Last night I dreamed that the zombie plague never started. But the dream was weird; there were no details. I suppose it’s because I never knew the world before First Night.
All I know is town and the Ruin.
68
“I… I’m sorry, Nix,” said Benny.
She glared at him through her tears. “Yeah, well, sorry doesn’t do much. I lost my mom. I lost everything, and it’s all that damn town’s fault.”
“What?”
“God, I couldn’t stand to be there another minute. It was like living in a graveyard. No one ever talked about what happened to the world. No one ever talked about the future. You know why? Because no one believed there was a future. Everyone in Mountainside was just sitting around, waiting to die. They act like they’re dead already.”
“I—”
She angrily fisted tears out of her eyes. “My mom was murdered by Charlie Pink-eye, and I was kidnapped. You’d think people would at least react to that, but they didn’t. Not really. After we destroyed Charlie’s camp and came back to town, people acted like I’d never been away. Except for Captain Strunk, Mayor Kirsch, and Leroy Williams, no one even asked where I’d been or what it was like out in the Ruin. People didn’t want to know. And at Mom’s funeral, you know what people said to me? They said stuff like ‘she’s in a better place’ and ‘at least she’s not suffering anymore.’ Suffering? She wasn’t sick, she was beaten to death!”
“Nix, I—”
“No one ever — ever — said anything about the fact that I was kidnapped and taken to Gameland. No one. I don’t think people even believed it. There were people in town who said they were sorry my mom had some problems with Charlie. Some problems. Problems? Like she died because they had a fricking argument. They wrote her off, because to pay any real attention to what happened would mean that they would have to accept that Gameland was real, and if they did that, they’d have to accept what goes on there, which means they’d have to talk about zoms. And people don’t. God! Remember what Preacher Jack called town? He said it was limbo… that the people there were just waiting to die. And I wonder why I’m going crazy? That town made me crazy, and if we’d stayed there any longer, it would have killed me. That’s no joke, Benny. I would have died.”
There was a very dangerous light in her eyes when she said that.
“Whoa, now,” said Benny. “Let’s not—”
Nix grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt. “I’m not exaggerating, Benny, and I’m not joking. That town is limbo. It’s nothing, it isn’t real. The people there, they’re no different from the zoms. They think they’re alive because they can talk, but they don’t talk about anything. They chatter. They make small talk and pretend that’s the same as engaging with one another. Going through the motions of life is not the same thing as living.”
“Nix, I know this stuff. It’s why I left too.”
“No,” she said fiercely, shaking him. “God, please don’t lie to me, Benny. Not now. Not out here. You left because of me. I know it. Tom knew it too. Tom left because of me too.”
“No way.”
“Yes. He was going to marry my mom, but my mom died. He would have stayed in town and raised you and maybe helped raise me, but I wanted to leave. He knew — knew — that no matter what happened, even if he tried to stop me, I would leave town. So he created our big Road Trip so he could watch over me. For my mom, maybe. And because you were in love with me. Benny — you left town because of me, and Tom left town because of you and me… and now Tom’s dead. If we don’t find that jet and find something real, a place that shows that we’re all still alive, then Tom will have died for nothing. And it will be all my fault.”
Benny stared into her eyes, and now he understood.
The size of it, the jagged edges of it, the skewed and destructive logic of it.
That knowledge gouged out a massive hole in his chest.
“Nix,” Benny said gently, “you can’t do this to yourself.”
“It’s true!”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Listen to me. Tom didn’t leave Mountainside because of you. Or me. He left because your mom wasn’t there anymore, and he couldn’t stand that. He left because he wanted to find the same kind of place you want to find. A place where people are alive. He wanted that for me and for you and for himself. There was no chance in hell that Tom wouldn’t leave town. Remember what he said after Danny Houser’s funeral? He said, ‘I can’t stand this damn town anymore.’ He said that, and he moved up the time we were scheduled to leave. Tom needed to escape that town.”
“But he died!”
Benny bent forward and pressed his forehead against Nix’s. “He died, Nix, but you didn’t kill him and neither did I. Even though I think I did almost every night. I think about all the things I’ve done wrong and how if I’d done this or done that, you and I would never have wound up at Gameland. And yeah, I can make myself crazy too. But we didn’t kill Tom. An evil man did that. Preacher Jack shot Tom in the back and that is the truth.”
Nix sniffed but said nothing.
“Nix… what would Tom tell us if he could hear this conversation?”
She shook her head.
“No… tell me,” Benny insisted.
She sat back and wiped at her eyes. “He — he’d say what you just said. That Preacher Jack… ”
“Right. Preacher Jack. An evil man who did an evil thing.”
Nix looked at the broken windows. “And now we have Saint John and Mother Rose. Is that all there is, Benny? Just corruption and evil?”
Fifty conciliatory lies rose to Benny’s lips. But this was not the time to placate Nix.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Panic flared in her eyes, but he smiled.
“I don’t know what’s out here,” Benny said, “but I can’t believe that there’s nothing left worth finding. I won’t believe it. I don’t. We met Eve, Nix. She has a family.”
“Who tried to kill us.”
“No. I don’t see it that way, not anymore. Think about it. They were out of their minds worrying about Eve, and then they find her with us. They don’t know us from a can of paint, and I think it’s pretty clear that they’re on the run. They see us and they’re terrified that we’re reapers. In their places we might have made the same mistake. But look at it another way — they’re running from evil. They aren’t the reapers. They were willing to fight and kill to protect their little girl. What does that tell you? And there’s all that talk about Sanctuary. Despite what Mother Rose and those other freak jobs said, it doesn’t exactly sound like an abode of evil, does it?”
“No,” she admitted hesitantly.
“No,” he agreed.
“And the people who flew this plane. They were scientists working to understand the plague and maybe cure it. Again, not the definition of evil.”
“No.”
“The American Nation,” Benny said, testing the name and nodding approval. “I say we gather up some of these papers, check out the rest of the plane, then get out of here and find Lilah and Chong.”
“And then what?”
“I’m working on that,” he admitted.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
“I do love you, Benny,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
“Even though I’m a nut?”
“Like I’m well-balanced? Hearing voices, remember?” He grinned at her.
