Rot & Ruin (36 page)

“What if the Imura pup gets back to town?”

The Hammer laughed at the idea. “There’s an army of zoms between him and safe, Charlie. Best-case scenario for
him is that he falls and breaks his neck before they get him.”

“Worse-case scenario is that I pick up his trail,” said Charlie.

“Truer words, brother,” said the Hammer, slapping him on the back. “Truer words.”

“Okay, let’s roll. Houston John and Bull should be getting in tonight, and I want to be on the move at first light.”

Charlie turned away, and they began climbing down, leaving the bodies of their friends behind, as if they weren’t even worth the effort to bury. The men reached the ground and faded back into the tall grass. From their direction, Benny figured they were going back to the highway or to some spot near it, where their own trail would take them to their camp.

Benny turned to Nix and opened his mouth to speak, but Lilah put a finger to her lips and held it there for a long minute. Then she rose slowly from her crouch and searched the clearing and the woods beyond it. Finally the tension left her shoulders, and she turned to Benny and Nix.

“Thank you,” he said to Lilah.

The Lost Girl looked momentarily confused, as if she didn’t know how to respond to that.

Nix said, “How did you know that we needed help?”

Lilah’s mouth worked as she tried to sort out how to answer, testing and tasting different words. For the second time Benny wondered how long it had been since she’d spoken with another human being.

“Follow,” she began, then changed the word. “Follow-
ing.
Men. Following men?” She ended it as a question, hoping they understood.

“You were following the men?” Nix asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Following
the
men. I was. Since, um … dark morning.”

“Since dawn?”

“Dawn,” Lilah agreed, smiling a little. “I was following the men since dawn.”

“Why were you following them?” Benny asked.

Lilah thought about it. “You.”

“Us?”

“Saw you. Last night. Saw you run from
them
. Walkers. Men. Heard shots. Followed. Heard you last night. Crying. Talking.”

Benny cut a quick look at Nix, who avoided his eyes. Had this feral girl heard them kissing? Benny thought about it, then dismissed it. The kisses were hot, but they weren’t loud. On the other hand, he mused, she could have stood on this very spot and
watched
them kiss. As he thought it, he realized that Nix had already reached that conclusion, hence her avoiding his eyes.

“Lilah … last night, when you heard us talking. Did you hear everything we said?”

She considered, shrugged … then nodded.

“Did you understand?”

That small smile flickered over her lips again. “I … understand. Just not …” She waved a hand back and forth between them.

“You’re just not used to talking,” Nix said. “Not used to conversation?”

“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.”

“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

T
HEY FOLLOWED
L
ILAH 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

T
HE 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
?”

Lilah’s eyes twinkled. “Yes. Very funny. Your faces!” She laughed, and the sound of it drew another series of long moans from the dead.

“What
is
this place?” Nix demanded.

Benny told her. Lilah listened and nodded, and Nix looked horrified. Lilah pointed out a few trees where the ropes had been cut and the zoms taken.

“God …,” Nix said, “Charlie’s
harvesting
them.”

“Sometimes,” Lilah said, “I come here. Cut some loose. Let them go.”

“Why?”

“I do it when I think Charlie is coming.”

“An ambush. Sweet,” Benny said with a grin. “Sick and twisted … but sweet. Oh, and … sorry for calling you a bitch.”

She shrugged. “Been called worse. Don’t care much.”

Nix could not take her eyes off of the legions of living dead. “How many of them are in here?”

Lilah considered, shrugged. “Three thousand. More.”

“It’s horrible.”

Lilah shrugged again and turned to Benny. “You think it’s horrible?”

“I’m not sure what I think about it,” he said.

To Nix, Lilah said, “Two times I came here and let them go. Cut all ropes.”

“Why?”

“To free them. They followed me to the field. By the water.”