Rot & Ruin (38 page)

Lilah gave Benny a slow up-and-down appraisal, perhaps re-evaluating him. Or maybe seeing him for the first time and
getting
who he was. She nodded, although Benny wasn’t sure if that was an agreement with what he’d said or a confirmation of some unspoken thought.

“So you fought?” Nix said, perhaps a little more sharply than was absolutely necessary.

Lilah’s eyes lingered on Benny as she said, “Yes.”

“What did
they
do?” Nix asked, and this time there was more compassion in her voice.

“They beat me.” Lilah shrugged as if that was nothing, as if measured against all that she had endured, it was a small thing. Nix paled and Benny shivered. “Beat me a lot. No food.”

Nix cursed.

Lilah gave another shrug. “Made me tougher. Made me mad. Mad enough.”

“And Annie?”

“She … ran.”

They looked at her and saw a tear break from the corner
of one hazel eye and roll down her tanned cheek. It glistened like a diamond in the lantern light.

“Ran?”

“Fought and ran. Stormy night, lots of rain. Annie ran, the ugly man chased her. Hammer. He chased. Annie tripped. Slipped on mud. She fell. Badly. Hit her head on a stone.”

“No …”

“I couldn’t do … anything.” Lilah shook her head in denial of the memory. “They left her there. Like trash out in the rain. Like she was nothing. I was already out of there, escaped two days before, but came back. Sneaky, quiet. To get Annie. But … when I found her, Annie was gone. Already gone. Then she … came back.”

“Oh God, no …”

“Tried to bite.”

More tears fell from Lilah’s eyes. It was all that Lilah would say on the subject. Nix asked her what she’d done with her sister, but Lilah just shook her head. Benny matched this against what Tom had told him, of the man Lilah has been trying to kill over and over again. The Motor City Hammer. All these long, frustrating years, Lilah had been killing the image of the Hammer in the hopes that one day she’d get him within range to take revenge for what had been done to her and her little sister.

“I’m sorry,” said Nix.

Lilah turned to her, eyes cold, voice frosty. “Sorry? Does that bring Annie back?”

“Well, no, but I—”

“Save words like ‘sorry.’ Save for the dead. Living don’t need them.”

She snatched up her spoon and forcefully stirred the stew, slopping some bits into the fire. Benny reached out and took Nix’s hand.

“How can the world be this cruel?” Nix asked quietly.

There was no chance that Benny could answer that question, but there was something about the warmth and reality of the hand he held in his that made an argument that cruelty wasn’t the only force at work in their world.

Nix said, “Lilah, will you come back to town with us?”

The Lost Girl looked up. “Why?”

“So you’ll be safe,” said Nix.

“Safe now.”

“It’s safer in town,” Nix said, but Lilah laughed.

“Charlie and the Hammer killed your mother in your town.” She pointed to Benny. “Killed his brother out here. Nowhere is safe.”

Before Benny or Nix could reply to that, Lilah added, “Out here—
I kill
. Walkers, bad men. I kill and I live. I’m safe here.”

That put an end to the conversation until after the stew was cooked. She dished out food, and Benny had to use real effort to maintain a straight face, because the one thing this wild girl could
not
do was cook. The stew tasted like hot sewage. He noticed that Nix was pretending to enjoy it while not actually eating much.

“Lilah,” Benny said, “Charlie Pink-eye’s camp is up here, right? On the other side of the mountain?”

Lilah nodded.

“Nix, you heard him,” Benny said. “He has kids up there, right?”

“Yes,” Nix said with a shudder. “They’re taking them to Gameland. It’s
where they were going to take me.”

“Gameland,” Lilah said, and she bared her teeth like a hunting cat. Her fist knotted around her fork until the tendons in her hand were as taut as fiddle strings. “Annie.”

“Gameland,” repeated Nix in a sick, flat voice.

“Charlie and the Hammer have destroyed all of our families. They’re worse than any zom out here in the Ruin. They’re worse than a world of zoms. At least the zoms don’t know that what they’re doing is wrong. Charlie and the Hammer do. They’re evil.”

“Evil,” Lilah said, and the Nix echoed the word.

“Where are you going with this, Benny?” Nix asked.

He set down his dish and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Look,” he said, “I’m nobody’s idea of a hero, but I don’t think I want to go back to town just yet. In fact, I don’t think I
can
go back to town, knowing that those other kids are up there.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Nix. “That we march into his camp and ask him to release those kids?”

“I don’t know, but we have to do
something
,” said Benny. He jumped to his feet in agitation and began walking back and forth as he spoke. “I can’t just go on with my life, knowing that they’re out there and that they’re going to just go on destroying other families and other lives without anyone even
trying
to stop them. Tom said that before First Night, people wouldn’t do anything. They’d let families live on the street and starve. I
can’t
. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in.”

“But the camp,” said Lilah. “Too many men.”

“How many?”

She thought about it. “Maybe twelve. Maybe twenty.”

“Too many of them, but—,” began Nix.

“Not enough of us,” said Lilah, finishing the thought.

Benny suddenly straightened. “Wait, wait … Let me think for a second. Lilah, you said it. There’s not enough of us. Right … riiiight …” He trailed off and looked at the rocky ceiling, as if he could see out of the cave and through the mountain and all the way to Charlie’s camp. An idea was forming in his head. But the idea was insane and stupid. It was absurd and impossible.

“What is it?” asked Nix.

“Hm?” he said distractedly.

“Why are you smiling?”

He hadn’t realized that he was, and he certainly had no reason to smile. The idea that had started to take form in his head wasn’t funny. It was suicidal.

“Okay,” he said, his eyes brighter than the lamplight. “I have an idea, but you won’t like it.”

“Tell,” insisted the Lost Girl.

“For this to work,” said Benny, “we’ll need to create a diversion and then get the kids out.”

“What kind of diversion? The guys are used to being out here. They’re always on guard. Whatever we do, they’ll see it coming.”

Benny Imura gave the girls a very strange, very dark grin. “No,” he said, “I can guarantee you they won’t see
this
coming.”

And he told them what that was.

47

L
ILAH AND
N
IX STARED AT
B
ENNY IN TOTAL SILENCE FOR MORE THAN TWO
minutes. The stew in the pot began to bubble and burn; the waterfall roared softly in the background. Somewhere deep in the cave, water dripped with the constant rhythm of a metronome. Benny stood there and waited out the silence.

“You are crazy,” said Lilah.

“Probably,” said Benny.

“Are you serious?” asked Nix.

“As a heart attack,” said Benny.

Lilah took the burning stew off the fire and set it on the rocks. She leaned toward Nix. “Is he … damaged?” She touched her head to indicate where the suspected damage might lie. Nix held one hand up and seesawed it back and forth.

“Opinions vary,” she said.

“It
could
work,” said Benny.

“We could die, Benny,” Nix said.

“We could,” admitted Benny. “Maybe we will.”

“Maybe not,” said Lilah, and they both looked at her. A crooked smile had worked its way onto her lips, and she appeared to be re-evaluating his plan.

“Maybe not,” repeated Benny.

Nix ran her fingers through the red tangles of her hair. “Maybe not,” she agreed eventually, although with far less conviction.

The shadows made the cave seem as vast as outer space.

“You do understand that this plan is crazy,” Nix said.

“Yes,” said Lilah, tapping her skull again. “Very crazy.”

“No doubt.” Benny nodded. “But it’s also
justice
.”

Nix snorted. “Justice is dead.”

Benny broke out into another twisted grin. “It sure as hell is.”

The Lost Girl turned to him, and her smile was every bit as big and bright and dark as his.

It took Nix another few seconds, but then the crazy sense of it took hold in the cracks that had been torn in her heart by Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer. Then she too smiled.

Anyone seeing those three teenagers smiling the kinds of smiles they wore would run in terror.

Benny was counting on it.

48

O
NCE THE IDEA WAS OUT, THEY TACKLED IT AND WRESTLED IT AND BANGED
it into a weird shape. It became immediately clear that they had to move fast and start at once. Lilah’s trove of weapons and equipment provided them with everything they needed. As they sorted through the supplies, Lilah never took her eyes off Benny, and he was uncomfortably aware of it. Just as he was aware that Nix never took her eyes off Lilah, and Benny wondered if Nix was trying to telepathically transmit some message. If so, Lilah was either immune to the nuclear radiation of Nix’s thoughts, or didn’t care. Or maybe having lived alone for so long—and all through puberty—she had no clear understanding of what she was feeling, what signals she was sending, and the complexities of social interaction. Benny wished Chong was here to explain it to him.

When they were done gathering the equipment, Lilah led them out of the cave and through her maze of booby traps, then back directly into the forest. She moved fast, selecting paths that were secret as well as efficient. They struggled to keep up as they crossed running water, climbed rocky outcrops, crawled through thorny thickets, and ran along game trails through dappled sunlight. The day felt like the hottest
of the whole summer, and sweat poured out of them, but none of them cared. Having a purpose put iron in their limbs; knowing there was a chance to get revenge against Charlie ignited fires in their chests that burned hotter than the sun.

The bounty hunters’ camp was on the far side of the mountain, and it took them almost two hours to reach it. Lilah guided them to a rocky promontory that was overgrown with white sage. They flattened out on the edge of the narrow cliff and pulled foliage over themselves. The camp looked strangely exposed, with paths leading up through forestland to a plateau as flat as a tabletop. Three traders wagons were positioned to block each path, their sides reinforced with sheet metal. The teams of horses were corralled in the center of the camp, each of them wearing a carpet coat, even in the afternoon heat. Without saying a word, Lilah slowly pointed out each guard and the other men wandering around the camp.

Nix cursed very quietly under her breath. There were twenty-three men in the camp. She glanced at Benny, but he kept his jaw set, so she didn’t see the new fear that was making his heart jump around in his chest. The resolve he’d had back in the cave—one part bravery, one part need for revenge, and a couple parts craziness—felt suddenly brittle.

He had not expected there to be so many. Then his roving eyes found the pen where they were holding the kids. It was a pen, too, the kind used for keeping pigs. Two guards stood watch over the captives, and through the shimmering heat haze, it took Benny a couple of tries to count them all. There weren’t a dozen kids. There were nineteen of them. Other bounty hunters must have joined the camp in the last few
hours, which would account for the higher number of guards and captives.

Nineteen kids. Five boys, fourteen girls. The oldest looked to be twelve, the youngest about eight. They were all hunkered down, tied together by ropes that were attached to metal rings in the leather collars each of them wore.

Any doubts Benny had when he’d first looked down at the camp withered and died at the sight of those kids huddled like animals in the pen. If Nix hadn’t escaped, she’d be collared and penned with the rest. He knew that Lilah had already been through that hell.

He saw Charlie Pink-eye walk across the center of the camp, and Benny pointed a finger at him, tracking the big bounty hunter, as if he was looking down the barrel of a hunting rifle. If wishes were bullets, Charlie would be sprawled dead in the dirt.

Careful not to make the slightest sound, they crawled back from the edge of the plateau and huddled together under a willow.

“Harder,” Lilah said. “More than I thought.”

“More kids, too. Nineteen.”

Benny cleared a space on the ground and, taking a small stick, began drawing a map of the camp. The others helped, making additions and corrections. Benny asked Lilah to mark where the landmarks were: Coldwater Creek, the blocked highway, the ranger station, and other places that had factored into recent events. Benny studied the map for a long time in silence. He rolled over onto his back and marked the position of the sun. In the Scouts, Mr. Feeney had taught
them how to tell the time of day by using the sun, and Benny had a rough guess as to when it would set.

“Okay, we have about five hours until twilight,” he whispered.

“Less,” said Lilah, and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. They looked to where she was pointing and saw a line of heavy clouds.

“Rain?” asked Nix. “Will that help or hurt us?”

“Rain is bad,” said Lilah. “Can’t hear, can’t see.”

“Neither can they,” said Benny. “If it rains, we deal with it. We’ll find a way to make it work for us.”

Lilah took a last look over the edge. “Need go. Much … to …” She stopped, and Benny could see her working something out, then she said, very slowly, “I need to go, now. I have much to do.” She almost blushed. “I don’t … think … the same way I read. It is … harder to put thoughts … into sentences.”

“You’re doing better than I would have if I lived alone all this time,” said Nix. “And you’re doing better than Benny does now.”