Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(18)

“I don’t understand.”

They crested a hill and looked down a dirt road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.

“Have you ever heard of one of them just wasting away and dying of hunger?” Tom asked.

“No, but—”

“The people in town think that the dead survive by eating the living, right?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“What ‘living’ do you think they’re eating?”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. There’re more than three hundred million living dead in America alone. Throw in another thirty-odd million in Canada and a hundred ten million in Mexico, and you have

something like four hundred and fifty million living dead. The Fall happened fourteen years ago. So—what are they eating to stay alive?”

Benny thought about it. “Mr. Feeney says they eat each other.”

“They don’t,” said Tom. “Once a body has started to cool, they stop feeding on it. That’s why there are so many partially eaten living dead. They won’t attack or eat one another even

if you locked them in the same house for years on end. People have done it.”

“What happens to them?”

“The trapped ones? Nothing.”

“Nothing? They don’t rot away and die?”


“They’re already dead, Benny.” A shadow passed over the valley and momentarily darkened Tom’s face. “But that’s one of the mysteries. They don’t rot. Not completely. They decay to a

certain point, and then they just stop rotting. No one knows why.”

“What do you mean? How can something just stop rotting? That’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, kiddo. It’s a mystery. It’s as much a mystery as why the dead rise in the first place. Why they attack humans. Why they don’t attack one another. All mysteries.”

“Maybe they eat, like, cows and stuff.”

Tom shrugged. “Some do, if they can catch them. A lot of people don’t know that, by the way, but it’s true. … They’ll eat anything alive that they can catch. Dogs, cats, birds—even

bugs.”

“Well, then, that explains—”

“No,” Tom interrupted. “Most animals are too fast. Ever try to catch a cat who doesn’t want to be caught? Now imagine doing that if you’re only able to shuffle along slowly and can’t

strategize. If a bunch of the dead came upon cows in a pen or fenced field, they might be able to kill them and eat. But all the penned animals have either long-since escaped or they died

off in the first few months. No … the dead don’t need to feed at all. They just exist.”

“Morgie says that out here wild animals turn into zoms.”

“Nope. As far as anyone’s been able to tell, only humans turn into the living dead. We don’t have the science to try and figure out why, and I don’t know if it’s true everywhere, but we

know it to be true here. Otherwise every time you bit into a chili dog, it’d bite back.”

They reached the gas station. Tom stopped by the old pump and knocked on the metal casing three times, then twice, and then four more times.

“What are you doing?”

“Saying hello.”

“Hello to … ?”

There was a low moan, and Benny turned to see a gray-skinned man shuffling slowly around the corner of the building. He wore ancient coveralls that were stained with dark blotches and,

incongruously, a garland of fresh flowers around his neck. Marigolds and honeysuckle. The man’s face was shaded for a few steps, but then he crossed into the sunlight, and Benny nearly

screamed. The man’s eyes were missing, and the sockets gaped emptily. The moaning mouth was toothless, the lips and cheeks sunken in. Worst of all, as the zombie raised its hands toward

them, Benny saw that all of its fingers had been clipped off at the primary knuckles.

Benny gagged and stepped back, his muscles tensed to turn and run, but Tom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

“Wait,” said Tom.

A moment later the door to the gas station opened, and a pair of sleepy-eyed young women came outside, followed by a slightly older man with a long, brown beard. They were all thin and

dressed in tunics that looked like they had been made from old bed sheets. Each wore a thick garland of flowers. The trio looked at Benny and Tom and then at the zombie.

“Leave him be!” cried the youngest, a black girl in her late teens, as she ran across the dirt to the dead man and stood between him and the Imura brothers, her feet planted, her arms

spread to shield the zombie.

Tom raised a hand and took his hat off so they could see his face.

“Peace, little sister,” he said. “No one’s here to do harm.”

The bearded man fished eyeglasses from a pocket beneath his tunic, and squinted through dirty lenses.

“Tom … ?” he said. “Tom Imura?”

“Hey, Brother David.” He put his hand on Benny’s shoulder. “This is my brother, Benjamin.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Passing through,” said Tom. “But I wanted to pay my respects. And to teach Benny the ways of this world. He’s never been outside of the fence before.”