Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(121)

The sheet that covered Tom’s body was still. There was no breeze; the fabric did not flutter.

“Please,” whispered Benny.

I’ll try not to come back. Benny reached down and picked up the thing Dr. Skillz had left for him. A sliver. It was polished and cool. One end was blunt for pushing, the other sharp for piercing. A pretty thing, well made. An ugly thing, dreadfully intended.

He held it in his hand while he stood and waited. Seconds fell around him like leaves from a dying tree. Inside his chest he felt something change. His heart dropped from where it had always been, falling to a lower place. A darker place. And there, he knew, it would remain.

The world itself had become darker.

I’ll try not to come back.

Benny pressed the cold, flat blade of the sliver against his forehead and closed his eyes.

“God,” he whispered, “please …” Others who had died recently had stayed dead. Most had come back, but not all of them. Not all.

Outside he could hear the first birds of morning. The world was waking up, unheeding of what had happened. Benny stared at the closed windows and wondered how nature could be so stupid, so cruel. How could the day just go on as if nothing had happened? So much was broken now. Time should be broken. Tom was gone. There had been a stopping of him. The world should have stopped then too. And yet it ground on.

Tears burned in Benny’s eyes.

I’ll try not to come back.

I’ll try.

The sheet lay undisturbed. Slowly, slowly Benny sank to his knees. Holding the sliver in his right hand, he reached out with his left and took the edge of the sheet between his fingers. His tears burned like ice on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a voice that was almost not there.

He pulled back the sheet. Tom Imura’s face was slack, his eyelids closed, lips slightly parted. Benny swallowed and tightened his grip on the sliver. Any second now.

He’ll come back, Benny thought. The world is the world and the plague is never going to end. He knew that what he had to do was going to end him. Not Tom … it would end Benny. He looked into the future and saw that horrible moment and knew that only darkness waited for him afterward.

“I’m sorry,” Benny said again, and he bent and kissed Tom’s forehead. “I love you, Tom. I wish I’d said that more.”


Benny turned Tom onto his side to expose the soft spot at the base of the skull. The sweet spot, Tom called it. He cradled Tom’s head in his lap.

I’ll try not to come back.

Benny knelt there, holding his brother, holding the sliver.

Waiting for horror.





-2-


FIVE MINUTES LATER BENNY IMURA UNBARRED THE DOOR AND STEPPED out into the morning sunlight. He still held the sliver in his hand. Nix took a step toward him and stopped. Benny was so pale, his eyes rimmed with dark, his mouth slack.



“Benny … ?”

Chong stepped forward, but Lilah stopped him. Not by grabbing his arm, but by taking his hand.

“Benny?” Nix whispered.

Benny raised his eyes to hers. They were wet and haunted.

“Benny?” she asked again.

Benny licked his dry lips. “Tom said that he would try not to come back.”

Nix came closer, touched his face. “I know, but …”

He shook his head, and Nix fell silent.

Chong went quickly past him, pulling Lilah with him. They entered the shed and were in there for almost a full minute. Then they came back out into the sunlight, both of them wearing frowns of confusion.

“Benny,” said Chong softly, “what does it mean?”

“What happened?” asked Nix.

Lilah had her knife in her hand, and she slowly slid it into its sheath. “Tom … he …”

Benny looked up at the clean sunlight and slowly lifted the hand that held the sliver. The others looked at it, mouths open, eyes wide. Benny opened his fingers and let it fall. The sliver struck the flagstones with a musical clang. Nix stared down at it. The metal gleamed in the bright light, the blade smooth and polished.

And totally unmarked.

“My brother kept his word,” Benny said.





-3-


MORGIE MITCHELL WALKED THROUGH THE SUN-DAPPLED STREETS OF Mountainside, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders slumped, head down. He barely noticed the other people. He was sunburned from hours spent at the fishing hole, but beneath the red there was a paleness that made him seem ghostly and insubstantial to the people who passed him on the street. He seldom met their eyes, and when he did his gaze was wet and dark and filled with shadows.



“How you doing there, Morgie?” asked Captain Strunk, but Morgie walked past him without comment. He headed out of the main part of town and down a country lane to a small cottage surrounded by a rail fence and lush bushes. Morgie stopped at the garden gate and looked into the yard. The grass was worn down to the dirt in places where Tom Imura had led them through hundreds of hours of drills with wooden swords and practice knives. He leaned on the fence rail and closed his eyes. The memories of wood clacking on wood and grunts of effort were as clear as if he could hear them right now.

Morgie sighed.

He opened the gate and walked up the garden path and around to the front porch. He sighed, mounted the front steps, and stopped at the door. Morgie knew that if he knocked there would be no one home. There couldn’t be. Benny and Tom, Lilah and Chong … and Nix … they were all gone. Far away, and with every second they were going farther. Gone forever.