Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(13)

Benny followed his gaze and half smiled. “It’s not you, man.”

“What?”

“She’s not mad at you. I mean, she is . . . but not any more than usual.”

“I fell in, and you know how she is with the whole thing about me being a clumsy town boy and—” began Chong, but Benny cut him off.

“It’s the kid. I . . . think she looks like Annie.”

Chong winced as if Benny had punched him in the stomach. “Oh, man . . .”

“Yeah.”

Benny understood Lilah’s pain. He and Tom had quieted the zombies that had once been their parents. Tom had helped him through it, though; and later, when Tom passed, Benny had been spared the horror of quieting him. Tom never reanimated. However, Lilah had been all alone with Annie. She had no older sibling to help her through it. Benny was wise enough to understand that no matter how bad his own experiences were, there were some people who had it worse.

As if reading his thoughts, Chong said, “I’d give a lot, you know? To make it different for her.”

“Yeah, man. I know.”

It was something Benny deeply understood, and he wondered if there was anything he wouldn’t give to change some of the things that had happened. To Nix’s mom. To Nix. To Tom.

To his parents.

He and Chong each drifted down the silent corridors of their personal pain as the sun burned its way through the hard blue sky. A pair of spider monkeys chattered in the trees. Benny looked at them because it was easier than looking at Eve, who still wept in Nix’s arms. He sighed, feeling immensely useless.

In town there was always someone around to help with children. The whole town looked after everyone’s kids. It was the way it had always been, at least in Benny’s experience. No one would ever let a little kid go wandering off on their own.

Nix kept stroking the sobbing child’s hair and murmuring words that Benny could not hear.

Eve was a little girl. Five years old. Helpless.

As Annie had been helpless.

Benny felt the weight of the sword slung over his shoulder. Tom’s sword. His sword now. The sword he had very nearly lost.

He felt his face flush as he thought about how Nix had chased him out of the ravine and Lilah had recovered the sword. That was wrong. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to work.

He felt eyes on him and turned to see Chong giving him a considering appraisal.

“What?” Benny demanded.

“What’s on your mind? You look like you’re trying to squeeze out a thought.”

“Nothing,” said Benny.

Chong sighed.

“Actually, there is something,” Benny said tentatively.

“What?”

“When I was in the ravine, I thought I heard something.”

“Like the sound of you peeing your pants?”

“Hilarious. Like a motor, like the hand-crank generator at the hospital. Did—did you guys hear that?”

Chong shook his head. “I didn’t. I was asleep.” Then, without meaning to, he said something very unkind. “Maybe you imagined it. You know, stress and all.”

Benny stared ahead, and for a few moments he did not actually see a thing except shadows drifting across the front of his mind.

“Yeah,” he said very quietly, “crazy, huh?”

Nix hugged Eve and kissed her hair. Then she encouraged her to drink from a canteen. Finally Nix caught Benny’s eye and gave him a tiny nod.

Benny and Chong came over, but they did not sit too close, warned off by a quick flare of Nix’s eyes. Benny sat cross-legged next to Chong and waited as Eve looked shyly at them from within the protection of Nix’s arms.

“Eve—?” began Nix softly.

“Mmm?” Eve answered in a tiny voice.

“Do you live around here?”

Eve sniffed and shook her head. “They chased us and . . . we had to run away.”

Ouch, thought Benny.

“Who did you run away with?” asked Nix. No need to ask who they ran from.

“Mommy and Daddy and Ry-Ry and me, we had to run away ’cause the angels came and set fire to the trees, and then the gray people came through the fence and ate all the sheep and cows and tried to eat—” She suddenly stopped and looked around, her eyes filling with new tears. “Where’s my mommy?”

“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, it’s all right,” soothed Nix, “we’ll find her.”

Benny marveled at Nix’s patience. As sympathetic as he was to Eve, he could not stand the tears, the crying, the panic that emanated from the girl. It made him want to scream and run and hit things. Dead things. Or . . . anything. Trees, a rock wall. His fists were balled tight, and his whole body remained rigid as he tensed against a possible new wave of weeping.

“Sweetie,” said Nix to Eve, “where was your mommy when you last saw her?”

Eve’s face went blank as she thought about it. She glanced over Nix’s shoulder to the slope that rose above the jagged mouth of the ravine, then turned and scanned the entire terrain. “I was playing in the creek,” she said. “Mommy was doing the washing. And Ry-Ry was making breakfast and—”

Benny nodded. He leaned forward and said, “Eve . . . does your mom have black hair?”

Eve blinked at him like a confused turtle. “No. Mommy has yellow hair.” She said it as if everyone knew that.