Rot & Ruin

card day all summer. What’s up?” Morgie wore a smile, but it went about a millimeter deep.

Benny forced his shoulders to give a nonchalant shrug. “No, it’s cool. She was just being a friend.”

“What kind of friend?”

“Just a friend, Morgie.” But Benny could see that answer wasn’t going to cut it. He sighed. “Look, we all know Nix has a thing for me and you have a thing for Nix. Big news flash. I don’t have a thing for Nix, and the reason you haven’t seen her around the last two days is that I think she knows it, and her feelings are hurt. I’m sorry, but there it is. So, if you want to make your move, now would be a pretty good time.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Chong without looking up from a card he was reading. The others looked at him. “Nix is probably feeling like total crap right about now. She could use a friend, but what she doesn’t need is someone breathing down her neck or following her like a horny dog.”

“What are you saying?” said Morgie, eyes narrowed.

Chong turned to him. “What part of that was unclear?”

“I don’t just horndog after her. I like Nix. A lot.”

Chong merely grunted and continued to read his card.

Morgie punched Benny’s shoulder.

“Ow! What the hell was that for?” Benny demanded.

“For screwing with Nix’s head!” Morgie shouted. “Now she’s going to be all moody and girly, crying in her room and writing in that stupid diary of hers.”

“Good God,” said Benny, appealing to Chong, and the universe, for help. Chong tried to hide a smile as he pretended to read the Zombie Cards.

They sat in silence for five minutes, each of them absorbed with the cards to varying degrees, each thinking about Nix but pretending not to.

Chong tapped him with an elbow, and when he turned, his friend held out a card, so he could see the picture. “You’re almost famous,” he said.

The picture was that of a young man, standing with his back to a bullet-scarred wall, but instead of a gun, he held a katana in his hands.

Tom.

“Oh, man, don’t do this to me,” Benny said.

Chong smiled. “I thought you and Tom kissed and made up. I thought you were best buds now.”

“Yeah, and pigs can tap dance,” muttered Benny, taking the card. He flipped it over and read the back aloud. “‘Card number 113: Tom Imura. Tom, a resident of Mountainside, is a first-class bounty hunter who prefers to be called a “closure specialist.” He’s known throughout the Rot and Ruin for his quiet manner and lightning fast sword.’”

Benny handed the card back. “I think I’m going to throw up,” he said.

Chong pretended to read off the back of the card. “‘Tom’s brother, Benny, is known throughout the world for his noxious farts and lack of personality.’ Man, they got your number.”

“Get stuffed,” Benny suggested.

Morgie took the card and tried to riff off Chong’s remark, but beyond a few disjointed vulgarities, could come up with nothing biting.

“I am so going to bust Tom on this,” said Benny. “On a Zombie Card for God’s sake. Who does he think he is?”

Chong slid the card into his thick pack. “What’s with you? You’re supposed to be working with him. Didn’t you guys go on some kind of vision-quest thing out into the Ruin? You came back all moody and introspective. What happened?”

“I got over it,” said Benny.

“No, I mean, what happened out there?”

Benny just shook his head.

“Come on, dude,” said Morgie. “Give us all the gory details.”

It was the wrong choice of words, and Benny felt his stomach turn, and his brain started flashing overlapping images of Harold Simmons, the blind eyes of Old Roger, and the squirming torsos of the dismembered zoms in the wagon. Chong caught his change of expression, and before Morgie could say anything, he handed the last unopened pack to Benny.

“Do the honors. Maybe this one will have your own ugly face on it.”

Benny faked a smile and tore open the wax paper. The first few cards were doubles they all had. There was one new one-a celebrity zom that the bio said was Larry King, but Benny couldn’t tell the difference between the before and after pictures. He turned over the last card. It wasn’t a bounty hunter or a famous person who’d gone zom and been bagged and tagged. No, this was one of the elusive Chase Cards-one of only six special cards that showed up so rarely that Benny, Chong, Morgie, and Nix had only two between them.

“What is it?” Morgie asked as he tried to lean closer, but Benny moved the card away. It was a weird reflex action, and even as he did it, Benny suddenly felt as if he stepped out of this moment, this place, and stood somewhere else. Someplace where the wind blew hot and dry, and the birds did not sing in the dying trees; where bones lay bright white on the ground, and the sky was as hard and dark as the bluing on a gun barrel.

Benny stared at the card. Not at the words, but at the image. It was a girl about his own age, maybe a year older. She wore the rags of old blue jeans and roughly made leather moccasins. Her blouse was torn and patched and too small for her, and the pattern had once been bright with wildflowers, but now was so faded that it looked like flowers seen through mist. She had hair that was so thoroughly sun-bleached, it looked snow-white, and her skin was tanned to a honey brown. The girl wore a man’s leather gun belt, which held a small pistol below her left hip and a knife in a weather-stained sheath on her right. She carried a spear, crudely made from a long piece of quarter-inch black pipe wrapped in leather and topped with the blade from a Marine Corps bayonet. Behind her was a heap of dead zombies. The painting was incredibly lifelike-more like a photo than a painting, but there hadn’t been a working camera for years.

What held Benny’s attention-what riveted him-was her expression. The artist must have known her, because he caught her with a blend of emotions on her beautiful face. Anger, or perhaps defiance, tightened her full lips into an inflexible line. Pride lifted her chin. But her hazel eyes held such a deep and ancient sadness that Benny’s breath caught in his throat. He knew that sadness. It haunted his brother’s eyes every day, and since returning from the small village on the mountainside, that sadness darkened the eyes that looked back at him from the bathroom mirror, morning and night.

This girl knew. This girl must have seen some of the things he’d seen. Maybe worse. She’d seen them with eyes that could never see things the way the bounty hunters did. This girl knew, and Benny knew that she knew. She knew in ways that Nix couldn’t.

There was no name in the caption bar at the bottom of the card. Just these words: “The Lost Girl.”

Chong leaned over. He started to make a joke, but he caught Benny’s expression and kept his words to himself.

Morgie was a few steps slower to the plate than Chong. He snatched the card out of Benny’s hand. “Mmm, nice rack. Almost as big as Nix’s.”

Benny’s hand moved so fast that it surprised everyone. One second his fingers were open and empty, and the next they were knotted in the front of Morgie’s shirt.

“Give it back,” Benny said in a voice that was more like Tom’s. Older, uncompromising. Hard.

Morgie wore half a smile for half a second, then he saw the look in Benny’s eyes and surprise-tinged with fear and a spoonful of hurt-blossomed in his eyes.

“I… I mean… sure, man,” he said, tripping over the words. “Sure… I was just…”

Benny took the card from between Morgie’s fingers. It was bent but not creased, and Benny smoothed it on his thigh.

“I’m sorry,” Morgie said, completely confused by what had just happened. Benny looked at him without seeing him, then leaned over to peer at the card. Morgie started to say something else, but Chong-out of Benny’s line of sight-gave a tiny shake of his head.

A shadow fell over them, and they looked up to see Zak standing on the top step, staring down at the card. He grunted once, mumbled something unintelligible as he shoved his own cards into his pocket, then clumped down the stairs and headed home.