Rot & Ruin

“Why not? They’re only zoms.”

Benny abruptly got up and walked down the hill, away from the farm and away from Tom. He stood looking back along the road they’d traveled, as if he could still see the fence line. Tom waited a long time before he got up and joined him.

“I know this is hard, kiddo,” he said gently, “but we live in a pretty hard world. We struggle to live. We’re always on our guard, and we have to toughen ourselves just to get through each day. And each night.”

“I hate you.”

“Maybe. I doubt it, but it doesn’t matter right now.” He gestured toward the path that led back home. “Everybody west of here has lost someone. Maybe someone close or maybe a distant cousin three times removed. But everybody lost someone.”

Benny said nothing.

“I don’t believe that you would disrespect anyone in our town or in the whole west. I also don’t believe-I don’t want to believe-that you’d disrespect the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers who live out here in the great Rot and Ruin.”

He put his hands on Benny’s shoulders and turned him around. Benny resisted, but Tom Imura was strong. When they were both facing east, Tom said, “Every dead person out there deserves respect. Even in death. Even when we fear them. Even when we have to kill them. They aren’t ‘just zoms,’ Benny. That’s a side effect of a disease or from some kind of radiation or something else that we don’t understand. I’m no scientist, Benny. I’m a simple man doing a job.”

“Yeah? You’re trying to sound all noble, but you kill them.” Benny had tears in his eyes.

“Yes,” Tom said softly, “I do. I’ve killed hundreds of them. If I’m smart and careful-and lucky-I’ll kill hundreds more.”

Benny shoved him with both hands. It only pushed Tom back a half step. “I don’t understand!”

“No, you don’t. I hope you will, though.”

“You talk about respect for the dead and yet you kill them.”

“This isn’t about the killing. It isn’t, and never should be, about the killing.”

“Then what?” Benny sneered. “The money?”

“Are we rich?”

“No.”

“Then it’s obviously not about the money.”

“Then what?”

“It’s about the why of the killing. For the living… for the dead,” Tom said. “It’s about closure.”

Benny shook his head.

“Come with me, kiddo. It’s time you understood how the world works. It’s time you learned what the family business is all about.”

8

THEY WALKED FOR MILES UNDER THE HOT SUN. THE PEPPERMINT GEL RAN off with their sweat, and had to be reapplied hourly. Benny was quiet for most of the trip, but as his feet got sore and his stomach started to rumble, he turned cranky.

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

“How far is it?”

“A bit.”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll stop soon.”

“What’s for lunch?”

“Beans and jerky.”

“I hate jerky.”

“You bring anything else?” Tom asked.

“No.”

“Jerky it is, then.”

The roads Tom picked were narrow and often turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt.

“We haven’t seen a zom in a couple of hours,” Benny said. “How come?”

“Unless they hear or smell something that draws them, they tend to stick close to home.”

“Home?”

“Well… to the places they used to live or work.”

“Why?”

Tom took a couple of minutes on that. “There are lots of theories, but that’s all we have-just theories. Some folks say that the dead lack the intelligence to think that there’s anywhere other than where they’re standing. If nothing attracts them or draws them, they’ll just stay right where they are.”

“But they need to hunt, don’t they?”

“‘Need’ is a tricky word. Most experts agree that the dead will attack and kill, but it’s not been established that they actually hunt. Hunting implies need, and we don’t know that the dead need to do anything.”

“I don’t understand.”

They crested a hill and looked down a dirt road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.

“Have you ever heard of one of them just wasting away and dying of hunger?” Tom asked.

“No, but-”

“The people in town think that the dead survive by eating the living, right?”

“Well, sure, but-”

“What ‘living’ do you think they’re eating?”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. There’re more than three hundred million living dead in America alone. Throw in another thirty-odd million in Canada and a hundred ten million in Mexico, and you have something like four hundred and fifty million living dead. The Fall happened fourteen years ago. So-what are they eating to stay alive?”

Benny thought about it. “Mr. Feeney says they eat each other.”

“They don’t,” said Tom. “Once a body has started to cool, they stop feeding on it. That’s why there are so many partially eaten living dead. They won’t attack or eat one another even if you locked them in the same house for years on end. People have done it.”

“What happens to them?”

“The trapped ones? Nothing.”

“Nothing? They don’t rot away and die?”

“They’re already dead, Benny.” A shadow passed over the valley and momentarily darkened Tom’s face. “But that’s one of the mysteries. They don’t rot. Not completely. They decay to a certain point, and then they just stop rotting. No one knows why.”

“What do you mean? How can something just stop rotting? That’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, kiddo. It’s a mystery. It’s as much a mystery as why the dead rise in the first place. Why they attack humans. Why they don’t attack one another. All mysteries.”

“Maybe they eat, like, cows and stuff.”

Tom shrugged. “Some do, if they can catch them. A lot of people don’t know that, by the way, but it’s true… They’ll eat anything alive that they can catch. Dogs, cats, birds-even bugs.”

“Well, then, that explains-”

“No,” Tom interrupted. “Most animals are too fast. Ever try to catch a cat who doesn’t want to be caught? Now