Dust & Decay(76)

He had never been here before, nor had he ever seen a zom pit before. It didn’t matter. Tom had described them to him and Benny and Morgie many times over the last few months. Tom had used the zom pit scenario as part of their training. One of Tom’s many worst-case scenarios. Part of the process of being warrior smart.

“So be warrior smart,” he told himself, speaking the words in a fierce whisper through gritted teeth. “What would Tom do? What would Lilah do?”

They wouldn’t take whatever was coming on their knees, he was certain of that. He thought about Nix having her face stitched without painkillers and without screams. Nix had to have dug deep to find the strength to deal with that. Just as she, Benny, and Lilah had found the courage to attack Charlie’s camp last year, even when they thought Tom was dead.

“Get up,” he snarled at himself.

The pain was enormous, and he dropped back onto his knees. A sob broke from his chest. Then another. While he knelt there, his mind did terrible things to him. It conjured images of Lilah standing over him, watching him kneel in sobbing defeat, and laughing.

Laughing at the weak, skinny kid. At the “town boy” who thought he could be a warrior.

At the fool who dared to think that he could ever in a million years win the love of someone as magical and powerful as the legendary Lost Girl. At the loser who had endangered the lives of his friends. At the coward who had run away. The images and the implications were like nails driven into his flesh.

But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace. He bit down on the pain, devouring it, accepting the hurt as something he deserved, and fueled by its energy he planted a foot flat on the ground, pressed the knuckles of his two balled fists into the cold dirt, and pushed himself up off his knees. It took a million years to get all the way to his feet. Straightening his body made it feel like every bruise was being stretched to the ripping point, but the shame would not let him stop until he was up and straight and at his full height.

“Warrior smart,” he said, but he loaded the words with scorn.

“Now ain’t that just a stirring sight?”

The words were like a bucket of cold water over Chong’s head. He jerked backward as if pushed, and he snapped his head upward to see three men looking down at him from the lip of the pit. One was the big one-eyed man with the flowing white hair who had brought him here. The man whose face was a melted ruin. The other two were strangers. They were smiling in ways that leached all the strength from Chong’s limbs.

“Who are you?” Chong demanded. It would have sounded better if his voice hadn’t cracked.

“’Who are you?’” mocked the big man. His voice made Chong’s skin crawl. It almost sounded like Charlie Pink-eye.

Could this be Charlie? When Benny had hit Charlie, had the bounty hunter survived and gone back into the burning camp? Or had the fires from that battle caught up to Charlie as he tried to crawl away? Was this Charlie Matthias? Or had some other monster descended into this already troubled and dying world?

“I’ll bet you have a lot of questions, little man,” said the Burned Man, as if reading Chong’s thoughts. “Well, think on this.”

He tossed something down into the pit that struck the dirt between Chong’s bare feet. It was a length of black pipe. One end was wrapped with black leather. There was old blood caked on the whole length of the weapon. Chong bent and gingerly picked it up.

“That there used to belong to a friend of mine,” said the Burned Man. “He used that there club to kill a thousand zoms. And near half that many folks who wasn’t zoms. Yeah … that piece of pipe’s got some history. It made my buddy famous all across the Ruin and in every town from Freehold to Sanctuary.”

The other two men laughed at this, giving each other high fives.

Chong gripped the object that had given the Motor City Hammer his nickname.

“My friend’s long since dead,” said the Burned Man, “but he’d be right pleased to know that his legend lives on.”

“I didn’t kill him,” said Chong, and then cursed himself for how cowardly and defensive that sounded.

“Maybe not,” conceded the Burned Man. “And then again, maybe you did. Or maybe you’re friends with those who did. Tiny Hank Wilson was one of the few who survived what happened at the camp last year. He said he saw what happened to the Hammer. Said it was a girl who killed him. That white-haired slut who’s been running these hills the last few years. But I don’t believe a little girl could take down the Hammer. No sir, I do not believe that. But a strapping kid like you, sneaking up behind him? Maybe clubbing him down when he wasn’t looking? That I can believe.”