Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(20)

Morgie looked up from his work as Benny walked up the flagstone path. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

Morgie bent over the rod and carefully threaded catgut through the guides. It was an old rod, made before First Night and beautifully tended to by Morgie. It had belonged to his father.

“Guess this is it, huh?” Morgie said in a voice that was flat and dead.

“We might be back,” Benny began, but didn’t finish because Morgie was already shaking his head.

“Don’t lie, Benny.”

“Sorry.” Benny cleared his throat. “I wish you could come with us.”

Morgie looked up, his face pinched and cold. “Really? You’d really want me to come with you—”

“Sure—”

“—and Nix?”

There it was. As quick and sharp as a slap.

“Morgie, c’mon, man. I thought you were over her last year… .”

“You’ve been too busy getting ready for your big adventure … how would you know what anyone else was feeling?” Benny started to reply, but Morgie shook his head in disgust. “Just … go away, Benny.”

Benny stepped forward. “Don’t be like that.”

Morgie suddenly flung his fishing pole away and shot to his feet. His face was red and filled with fury and hurt. “I HATE YOU!” he yelled. Cletus woke up and barked in alarm, birds leaped in panic from the oak trees.

“Hey, man,” said Benny defensively, “what the hell? What’s this crap all about?”

“It’s about you and her ditching me and going off with her on some great adventure.”

Benny stared at him. “You’re crazy.”

Morgie stormed down the steps and shoved Benny as hard as he could. Morgie was a lot bigger and stronger, and Benny staggered back and fell. Morgie took a threatening step closer, following Benny as he fell, fists balled with rage.

“I frigging hate you, Benny. You pretend you’re my friend, but you took Nix and now you’re dumping me and going off together. You and that bitch, Nix.”

Benny stared in total shock, then he felt his own anger starting to rise. He scrambled to his feet.

“You can say whatever you want to say about me, Morgie,” he warned, “but don’t ever call Nix names.”

“Or what?” Morgie challenged, moving in almost chest to chest.

Benny knew that Morgie could take him in a fight. Morgie was always the toughest of the crowd, the one who never backed down. He had tried to stand up to Charlie and the Hammer at the Riley house, and nearly died for it.

Morgie shoved him again, but this time Benny was expecting it, and all it did was knock him back a few steps. As he staggered, his heel came down on the fishing rod, and there was a sharp crack!

They both stared down at it. They had caught a hundred trout with that rod. They had spent thousands of hours sitting on the banks of the stream, talking about everything. Now it lay snapped into two pieces that could never be mended. Benny’s heart sank. As symbolic incidents go, it had too much drama and no comfort at all, and he cursed the universe for making a joke like that at a time like this.

Morgie shook his head and turned away. He walked to the steps, climbed heavily up to the porch, and then stopped. He half turned, and in an ugly growl of a voice he said, “I hope you die out there, Benny. I hope you all die out there.”

He went inside and slammed the door.

Benny stood in the yard for a long time, staring at the house, willing Morgie to come outside. He would rather have fought him and gotten his ass kicked than have things end like this. He wanted to scream, to shout, to demand that Morgie come back outside. To take back those words.

But the door remained stubbornly shut.

Slowly, brokenly, Benny turned and walked back home.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Tools of the Zombie Hunter Trade





BOKKEN: A wooden sword developed by the Japanese. The name combines two words, bo (“wood”) and ken (“sword”). The bokken is used for training and is usually the same length and shape as the katana, the steel sword carried by samurai. Also called a bokuto.





My bokken is thirty-nine inches long and is made from air-dried hickory. It weighs five pounds.





Benny’s bokken is forty-one inches long and made from white oak. (So far he’s cracked three of them, and Tom is getting mad at him.)





16


WHEN THE FIRST PROMISE OF SUNRISE GLIMMERED BEYOND THE TREE LINE of the forest, Tom had them all rigged and ready at the gate.



Over the last few weeks Tom had gotten the mayor’s wife to sew each of them a vest made from very tough pre–First Night canvas. The vests had lots of pockets and were extremely durable. Benny filled his pockets with gum, all-weather matches, a compass, spools of wire and twine, and a hand line for fishing. He tried not to think about Morgie as he stuffed this last item into its pocket. Tried and failed.

As they checked their gear, Benny kept looking back toward town.

“He’ll be here,” Nix said.

But Morgie never came.

Tom bought each of them three small bottles of cadaverine and a pot of mint gel from a vendor at the gate. The cadaverine was a chemical harvested from rotting flesh—and Benny was almost completely sure that it was made from dead animals and not from other sources … like maybe dead zoms. Dribbling it on clothes and hair made the living smell like rotting corpses. Zoms did not attack other zoms, so the smell usually kept the wearer safe.