Dust & Decay(22)

They were back to the question about leaving. Benny bowed his head for a moment, unable to bear the weight of what she was asking. Nix hooked a finger under his chin and lifted his face toward hers.

“Please, Benny …”

“I swear it, Nix. I love you and I swear on that.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she kissed him. Then Benny was on his knees, his arms wrapped around her, and both of them were crying, sobbing out loud under the bright blue sky. Even then, even with the terrible shared awareness of what lay behind them and before them, neither Benny nor Nix would ever be able to explain what it was that was breaking their hearts.

Benny thought about what Nix had said in the cemetery. That leaving was like dying.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Questions:





Can zoms experience fear?





Do they know they’re dead?





Can they feel any emotions? (Do they hate the living?)





14


“JUST SO I’M CLEAR ON THIS,” SAID CHONG IN HIS CALMEST AND MOST reasonable voice. “You want to take us camping in the Rot and Ruin?”



“Yes,” said Tom. “Just an overnight trip.”

“Out where the zoms are?”

“Yes.”

“Out where there are three hundred million zoms?”

Tom smiled. “I doubt there are that many of them left. I doubt there’s more than two hundred million zoms left.”

Chong peered at him with the flat stare of a lizard. “That’s not as much of a comfort as you might think, Tom.”

“Hundred million fewer things that want to eat you,” said Benny. “Put it in the win category.”

“Hush,” said Chong, “there are grown folks talking.”

Benny covertly offered a rude gesture.

They were in Benny’s yard. Nix sat nearby, wiping down her wooden sword with oil and trying not to smile. Lilah sat cross-legged on the picnic table, strip-cleaning her Sig Sauer automatic pistol. Again.

“Are you going?” Chong asked her.

Lilah snorted. “Better than staying here. This town is worse than the Ruin. If they go,” she said, indicating Tom, Benny, and Nix, “why would I want to stay here?”

Benny caught Chong’s wince.

Damn, he thought, that’s got to hurt.

It was clear from the frank look on Lilah’s face that she had no idea that her words had just jabbed into Chong’s flesh. Benny doubted she had a clue as to Chong’s feelings.

“So that’s the plan,” Benny said brightly, trying to lighten the mood. “A last blast for the Chong-Imura Gang of Badasses.”

“Language,” said Tom, more out of reflex than anything else.

“‘Chong-Imura’?” echoed Nix with a roll of her eyes. “Gang? Oh, please.”

“Why camping?” asked Chong gloomily. “Why not just rub us all down with steak sauce and send us running into a herd of zoms?”

“I’m not actually trying to get you killed,” said Tom.

“Oh, of course not. Our safely is clearly your first concern.”

Tom sipped his iced tea. “We’re going to be out there for months. We have to provide for ourselves. Besides, it’s a good way to learn woodcraft.”

“Woodcraft?” asked Benny. “What, like making chairs and tables and stuff? How’s that—”

Chong elbowed him. “No, genius. Woodcraft is the art of living in the wild. Hunting, fishing, setting traps, finding herbs. That sort of stuff.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because,” Chong said with raised eyebrows, “when you open those things called ‘books,’ there are words as well as pictures. Sometimes the words tell you stuff.”

“Bite me.”

“Not even if I was a starving zom.” To Tom he said, “We learned some of that in the Scouts.”

“Camping out in McGoran Field is hardly the same as surviving in the Rot and Ruin,” chided Tom. “Lilah already knows how to do that. So do I. Benny and Nix learned a little when we were out in the Ruin, but they don’t know enough.”

“And I don’t know any,” concluded Chong. He sighed. “And I guess I don’t really need any. You know what my parents think about your trip.”