Rot & Ruin

trying to escape the small town in which the school was set. When there were fewer than a dozen of the dead in the schoolyard, Strunk dressed his kids in heavy coats and choir gowns; armed them with golf clubs, hockey sticks, and baseball bats from the gym; and led his makeshift army out of the danger zone. Of the thirty-seven kids and four other adults who left the building with him, twenty-eight kids and two adults were still alive and uninfected by the time they discovered another group of refugees who were bound for a fenced-in settlement in central California. Strunk helped organize the town’s defenses and served as its first mayor, and now he commanded the fence patrols and the town watch. And although he and Tom agreed on many things, Strunk had no inclination to expand the town or reclaim the world. He was haunted by those kids he had not been able to save.

Strunk watched as the artist’s body was loaded onto the cart by a cluster of deputies, and he listened to Tom’s account of what happened. Mayor Kirsch came out of his house next door and joined them.

“And you think this was Charlie and the Hammer?” Strunk asked, running his fingers though his thick, curly gray hair.

“Yeah, Keith, I do.”

Mayor Kirsch sighed. “I don’t know, Tom. You’ve got nothing but circumstantial evidence, and pretty thin evidence at that. Guesswork isn’t the same as proof.”

“I know,” said Tom. “But the pieces fit as far as I’m concerned.”

“What do you expect me to do?” asked Strunk.

“How about arresting them?” said Benny.

“And charge them with what?”

“Murder. Torture. How much do they have to do before you’ll do something?”

“Hush, Ben,” cautioned Tom. To the others he said, “I know you can’t do much based on my say-so, but I have to do something.”

“Whoa now, Tom, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” the mayor said quickly.

“Don’t worry, Randy, I’m not going to do anything in town. Not without proof.”

“We have to do something!” Benny said, and then realized he was yelling. He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. “Tom, we have to do something. You said-”

“I know what I said, kiddo. Go inside and get washed up. Try to get some sleep.”

“Sleep? Sleep? What are the chances that I’m ever going to be able to sleep again?”

“Try,” said Tom.

“And what are you going to be doing?”

“Your brother asks a fair question, Tom,” said Strunk. He had his thumbs hooked into a Western-style gun belt, and it made him look like a gunslinger that Benny had seen in a book about the old West. Benny realized that Strunk was willing to use force, or at least imply that he would, to keep Tom from taking the law into his own hands. Benny wanted to knock Strunk’s teeth out. How could the man want to give Tom a hard time when Charlie Matthias was walking around free? When he opened his mouth to say something, he caught Tom’s eye, and his brother gave him a small shake of the head.

Reluctantly Benny lapsed into silence.

To Strunk, Tom said, “I’m going to go over and take a look at Rob’s place. I can do that alone or you can come with me. Rob was tortured, and I’m betting it was done there. Who knows what we’ll find?”

“And then what?”

“Then tomorrow morning, at first light, Benny and I are going out into the Ruin to try and find that girl.”

Mayor Kirsch snorted. “Every bounty hunter and way-station monk for five hundred miles has looked for the Lost Girl, and nobody’s found her yet.”

“I found her,” said Tom. “Twice. And I can find her again.”

The other men gaped at him. From their expressions it was clear they didn’t want to believe him, but Benny knew that Tom never bragged. He had his faults, but lying wasn’t one of them.

“Why would anybody care?” asked one of the deputies.

“Gameland,” said Tom.

“That burned down.”

Strunk sighed. “Tom thinks they rebuilt it and that they’re dragging kids off to play in some kind of zombie games. He thinks the Lost Girl knows where it is.”

The men looked at one another and shifted uncomfortably. Benny noticed that not one of them asked Tom to verify this, and no one asked where Gameland might be. They said nothing. Tom made a disgusted noise.

Strunk nodded. “Okay, Tom. Let’s do it your way. Let’s go over to poor Rob’s house and see what we can see.”

“I want to go too,” said Benny.

“You need to sleep.”

“We already covered that. Maybe-maybe-I’ll sleep when I’m forty, but I just killed a zombie who used to be someone I know. If I close my eyes, he’s going to be right there. I’d rather stay awake.”

It wasn’t said as a joke, and no one took it that way. All three men nodded their understanding.

“Okay, Ben,” Tom said.

Before they left, Tom went inside, dressed in cowboy boots and jeans, strapped on a pistol belt, clipped his double-edged commando dagger inside his right boot, and slung his katana across his back.

“What the hell, Tom? The fight’s over,” said Mayor Kirsch.

Tom didn’t dignify that with an answer.

They walked down the middle of the street-Tom on one side, Strunk on the other, with Benny in the middle. Tom had given him back the wooden sword.

“How about a real one?”

“How about no? You’d cut my head off, or your own. And besides, you already know you can do enough damage with this.”

“How about a gun?” Benny asked hopefully.

“How about you stay home?”

“Okay, okay. Geez.”

They walked on through the shadows. Now that the storm was over, the lamplighters had come out to relight the torches that served as streetlights. Captain Strunk took one of the torches to light their way through town. Mountainside was laid out on a broad, flat piece of ground. The mountains rose up impossibly sheer behind them, and the great fence line stretched in a rough three-sided box from cliff wall to cliff wall. Most of the oldest homes in town were little more than shotgun shacks that were a dozen feet wide and built like long, narrow rectangles with doors at both ends. There were several hundred motor homes, most of which had been dragged into town by teams of horses. Some, of course, had arrived before the EMP blew out the ignitions and electronics on the vehicles. Roughneck traders occasionally brought wagon trains of building supplies to town-along with clothing, books, tools, and other precious items recovered from abandoned farms and towns throughout that part of the Ruin-and those materials had gone into the construction of some of the two-story houses. The Imura house was a tiny two-story that Tom had built himself.

The artist’s house, one of the very first that had been built, was narrow. It would have been ugly except for the rainforest murals Sacchetto had painted on the exterior walls. As they stopped outside, Benny studied the art and felt a deep sadness spear through him. He’d only met the man twice, but he had liked him.

Tom must have sensed his feelings, because he put a brotherly hand on Benny’s shoulder.

“Gate’s open,” Strunk said. “Rob could have walked out after he turned.”

“And bright blue pigs might fly out of my ass,” muttered Benny. Strunk shot him a stern look, and Tom turned aside to hide a grin.

“My point is that we shouldn’t make assumptions,” Strunk snapped.

Benny felt another joke coming on, but he restrained himself as Tom drew his gun-a Beretta nine millimeter- racked the slide, and stepped carefully through the open gate. Strunk drew his gun and followed, holding the torch high. Benny, feeling enormously underdressed for this party, took a firmer grip on his wooden sword and crept after them.