Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(116)

puppeteer. The last shot caught him high and he pitched backward into the arms of three zoms-—a nun and two men in business suits. The man collapsed under the zoms, screaming as they began

to feast.

Nix stared at the fallen man, then down at the gun she held.

“God …,” she murmured, her voice sounding lost, and for a moment Benny thought that killing Joey had somehow broken her. But then a zom reached for her, and Nix calmly, coldly, turned and

shot it between the eyes.

Another body fell past Benny, and he turned to see Lilah dispatch the last of the four zoms who had rushed her. Her face ran with rainwater, and she was grinning. Grinning.

That is one spooky girl, Benny thought. From all that Lilah had been through, she was “lost” in more ways than one. He wondered if there was any roadmap that would lead her toward some

kind of normal life. Or was she too far out in the wilderness of her own experience for that?

“Benny!”

Tom’s voice shook him back to the moment, and he saw his brother running toward him. The last of the bounty hunters were trying to make a stand by the bonfire, and a wall of zoms was

closing in on them.

“The east path!” Tom yelled, pointing with his bloody sword, and Benny turned toward the path the children had taken. It was the only path clear of the dead. Lilah had said it was the best

one for their escape, because it was elevated—part of an ancient rock wall that had long ago collapsed, and unlike all of the other paths, it didn’t directly connect with the forest. It

had been their planned escape route, but in all of the turmoil, Benny had become confused.

“RUN!” Tom yelled, and even as he said it, Apache came tearing out of the shadows and galloped at full speed along the path, sensing the direction of safety. Benny began backing up, but he

was still looking at the camp. There were more than a thousand zoms closing in now, and only eight bounty hunters. After all they’d done, after all the harm they had caused, Benny felt a

flicker of compassion for them, and he knew that this was the same thing Tom must have felt when he’d spared Charlie’s life years ago. Back in Sunset Hollow, whatever that was.

But there was no saving these men. Lilah and Nix knew it, because they ran along the path without a flicker of hesitation. Tom knew it, though when he caught up with Benny, he too turned and

looked back for a moment.

“We can’t save them,” Tom said.

“No,” whispered Benny, but his reply was lost in the rain.

“Go catch up with the girls,” Tom said. “I’ll hold this trail until you’re well clear. Leave Apache for me, because when I leave, I’ll be in a hurry.”

Benny ran down the road and whistled for the horse, and Apache stopped, turned reluctantly, and trotted back to him. Benny tied the reins in a loose pull knot to a stunted tree.

“Tom, how did you … I mean … How are you alive?”

Tom flashed him a grin. “Remember when you threw that bottle of cadaverine to me with the cap loose, and I spilled it all over myself? I think you saved my life. After I fell, I landed

right in the middle of them, but they didn’t go for me. Not right away. The cadaverine gave me a couple of seconds, and I rolled under a car. I was stuck there for hours. I didn’t know

where you were … or if you were alive.”

“Geez. How bad are you hurt? I saw a lot of blood. …”

“I took some buckshot pellets. It’ll be fun getting them out, but it could have been a lot worse.”

The gunshots and screams were intensifying.

“Family reunion later, kiddo. Haul ass.”

Benny did just that. He turned and followed Nix and the Lost Girl out of the camp, leaving the dying to the dead.

But as he rounded the bend in the path, Benny skidded to a stop. Nix and Lilah stood on either side the road, and fifty yards beyond them was the twelve-year-old girl and the other children.

Standing like a monster from some old fairy tale—covered with mud and blood, fierce and terrible—was Charlie Pink-eye.

He held the pistol at arm’s length, but his gun hand was no longer steady. He was breathing hard, and his red eye leaked tears of blood. There were deep gashes on his cheeks, and his shirt

was torn open to reveal a body that was crammed with muscles and crisscrossed by scar tissue.

“Damn you all to hell,” he said in a low hiss. “You took everything I had away from me. You led those monsters here! You turned against your own kind.”


Benny’s lips curled back, but Nix got her words out first. “You’re not our kind, you freak. You killed my mother! You’re not even human.”

She pointed her pistol at Charlie and fired, but he read her intent and ducked to one side, and the shot went wide by five inches. The slide locked back with a hollow click, the magazine

empty. Growling with frustration, Nix threw the pistol at Charlie and caught him on the shoulder, but he only winced. Lilah tried to gut him with her spear, but the big man moved so fast

that only the tip of the blade grazed him. Even so, it drew a hot red line across his abdomen, and he howled in pain. He used one fist to club the spear down, so that the point dug into the

mud, and with his other fist he punched Lilah in the stomach. She collapsed to her knees and threw up into the weeds. Nix made a grab for Lilah’s spear, but Charlie backhanded her to the