Rot & Ruin

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to some real-world people who were willing to enter the world of Benny and Tom Imura. I believe that if the world ends, you’ll still be there. My agents, Sara Crowe and Harvey Klinger; David Gale and Navah Wolfe at Simon & Schuster; Nancy Keim-Comley, Tiffany Schmidt, Greg Schauer, Rob and Andrea Sacchetto, Randy and Fran Kirsch, Jason Miller, Sam West-Mensch, Keith Strunk, Charlie and Gina Miller, Arthur Mensch; and the Philly Liars Club: Gregory Frost, Don Lafferty, L. A. Banks, Jon McGoran, Solomon Jones, Ed Pettit, Merry Jones, Maria Lambra, Sara Shepherd, Kelly Simmons, Keith Strunk, and Dennis Tafoya.

Excerpt from
The Onion Girl
by Charles De Lint used by permission of the author.

Richard Pryor’s comment used by permission of Jennifer Lee Pryor.

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www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Jonathan Maberry

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Book design by Laurent Linn

Endpaper art by Rob Sacchetto

The text for this book is set in Augustal.

Manufactured in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maberry, Jonathan.

Rot & Ruin / Jonathan Maberry. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother’s footsteps and become a bounty hunter.

ISBN 978-1-4424-0232-4 (hardcover)

[1. Zombies—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Bounty hunters—Fiction.
4. Brothers—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Rot and Ruin.

PZ7.M11164Ro 2010

[Fic]—dc22

2009046041

ISBN 978-1-4424-0234-8 (eBook)

For the young writers in my Experimental Writing for Teens class: Rachel Tafoya, Clint Johnston, Brandon Strauss, Brianna Whiteman, Jessica Price, Tara Tosten, Jennifer Carr, Kellie Hollingsworth, Nathanial Gage, Maggie Brennan, Kris Dugas, Evan Stahl, and Jackson Toone. You always amaze and inspire me.

And, as always, for Sara Jo.

1

B
ENNY
I
MURA COULDN’T HOLD A JOB, SO HE TOOK TO KILLING.

It was the family business. He barely liked his family—and by family he meant his older brother, Tom—and he definitely didn’t like the idea of “business.” Or work. The only part of the deal that sounded like it might be fun was the actual killing.

He’d never done it before. Sure, he’d gone through a hundred simulations in gym class and in the Scouts, but they never let kids do any real killing. Not before they hit fifteen.

“Why not?” he asked his Scoutmaster, a fat guy named Feeney who used to be a TV weatherman back in the day. Benny was eleven at the time and obsessed with zombie hunting. “How come you don’t let us whack some real zoms?”

“Because killing’s the sort of thing you should learn from your folks,” said Feeney.

“I don’t have any folks,” Benny countered. “My mom and dad died on First Night.”

“Ouch. Sorry, Benny—I forgot. Point is, you
got
family of some kind, right?”

“I guess. I got ‘I’m Mr. Freaking Perfect Tom Imura’ for a brother, and I don’t want to learn
anything
from him.”

Feeney had stared at him. “Wow. I didn’t know you were
related to him. He’s your brother, huh? Well, there’s your answer, kid. Nobody better to teach you the art of killing than a professional killer like Tom Imura.” Feeney paused and licked his lips nervously. “I guess being his brother and all, you’ve seen him take down a lot of zoms.”

“No,” Benny said with huge annoyance. “He never lets me watch.”

“Really? That’s odd. Well, ask him when you turn thirteen.”

Benny had asked on his thirteenth birthday, and Tom had said no. Again. It wasn’t a discussion. Just “No.”

That was more than two years ago, and now Benny was six weeks past his fifteenth birthday. He had four more weeks grace to find a paying job before town ordinance cut his rations by half. Benny hated being in that position, and if one more person gave him the “fifteen and free” speech, he was going to scream. He hated that as much as when people saw someone doing hard work and they said crap like, “Holy smokes, he’s going at that like he’s fifteen and out of food.”

Like it was something to be happy about. Something to be proud of. Working your butt off for the rest of your life. Benny didn’t see where the fun was in that. Okay, maybe it was marginally okay because it meant only half days of school from then on, but it still sucked.

His buddy Lou Chong said it was a sign of the growing cultural oppression that was driving postapocalyptic humanity toward acceptance of a new slave state. Benny had no freaking idea what Chong meant or if there was even meaning in anything he said. But he nodded agreement because the look on Chong’s face always made it seem like he knew exactly what was what.