Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(96)

“Conversation.” Lilah repeated the word slowly, enjoying it.

Benny said, “We have to get out of here. We have to get back to town. Do you know about town, about Mountainside? Where we live?”

“Know. Some. Not much.”

“Can you take us there?” Nix asked.

“Can,” Lilah said. “Won’t.”

Benny frowned. “You won’t? How come?”

“Eat,” she said, and when they didn’t react, she looked irritated and mimed the action of picking up food and eating it. “Eat.”

“Yes,” Benny said, “I understand that we have to eat, but we also have to get home.”

As soon as he said it, the reality of that word—“home”—hung in the air, filled with ugly images and new meanings.

“Home to what?” Nix asked, turning sharply to him. “Home to who?”

“I …,” he began, but clearly he had no idea of where to go with that thought. She was completely right. Home to who? Her mother was dead. So was Tom. Both of them had empty houses back in

Mountainside. Empty houses and wrecked lives.

“Eat,” Lilah said. “Eat first. Eat and think.”

“Eat where? Here?”

Lilah shook her head. “Follow.”

Without another word, Lilah turned and headed into the woods along a path that whipped and turned, snakelike as it cut around the shoulders of the mountain. Nix tried to talk to Lilah as

they walked, but the Lost Girl shook her head and moved way out front, apparently liking to be in her own head when out in the wild.

Soon they heard the gurgle of water, and several times they glimpsed streams that cut downland toward Coldwater Creek. Seeing the streams was comforting, because Benny knew that he could use

them to find the creek and from there, maybe find his way back to Mountainside. But just thinking of the creek reminded him of Tom.

Nix must have noticed a look on his face and asked him what was wrong.

“Thinking about Tom,” Benny said.

She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry for what I said about him. Mom … Mom really cared for him. I think maybe she was a little bit in love with him.”

“I think it went both ways, Nix.” He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “I used to think I was a reasonably intelligent person. Not like Chong—”

“No one is,” Nix said with a smile.

“And not like you.”

She said nothing.

“But I’m not completely dense.”

“Okay, but what’s your point?”

“I … I never told anyone about this,” Benny began, and then he told her about his memory of First Night, and of his mother in her white dress and red sleeves and screaming mouth. Of Tom

taking him and running away. “It’s the first thing I remember,” Benny concluded, “and it’s how I used to see Tom.”

“As … what?” she asked, although Benny thought she’d already guessed where he was going with this.

“As a coward. I think he ran away.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe your mom told him to get you to safety.”

“She did. Tom told me that much, and I believe him, but he didn’t go back for her. He didn’t do anything to help her. All he did was run.”

Nix was quiet as they climbed over some rocks. Lilah was almost a hundred yards up the trail and didn’t show any sign of slowing down to let them catch up.

“Is she what you expected to find?” Nix asked, one eyebrow arched.

“Not even a little,” Benny said. “She’s pretty weird.”

“She’d have to be,” said Nix.

“Living out here? Fighting zoms and dodging guys like Charlie every day? Yeah, if it was me, I’d have gone buggy a long time ago.”

Nix dropped down on the far side of the rocks and waited for Benny to scramble down. They moved along up the trail, side by side.

“The thing is,” Benny said, “what if I was wrong about Tom all this time?”

“What makes you ask now?”

“Stuff that’s happened. Seeing how he was out in the Ruin the first time he took me out here. He was smart and skillful. He knew things and could do things that I never knew about.”

“That’s true of most people until you get to know them,” she said. “And sometimes even after you think you know them really well.”

He nodded. “Then there’s the way people talk about him. They act like he was all Joe Tough. I think the Hammer and Charlie were even a little scared of him outside of Mr. Sacchetto’s

house. Well … maybe the Hammer was scared, and Charlie was just cautious, but why? Tom wasn’t big, and he wasn’t strong like those two guys.”

“My mom said she saw him fight once, but she would never tell me under what circumstances.”

Benny guessed that Mrs. Riley had probably been referring to the time Tom rescued her from Gameland.

“Yeah, and I saw him face down Vin Trang and Joey Duk while all those zoms were closing in on us. Tom was figuring it out. Maybe he was stressed, but I kept looking for him to be afraid,

because that’s what I expected to see when the chips were down.”