Flesh and Bone
Riot sat with her back to the wall. “I don’t . . . ” She let it trail off and merely shook her head.
“No, damn it,” protested Chong. “That’s not how this works.”
His statement made no sense, and he knew it. But what else could he say? The arrow had gone all the way through him, pushing the infected matter deep into his flesh, into his bloodstream. The sickness was already at work within him. His skin was cool and clammy to the touch and yet sweat poured down his face. In his chest, his heart was beating with all the urgent frenzy of a trapped rabbit.
He was infected.
He was dying.
He was, by any standard of life here in the Rot and Ruin, already dead.
It was too real, too big, too wrong.
“No,” Chong said again.
Riot sniffed back some tears. “I’m sorry.”
She got up and walked to the open doorway of the old shack and stood there, staring silently out at the desert, fists balled tightly at her sides.
Chong turned away and put his face in his hands. Even when the first sob broke in his chest, the arrow wounds, which should have screamed with pain, merely ached. Even his pain was dying.
Sorry.
So small a word for so enormous a thing.
Lilah.
He cried out her name in his mind, and he saw her, standing tall and beautiful, leaning on her spear, her honey-colored eyes always aware. If she saw him right here and now, would she even wait before quieting him? Would her feelings for him make her pause even for a second before she drove her spear into the back of his neck? Would she grieve afterward? Would the unsurprising death of a clumsy town boy break her heart, or merely add another layer of callus to it?
I’m so sorry, he thought. Oh, Lilah, I’m so sorry.
He squeezed his eyes shut in pain that was deeper than his physical wounds. He thought about his parents. The last time they’d seen him, he was heading out with Tom for a simple overnight camping trip in the Ruin. It had been allowed only because Tom and Lilah would both be there, and they were the most experienced zombie hunters anyone knew. And they’d allowed it because his folks knew that Chong needed to say good-bye to Benny and Nix. And Lilah.
I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, Pop.
I’m sorry for everything.
Chong heard a small, soft sound and turned to see Eve in the middle of the room. She was pink-faced from sleep and jumpy-eyed from bad dreams and waking realities.
Chong sniffed and hastily wiped away his tears.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, and he even conjured a smile. “How are you?”
Eve came over and stood in front of him. The trauma of everything she’d experienced had regressed her. The child she had become was younger still, and Chong could see that so little of her was left—and that was hanging by a thread.
She reached out a finger and almost touched the burn on Chong’s stomach. The flesh around it was livid and veined with black lines.
“Hurt?” she asked in the tiniest of voices. Looking into her eyes was like looking into a haunted house.
“No, honey . . . it’s not bad,” lied Chong. “Hardly hurts at all.”
He reached out and gently stroked Eve’s tangled blond hair. She flinched at first, but he waited, showed her that his hand was empty, and tried again. This time Eve allowed it. Then she knelt down and laid her head against his chest.
“I had a bad dream,” she murmured.
That thought—that Eve believed this was a dream she would or could wake up from—came close to breaking Chong’s heart. He continued to stroke her hair while he lay there and tried not to be afraid of what he was becoming.
He hoped Lilah would never find him.
PART THREE
SANCTUARY
The act of dying is one of the acts of life.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Tom once asked us each if we knew what we would fight for. What we would kill for. What we would die for.
He said if a person didn’t know the answers to those questions, then they should never go to war. He also said that if a person did know the answers to those questions, they should never want to go to war.
I don’t know if I can answer any of those questions yet, but I feel like I’m already living inside a war.
66
“NIX?” ASKED BENNY GENTLY. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
She kept crying and didn’t answer.
“Look . . . Tom was right,” said Benny, “the plague is changing, and maybe that’s good news. Those papers said that it was mutating. Maybe it’s mutating into something that won’t be as bad.”
“Oh sure, and when’s the last time something changed for the better?” she sobbed. “Everything is wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how any of this is supposed to be. It’s all wrong, Benny. God, I’m so stupid.”
“Wait—what? Nix, what are you talking about? How’s any of this your fault?”
“You don’t understand.” She was crying so hard those were the only words he could understand. “You just don’t understand.”
“Nix . . . I want to understand . . . just tell me what’s wrong.”
Benny felt his own tears running in lines down his face and falling onto her hair.
What storms raged inside Nix? Benny could make a list, but he was achingly positive that any list he could make would not be complete.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because he had nothing better to say. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not going to be okay.”
He pushed her gently back and studied her face. “What do you mean?”
There was a strange light in her beautiful green eyes, and an even stranger half smile on her lips. The smile was crooked and filled with self-loathing and self-mockery.
“Oh, Benny,” she said in a terrible whisper, “I think I’m in trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“I think I’m going crazy.”
He smiled. “You’re not going crazy.”
“How would you know?”
“Nix, don’t you think I’d know?”
She shook her head. “No one knows. No one understands.”
“Try me, Nix. If something’s wrong, then tell me. Let me in.”
“God, if you knew what was going on in my head, you’d run so fast. . . . ”
“No.”
“Yes, you would.”
“No,” he said firmly, leaning all his weight into the word, “I wouldn’t. You can tell me anything.”
She continued to shake her head.
So Benny said, “I hear voices.”
He dropped it on her, and for a moment she stopped crying, stopped shaking her head, and stared at him. A twisted half smile kept trying to form on her lips.
“Yup,” said Benny, tapping his temple. “Sometimes I have a real party in here.”
“This isn’t a joke. . . . ”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” He did smile, though, and he knew that smile was probably every bit as crooked as hers.
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Why haven’t you?” Benny sighed. “It’s not like we’ve been communicating that well lately, Nix.”
She sighed. “A lot’s happened.”
“I know, but we haven’t talked about it. I think that’s the whole problem.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Okay, so if it’s not the whole problem, then it’s the doorway to the problem. C’mon, Nix, it’s been a month since Gameland. Since then, what have we talked about? Hunting for food. Cooking. Routes on the map. Which leaves are safe to use as toilet paper. Jeez, Nix, we talk about stuff that just gets us through the day, but we don’t talk about what happened.”
Nix said nothing.
“We killed people, Nix.”
“I know. We killed people seven months ago at Charlie’s camp, too.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t really talk about it. Not in any way that made sense of it, or cleared it. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”
She shrugged. “Everything’s weird.”
“After everything that’s happened, Nix, I really don’t think either of us has a chance of being totally sane. I guess ‘normal’ was last year.”
She thought about that and gave a grudging nod.
“Okay,” Benny continued, “but it can’t be good that we don’t talk about this stuff. We never really talked about your mom and what happened.”
Nix turned away.
“And . . . that’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “I even start to mention it and you lock up. That can’t be the best way of dealing with—”
“What kind of voices?” Nix interrupted.
“It . . . used to be what I guess you could call my ‘inner voice,’” he began slowly. “It was like me, but not me. It was smarter, you know? It knew about stuff. It’s hard to explain.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“All kinds of stuff. Even how to talk to you.”
The ghost of a smile flitted across her lips.
“But that’s not what really has me scared,” Benny continued. He took a breath and then blurted it. “I think Tom’s talking to me too.”
“Oh.”
“At first I thought I was just remembering things he said. But lately . . . I don’t know. I think he’s actually talking to me. Like, maybe it’s his ghost.”
“Ghost?”
Benny nodded. “God, this is why I don’t talk about this stuff, because you’re definitely going to think I’m totally monkey-bat crazy.”
“You always have been,” she said with another small smile.
“Since Tom died . . . I knew that I had to keep him alive somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but it makes sense to me. I have to remember everything Tom ever said. Every lesson he gave us. Everything. God, Nix, he was the very last samurai, do you realize that? The last one. Think about everything that . . . died . . . with him. Everything he knew. Everything he could have taught us is gone. Do you get how bad that is? All that knowledge. How to fight, how to do things. Gone. Just—gone.”
“I know, Benny. My mom knew a lot of things too.”
“Look, Nix, I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. It’s okay.”
Benny licked his lips, which had gone completely dry. “I can’t stand it, Nix. I can’t stand that it’s all gone. I can’t stand that he’s gone.” His nose was starting to run, and he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped it.
“I know,” she said.
“But,” Benny said, “maybe he’s not. That’s what I’m trying to say. Today, when I was down in the ravine . . . he actually spoke to me. It wasn’t a memory. It was like he was right there.”
“You were surrounded by zoms, Benny. You were probably in shock.”
“No kidding. Doesn’t change anything. Tom started speaking to me, and I could hear him as clear as I’m hearing you now.”
“Why are you scared of that? He’s your brother.”
“Um . . . hello? He’s a ghost?”
“You only think you’re hearing Tom’s ghost.”
“Yes.”
“Is he here now?” Nix asked. “Can you ask him a question? Ask him what my mom’s middle name was.”
“He’s a ghost, not a carnival magician.”
“Tom knew her middle name,” said Nix. “Ask him. If it’s really him, then he’ll know.”
“That’s stupid—”
“Ask him!” she yelled.
“I can’t!” he yelled back.
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work like that.”
“How do you know how it works? Come on, Benny, we’ve been on the run since we got up this morning. Exactly when did you have time to process everything and come to the unshakable conclusion that you’re the expert on all things spiritual?”
“Why are you getting mad at me? I’m trying to get some help here ’cause I think I’m really screwed up, and you’re giving me crap.”
“Benny, how do you know this is Tom?”
“I just know.”
“No,” she snapped, “that’s not good enough. How do you know?”
“I just do. He was my brother. I think I’d know my brother’s voice. This is him.”
“Then ask him my mother’s middle name. What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of that.”
When Nix didn’t say anything, Benny sighed.
“Look,” he said, “why are you badgering me about this? You think I want to hear my dead brother’s voice?”
“Why not? I’d give anything to hear my mother speak to me,” said Nix in a voice that was filled with fragile cracks.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because,” shouted Nix, “I can’t even remember what she sounded like.”
After a long moment, Benny said, “What?”
“God . . . I’d give anything for her to start talking to me.” A sob hitched in her chest. “Benny . . . I can’t even remember what my mother looked like.”
67
SITTING WITH EVE STEADIED CHONG. HE UNDERSTOOD WHY. IT WAS harder to let yourself sink if someone else needed you to be their rock. He saw Benny and Nix do that for each other, even though he was positive they weren’t aware of it.