Dust & Decay(82)

“Hurt?”

“From what’s happened to them, and what’s still happening. The wounds that killed them, the decay … can they feel it?”

“They’re rotting, Benny. Their bodies move around, but there’s no intelligence.”

He shook his head. “We don’t really know that, Nix, and don’t pretend we do. Tom’s seen them turn door handles and climb steps. He says that some of them pick up stuff to use as weapons. Sticks and stones. The one last night beat on the door. That says something. That says there’s something going on inside.”

“Benny, a squirrel will pick stuff up. A cat will swat at stuff. It doesn’t mean—”

“That’s just it!” he cried. “Even if they’re only like a squirrel or a cat, or even if they’re only as smart as a bug, Nix … even bugs feel pain.”

She shook her head and looked at the twisted wreckage of zombie corpses lying in the ash. “No,” she said. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy thinking like that. Tom’s quieted thousands of zoms. He never said anything about them feeling pain.”

“How would he know?”

“Tom would know,” she said firmly. Benny listened to her words, but he also heard something in her voice. A tremor of doubt.

Let it be, whispered his inner voice. Now’s not the time.

He nodded and Nix looked relieved, thinking that he was agreeing with her. Benny stepped onto the ash and walked slowly over to the way station. The building was a total loss. Only the front wall still stood; the rest lay in heaps. Benny touched a finger to the outside wall. It was almost cool and covered with a thin film of soot. He nodded again, considering things very carefully, and then used his finger to write a message.

T L C

WE’RE FINE. HOPE YOU ARE TOO.

HEADING ON. YOU KNOW WHERE TO

LOOK FOR US.

W.S.

B / N

“W.S.?” Nix murmured. “Warrior smart?”

“Yeah. I want him to know we’re using what he taught us.”

“So … we’re heading east?”

“I guess,” he said. “To Yosemite. It’s that or go back to town. I sure don’t want to wait around here. I don’t know what drove all those zoms down here last night, and I don’t want to find out.”

He hadn’t yet told her about the man he’d seen standing among the zoms. The man he was pretty sure was Charlie Pink-eye. How could he tell Nix that her mother’s murderer was still out here, still roaming the world free?

Benny knew he would have to tell her soon. But not here and not now.

Nix touched the wall below the first line. T for Tom. L for Lilah. C for Chong. “It’s funny, but Mom used those letters to mean ‘tender loving care.’” She turned away. “That was a different world.”

“Yes, it was,” he agreed.

“We don’t belong there anymore.”

“No.”

She narrowed her eyes and surveyed the way ahead. Past the blackened ruins, toward the green expanse of the forest and the mountains in the east. “It’s funny,” she said. “I actually thought this part—getting started, I mean—would be the easy part. I expected it to get harder later, but I thought that this would be … I don’t know … kind of ordinary. We’ve been out to Brother David’s a million times … but we’re not even twenty miles from home.”

“I don’t know if anything’s going to be easy, Nix.”

She glanced at him, her lip caught between her even white teeth. She said, “Benny … if you say, ‘Let’s go back,’ I will. Right now. So help me, God … I’ll go back.”

He looked into her eyes and then turned and stared across the charred field of bones to the path that led up into the northwestern slopes. Then he drew a breath and let it out before he turned back. “You already said it, Nix,” he said. “We don’t belong there anymore.”

Doubt darkened her face. “Do we belong here?”

“I don’t know.” He knelt and used a handful of withered grass to wipe the soot from his finger. “Maybe we don’t belong anywhere. But I got to tell you, Nix, it cost us too much to get this far to go back now. We have to keep going.”

“We don’t have to prove anything, Benny.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I kind of think we do.” Then he smiled. The first real smile he’d worn since they left the tree. “Don’t ask me what it is, though.”