Dust & Decay(112)

They were simple memories, but their simplicity was the source of their power. As Tom remembered smiles and laughter and Benny’s goofy jokes, the rage began to falter within him. As he recalled watching from afar as Benny and Nix fell in love, the reckless anger cracked and fell apart. And as he remembered the promise he’d made to Jessie Riley as she lay dying in his arms—that he would protect Nix—his resolve rose up in his mind like a tower of steel.

He stood in the shadows and found himself again. He found the Tom Imura that he wanted and needed to be. He took another breath and held it for a long moment, then let it out slowly. He opened his eyes. Then he made himself a promise. “I do this one thing and then I’m done. I do this and then I take Benny and the others and we go east.”

Tom adjusted his sword and checked his knives and his pistol. If there had been anyone there to see his face, they would have seen a man at peace with himself and the world. And if they were wise, they would know that such a man was the most dangerous of all opponents—one who fights to preserve love rather than perpetuate hatred.

When he moved, he seemed to melt into the darkness.





66


LOU CHONG HEARD A SCREAM. NOT A WARRIOR’S CRY. IT HAD BEEN high and wet and filled with pain; and it had ended abruptly. Laughter and shouts rose up immediately and washed the scream away. Chong knew what it meant. Someone else had been fighting a zom, and had lost.



The thought threatened to take the strength out of his arms, but he set his jaw and held on. Literally held on. For the last two hours he had been using the Motor City Hammer’s black pipe club to chop divots out of the packed earth walls of the pit. It was grueling work, and to do it he had to gouge divots deep enough for his feet so he could stand in them and reach high to chop fresh holes. His muscles ached. Sweat poured down his body. His toes were numb with cold from standing in the holes, and his arm trembled between each strike.

He never stopped, though. Every time pain or exhaustion or fear tried to coax him down the wall and away from what he was doing, he held a picture in his mind. It wasn’t a picture of himself fighting another zom. It wasn’t even a picture of running free from this place. Chong knew that he had been bitten. He knew that he was going to die.

No, the picture he held in his mind was that of a girl with honey-colored eyes and snow-white hair and a voice like a whisper. A crazy girl. A fierce and violent girl. A lost girl who didn’t even like him.

Lilah.

If he was going to die, then he was going to die as a warrior. If Lilah didn’t—or couldn’t—love the weak and intellectual Chong, then perhaps she would have a softer heart when remembering the warrior Chong who fought his way out of Gameland. As Lilah herself had fought her way out years ago.

And maybe … just maybe … he could save some of the other kids trapped here in Gameland. Like Benny and Nix and Lilah had done last year. If he couldn’t go with them on their journey, if he was to die sometime in the next few hours or days, then he wanted his life to mean something. He wanted to matter.

He reached and slid his fingers into the hole he’d just chopped, and pulled. His muscles screamed at him, but his mind screamed back at them. The rim of the pit was only three feet above him now.

One more hole to go.





67


THE DOOR TO THE DUSTY ROOM OPENED, AND DIGGER AND HEAP CAME in. The two thugs looked at the wires that had been torn down from the ceiling fixture and at the hole in the wall, which was bigger than it had been and revealed broken laths. Piles of torn plaster and broken lath littered the floor by the wainscoting. Benny and Nix were covered with plaster dust. The two men cracked up laughing.



“What’d you two morons try to do?” asked Digger between brays of laughter. “You try to chew your way outta here?”

“Yeah,” said Benny with a sneer. “We were hungry.”

Heap laughed, but Digger hit Benny across the face with a backhand blow. Benny saw it coming and turned with it, a move Tom had taught him to shake off some of the power of a hit. It made it look like Benny took the blow and shook it off.

Digger and Heap exchanged a look. “Tougher than you look, boy,” murmured Digger, getting up in Benny’s face. “You make it out of the pits with a whole skin, you and I might have to go out behind the barn and dance a bit. Bet you ain’t nearly as tough as you think you are.”

“Save it for later,” warned Heap, and they all turned as Preacher Jack entered the room, followed by a stranger who was taller than the old man and more massive than Charlie Pink-eye had been. The man’s face was a ruin of melted flesh. One eye was a black pit, and the other as blue as lake water. He wore heavy cloak of white bearskin. Even though Benny had never seen him before, he knew at once who this had to be. White Bear.