Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(117)

edge of the path, so that she stood wobbling on the edge of a sheer drop, her arms pinwheeling for balance.

And then Benny moved. He ran to Nix and grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the ledge and then he rushed at Charlie. He still had the Hammer’s club, and Benny swung it hard at

Charlie’s head. The bounty hunter was actually starting to smile at the obviousness of the attack, but Benny was tired of being obvious, tired of being beaten up, clubbed down, tossed aside

like something that, in the grand scheme of things, just plain didn’t matter. He turned the swing into a fake, checked the hit, and used his left hand to punch Charlie in the nose. It wasn

’t a very powerful blow, but it doesn’t require power to break a nose. Charlie’s head rocked back as his nose flattened and blood flew from his nostrils.

And that’s when Benny hit him with the pipe.

He grabbed the weapon with both hands and swung it in a sideways arc that fourteen years ago would have sent a baseball into the bleachers in any major league park in the country. The swing

had everything Benny had to give: rage and hate, hurt and fear, passion and confusion. And it also had love and grief. For Nix and her mother. For Lilah and her sister, Annie. For the

twelve-year-old girl and the kids who huddled around her. For George Goldman, the quiet hero. For Tom and the heartbreak he felt over Jessie Riley. For people named and unknown who had

fallen victim to this man. This abomination.

He hit Charlie Matthias only once.

And once was enough.

The big man took a single wandering sideways step, all sense and control knocked out of his head by the blow. He staggered past Nix, who was crouched down holding Lilah against her. He swung

around in a sloppy turn, fighting for balance that was no longer his to own, and then his next step came down three inches past the edge of the path. Below his big foot was a drop that

plunged a hundred yards into darkness. Charlie Matthias shot Benny one last, momentary glance of desperation and fear.

Benny would like to have seen guilt there or some last minute awareness and acceptance of the wrongness of all that he had done. That would have been nice. That would have been closure.

All he saw in Charlie’s eyes was hatred.

Then Charlie fell.

With the rain, with the last few pops of gunfire from the camp, and with the moans of the hungry dead, they never heard him land. Benny stood on the edge of the trail, and for all that he

could see or hear, he might as well have been on the edge of the world. He held the Hammer’s club out at arm’s length, opened his hand, and let the weapon fall. There would be a need for

weapons, he knew that; but there would be other weapons. This one, like the man it had killed, was unclean.

He turned to the others and sank to his knees by Nix and Lilah. They both stared past him to the edge of the road, their eyes wide. Benny rested his head on Nix’s shoulder, and she gathered

him to her. Lilah wrapped her arms around them both. Then there were other arms—the twelve-year-old girl and the children.

Tom Imura sat on Apache’s back and stared at the huddled mass. He’d heard the single gunshot behind him and had come as fast as he could. He read the scene and understood what he was

seeing.

He heard Benny and Lilah and Nix and the others as they wept.

Tom bowed his head and he too wept.





EPILOGUE


SUNSET HOLLOW


THEY WALKED IN SILENCE, SIDE BY SIDE, HEADING SOUTHEAST. MILES FELL away behind them. They passed another gas station, where Tom greeted another monk. They didn’t linger, though. The day

was burning away.

Benny’s hand was still wrapped in tape. One of his knuckles was cracked and his wrist was sprained, but in the two weeks since the fight at the camp, he’d healed quickly. Tom looked like

an Egyptian mummy. Doc Gurijala had pulled forty-one shotgun pellets out of him, and there were at least ten that he couldn’t reach without doing more harm than good. Tom told him to leave

them.

Lilah was healing, too, although more slowly. When Charlie had punched her in the stomach, he’d clipped her rib cage and broken three bones. She was staying with Lou Chong’s family. They

had the room, and Chong’s aunt was a nurse. If Lilah was impressed by the town and all it had to offer, she didn’t show it. And getting her to part with her spear nearly caused a minor war

at the Chong residence.

Benny was surprised to see that Nix and Lilah were bonding, and the two girls spent hours sitting apart from Benny and Chong, heads bowed together, talking. Nix never told him what they

talked about.

One night, while walking back from Chong’s, Benny said, “I’m trying to see things from her perspective. She must not know where she belongs.”

“She belongs with us,” said Nix.

“Even if we leave? Wouldn’t she be better off staying here with the Chongs or the Kirsches?”

Nix shook her head. “Would they understand what she’s been through, Benny?”

“Do we? Nix … we don’t even really know her.”

She shrugged and brushed a curly strand of red hair from her face. “Maybe not. But we know her better than anyone else.”

They went home. Nix slept in Benny’s room; Benny camped out on the couch. The couch was uncomfortable, but he really didn’t care.