Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(119)

He could, and she proved it.

Benny and Tom left at noon. They walked for several hours, rarely talking. The sun broke through the clouds as they cut through a grove of trees that were heavy with apples. Tom picked a

few, and they ate them and still said almost nothing until they reached the wrought-iron gate of a community that was embowered by a high red-brick wall. A sign over the gate read: SUNSET

HOLLOW.

Outside of the gate there was trash and old bones and a few burned shells of cars. The outer walls were pocked with bullet scars. To the right of the gate someone had used white paint to

write: “This Area Cleared. Keep Gates Closed. Keep Out.” Below that were the initials TI.

Benny pointed. “You wrote that?”

“Years ago,” Tom said.

The gates were closed, and a thick chain had been threaded through the bars and locked with a heavy padlock. The chain and the lock looked new and gleamed with oil.

“What is this place?” Benny asked.

Tom tucked his hands into his back pockets and looked up at the sign. “This is what they used to call a gated community. The gates were supposed to keep unwanted people out and keep the

people inside safe.”

“Did it work? I mean … during First Night?”

“No.”

“Did all the people die?”

“Most of them. A few got away.”

“Why is it locked?”

“For the same reason as always,” Tom said. He blew out his cheeks and dug into his right front jeans pocket for a key. He showed it to Benny and then opened the lock, pushed the gates

open, and then restrung the chain and clicked the lock closed with the keyhole on the inside now.

They walked along the road. The houses were all weather damaged, and the streets were pasted with the dusty remnants of fourteen years of falling leaves. Every garden was overgrown, but

there were no zombies in them. Some of the doors had crosses nailed to them, around which hung withered garlands of flowers.

“Your job’s here?” Benny asked.

“Yes,” said Tom. His voice was soft and distant.

“Is it like the other one? Like Harold Simmons?”

“Sort of.”

“That was … hard,” said Benny.

“Yes, it was.”

“Tom … I never wanted this. I mean, we all played games. Y’know, Kill the Zoms. Stuff like that. But … this isn’t how I imagined it.”

“Kiddo, if you were capable of imagining this without having seen it, I’d be scared for you. Maybe scared of you.”

Benny shook his head. “Doing this over and over again would drive me crazy. How do you do it?”

Tom turned to him as if that was the question he’d been waiting for all day. “It keeps me sane,” he said. “Do you understand?”

Benny thought about it for a long moment. Birds sang in the trees and the cicadas buzzed continually. “Is it because you knew what the world was before?”

Tom nodded.

“Is it because if you didn’t do it … then maybe no one would?”

Tom nodded again.

“It must be lonely.”

“It is.” Tom glanced at him. “But I always hoped you’d want to join me. To help me do what I do.”

“I … don’t know if I can.”


“That’s always going to be your choice. If you can, you can. If you can’t, then believe me, I’ll understand. It takes a lot out of you to do this. And it takes a lot out of you to know

that the bounty hunters are out there, doing what they do.”

“How come none of them ever came here?”

“They did. Once.”

“What happened?”

Tom shrugged.

“What happened?” Benny asked again.

“I was here when they came. Pure chance.”

Benny looked at him. “You … killed them,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

Tom walked a dozen steps before he said, “Not all of them.” A half dozen steps later he added, “I let one of them go.”

“That was Charlie, wasn’t it? That’s what he was talking about.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you let him go?”

“To spread the word,” Tom said. “To let the other bounty hunters know that this place was off-limits.”

“And they listened? The bounty hunters?”

Tom smiled. It wasn’t boastful or malicious. It was a thin, cold knife-blade of a smile that was there and gone. “Sometimes you have to go to some pretty extreme lengths to make a point

and to make it stick. Otherwise you find yourself having to make the same point over and over again.”

Benny stared at him. “How many were there?”

“Ten.”

“And you let one go.”

“Yes.”

“And you killed nine of them?”

“Yes.” The late afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees threw dappled light on the road and painted the sides of all of the houses to their left with purple shadows. A red fox and

three kits scampered across the street ahead of them. “I let the wrong one go.”

“How could you have known? With one of the other guys, even Vin or Joey … It might not have been any different.”