Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(43)

He cut looks at Nix, who was also sweating heavily and yet seemed able to keep going, despite the pain and the injury. It wasn’t the first time that her strength amazed and humbled him.

They ran and walked, ran and walked.

During one of the walking times, Benny leaned to Nix. “What the heck was that?”

“Preacher Jack,” she said, and shivered. “I feel like I need a bath.”

Benny counted on his fingers. “We know—what—seven religious people? I mean people in the business.”

“You mean clerics? There’s the four in town, Pastor Kellogg, Father Shannon, Rabbi Rosemann, and Imam Murad …”

“… and the monks at the way station: Brother David, Sister Shanti, and Sister Sarah. Seven,” finished Benny. “Except for the monks, who are a little, y’know …” He tapped his temple and rolled his eyes.

“Touched by God,” Nix said. “Isn’t that the phrase Tom uses?”

“Right, except for them, everyone else is pretty okay. I mean the monks are okay too, but they’re loopy from living out here in the Ruin. But even with different religions, different churches, they’re all pretty much the kind of people you want to hang with during a real wrath-of-God moment.”

“Not him, though,” said Nix, nodding along with where Benny was going with this. “He’s scarier than the zoms.”

“‘Zoms’ is a bad word, girlie-girl,” Benny said in a fair imitation of Preacher Jack’s oily voice.

“Eww … don’t!” Nix punched him on the arm.

They walked another few paces as the road bent around a hill.

“Weird day,” Benny said.

“Weird day,” Nix agreed.

Around the bend were dozens of cars and trucks that had been pushed to the side of the main road, which left a clear path down the center. Some of the cars had tumbled into the drainage ditch that ran along one side. Others were smashed together. There were skeletons in a few of them.

“Who pushed the cars out of the way?” asked Chong.

“Probably a tank,” said Tom. “Or a bulldozer. Before they nuked the cities, back when they thought this was a winnable war.” He gestured to the line of broken cars, many of them nearly invisible behind clumps of shrubbery. “This is a well-traveled route. Traders and other people out here. All these cars have been checked for zoms a hundred times.”

Nix wasn’t fooled, and she gave Tom a sly smile. “Which doesn’t mean they’re safe. We have to check them every time, don’t we?”

Tom gave her an approving nod. “That’s the kind of thinking—”

“—that’s going to keep us alive,” finished Benny irritably. “Yeah, we pretty much get that.”

To Tom, Nix said, “He’s cranky because he didn’t think of it first.”

“Yes, I did,” Benny lied.

They moved on.

As the sun began edging toward the western tree line, they crested a hill and looked down a long dirt side road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.

“Take a closer look,” suggested Tom, handing Benny a pair of high-power binoculars.

Benny focused the lenses and studied the scene. The surrounding vegetation was dense with overgrowth, but there was a broad concrete pad around the cluster of small buildings. An ancient billboard stood against the wall of trees. It had long ago been whitewashed, and someone had written hundreds of lines of scripture on it. Rain had faded the words so that only a few were readable.

“This is Brother David’s place?” asked Chong in a leaden voice. Between the catastrophe with the rhino and finding the dead man, and then the weird encounter with Preacher Jack, Chong seemed to have lost his humor and virtually all trace of emotion. He barely spoke, and when he did his voice lacked inflection. It was like listening to a sleepwalker.

Tom caught the sound and cut a look at Benny, who nodded.

Tom mouthed the words, “Keep your eye on him,” and Benny nodded again.

“Yup,” said Benny. “He was the first monk I ever met out here. It’s him and two girls. Sister Sarah and Sister Shanti.”

“And Old Roger,” added Nix.

“Who?” Chong asked.

“He’s a zom they take care of. Remember I told you?”

Chong nodded but didn’t comment.

They descended along a path that ran beside a mammoth line of white boulders dumped there ages ago by a glacier. A thin stream of water trickled between the rocks, but it was so small that it made no sound. Chong lagged behind the rest, and Benny slowed to keep pace with him. When Benny caught a look at Chong’s face, he almost missed his step.

There were tears at the corners of Chong’s dark eyes.

“Hey, dude. What’s—?”

Chong touched Benny’s arm. “I’m really sorry, man.”

Benny shook his head and started to protest.

“No,” Chong interrupted, “I should never have come. You guys are better off without me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Benny said, though his voice lacked total conviction. “Besides, this way you get to spend a couple of days with Lilah—”

Chong dismissed that with a derisive snort. “Ever since the rhino thing, I’m less than dog crap to her.”