Dust & Decay(40)

There were no screams.

After what seemed like five hundred years, Tom repeated what he’d said.

“She’s strong.”

“Yeah,” Benny said again.

His fingernails were buried into his palms hard enough to gouge crescent-shaped divots.

“Girls are stronger than boys,” Tom said.

“Not a news flash,” Benny said.

“I’m just saying.”

They watched the forest.

“If this goes on any longer, Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“Shoot me.”

Tom smiled.

Benny looked at him and then over to where Chong still sat in the tall grass.

“Is this all really Chong’s fault?”

Tom shrugged.

“No, tell me.”

“If you really want an honest answer,” Tom said quietly, “then … yes. Chong didn’t listen when he was told to be quiet, and he didn’t listen when he was told what to do when the rhino was chasing us.”

“He’s scared.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Sure,” Benny said grudgingly, “but I’ve been out here before.”

“Don’t make excuses for him. You listened to me the first time we came out here,” Tom reminded him. “And that was back when you couldn’t stand me.”

“I know.”

“Not everyone is built to be tough,” said Tom. “Sad fact of life. Chong is one of the nicest people I know. His folks, too. If our species is going to make it back from the brink and build something better than what we had, then we need to breed more people like them. It would be a saner, smarter, and far more civilized world.”

“But … ?”

“But I don’t think he’s cut out for this.”

“I guess.”

“It’s better that he’s not coming with us.”

Benny said nothing.

“Do you agree, kiddo?”

“I don’t know.” Benny sighed. “Chong’s my best friend.”

“That’s why he’s here. He only came out here because he’s your friend, and because he doesn’t quite know how to say good-bye,” said Tom. “Saying good-bye is one of the hardest things people ever have to do. Back before First Night, I remember how hard it was just to say good-bye to my friends when I was done with high school. We wrote a lot of promises in each other’s yearbooks about how we’d always stay in touch, but even then we knew that for the most part they were lies. Well-intentioned and hopeful lies, but still lies.”

“That was different.”

“Sure, but things are relative. Just like pain. What Nix is going through is not the worst pain she’s ever felt, which is why she can deal with it. For me, saying good-bye to my friends from high school was terrible. We all were going off to colleges in different parts of the country. The old gang I grew up with was falling apart. It felt like dying. It was grief.”

Benny thought about the way he had left things with Morgie. He nodded.

“I guess I’m having a hard time adjusting to the fact that leaving is so final.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” said Tom.

“For Nix it does.”

Tom nodded.

“What are we going to do about Chong?” asked Benny.

Tom ticked his chin toward the southeast. “There’s a back road to Brother David’s way station. My friend Sally Two-Knives will be coming through here today or tomorrow. I’m going to wait at the way station until she shows, and then I’ll ask her to take Chong back home.”

Benny had the Zombie Card for Sally Two-Knives. She was a bounty hunter who worked mostly out of the towns farther north. She was a tall, dark-skinned woman with a Mohawk and a matched pair of army bayonets strapped to her thighs. The text on the back of her Zombie Card read:

Card No. 239: Sally Two-Knives. This former Roller-Derby queen has become one of the toughest and most reliable bounty hunters and guides in the Ruin. Don’t cross her or you’ll find out just how good she is with her two razor-sharp knives!





Like most of the Zombie Cards, it didn’t give a lot of information, but Benny always liked the fierce woman’s smiling face. She wasn’t pretty, but there was humor in her brown eyes.

Brother David, on the other hand, was a way-station monk, one of the Children of God who lived out in the Ruin and did what he could to tend to the living dead. Brother David and the others of his order called the zombies the Children of Lazarus and believed them to be the “meek” who were meant to inherit the earth. Benny couldn’t quite grasp the concept, especially after what he and Nix had encountered in the field.