Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(55)

“What are microwave ovens?”

“Ovens that run on electricity,” Tom said. “Something I hope you’ll actually get to use one day if people can shake off the superstitious nonsense they’ve associated with electricity.

Now, listen close, because this is where the story takes a turn.”

He and Benny both leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands curled around fresh cups of tea.

“That morning, after I left the truck, I found a dead zom in the middle of the road. Nothing too surprising about that, but it was the way it had been killed that intrigued me. Someone had

come up on the zom from behind and slashed the back of one knee and the ankle of the other leg. Crude cuts, but effective. Took out the tendons and brought the zom down, and once it was

down, they drove a knife into the back of its skull. As I said, this wasn’t a skillful job, but it was smart. An hour later I found another one, and then another. By the end of that day, I

’d found eighteen zoms killed the same way. Some of the kills were weeks old, a couple were very fresh, but the method was always the same. Tendon cuts from behind and then the knife in the

back of the skull. After about the fifth or sixth kill, I was pretty sure I knew something about this particular zombie hunter. Everyone who works out in the Ruin, anyone who kills on a

regular basis, develops a style. They find a method that works for them, a way to get the job done easiest and with the least amount of risk, and they stick to it. After all, it’s not like

the zoms can become aware of how hunters work, and change their tactics.”

“So … who was doing this?”

“Ah,” said Tom, “you just sailed past an obvious question.”

“What?”

“Think about it.”

Benny did, and then he got it. “Wait … you said that there weren’t many zoms in the high country, but you found a whole bunch of dead ones. So, why were there so many up there?”

“Right. That had been worrying me all day. At first I thought there was a community up there that had been overrun. If that was the case, I could be walking into real trouble. But then

something occurred to me. When I thought back to each of the zoms that this particular hunter had killed, I realized they were all very similar. They were all men. Adult men, all over

thirty, all fairly big—or as big as a desiccated zom can be.”

“Were they from a team or something? Or guys from an army base?”

“Good guesses, kiddo, but no. I went back to the most recent kills and followed their trails, backtracking them down to the lowlands. One was from a farm, the other from a service station.

I climbed back into the hills and found another kill. A fairly fresh one, blood all over the place.”

“Blood?” Benny said. “Zoms don’t bleed.”

“No, they don’t,” Tom agreed. “Now how about that?”

“This was a murdered person?”

“It was a dead person. ‘Murder’ is a relative term.”

“Then I don’t get it. I can see where you’re going with this. These are kills the Lost Girl made, right? I mean, that’s the surprise twist in your story.”

“It’s not a twist. You asked me to tell you about her, so there’s no surprise. What I’m doing, little brother, is giving it to you as close as I can to the way I came into it. Laying out

the evidence.” Tom grinned. “Remember, I was in the police academy before First Night. I was studying to be a cop. Granted, I never spent time on the street, but I learned the basics of

investigation and something about psychological profiling. When I bedded down that night, I looked at the evidence I had and made some basic deductions. Not assumptions, mind you. Do you

know the difference?”

“One’s based on evidence and the other’s based on guesswork,” Benny said. “We had the whole ‘when you assume you make an ass out of you and me’ speech in school.”

“Okay, so make some deductions.”

“Aside from the fact that this was the Lost Girl?”

“That’s guesswork because I was telling her story.”

“Okay. Well, describe the man she killed. The human, I mean.”

“Not as big as the dead zoms, but sturdy.”

“Was he a farmer or something?”

“No. From his weapons and equipment, it seemed pretty clear that he was a bounty hunter.”

Benny sat back and thought about it, and Tom let him. The more he thought about it, the less he liked what he was thinking.

“She’d have been, what … eleven, twelve?”

“About that.”

“And she was only killing men?”

“Yes.” Tom was no longer smiling.

“Men who kind of fit a ‘type’?”

“Yes.”

Benny stared at Tom’s hard, dark eyes for as long as he could. Thunder beat furiously on the walls.

“God,” he said. “What did they do to her out there?”

But he already knew the answer, and it hurt his heart to know it. He thought of what Tom had said, of the fighting pits at Gameland, and tried to imagine a young girl down in the dark, armed

with only a knife or a stick, the dead gray hands reaching for her. Even if she survived it, she would have scars cut deep into her mind. Benny and Tom sat together and listened to the storm