Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(76)

“There’s a spot down there that everyone avoids. It’s thick with zoms, one of the natural lowland points where the nomad zoms gather. Last time I came this way, there were a few hundred

of them.”

“Hundred?”

“Yep, some of them had probably been there since First Night. Others just kind of wandered in.”

“Pulled by gravity, right? Following any downsloping path.”

“Exactly. There’s a crossroads down there. A highway intersects with two farm roads and this road we’re on. Big intersection.”

“So … why don’t we just go around?”

“We can, but the trail we’re following goes straight along this road.” He pointed to visible footprints in the soft clay beside the road.

“That doesn’t make sense. Why would Charlie go right into a nest of zoms? Isn’t he supposed to know the Ruin as well as you?”

“He knows it better than me. He spends more time out here.”

“Okay, look … I may only be your little brother, and I know I’m not a bounty hunter and all that, but doesn’t this have ‘trap’ written all over it in bright red paint?”

Tom almost smiled. “You think?”

“So you know it’s a trap?”

“Benny, this whole thing is a trap. Everything Charlie’s done since he attacked Rob Sacchetto has been a trap.”

Tom stopped and suddenly pointed to the trail of footprints that led off around the bend. The prints were mostly those of a man with big feet. Charlie. However, at one point, another set of

prints suddenly appeared beside his. Small bare feet.

“Nix?” Benny asked.

Tom put a finger to his lips and whispered, “It looks like Charlie was carrying her and set her down here. See? Their prints go all the way around the bend. Right toward the crossroads.”

“Maybe they don’t know how close we are,” Benny suggested. He looked for confirmation in Tom’s face, but didn’t see any. Benny started to draw his knife, but Tom shook his head.

“Wait until you need to,” Tom cautioned. “Steel reflects sunlight, and that’ll attract zoms as much as movement. Now, I need you to stay steady, kiddo. Once we round this bend, it’s

going to get weird. Maybe it’s a trap, maybe not; but even if it isn’t, this is one of the most dangerous spots out here. You’ll see why.”

“Great pep talk, coach.”

Tom grinned.

Moving very slowly, careful not to make a sound, they rounded the bend in the road, hugging close to the wall and staying in the shade of the rocks. Apache and Chief were trained for this,

and they moved only when and where they were steered.

Around the bend, the view opened up, and Benny saw the roads that wandered from all directions over hills down to the crossroads.

“God!” Benny gasped, but immediately clamped a hand over his mouth.

It was neither the beauty of the vista of endless mountains nor the tens of thousands of silent cars crowding the road that tore a gasp from him. The crossroads and the fields surrounding it

were crowded with the living dead. There were at least a thousand of them. Benny stared, searching for movement, waiting for the sea of monsters to turn and begin shambling toward them. But

they did not. The zombies just stood there in one crowded mass. Others, alone or in small groups, stood along the roads or in the fields. All still, all silent.

The horses now showed their training, and in the actual presence of the dead, they made no sound, but Apache’s trembling terror vibrated through his entire body and up into Benny’s.

Benny tried to understand what he was seeing. He didn’t believe that all of them had just wandered here because the roads sloped down and they followed the unrelenting pull of gravity.

There were too many for that. Maybe they chased some people down here and after the kills, they had nowhere to go and nothing to distract them. Some of the zoms were probably the people from

the cars, who had been killed there and reanimated with no direction or purpose. The tough grass covered them to the waist, and some of them were completely wrapped in ivy and twists of

wisteria and trumpet vines. There were soldiers, nurses, kids his own age, ordinary people, old people, many of them showing signs of the terrible bites that had killed them. Just standing

there in the midday sunlight. It was such a strange sight—all these dead standing there like statues.

No … that wasn’t it. They were like gravestones, using their own flesh to mark where they had died and where they would spend eternity. Not buried in a box but trapped in decaying tissue

that could move, that would hunt and attack, but that, in the absence of something to attract it, would remain in place forever. The thought was as horrible as it was sad. Suddenly, Benny

could feel something deep inside of him begin to undergo a process of change. His fear, which had been as big as the whole Rot and Ruin, seemed to shrink. Not completely, but enough so that

he was consciously aware of it. He thought he understood why.

On their first trip into the Ruin, Tom had said that fear makes you smart, but Benny understood now that his brother had been talking about caution rather than fear. These zoms, every last

one of them—even the smallest child—would kill him if they could, but not one of them meant him harm. Meaning, intention, will … None of that was part of their makeup. There was no more