Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(21)

“If he’s nuts, then at least his heart’s in the right place. The Children don’t believe in violence of any kind.”

“But they’re okay with you, even though you kill zoms?”

Tom shook his head. “No, they don’t like what I do. But they accept my explanation for why I do it, and Brother David and a few others have seen how I do it. They don’t approve, but they

don’t condemn me for it. They think I’m misguided but well-intentioned.”

“And Charlie? What do they think of him? Can’t be anything good.”

“They believe Charlie Pink-eye to be an evil man. Him and his jackass buddy, the Motor City Hammer. Bunch of others. Most of the bounty hunters, in fact, and I can’t fault the Children for

those beliefs.”

Benny said nothing. He still thought Charlie Matthias was cool as all hell.

“So … these Children, what do they actually do?”


“They tend to the dead. If they find a town, they’ll go through the houses and look for photos of the people who lived there, and then they try and round them up if they’re still

wandering around the town. They put them in their houses, seal doors, write some prayers on the walls, and then move on. Most of them keep moving. Brother David’s been here for a year or

so, but I expect he’ll move on too.”

“Charlie said that he rounds up zoms, too. He told us about a place in the mountains where he has a couple hundred of them staked out. He said it was one of the ways he and the Hammer were

making the Ruin a safer place.”

“Uh-huh,” Tom said sourly. “The traders call it the Hungry Forest. I think Charlie cooked up that name. Very dramatic. But it’s not the same as what the Children do. Charlie rounds up

zoms and ties them to trees, so that he can find them more easily when he gets a bounty job.”

“That sounds smart.”

“I never said Charlie wasn’t smart. He’s very smart, but he’s also very twisted and dangerous, and his motives are not exactly admirable. He also does a lot of bulk work—cleaning out

small towns and such for the traders. That doesn’t make the people in town happy, because it confuses the issue of identification when you wipe out a whole town of zoms, but salvaging for

stuff is more important. We’ve become an agricultural society. No one’s made much of an effort to restart industry, and people seem to think that we can salvage forever for almost

everything we need. It’s like in the old days, when people drilled for oil for cars and factories without making much of an effort to find renewable sources for energy. It’s a pillage-

and-plunder mentality, and it makes us scavengers. That’s not the best place to be on the food chain. Charlie’s happy with it, though, because a cleanup job is big money.” He looked back

over his shoulder in the direction they’d come. “The Children, on the other hand … They may be crazy and they may be misguided, but they do what they believe is the right thing.”

“How do they round up zoms? Especially in a town full of them?”

“They wear carpet coats, and they know the tricks of moving quietly and using cadaverine to mask their living smells. Sometimes one or another of the Children will come to town to buy some,

but more often guys like me bring some out to them.”

“Don’t they ever get attacked?”

Tom nodded. “All the time, sad to say. I know of at least fifty dead in this part of the country who used to be Children. I’d quiet them, but Brother David won’t let me. And I’ve even

heard stories that some of the Children give themselves to the dead.”

Benny stared at him. “Why?”

“Brother David says that some of the Children believe that the dead are the meek who were meant to inherit the earth, and that all things under heaven are there to sustain them. They think

that allowing the dead to feed on them is fulfilling God’s will.”

“That’s stupid,” Benny said.

“It is what it is. I think a lot of the Children are people who didn’t survive the Fall. Oh, sure, their bodies did, but I think some fundamental part of them was broken by what happened.

I was there, I can relate.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“I have my moments, kiddo, believe me.”

Benny gave him a strange look. Then he smiled. “I think that redheaded woman, Sister Sarah, has the hots for you. As disgusting a concept as that seems.”

Tom shook his head. “Too young for me. Though … I thought she looked a bit like Nix. What do you think?”

“I think you should shove that right up your—”

And that’s when they heard the gunshots.





10


WHEN THE FIRST SHOT CRACKED THROUGH THE AIR, BENNY DROPPED to a crouch, but Tom stood straight and looked away to the northeast. When Tom heard the second shot, he turned his head slightly

more to the north.

“Handgun,” he said. “Heavy caliber. Three miles.”

Benny looked up at him through the arms he’d wrapped over his head. “Bullets can go three miles, can’t they?”

“Not usually,” said Tom. “Even so, they aren’t shooting at us.”