Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(65)

“NO!” Benny yelled, and backed away. Pale hands grabbed his ankles and held him as Tom took one unsteady step toward him, and then another. And another. Benny screamed again and kicked his way free just as Tom’s dry fingers brushed his face. Benny ran as ash drifted down from the burning trees.

“NIX!” he cried, but still his voice had no volume. No power.

There was movement and color off to his left, a flash of red, and Benny cut that way. He saw Morgie Mitchell sitting cross-legged on the hood of a burned-out car, his face screwed up with concentration as he tried to repair the broken pieces of his father’s fishing rod. Lying slumped against the side of the car was a slender figure covered with bright red blood.

Chong!

Benny hurried to him and knelt down, trying to figure out where his friend was hurt. “Chong! Chong … can you hear me? C’mon, talk to me, you skinny monkey-banger.”

Chong’s eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. There was still life in his eyes, a wet glimmer deep in the brown irises. Chong tried to smile. He began speaking very slowly and softly, and Benny had to bend close to hear.

“Everything out here wants to kill you, Benny,” Chong said.

“Chong! Where are you hurt?”

Chong lifted a hand, and with one bloody finger he tapped his temple. “It hurts in here, Benny. Nothing in here works anymore.” Then the hand fell limply away, and Chong slumped over sideways, his last breath rattling from his throat.

Benny fell backward, kicking himself away from Chong. More hands burst through the dirt and clamped around his wrists.

“No!” Benny bellowed, and he twisted and kicked and bit the fingers until they broke apart and became hot ash. He spat out the ashes and scrambled to his feet. Tom was still coming toward him.

“You should have stayed home,” Morgie said without looking up from what he was doing. “’Cause you know that you’re all gonna die out here.”

“Where’s Nix?” Benny demanded.

Morgie looked up. Instead of eyes he had two empty black holes in his face.

“She’s gonna die too, Benny … and it’s your fault.”

Anger and revulsion warred in Benny’s heart, but he backed away. Suddenly hands grabbed him. Not the cold hands of the buried dead, but two small, warm hands. They touched his back, then his shoulders, and finally the sides of his face. Benny turned slowly, gratitude and relief flooding his heart.

“Nix … God! Where were you?”

His voice trailed away. Nix Riley was a withered thing. Her red hair hung like limp red strings from a scalp that was patchy and blotched. Her skin was leached of color and there were clear signs of bites on her cheeks and shoulders and arms. Worst of all, her eyes … her beautiful green eyes … were wrong. They were a diseased confusion of green and gold and black. The effect was dreadful, the eyes of a thing rather than a girl.

“Benny,” she said, and then she smiled. Rotting lips peeled back from jagged teeth. “Kiss me.”

? ? ?

Benny screamed himself awake.



He sat up, gasping, heart pounding, his body drenched in sweat. Cold starlight filtered through the leaves, casting the world into a blue-white strangeness, as alien as the dreams-cape from which he’d just escaped.

Benny turned to Nix, surprised that his scream hadn’t startled her awake. Or had the scream been part of the dream too? He touched her arm to gently shake her.

But her skin was as cold as ice.

“W-what … ?” Benny’s voice was hollow and brittle.

He turned her over and she moved stiffly, her limbs already freezing into the rigidity of rigor mortis.

“No!” He fumbled at her throat, trying to find her pulse, needing to find at least the thread of it. All he found was slack skin beneath which nothing moved. “NO!”

Benny grabbed her and pulled her to him, a new scream rising like volcanic lava in his chest. How could this be? How was it possible? Was it the cut on her face? No … that was just a cut. Had she been bitten? Where? When?

And that fast he knew the answer. On the field. In the dark. As the fire raged and the smoke obscured everything, one of the shambling monsters had bitten her. In their panic and flight, maybe Nix hadn’t known. Or maybe she had and didn’t dare tell him.

She was like a block of ice in his arms, and Benny cried out her name over and over again. It was impossible. The world could not allow this. It could not be true.

Nix stayed cold and dead in his arms.

Until she moved.

Benny recoiled from her, staring at her, his splintering mind scrabbling for that last bit of hope. Please … let her be okay! Maybe she’s just sick. Please … please … please!

Nix Riley opened her eyes.

They were the green and gold diseased eyes of a zom.

With a snarl of impossible hunger, she lunged at him.





44


AND HE WOKE UP.



The forest was as black as death. The crickets pulsed and the night owls hooted. The girl in his arms was a soft, warm reality.

Benny Imura held her. His heart hammered and hammered. Sweat poured down his face, mingling with his tears.

“Nix,” he said gently. She moaned softly in her sleep, lost in her own dreams, and snuggled against him. He held her as tightly as he could without waking her. Benny did not sleep again the rest of the night.