Dust & Decay(17)

“If you bothered to read my proposal,” he said, “you’d have seen that I made several recommendations for how to handle things. Not all the bounty hunters are like Charlie. There are some people you can trust—granted, only a handful, but I trust them completely.” He began counting on his fingers as he ran through some names. “Solomon Jones, Sally Two-Knives …” He counted off twenty names.

“Oh, please,” said Mayor Kirsch, making a face. “Half of them are psychos and loners who refuse to come into town and—”

“They don’t need to come into town,” cut in Tom. “Meet them at the fence line and talk business. Deputize them. Pay them. And, here’s a thought, treat them with a little respect and maybe they’ll show some loyalty to you and the town.”

“Maybe they behave themselves around you,” said Strunk, “but I hear wild tales.”

“Really? Well, what wild tales have you been hearing about Gameland? It’s back in operation again. Without a militia of any kind, what are you going to do when kids start disappearing? How would you feel about your own kids vanishing off the street and getting dragged off to fight in a zombie pit? Don’t pretend that doesn’t happen in town. Ask Nix Riley.”

There was more, but the three of them began walking toward the garden gate and the road to town. Benny closed the door.

Great, he thought, just what we need. Another reason to feel bad about leaving.





12


THE NEXT DAY WAS THE VIEWING AND FUNERAL FOR THE HOUSER FAMILY. More than two hundred people showed up. Benny and Nix went together. She had been sad and quiet since yesterday, and the day suited her mood. Clouds obscured the sun and turned the air wet and cool, but no rain fell. The trees were filled with crows and warblers and grasshopper sparrows. A grackle—scruffy and dark—landed on the closed coffin of Danny Houser and mocked the sermon like an uncouth heckler, until the grave digger chased him away with a shovel.



Pastor Kellogg wore a black robe and held a heavy and very battered old Bible. There was a rumor around town that the pages of the Bible were stained with blood because the pastor had been forced to use the Good Book to beat the head in of one of his parishioners who had been zommed out and attacked him. It was a lurid story, but Benny believed it was true. There were a lot of stories like that in town. Everyone who had survived First Night had one.

The mayor and his wife were there, dressed in formal clothes, and even Captain Strunk of the Town Watch was in a suit.

Benny did not own a suit, but he wore his best pair of dark blue jeans and a clean white shirt. Nix wore a pretty dress that Fran Kirsch, the mayor’s wife, had sewn for her. The dress was a richer shade of blue than Benny’s jeans, and the bodice was embroidered with wildflowers and hummingbirds. The colors made Nix’s red hair and green eyes look more intense.

Tom wore a black shirt and jeans and kept his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses he’d recently bought from a trader. He did not say a word the whole time. Chong and his family stood nearby, but Lilah was not with them. Only when Benny looked around during one of the hymns did he see her standing on the far side of the graveyard fence. She wore a dress made from some charcoal-colored cloth embroidered with tiny white flowers. Lilah’s snow-white hair danced in the light breeze, and her eyes were in shadow. She looked as cold and beautiful as a ghost.

Benny saw that Chong was staring openly at her.

Morgie Mitchell came to the funeral too, but like Lilah he stood apart from the others.

When the burial was over, only a handful of people walked to the other side of the cemetery for the Matthias service. Nix took Benny’s hand as they threaded their way through the tombstones.

“You know what this feels like?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s like we’re at our own funerals.”

Benny almost stopped, but Nix pulled his hand.

“Think about it … in a couple of days we’ll be gone too. Nobody in town will ever see us again. Someone else will be living in your house, just like somebody else is living in mine now. By Christmas we’ll be an anecdote. By next year people will start forgetting our names. I’ll be ‘the redheaded girl whose mama was murdered.’ You’ll be ‘that bounty hunter’s kid brother.’” Her voice was soft, pitched for just him to hear. She trailed her fingers over the curved top of a tombstone. “Ten years from now they won’t even remember that we lived here.”