Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(11)

Tom says that most of them are dangerous and not very nice, but that “nicer people generally won’t do that kind of work.” Mayor Kirsch calls them a “necessary evil.”





People in town have been talking about a new bounty hunter moving into the area to take over Charlie Pink-eye’s territory. They call him White Bear, but that’s all I know about him … except that he’s supposed to be just as mean and tough as Charlie. Oh … great.





Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer were bounty hunters, and the people who worked with them were all bad.





Closure experts are a different kind of bounty hunter. They’re hired by people to look for family members or friends who have been zommed. This is what Tom Imura does.





Tom finds them if he can (zoms usually don’t wander far from where they reanimated), reads them a last letter from the family, and then “quiets” them as humanely as possible.





Other closure experts Tom introduced me to: Old Man Church, Solomon Jones, and Lucy Diamonds.





Bounty hunters Tom trusts: J-Dog, Dr. Skillz, Hector Mexico, Sally Two-Knives, Basher Bashman, Magic Mike, LaDonna Willis and sons, and Fluffy McTeague.





What would my name be if I was a bounty hunter? Reds Riley? Li’l Killer?





I’ll have to think about that.





10


BENNY FELT HORRIBLE AND HELPLESS. MORGIE HAD ALWAYS HAD A CRUSH on Nix and had been on his way to her house to ask her out the night Nix’s mom was killed. Morgie had tried to defend Nix and her mom, but the Hammer had struck him on the back of the head with his iron club.



The same club Benny had used to take down Charlie.

Now Morgie and Nix were deep inside the pocket of a shared experience, and the intimacy of it made Benny feel deeply insecure. But when he realized that he was feeling insecure and jealous, Benny wished he could drag his own stupid mind behind the house and kick the crap out of it.

They ate the last of the leftovers from supper and more big slices of pie. They sat in silence, trying not to look at the road. After fifteen minutes Nix and Morgie came back. They each accepted plates of pie and glasses of tea from Tom.

Morgie sat in the empty gap between Tom and Chong, and there were dried tear tracks on his face. Nix sat on the picnic table, but not as close to Benny as she had been before.

As if there had been no interruption, Tom picked up the conversation where his narrative of the events at the Houser place had left off.

“… and you know the rest,” Tom concluded.

“What about Danny’s dad?” asked Nix. “And the twins?”

Tom sighed. “The girls told me that they and their dad got home about two hours ago. The girls went upstairs to play, and Jack went into the kitchen. Danny must have come home sometime after Michelle was attacked but before Jack. From the way I read it, Danny, Grandpa, and Michelle attacked Jack when he went into the kitchen. He got away, but he was badly hurt. He got the girls into their room and told them to barricade the door. Then he got his gun.”

“He fired that first shot?” asked Benny.

“Probably. Maybe he was planning on quieting Michelle and the others, but he was too badly torn up. I think he realized that he was about to die, and he did what he thought was best to try and protect the girls.”

“He shot himself?” asked Nix, horrified.

Tom nodded. “Right at the top of the stairs, so his body would block the others from getting at the girls. Jack must have been too weak to hold the gun right; his bullet missed the motor cortex and the brain stem. All he did was speed up how fast he came back. When we came in, he was just about to break into the girls’ bedroom.”

Nix sniffed and wiped tears from her eyes.

“All those people,” Benny said softly. “And those two little girls.”

“More orphans.”

It was Lilah who spoke, and everyone turned to her. Her stern expression had softened, and it was clear that she was looking into her own memories. Like Nix, Lilah was an orphan. And like Nix and the little girls, Lilah had lost her sibling as well: Annie, a little sister who was born on First Night and who had died trying to escape the zombie pits at Gameland.

Chong said, “What will happen to them?”

“The girls?” Tom asked. “I think there’s an aunt somewhere. In Hillcrest, maybe.”

That town was four days’ ride to the north, and the route went through some of the worst zombie-infested lands. It was a terrible thing. The girls would go off to another town—and as travel between the few towns left in the Ruin was rare, usually only the bounty hunters and traders risked the journey. Benny knew that people here in Mountainside would never see Faith and Hope again. Probably never even hear about them again, as if they had been erased from the world as so many other people had been erased.

The thought of so much death and loss hit him like a punch to the heart.

Nix, however, was furious, and she pounded her thigh with a small, hard fist. “God! I can’t wait to leave this place. I want to get out of here and never come back.”

Tom looked at her and then turned his face to the east and gave a slow nod.