest of the hill that separated the field of tall grass from an upslope that wound around the base of a huge mountain. There was a road there, a two-lane blacktop that was cracked and choked with weeds. The road spun off toward a chain of mountains that marched into the distance and vanished into heat haze far to the southeast. There were old bones among the weeds, and Benny kept stopping to look at them.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Benny.

Tom kept walking.

“I don’t want to do what you do. Not if it means doing … that sort of stuff.”

“I already told you. I don’t do that sort of stuff.”

“But you’re around it. You see it. It’s part of your life.” Benny kicked a rock and sent it skittering off the road and into the grass. Crows scolded him as they leaped into the air, leaving behind a rabbit carcass on which they’d been feeding.

Tom stopped and looked back. “If we turn back now, you’ll only know part of the truth.”

“I don’t care about the truth.”

“Too late for that now, Benny. You’ve seen some of it. If you don’t see the rest, it’ll leave you—”

“Leave me what?
Unbalanced
? You can stick that Zen crap up your—”

“Language.”

Benny bent and snatched up a shinbone that had been polished white by scavengers and weather. He threw it at Tom, who sidestepped to let it pass.

“Screw you and your truth and all of this stuff!” screamed Benny. “You’re just like those guys back there! You come out here, all noble and wise and with all that bull, but you’re no different. You’re a killer. Everyone in town says so!”

Tom stalked over to him and grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt and lifted him to his toes. “Shut up!” he said with a snarl. “You just shut your damn mouth!”

Benny was shocked into silence.

“You don’t know who I am or what I am.” Tom shook Benny hard enough to rattle his teeth. “You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know the things I’ve had to do to keep you safe. To keep us safe. You don’t know what I—”

He broke off and flung Benny away from him. Benny staggered backward and fell hard on his butt, legs splayed among the weeds and old bones. His eyes bugged with shock, and Tom stood above him, different expressions warring on his face. Anger, shock at his own actions, burning frustration. Even love.

“Benny …”

Benny got to his feet and dusted off his pants. Once more he looked back the way they’d come and then stepped up to Tom, staring up at his big brother with an expression that was equally mixed and conflicted.

“I’m sorry,” they both said.

They stared at each other.

Benny smiled.

Tom’s smile was slower in coming.

“You’re a total pain in my butt, little brother.”

“You’re a world-class jerk.”

The hot breeze blew past them. Tom said, “If you want to go back, then we’ll go back.”

Benny shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Do I have to have an answer?”

“Right now? No. Eventually? Probably.”

“Yeah,” said Benny. “That’s okay, I guess. Just tell me one thing. I know you said it already, but I really need to know. Really, Tom.”

Tom nodded.

“You’re
not
like them. Right? Swear on something.” He pulled out his wallet and held up the picture. “Swear on Mom and Dad.”

Tom nodded. “Okay, Benny. I swear.”

“On Mom and Dad.”

“On Mom and Dad.” Tom touched the picture and nodded.

“Okay,” said Benny. “Then let’s go.”

The afternoon burned on, and they followed the two-lane road around the base of the mountain. Neither spoke
for almost an hour and then Tom said, “This isn’t just a walk we’re taking, kiddo. I’m out here on a job.”

Benny shot him a look. “You’re here to kill a zom?”

Tom shrugged. “It’s not the way I like to phrase it, but … yes, that’s the bottom line.”

They walked another half mile.

“How does this work? The … job, I mean.”

“You saw part of it when you applied to that erosion artist,” said Tom. He dug into a jacket pocket and removed an envelope, opened it, and took out a piece of paper that he unfolded and handed to Benny. There was a small color photograph clipped to one corner that showed a smiling man of about thirty, with sandy hair and a sparse beard. The paper it was clipped to was a large portrait of the same man as he might be now if he was a zombie. The name “Harold” was handwritten in one corner.

“This is why erosion portraits are so useful. People have pictures done of wives, husbands, children … anyone they loved. Someone they lost. Sometimes they can even remember what a person was wearing on First Night, and that makes it easier for me, because as I said, the dead seldom move far from where they lived. Or worked. Guys like me find them.”

“And kill them?”

Tom answered that with a shrug. They rounded a bend in the road and saw the first few houses of a small town built onto the side of the mountain. Even from a quarter mile away Benny could see zombies standing in yards or on the sidewalks. One stood in the middle of the road with his face tilted toward the sun.

Nothing moved.

Tom folded the erosion portrait and put it in his pocket, then took out the vial of cadaverine and sprinkled some on his clothes. He handed it to Benny, then dabbed some mint gel on his upper lip and passed the jar to his brother.

“You ready?”

“Not even a little bit,” said Benny.

Tom loosened his sword in its scabbard, and led the way. Benny shook his head, unsure of how exactly the day had brought him to this moment, and then followed.

12

“W
ON’T THEY ATTACK US?”
B
ENNY WHISPERED.

“Not if we’re smart and careful. The trick is to move slowly. They respond to quick movements. Smell, too, but we have that covered.”

“Can’t they hear us?”

“Yes, they can,” Tom said. “So once we’re in the town, don’t talk unless I do, and even then—less is more, and quieter is better than loud. I found that speaking slowly helps. A lot of the dead moan … so they’re used to slow, quiet sounds.”

“This is like the Scouts,” Benny said. “Mr. Feeney told us that when we’re in nature we should act like we’re part of nature.”

“For better or worse, Benny … this is part of nature too.”

“That doesn’t make me feel good, Tom.”

“This is the Rot and Ruin, kiddo. … Nobody feels good out here. Now hush and keep your eyes open.”

They slowed their pace as they neared the first houses. Tom stopped and spent a few minutes studying the town. The main street ran upward to where they stood, so they had a good view of everything. Moving very slowly, Tom removed
the envelope from his pocket and unfolded the erosion portrait.

“My client said that it was the sixth house along the main street,” Tom murmured. “Red front door and white fence. See it? There, past the old mail truck.”

“Uh-huh,” Benny said without moving his lips. He was terrified of the zombies that stood in their yards not more than twenty paces away.

“We’re looking for a man named Harold Simmons. There’s nobody in the yard, so we may have to go inside.”

“Inside?” Benny asked, his voice quavering.

“Come on.” Tom began moving slowly, barely lifting his feet. He did not exactly imitate the slow, shuffling gait of the zombies, but his movements were unobtrusive. Benny did his best to mimic everything Tom did. They passed two houses in which zombies stood in the yard. The first house, on their left, had three zombies on the other side of a hip-high chain-link fence. Two little girls and an older woman. Their clothes were tatters that blew like holiday streamers in the hot breeze. As Tom and Benny passed by them, the old woman turned in their direction. Tom stopped and waited, his hand touching the handle of his sword, but the woman’s dead eyes swept past them without lingering. A few paces along, they passed a yard on their right in which a man in a bathrobe stood, staring at the corner of the house as if he expected something to happen. He stood among wild weeds and creeper vines that had wrapped themselves around his calves. It looked like he had stood there for years, and with a sinking feeling of horror, Benny realized that he probably had.

Benny wanted to turn and run. His mouth was as dry as
sand, and sweat ran down his back and into his underwear.

They moved steadily down the street, always slow. The sun was heading toward the western part of the sky, and it would be dark in four or five hours. Benny knew they could never make it home by nightfall. He wondered if Tom would take them back to the gas station … or if he was crazy enough to claim an empty house in this ghost town for the night. If he had to sleep in a zombie’s house, even if there was no zombie there, then Benny was sure he’d go completely mad-cow crazy.

“There he is,” murmured Tom, and Benny looked toward the house with the red door. A man stood inside, looking out of the big bay window. He once had sandy hair and a sparse beard, but now the hair and beard were nearly gone, and the skin of his face had shriveled to a leathery tightness.

Tom stopped outside of the paint-peeling white picket fence. He looked from the erosion portrait to the man in the window and then back again.

“Benny?” he said under his breath. “You think that’s him?”

“Mm-hm,” Benny said with a low squeak.

The zombie in the window seemed to be looking at them. Benny was sure of it. The withered face and the dead pale eyes were pointed directly at the fence, as if it had been waiting there all these years for a visitor to come to the garden gate.

Tom nudged the gate with his toe. It was locked.

Moving very slowly, Tom leaned over and undid the latch. The process took more than two minutes. Nervous sweat ran down Benny’s face, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the zombie.

Tom pushed on the gate with his knee, and it opened.

“Very, very slowly,” he said. “Red light, green light—all the way to the door.”

Benny knew the game, though, in truth, he had never seen a working stoplight. They entered the yard. The old woman in the first garden suddenly turned toward them. So did the zombie in the bathrobe.

“Stop,” Tom hissed. “If we have to make a run for it, head into the house. We can lock ourselves in and wait until they calm down.”

The old lady and the man in the bathrobe faced them, but did not advance.

The tableau held for a minute that seemed an hour long.

“I’m scared,” said Benny.

“It’s okay to be scared,” said Tom. “Scared means you’re smart. Just don’t panic. That’ll get you killed.”

Benny almost nodded, but caught himself.

Tom took a slow step. Then a second. It was uneven, his body swaying, as if his knees were stiff. The bathrobe zombie turned away and looked at the shadow of a cloud moving up the valley, but the old lady still watched. Her mouth opened and closed, as if she was slowly chewing on something.

But then she too turned away to watch the moving shadow.

Tom took another step and then another. Benny eventually followed. The process was excruciatingly slow, but to Benny it felt as if they were moving too fast. No matter how deliberately they went, he thought it was all wrong, that the zombies—all of them up, and down the street—would
suddenly turn toward them and moan with their dry and dusty voices, and that a great mass of the hungry dead would surround them.

Tom reached the door and turned the handle.

The knob turned in his hand, and the lock clicked open. Tom gently pushed open the door and stepped into the gloom of the house. Benny cast a quick look at the window to make sure the zombie was still there.