Rot & Ruin (Rot & Ruin, #1)(97)

“But … ?”

“But all he did was fight. He died fighting.”

“There’s another thing,” Nix said, her eyes sad. “Charlie and the Hammer went over to Mr. Sacchetto’s and killed him. They broke into our house. But … they didn’t attack Tom directly.

”

Benny sighed and trudged along beside her for a while, lost in a sick depression. “It sucks,” he said eventually. “Tom died, thinking that his brother, the only relative he had left on

Earth, thought he was a piece of crap coward.” He shook his head. “But I stopped thinking that the first time he took me out here. I’d give a lot to change things between us.”

Nix took his hand and squeezed it. There was a whole world full of things they both wished they could change.





44


THEY FOLLOWED LILAH THROUGH A FOREST OF ANCIENT OAKS THAT WAS SO lush that the canopy of leaves cast everything below into a twilight darkness. Morning mist clung to the mossy ground, and

the trunks of the trees rose, like ghosts in the humid gloom. After only a few steps into this nightmare landscape, the wind settled and died, leaving behind a dreadful stillness.

It was Nix who first heard the moans of the dead.

“Wait!” she hissed, dropping into a crouch. “Zoms!”

Benny pulled the big hunting knife he’d taken from the dead bounty hunter.

The moan was a wordless cry of hunger that drifted to them through the pillars of oak trees, like the plaintive call of a wandering ghost.

“Where is it?” Nix whispered.

“There,” said Benny, pointing. “I think it’s coming from over there.”

Lilah bent and ran quickly in that direction, her feet making no sound on the mossy ground, her body bent, spear ready.

“Um … Benny?” said Nix. “She’s running toward the zombies.”

Fifty yards up the trail, Lilah stopped and waved to them.

“And she wants us to follow.”

“Oh crap.”

“Well,” said Nix, “she’s your object of obsession.”

“Very funny.”


Reluctantly and slowly, they followed.

The closer they got, the louder was the moan of the zombie. It was different from other zom voices that Benny had heard, although he couldn’t yet put his finger on what was different.

Whatever it was, it made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up.

They reached Lilah, and together they crept around a bend in the path. A zombie stood right in front of them. He had once been a great brute of a man, and even withered and dead he had a

massive chest and broad shoulders, and hands that looked big enough to snap Benny in half. He was wearing a mechanic’s coveralls, and there was a line of gaping black bullet holes across

his chest and stomach.

Nix yelped in fear. Benny cried out and brought up his knife, ready to make a fight of it. He crowded Nix backward, willing to sacrifice himself for her.

The moan of the zombie changed to a growl of immediate need, and his wrinkled lips curled away from rotted yellow teeth.

The forest around them erupted into a chorus of other hungry moans as an army of the undead began to howl for their flesh. Benny and Nix turned and saw that there were, indeed, hundreds of

zombies—men and women, children and adults—and they were everywhere. Lilah had taken them the wrong way. Instead of leading them to safety, she’d stumbled into a terrible trap.

Lilah stood inches from the massive zombie. She turned to Benny and Nix … and laughed.

“What … ?” Nix said, blinking as if it was her eyes and not her mind that needed clearing.

“You bitch!” Benny snarled. “You betrayed us!”





45


THE MOANS OF THE DEAD FILLED THE ENTIRE FOREST.

Benny and Nix stood back-to-back. Without realizing it they had already passed dozens of the zoms as they followed Lilah into the woods, and looking back they could see them standing there,

dead eyes turned their way.

Lilah put her hand on the center of the big zombie’s chest.

The Lost Girl was still laughing. The big zombie tried to grab her, tried to bite her. But it couldn’t do either.

“What … ?” Benny said softly. His mind was struggling to understand this moment.

And then he saw it.

The zombie was tied to the tree. A length of sturdy rope was wrapped around its waist, and shorter lengths anchored each hand. It could move its hands a few inches, but that’s all.

Benny turned and saw that the zombie by the next closest tree was similarly bound. And the next.

“They’re all … tied up,” said Nix, turning in a slow circle.

It was true.

The forest was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of zombies, and every one of them was tied to a tree. In some places three or four were tied to the trunks of massive oaks.

“I … don’t understand,” said Nix, but Benny did. He suddenly remembered something Tom had told him about Charlie rounding up zoms and tying them to trees, so that he could find them more

easily if he got a bounty.

He knew where they were.

The Hungry Forest.

Nix wheeled on Lilah. “You think this is funny?”