Rot & Ruin

Nix turned toward him.

He said, “The ocean, the islands to the west, or whatever’s on the other side of the Rot and Ruin to the east. Maybe what’s in another country. Whatever’s there, I want to see it. I don’t want to live my life in a chicken cage.” He took a breath, fishing for the right way to say it. “You’re right. If we don’t get out of this town, we’re going to die here. And I don’t mean just us. You and me. The caged birds. I mean all of us. Mountainside was how Tom and the other adults survived First Night. But now it’s-”

She finished it for him. “Now it’s a coffin. No room, no air, no future.”

“Yeah.”

Even though his inner voice screamed at him to say more, he couldn’t make his mouth form the words. He sat there, staring into her green eyes. After a long time Nix sighed. She touched his face. No more than a ghost-light brush of fingertips on his cheek.

“One of us is the stupidest person in the whole wide world, Benny Imura,” she said. Then she rose and went inside to wash up.

23

THE CLOUDS SWEPT OVER THE MOUNTAINS AND ACROSS THE VALLEY, blotting out the sun. Morgie, Chong, and Nix stayed for roasted corn and hamburgers that Tom made on a stone grill in the yard, but as the first fat raindrops splatted down, they bolted for home. The wind picked up, and the Imura brothers ran to close the shutters and button up the house. By the time they were done, lightning was flashing continuously, throwing weird shadows across the lawn and stabbing in through the slats of the shutters.

“This is going to be a bad one,” Tom said, sniffing the air.

Inside, they changed out of their workout clothes, washed, and shambled back into the kitchen in pajama bottoms and T-shirts. The temperature dropped like a rock, and Tom brewed a pot of strong black tea, flavored with fresh mint leaves. They drank it with honey-almond muffins Nix’s mother had sent over.

“How come Mrs. Riley sends us stuff so often?” Benny asked, halfway through his third muffin.

Tom gave an enigmatic little shrug. “She thinks she owes me, and this is how she repays the debt.”

“Does she owe you?”

“No. When a friend does a favor for a friend, it isn’t with the expectation of repayment.”

“What favor? Getting her out of Gameland?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tom said. “And it was a long time ago. But I think it makes Jessie feel better to send us what she can.”

Benny nodded, uncertain what to make of Tom’s answer. He nibbled the muffin. “She’s a pretty amazing baker.”

“She’s a pretty amazing woman,” said Tom.

Benny straightened. “Really?” he said with a grin.

“You can wipe that smile off your face right now, because Jessie and I are just friends. She’s one of the few people I really trust. And that is the end of that discussion.”

Benny grinned all the way through the rest of his muffin. Thunder slammed against the house-hard enough to rattle the teacups.

Tom left the room and came back with his boots, rain slicker, and his sword. The real one, not the wooden training bokken. He set them by the back door.

“What’s that for?”

“That last one sounded like a lightning strike. There are trees near the north wall of the fence.”

“Sure, but there’s a guard detail too.”

“Sure, but it’s always better to be prepared.”

As Tom sat down he spotted the object that Benny had placed in the center of the table. The Zombie Card with the picture of the wild and beautiful Lost Girl.

“Ah,” Tom said.

“Will you tell me about her?”

“Maybe. Will you answer my questions first?”

“About Charlie Matthias?”

“Yep.”

Benny sighed. “I guess.”

Tom stood up. “Good night, kiddo. Sleep tight.”

“Hey!”

Tom said, “‘I guess’ doesn’t sound like a show of trust. Either you will or you won’t.”

“You’re going to go all Zen on me again?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “I am. Now this time think it through and give me a straight answer.”

“Yes,” said Benny. “I’ll answer any question you want to ask, as long as you tell me about Lilah.”

“No reserves, no fake outs. Straight answers?”

“Yes. But I’m going to want the same.”

“Fair enough,” said Tom. “So I’ll get right to it. Do you trust Charlie Pink-eye?”

“After what happened today? No, not much.”

“How much is ‘not much’?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. I like Charlie… or I used to, but today he really freaked me out. For a minute there, he looked like he was going to take that card from me. By any means necessary.”

“Do you think he would have hurt you?”

“To get the card?”

Tom nodded.

“That’s a weird question, because it’s only a card, you know? I mean… so what? It was only dumb luck that I even got it. It could have been Charlie’s own nephew, Zak, who bought that pack. Or one of the other kids that Charlie doesn’t know. It could have been Chong or Morgie. Or Nix.”

“Yeah, things happen in strange ways sometimes,” said Tom. He sipped his tea. “When you let go of the card, was that an accident or did you toss it to keep it away from him?”

“I dropped it.”

“Why? Why not show him the card? Why not give it to him?”

“It was mine.”

Tom shook his head. “No. You were willing to let it blow away in the wind instead of letting Charlie have it. That wasn’t about possession. So what was it about?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Benny said. “But when I first saw that card, when I saw her, I had this weird feeling that I knew her. Or… would know her. Does that make sense?”

“It’s a dark and stormy night, kiddo. Mystical seems kind of appropriate.” As if in agreement, another crack of thunder rattled the crockery in the cupboards and pulled groans from the timbers of the house. “Go on.”

“I don’t know. I felt like I needed to protect her.”

“From Charlie?”

“From everyone.”

Tom reached out and turned the card. The girl looked fierce, and the heap of zombie corpses behind her suggested that she was brutally tough. “She can take care of herself.”

“You say that like you know her,” Benny said. “I was square with you, now it’s your turn. Tell me about the Lost Girl. Tell me everything.”

“It’s not a nice story, Ben,” Tom said. “It’s sad and it’s scary and it’s full of bad things.”

Thunder punched the house over and over again.

“Like you said, this is the night for that kind of thing.”

“Yeah,” said Tom. “I guess it is.”