Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(91)

Tom the zombie. Would there be a new Zombie Card? Two weeks ago Benny might have thought that was funny. Or appropriate.

Now the horror of it was bigger than the night that loomed around him. He remembered the argument they’d had when Tom had showed him the old man and the girl in the waitress uniform.

“It’s not the same. These are zoms, man. They kill people. They eat people.”

Tom had said, “They used to be people.”

Now Tom was one of them. He tried not to think of what Tom’s last few seconds had been like. The Hammer’s shotgun blast had caught him; Benny had seen the blood fly. Had the blast killed

him? That would have been a kindness. The alternative was beyond horrible. Falling down into the mass of them, covered in blood. White hands clawing at his skin, rotting gray teeth biting

into him, tearing at him …

Tom did not deserve that. Benny was unsure if Tom was a coward or had ever been a coward. He doubted his own memories of First Night, or, at least, of what those old memories meant. No

matter what, though, Tom did not deserve what had happened to him.

He shivered and Nix stirred restlessly.

Looking at her dragged his mind into another room of thought. That kiss. With Nix? Nix, of all people. It was absurd, impossible. They’d already come to that hurdle back in town, and they

hadn’t been able to climb it together. It was dangerous and wrong to fall in love with a friend. It complicated things. He and Chong had once sworn that they would never ever fall for a

girl they knew. A bold claim in a town as small as Mountainside. Now … Nix Riley lay asleep on his lap, and he swore he could still feel the warmth of her lips on his.

He tugged the battered and sweat-stained Zombie Card from his shirt pocket and looked at the Lost Girl. A dagger of guilt stabbed him beneath the breastbone, and he quickly glanced down at

Nix. He could see her eyes move under her closed lids and knew that she was dreaming. A soft cry escaped her parted lips, and it was filled with jagged pieces of emotion. Hurt and loss,

despair and terror, but also rage and defiance.

Benny brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek.

His stomach churned with confusion and conflict. Even now, even after that incredible kiss he and Nix had shared, when he looked at the picture of the Lost Girl, he felt an almost physical

impact. The desire to find and protect Lilah was every bit as strong now as it was when he’d first turned over her card on the porch at Lafferty’s General Store, and that made as little

sense to him now as it did then. He didn’t know this girl. Even Sacchetto and Tom hadn’t really known her. Even if she was still out here somewhere, she was nothing and no one to him. And

yet …

And yet.

He studied the card for a long time, even as exhaustion dragged on his eyelids. Nix groaned again in the private hell of her troubled sleep. Benny looked from Nix to the Lost Girl and back

to Nix.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he stretched out his other hand, and for the second time, he opened his fingers and let the wind take the card. It blew high into the air, tumbling over and over again, its pasteboard

face flashing with silver starlight, and then it dropped into the darkness below.

Benny bent and kissed Nix’s cheek. He leaned back against the wall and stared at the night and drifted off into a sea of stars.





41


“NOW AIN’T THIS JUST ADORABLE.”

Benny and Nix jerked awake at the sound of the voice, blinking in the harsh dawn light, struggling to disentangle themselves from each other and understand where on Earth they were.

Two men stood on the metal catwalk that ran around the outside of the deserted ranger station. Both men had guns holstered on their hips, shotguns slung over their shoulders, and ugly smiles

on their mouths.

Skins and Turk.

“Ain’t nothing like young love,” said Turk.

“Warms the cockles of my heart,” agreed Skins.

Benny instinctively spread his arms, like a barrier between the bounty hunters and Nix.

“Charlie’s going to like this,” said Skins. “He was pretty smoked about the little witch skipping out like that.”

“Leave us alone,” Benny said with a growl.

“Yeah.” Turk laughed. “That’s gonna happen. We spent the whole damn night searching these freaking woods and then climbed this big mother of a tower, just to go away ’cause you asked.

Yessir, we’ll be on our way, so sorry to bother your beauty sleep.”

Skins tapped his palm on his thigh, like he was calling in the dogs. “C’mon … get your butts over here.”

Benny and Nix slowly got to their feet, but they made no move toward the bounty hunters. Turk went into the ranger station and came out with the bokken. “Look,” he said. “Kid has a toy

sword.”

He raised it over his head and brought it down in a powerful two-hand swing onto the metal rail. The hard wood rebounded from the hit, but did not break. Turk cursed and turned it sideways

and slammed the flat of the blade onto the rail, and with a sharp crack the sword snapped in half. The long end went spinning off into the canopy of trees far below. Turk laughed and tossed

the broken handle onto the catwalk.

“They have anything else in there?” Skins asked.