Rot and Ruin

“Go,” she snapped. “Now. Now!”



Without waiting to see if they followed, she spun around and climbed down the ladder as quickly and smoothly as a monkey. Nix followed, but Benny lingered for a moment, looking at the man he’d killed.



“Benny!” Nix called.



“Wait. Give me a second,” he said. “I have work to do.”



He took the weapons from the dead men, stripping off Turk’s gun belt and buckling it around his narrow waist. The gun was heavy, but the weight was comforting. He left the shotguns. They were big and clumsy, and he had never fired one before. Now didn’t seem like the time to fool around with unfamiliar weapons. However, he took Skins’s knife. It was not as good as Tom’s double-bladed dagger or the hunting knife Benny had lost back at the field, but it would do.



Benny knelt beside the corpse for a second, the naked blade in his hand.



“This is probably cutting you a break,” he muttered, “but we may need this place again.”



With that he plunged the tip of the blade into the back of the man’s neck, right below the skull. Quieting him. He pulled the blade free, lips curled in disgust, and then repeated the process with Turk. Then he wiped the blade clean on Turk’s shirt, slid the knife into the sheath on the gun belt, and climbed down to catch up with Nix and Lilah. His mind churned with what he had just done. Closure, of a kind, although it felt more like taking out the garbage than giving peace to the dead. Either way it was necessary work.



All part of the family business.



43



BENNY AND NIX FOLLOWED THE LOST GIRL INTO THE WOODS THAT surrounded the ranger station. She led them thirty yards up a crooked path that had been carved by rain runoff, making sure to step on rocks or fallen logs, leaving no footprints at all. Nix noticed that first and pointed it out to Benny, and they imitated her careful ways, though it meant that they went more slowly and with far less grace than the lithe Lilah.



Lilah suddenly stopped with her head cocked to listen.



“Hide!” she hissed with quiet urgency, and immediately she appeared to vanish into a tangle of wild roses. Nix pulled Benny down behind an ancient rhododendron, and they huddled together, trying to make themselves as small as rabbits.



“What is it?” Benny whispered, but Nix jabbed him in the ribs and pointed.



They had a good view of the open space at the base of the tower and the various game trails that crisscrossed in front of it. At first Benny didn’t see anything, but then the tall grass in the clearing shifted and a man stepped very cautiously out of hiding.



Charlie Matthias.



Nix gave a sharp inward hiss and grabbed Benny’s arm with such force that he thought she’d break the bones. Her fingernails dug into his flesh, and from that point of contact he could feel a shudder of disgust and murderous fury wash through her. Here was the man who had killed her mother. With his other hand Benny reached for the pistol at his hip, but Lilah appeared out of nowhere and touched his arm. When he looked at her, she shook her head and nodded to the other side of the clearing. Three more men stepped into the sunlight. The Hammer and the Mekong brothers. All of them carried guns.



The men walked to the foot of the ranger tower, casting cautious looks at the surrounding woods and checking the ground for footprints. When they passed the spot where Lilah had led Nix and Benny into the woods, the men saw nothing to attract their attention.



At the base of the ladder, the Hammer cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a short, sharp whistle that sounded like a woodland bird. He waited for a few seconds, then made the call again. He turned to Charlie and shook his head.



“Go on up and see what’s what,” Charlie growled to Vin. His voice carried easily in the clear morning air.



“Yeah, maybe I’ll find my lucky coin,” Vin said as he turned toward the ladder, but Charlie grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.



“You have something to say, boy, you say it to my face.”



Vin looked up at Charlie, and for a moment Benny thought that the smaller man was going to try something. He was holding his shotgun; he could have stepped back and brought the gun up into Charlie’s face. One act of courage or pride, and the devil would be on his way down. Nix gripped Benny’s wrist and gave it a pump, as if that would somehow encourage Vin to do the right thing.



In the end, however, Vin did the cowardly thing. He mumbled something and lowered both his eyes and his gun.



“Go about your business, then,” Charlie said flatly. “Git your skinny butt up that ladder and see what those two morons are doing,”



Vin shot a quick look at Joey Duk, but he didn’t let Charlie see his expression. He slung his shotgun across his back and began climbing as the other men trained their weapons on the catwalk. Vin went up carefully and slowly, and when his head and shoulders were just above the level of the platform, he froze. Benny could hear his curses floating through the trees.



“What is it?” demanded Charlie.



“You better get up here, boss.”



With a growl, Charlie and the Hammer climbed to the catwalk while Joey remained at ground level to guard the ladder. Benny had to crab sideways a few yards to see the three men as they stood there, examining the bodies of their fallen comrades.



It was then that the reality of what he’d done hit Benny.



I killed a man.



Not a zombie … but a real, living human being.



He listened inside for his conscience to scream about the wrongness of it, but all he heard echoing through his internal darkness was the sound of Morgie’s trembling voice back at Nix’s house, and the sound of Tom’s voice as he held Jessie Riley. And the sound of Nix’s awful sobs last night. If his conscience had something to say about what he’d done, it didn’t dare say it loud enough to be heard. And some other part of him wished that he’d driven that wooden spike into the big man with the pale skin and the one red eye, who stood with his fists on his hips thirty yards away. If only Tom had taught him how to shoot. But then, he reflected, he knew enough about handguns to understand that thirty yards was a long way for any kind of accuracy. Even if he emptied the entire magazine at the catwalk, he might not hit anyone and would, in turn, draw deadlier fire from their long guns. Charlie had a rifle slung on his back.



He bent close to Nix and Lilah, and mouthed the words: “Stay or go?”



Lilah made a palms-down gesture. Stay.



Charlie went to the rail of the catwalk and looked out over the mountain slope and the surrounding forest. He swept his eyes slowly from one side to the other, and for one chilling moment his gaze rested on the spot where Benny and the girls crouched. Could that evil red eye see them? Then the big man’s gaze swept past.



The Hammer came and stood beside him. “This is a complete waste of time, Charlie. We need to get them kids and get ours asses over the hill.”



“I don’t like leaving it like this,” growled Charlie. “Unfinished business is sloppy.”



“Yeah, well, wasting time is wasting money,” retorted the Hammer. “We already got us a round dozen for the games.”



“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.”