Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(75)

Tom picked up some loose bits of dirt and leaf debris and threw it into the air, watching where the wind took it. “Wind’s blowing toward us. If we stay on this side of the creek, we should

be okay. But we’ll need to keep our voices low.”

The path along the creek had once been a scenic country road, and it was wide enough for them to walk side-by-side, leading the horses.

“Tom?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to find her, aren’t we?”

“Lilah? I—”

“No,” Benny said, “Nix. We’re going to find her, right?”

“We’re going to try.”

“That’s not good enough, man. We’ve got to find her. She’s lost everything. Everyone. We can’t … abandon her.”

“We won’t.”

“Swear it.”

Tom looked at him.

“Swear that no matter what happens, we’ll find her. That we’ll never stop looking for her.”

In another place, under other circumstances, what Tom did next might have seemed silly or corny, but out here in the Rot and Ruin it had a strange sense of grandeur, perhaps of nobility. Tom

placed his hand over his heart.

“I swear to you, my brother, that we will find Nix Riley. I swear that we will never stop looking for her.”

Benny nodded.

They walked on, entering the thickest part of the forest that ran alongside the creek. Under the roof of leaves the air was cooler, but it was as damp as a cave. There were so many songbirds

singing in the branches that it was impossible to pick out a particular voice.

Half a mile in, Tom knelt and ran his fingers over the damp grass. “Got you, you bastard!”

“What is it?”

“Footprints. Big, have to be Charlie’s. Grass hasn’t even had time to unbend all the way.”

“How long?”

“Half an hour. We’re close now, kiddo. Time to move quick and quiet.”

“The horses make a lot of noise.”

“I know, but it’s what we have, so we’ll need to be twice as vigilant.”

They remounted, and Tom led the way down the grassy lane. The soft green of the grass as it ran along the glistening blue water, and the constant birdsong all around them, gave the moment a

fairy tale feeling that Benny found hard to shake. It was unreal, even surreal in its gentle, unhurried beauty. So at odds with everything that was real in their immediate world of hurt and

harm and hurry.

“Tom? About Gameland. Do you know for sure that they rebuilt it?”

“Not firsthand, but from people whose word I believe. People who said that Lilah’s been there. Even if we don’t find it today, I’ll keep looking for it.”

“Why? No one in town even cares about it. They won’t do anything about it.”

“I know. But I care.” Tom sighed. “We lost the world, Benny. That should have taught us something about the value of human life. Gameland shouldn’t be allowed to exist. It needs to be

taken down.”

“They rebuilt it once, wouldn’t they do it again?”

“Maybe. And if they did, then someone should always be ready to burn it down again.”

“Who?” Benny asked. “You?”

Benny was suddenly aware that too much of his skepticism about his brother’s abilities showed through in his tone. He immediately regretted his words. They were part of an old reflex, and

he didn’t actually hate Tom anymore. In fact, after everything that had happened last night, on top of what they had experienced together that first time in the Ruin, Benny was seeing Tom

in a different light.

But the words were said, and Benny didn’t know how to unsay them.

Tom squinted into the sun. Small muscles bunched and flexed at the corners of his jaws. “Some of the travelers and traders I’ve talked to say that certain bounty hunters that they declined

to name have been gathering kids—girls and boys—to take to Gameland.”

“Kids from where? I haven’t heard about any kids from town going missing.”


“There are other towns, Benny. And there are kids living with some of the way-station monks. Some of the loners have kids, too. None of these kids would be missed, not by the people in

Mountainside. The bounty hunters prey on them because of that, and there’s nobody out here to protect them. No one to stand up for them or speak for them. It’s a bad, bad world out here.”

“All of it?” Benny asked. “Is that all there is? Fear back in town and evil out here?”

“I hope not.”

The path rounded a bend and then moved sharply away from the water and eventually left the shelter of the trees to run through a series of low, rocky hills. Without the canopy of cool

leaves, the heat returned like a curse. Even through his shirt, Benny’s shoulders and back felt charbroiled. His forearms glowed with sunburn, and sweat boiled from his pores and evaporated

at once without any perceptible cooling of his skin.

Tom studied the landscape and slowed to a stop, looking concerned.

“What is it?”

“Something doesn’t make sense,” Tom whispered. He pointed to where their path curved around between two walls of rock. The red-rusted span of a train bridge arched over the path.