Dust & Decay(6)

5


LILAH OUTRAN THEM ALL. HOWEVER, SINCE LAST SEPTEMBER THEY HAD each put on muscle and built their endurance, so they weren’t too far behind. In a loose pack they rounded the corner by the grist mill and then tore along Oak Hill Road.



Benny grinned at Chong, who grinned back. In a weird way, this was fun. They were warriors, the world’s last group of samurai trainees. This was what they were training for.

Then, just as they reached the top of the hill and cut left onto Mockingbird Street, they heard a fresh set of screams.

They were the high, piercing screams of children.

That sound slapped the grins from their faces.

Benny looked at Nix.

“God,” she gasped, and ran faster.

The screams were continuous. Benny thought they were screams of fear, not of pain. There was a fragment of consolation in that.

They cut right onto Fairview, running abreast, their wooden swords clutched in sweating hands.

Then as one they skidded to a stop.

Three houses stood at the end of a block of stores. The Cohens on the left, the Matthias place on the right, and the Housers in the center. Townsfolk were clustered in front of the Houser place. Most of them had axes, pitchforks, and long-handled shovels. Benny saw at least four people with guns.

“It’s Danny’s place!” said Nix in a sharp whisper.

Benny and his friends went to school with Danny Houser; Danny’s twin sisters, Hope and Faith, were in the first grade.

They saw Tom on the porch, peering into the open doorway. Then he backed away as something moved toward him from the shadows of the unlit living room.

Benny’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the figure emerge from the doorway in a slow, uncertain gait, his legs moving stiffly, his hands out and reaching for Tom. It was Grandpa Houser.

“No!” Benny cried, but Tom was still backing away.

Grandpa Houser’s eyes were as dark and empty as holes, and his dentures clacked together as if he was trying to bite the air.

A deep sadness opened in Benny’s chest. He liked Danny’s grandfather. The old man was always kind, and he told the funniest fishing stories. Now Grandpa Houser was gone, and in his place was a thing that had no conscious thought, no humor or intelligence. No trace of humanity other than the lie of its appearance. It was a zombie, driven by an unconquerable hunger for human flesh. Even from forty feet away Benny could hear the creature’s low moan of endless need.

“He must have died in his sleep,” Nix breathed.

Chong nodded. “And he didn’t lock his bedroom door.”

It was a sad and terrible fact of life that everyone who died came back as a zom, so everyone locked themselves in their rooms at night. It was a rare zom who could turn a doorknob, and none of them could work a padlock or turn a key. Someone dying in their sleep and reanimating was one of the constant fears for people in town.

Because this kind of thing could happen.

Benny caught movement to his right and saw Zak Matthias looking at him out of the side window of the adjoining house. Zak had never exactly been a friend, but for the most part he and Benny had been able to get along. They were the same age and had been all through school and the Scouts together. They played on the same baseball team, wrestled in the same weight class, and even sometimes went fishing together if Morgie and Chong were busy. But all that had been before last September.

Zak Matthias was Charlie Pink-eye’s nephew. Although they didn’t know for sure, Benny and Nix believed that it had been Zak who’d told Charlie what Benny had found in a pack of Zombie Cards: a picture of the Lost Girl.

Lilah.

Charlie had come after Benny and tried to take the card from him. Benny hadn’t understood why at the time, but soon learned that Charlie was afraid that Lilah would tell people what was going on out in the Ruin. About the bounty hunters like Charlie who kidnapped kids and took them to fight in the zombie pits at Gameland so evil people like them could gamble on who would win or lose.

Charlie’s attempt to erase all knowledge of the Lost Girl and Gameland had led to the murders of Nix’s mom and a local erosion artist, Rob Sacchetto—the man who had painted the Lost Girl card.

Zak didn’t go to school anymore. His father, Big Zak, kept him home, and the whole family was mostly shunned by the town. Benny had heard rumors that Zak’s dad knocked him around, somehow blaming him for what happened to Charlie.

In a strange way Benny felt sorry for Zak. He looked so lost as he stood there behind the glass and lace curtains, pale from always hiding in the house. Benny wanted to hate him, but he was sure that Zak had had no idea of the terrible things Charlie Pink-eye would do with the little bit of information his nephew had given him.