Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(63)

“I know,” Benny murmured, trying to keep the sadness out of his voice.

Nix found his hand in the dark and laced her fingers through his. “I guess,” she said, “that this does qualify as the worst camping trip in history, though.”

He laughed. “No question.”

They sat and listened to the woods. There was a constant and comforting trill of crickets.

“Lilah’s out there,” Nix said. “She’s somewhere safe. Right?”

“Absolutely,” said Benny.

“Tom, too. I’ll bet he found Chong and they’re in a tree somewhere up the mountains, waiting for dawn.”


“Yup.” The forest pulsed with the crickets and the soft swish of branches in the breeze. “Look, Nix,” Benny said, “I’m sorry about how I acted back at the way station. I guess I was freaking out, you know?”

“No kidding.”

“I was being a total jerk.”

“Yes you were.”

“And a major butt-wipe.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jump in any time now and stop agreeing with me.”

“Ha!” she snorted. “You ought to have your butt royally kicked.”

He sighed. Then Nix nudged him with her shoulder. “You’re pretty good in a crisis, Benny,” she said, “but you can’t take waiting at all, can you?”

“It’s not the waiting, Nix … it’s the not knowing. Drives me buggy.”

“Me too.”

“Doesn’t show,” he said. “You and Lilah were doing pretty good until I opened my big fat mouth.”

“You’re going to need to make it up to Lilah,” she said.

Nix was kind. She didn’t point out how easy a target Lilah was or how much Benny had probably hurt her. Somehow her kindness made Benny feel even more like a creep.

Sometime later Nix said, “It’s not how it’s always going to be.”

Benny wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question. Either way, his answer was the same. “No.”

She squeezed his fingers. He squeezed back. Then her hand relaxed, and Benny realized that Nix had drifted off to sleep. Just like that. Even though he could not see her in the dark, he listened to the slow, deep rhythm of her breathing. He settled back and listened to the night and began to deconstruct the day in order to make a plan for tomorrow, but three seconds later he was asleep too. Above and around them the night spun its web of darkness as the world ground on its axis toward dawn.





42


LOU CHONG WOKE UP.



He was still in hell … though he was immediately certain that he was now in one of the darkest rings of hell. They had taken his vest and shirt and shoes, leaving him shivering only in jeans. The ground on which he lay was hard-packed dirt. Cold and damp and smelling of decay. Chong sat up and wrapped his arms around his body. He had a lot of wiry muscle but no body fat at all, nothing to keep him warm down here in the clammy darkness.

There was enough light to see, but it was shadowy and gloomy. The walls were also made from dirt that had been pounded smooth. Chong raised his head and saw that the walls rose twenty feet above him, with no ladder, handholds, or rope.

He started to get to his feet but immediately cried out in pain and dropped to his knees. His whole body seemed to be composed of different kinds of aches stitched together into a tapestry of searing pain. The worst hurts were where he had been punched in the jaw, rammed in the stomach with the wooden stock of a shotgun, and kicked in the groin while he lay gasping on the ground. Chong tried not to cry.

Even as he huddled there, fighting the tears and fighting the pain, Chong’s mind was working. He knew where he was. Gameland. In a zombie pit.

He had never been here before, nor had he ever seen a zom pit before. It didn’t matter. Tom had described them to him and Benny and Morgie many times over the last few months. Tom had used the zom pit scenario as part of their training. One of Tom’s many worst-case scenarios. Part of the process of being warrior smart.

“So be warrior smart,” he told himself, speaking the words in a fierce whisper through gritted teeth. “What would Tom do? What would Lilah do?”

They wouldn’t take whatever was coming on their knees, he was certain of that. He thought about Nix having her face stitched without painkillers and without screams. Nix had to have dug deep to find the strength to deal with that. Just as she, Benny, and Lilah had found the courage to attack Charlie’s camp last year, even when they thought Tom was dead.

“Get up,” he snarled at himself.

The pain was enormous, and he dropped back onto his knees. A sob broke from his chest. Then another. While he knelt there, his mind did terrible things to him. It conjured images of Lilah standing over him, watching him kneel in sobbing defeat, and laughing.

Laughing at the weak, skinny kid. At the “town boy” who thought he could be a warrior.

At the fool who dared to think that he could ever in a million years win the love of someone as magical and powerful as the legendary Lost Girl. At the loser who had endangered the lives of his friends. At the coward who had run away. The images and the implications were like nails driven into his flesh.

But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace. He bit down on the pain, devouring it, accepting the hurt as something he deserved, and fueled by its energy he planted a foot flat on the ground, pressed the knuckles of his two balled fists into the cold dirt, and pushed himself up off his knees. It took a million years to get all the way to his feet. Straightening his body made it feel like every bruise was being stretched to the ripping point, but the shame would not let him stop until he was up and straight and at his full height.