Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(36)

talk. So you probably have a sense of it, but that’s really not the same thing as having belonged to that world. You live here in town, with a slice of what’s left of the population. What

’s our head count at the New Year’s census? Eight thousand? When I was working on the boardwalk, I’d see three times that many people just sprawled in the sand, soaking up the sun. The

freeways were packed with tens of thousands of cars, horns blaring, people yelling. I used to hate the crowd, hate the noise. But … man, once it was all gone—I’ve missed it every day

since. The world is too quiet now.”

Benny nodded, but he didn’t agree. There was always something happening in town, always some noise or chatter. The only quiet he’d heard was out in the Ruin.

“When the dead rose … The noise changed from the sound of life in constant motion to the sound of the dying in panicked flight. I heard the first screams just as the sun was setting. A guy

in the drunk tank died from a beating he’d gotten when he’d been mugged. I guess the cops didn’t realize how hurt he was. They thought he was asleep on the bunk, didn’t know he was dead.

Then he woke up, if that’s the right word. ‘Resurrected’ is closer, I guess. Or maybe there should have been new words for it. If there’d been time, if the world had lasted longer, I’m

sure there would have been all sorts of new words, new slang. Thing is, the zoms—they weren’t really ‘back’ from the dead, you know? They were the dead. It’s been fourteen years, and

the idea still won’t fit into my head.” He closed his eyes for a moment, looking inward—or backward—at images that even his artist’s imagination could not reconcile.

“The Lost Girl,” Benny prompted gently.

“Right. That was later. Let me get to it how I need to get to it, because one thing leads to another, and if I tell it out of order, you might not understand.” He took another sip of

coffee. “The guy in the cell started biting the other drunks. Everybody was screaming. The cops thought they had a nutcase on their hands, so they did what they were trained to do: They

unlocked the cell to try and break up the fight. But by then at least one or two of the other drunks were dead from bites to their throats or arteries. It was a mess—blood all over the

walls and floor, grown men screaming, cops shouting. But I just stood there, staring. All of the colors, you know? The bright red. The pale white of bloodless skin. The gray lips and black

eyes. The blue of the police uniforms. The blue-white arcs of electricity as they used Tasers. In a weird, sick way it was beautiful. Yeah, I can see the look in your eyes, and I know how

crazy that sounds, but I’m an artist. I guess we’re all a little crazy. I see things the way I see them. Besides, I was around death and dying all the time. I was around pain and loss all

the time. This was so real, so immediate. Even working with the police, I’d never been there at the moment a crime was committed … and here it was. Murder and mayhem being played out in

all the colors in my paint box. I was transfixed. I couldn’t move. And then the dead drunks woke up, and they started biting the cops. After that … The colors blurred, and I don’t

remember much except that there was screaming and gunfire. The younger cops and all of the support staff—the people who weren’t street cops—they went crazy. Screaming, running, crashing

into one another.

“It made it easier for the dead to catch them, and the more people they bit, the more the situation went all to hell. A cop I knew—a woman named Terri—grabbed my sleeve and pulled me away

a second before one of the zombies could take a bite out of me. She shoved me down a side hall—the hall that led to the parking lot. She told me to get into my car and get the motor

running. Then she turned and went back down the hall to get some other people out.” He sighed. “I never saw her again. All I heard was gunfire and the moans of the dead.”

“Is that where it all started?” Benny asked.

The artist shrugged. “I don’t think so. Over the years you talk to people, and you hear a hundred stories about how it all started. You know what I really think?”

Benny shook his head.

“I think that it doesn’t matter one little bit. It happened. The dead rose, we fell. We lost the war and we lost the world. End of story. How it happened doesn’t matter much to anyone

anymore. We’re living next door to the apocalypse, kid. It’s right on the other side of that big fence. The Rot and Ruin is the real world. Our town isn’t anything more than the last bits

of mankind’s dream, and we’re stuck here until we die off.”

“You always this depressing or is it that crap you poured in your coffee?”

Sacchetto tilted his head to one side and stared at Benny for a ten count before a slow smile formed on his mouth. “Subtlety’s not your bag, is it, kid?”

“It’s not that,” said Benny. “It’s just that I’m fifteen, and I have this crazy idea I might actually have a life in front of me. I don’t see how it’s going to do me much good to

believe that the world is over and this is just an epilogue.”

Sacchetto chuckled. “You’re smarter than I thought you were. Maybe I should have given you the job.”