Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(69)

LOOK FOR US.

W.S.

B / N

“W.S.?” Nix murmured. “Warrior smart?”

“Yeah. I want him to know we’re using what he taught us.”

“So … we’re heading east?”

“I guess,” he said. “To Yosemite. It’s that or go back to town. I sure don’t want to wait around here. I don’t know what drove all those zoms down here last night, and I don’t want to find out.”

He hadn’t yet told her about the man he’d seen standing among the zoms. The man he was pretty sure was Charlie Pink-eye. How could he tell Nix that her mother’s murderer was still out here, still roaming the world free?

Benny knew he would have to tell her soon. But not here and not now.

Nix touched the wall below the first line. T for Tom. L for Lilah. C for Chong. “It’s funny, but Mom used those letters to mean ‘tender loving care.’” She turned away. “That was a different world.”

“Yes, it was,” he agreed.

“We don’t belong there anymore.”

“No.”

She narrowed her eyes and surveyed the way ahead. Past the blackened ruins, toward the green expanse of the forest and the mountains in the east. “It’s funny,” she said. “I actually thought this part—getting started, I mean—would be the easy part. I expected it to get harder later, but I thought that this would be … I don’t know … kind of ordinary. We’ve been out to Brother David’s a million times … but we’re not even twenty miles from home.”

“I don’t know if anything’s going to be easy, Nix.”

She glanced at him, her lip caught between her even white teeth. She said, “Benny … if you say, ‘Let’s go back,’ I will. Right now. So help me, God … I’ll go back.”

He looked into her eyes and then turned and stared across the charred field of bones to the path that led up into the northwestern slopes. Then he drew a breath and let it out before he turned back. “You already said it, Nix,” he said. “We don’t belong there anymore.”

Doubt darkened her face. “Do we belong here?”

“I don’t know.” He knelt and used a handful of withered grass to wipe the soot from his finger. “Maybe we don’t belong anywhere. But I got to tell you, Nix, it cost us too much to get this far to go back now. We have to keep going.”

“We don’t have to prove anything, Benny.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I kind of think we do.” Then he smiled. The first real smile he’d worn since they left the tree. “Don’t ask me what it is, though.”

Then he kissed her. First, very lightly on the line of stitches that crossed her brow, and then more firmly on the lips.

She kissed him back, and it wasn’t merely reflex. She kissed him like she meant it. Then she stepped back and looked him with green eyes that were filled with a thousand mysteries. For once Benny felt like he understood some of them.

He smiled and held out his hand, and Nix took it. Together they turned away from the charred graveyard of the dead and headed east. The road before them was tangled in weeds, but the sun glimmered like a promise on every blade of grass.

As they walked away they did not see the figure that stepped from behind a stand of fire-blackened pines. It was a tall man. Thin as a scarecrow in a black coat, with white hair that fluttered in the hot wind. He watched the two teenagers as they walked along the road.



The man moved as silently as a shadow as he crossed the field to the way station. He stopped and those cold eyes read the message written in the soot. His lips moved as he read the words, and then he chuckled softly to himself.

He stood for a long time with his lips pursed, considering the words. Then he used the hard, flat palm of his hand to wipe them out. All that remained was a smear of soot. The figure turned and looked at the road. Nix and Benny were tiny dots now, and as he watched they vanished into the far woods.

The man smiled and, quiet as death, followed.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Tom on Quieting Zoms





Tom Imura: “Put a bullet through the brain stem and you switch off your zombie. The same holds for a sword or ax cut, or sufficient blunt force trauma. However, if you inflict minor damage to the brain stem, you may remove some of the zombie’s functions … he might be unable to bite or unable to maintain balance. The bottom line here is that the real off buttons for a zombie are the brain stem and the motor cortex.”





47


LILAH CROUCHED BENEATH THE SHELTERING ARMS OF A MASSIVE OAK TREE. Cool green darkness wrapped around her. Her white hair was tangled with moss and bits of leaves. There were long rips in her shirt. She had no memory of what had torn the fabric. Sharp branches or broken fingernails. Her pistol was gone. Her knife was gone. She’d left her spear buried in the chest of a zom back at the edge of the burned field. It was hours before she realized that she was no longer carrying it.



She had no memory of most of the night. Her head felt broken. As broken as her heart. When she touched her face she was surprised to find fresh tears, but an hour later the surprise turned to panic when she realized that she was still crying. That she could not stop crying. There were no sobs. Just tears. Cold against the fevered heat of her skin.