Dust & Decay(115)

“Tom was—”

“Hush, boy,” snapped Preacher Jack. His smile had not returned, and the unsmiling version of him was even more frightening. “White Bear’s face is his face. Warriors have scars, and his scars are between him and Tom. That’s not the reason you owe us a blood debt. No … the reason you two and Tom and that witch Lilah are going to pay, indeed must pay, is because you tricked the Children of Lazarus—God’s own sacred swarm—into attacking Charlie and his men. That alone is crime enough to flay the flesh from your bones.”

“But he—”

White Bear suddenly stepped forward and grabbed a fistful of Benny’s vest and with a flex of his huge biceps lifted him completely off the floorboards. He breathed right into Benny’s face. “You killed Charlie. I don’t understand it, because Charlie was a powerful man and a great warrior, but somehow you blindsided him and you killed him. You!” He spat full in Benny’s face. “You killed my brother.”

Benny stared in absolute shock. “I—I—”

White Bear swung around and slammed Benny against the wall. Nix screamed and rushed the big man, tried to claw his face, but Heap and Digger each grabbed an arm and pulled her back.

“And then two days ago we get news from town,” said White Bear in a deadly whisper, “that my other brother, Zak, and his boy are dead … and guess who was involved in that?” He pulled Benny off the wall and slammed him into it again. The thin laths cracked as Benny’s shoulders and head crunched through the plaster. “Both of my brothers are dead because of you and your puke brother and your puke friends. My only nephew is dead! Zak Junior is dead. Killed by you and this redheaded daughter of Judas!”

With that he flung Benny across the room so that he crashed into the far wall and slid down into a heap. Nix tore free of the bounty hunters and ran to him. Benny coughed and moaned softly. Blood trickled from his hairline and left ear.

White Bear stood above them, his chest heaving, his face alight with hatred. Worse still was the look on Preacher Jack’s face. It was as if his features were lit from within; his eyes burned with fire and an absolute madness that was more frightening than anything Benny had ever seen. He and Nix huddled together and stared up at the preacher as he stalked across the room and bent over them.

“You killed Charlie Matthias and you killed Zachary Matthias,” whispered Preacher Jack. And then the man whispered four words that made the whole world spin into red lunacy.

“You killed my sons.”

The words hit Benny harder than the battering White Bear had given him.

“W-what … ?” he stammered.

“How would justice survive in the world if I let you go unpunished?” said Preacher Jack icily. “How would that make the world right again?”

Benny tried to say something, anything that would make those words untrue; but then Preacher Jack straightened and turned away.

“Enough,” he said. “Take them to the pits.”





PART FIVE

FUN AND GAMES




Understand death? Sure.

That was when the monsters got you.

—STEPHEN KING, ’SALE M’S LOT





68


CHONG REACHED UP FOR THE EDGE OF THE PIT. HIS LEGS TREMBLED AND threatened to collapse, his knees were like rubber, his muscle like jelly. People roared and applauded somewhere else, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before someone came back here. He was never a lucky person, so he had long ago learned to use what fragments of luck came his way.



He reached and reached, his fingers clawing at the edges of the pit, but the dirt there was looser, the edges scalloped from shovel blades and weakened by the weight of people leaning over to look at the pit fights. He dug his fingernails into the dirt, scrabbling, sending showers of soil down onto his face. He sputtered and coughed and spit it out; he shook his head like a dog to get the dirt out of his eyes.

Then something closed around his wrist. It was sudden, immediate, and as hard as iron. And abruptly he was being pulled out of the pit.

He opened his mouth to cry out, but a second hand clamped down over his mouth.

Chong was caught!





69


LILAH CROUCHED ON THE LIMB OF A TREE AND STARED AT THE STARLIT facade of Gameland. For two hours now she had watched people arriving on horseback and in armored trade wagons. Townsfolk and people who lived rough out in the Ruin. Coming for the Z-Games. Coming to wager on the lives and deaths of children in the zombie pits. She ached to run wild among them with her spear, to show them what it felt like to be hunted. All the way here she had hoped to come upon Benny and Nix, but all she’d found were their footprints … and later signs of a scuffle near the front of the hotel. She was sure they had been taken.