No… not twigs. Bones.
He set his sword down and used his thumb and fore-finger to lift a bit of the fabric, and as he did, he understood what this was. The rags were the remnants of clothes-a brown uniform trimmed with gold cord. An old flat-brimmed hat lay under the remains. A tarnished badge was pinned to the crown. Benny had never met one, but he’d seen pictures of forest rangers in books. This was the ranger. Had he been bitten and crawled in here to die? No… that made no sense. He’d have turned. Then Benny considered the pistol, and he understood. The man had been bitten, and he’d come in here to do what was necessary to keep himself from becoming a monster. Even though Benny knew this sort of thing had probably happened hundreds of thousands of times around the world, seeing it here, firsthand, made it almost unbearably sad.
Benny’s match was burning down, but he had enough light left to poke among the rags and find the ranger’s name tag.
M. Horwitz.
“I’m sorry,” Benny said.
Was this the same ranger station where Tom and Mr. Sacchetto had come with their telescope? If so, there was no sign of it, and Benny guessed there were probably several similar towers scattered throughout the mountains.
He straightened and stepped out of the bathroom and then hurried through the station and around the corner to where Nix still crouched. Despite the heat she was shivering, and Benny felt a knife of panic stab him. He’d learned about shock in the Scouts, and he knew it could be as dangerous as a bullet.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hands. Nix hesitated for a moment, her eyes unfocused, as if she didn’t quite recognize him. She reached for him, and he pulled her against his chest. Nix wrapped strong arms around him and clung to him, and after only a sliver of a second, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and back, and squeezed her with all his strength.
Together, still holding onto each other and moving in an awkward ballet, they stumbled back to the door and shambled inside. Benny kicked the door closed and leaned back against it, sliding down to the floor, taking Nix with him.
She whispered a single, heartbroken and heartbreaking word.
“Mom!”
Benny clutched her to him, sharing his heat with her.
“I know,” he said. It was all he had to say, all she needed to hear. That he knew, that he understood, was as necessary to her as it was terrible, and she disintegrated into tears that burned against his face and throat. Benny held her, and his grief for her, for her mother, for Mr. Sacchetto… and for Tom was a vast and unbearable ache that filled every inch of him.
They held each other and wept as the night closed its fist around their tiny shelter, and the world below them seethed with killers both living and dead.
Part Four. Family Business
39
BENNY OPENED HIS EYES AND REALIZED THAT HE’D BEEN ASLEEP… AND that he was alone. The ranger station was in absolute darkness. Benny tensed, reaching for his sword, but his fingers found nothing. He remembered then that he’d left the
“Nix…?” he whispered.
Nothing.
Very slowly he shifted onto his knees and then climbed to his feet, staying low, listening for some sound. His shirt collar was still damp from her tears, so he knew he couldn’t have been asleep for long. Half an hour maybe?
He went outside. Nix was at the corner of the rail, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her hair blowing in the breeze. There was a sliver of moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks. He stood next to her, leaning his arms on the rail and looking out at the vastness of the sky. The starlight glimmered on the canopy of leaves, and the ocean of trees seemed to stretch away forever.
“Have you heard anything?” he whispered as they sat down on the edge of the catwalk, their feet hanging over into the lake of darkness.
“No.”
“Good. I think we’re safe,” he said, then added lamely, “Up here, I mean.”
She nodded. A mockingbird sang its schizophrenic melodies from a nearby tree.
Benny said, “When there’s light we’ll have to try and find our way back to town.”
Nix just shook her head, and the denial had so many possible meanings that Benny left his questions unasked.
“Morgie,” she said. “Is he…?”
“No, he’s okay. Or will be. They hit him pretty hard in the head, but they say he’s going to make it.”
Benny saw Nix steeling herself for the next question, and he was pretty sure he knew what it was going to be.
“My mom,” she began, and he quietly curled his fingers around the lip of the catwalk’s metal floor. “They said that she was… They said that she’d…” Nix stopped and shook her head, trying it another way. “They wanted to leave a present for Tom. That’s what they called it. A ‘present.’”
“It wasn’t like that,” Benny said. “We got there pretty quick. Your mom was still… your mom. Tom held her all the way up to the last, and she held onto him. It was… I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. But then she was… gone. It didn’t look like she was in pain when it happened. She just went to sleep.”
“Sleep,” Nix said in a soft echo. “And… after? Did she… I mean, did they let her… God, Benny, don’t make me
“No,” he soothed. “No. She never returned. There wasn’t time. Tom did what was necessary.”
“Tom?”
“Yes. With a sliver. He did it fast and quick. She never knew. And he held her afterward.”
Nix made no comment, but he could
“Why did they come after you, Nix?”
She turned to him in the dark. “It was because of that card. The Zombie Card with the girl on it.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Zak Matthias got one too. I ran into him yesterday. He was on his way home from the store with his Zombie Cards, and I asked to see them. He was kind of weird about it, but he showed them to me. When I saw the card for the Lost Girl, I told him that I’d seen that picture before. He seemed really interested and asked where, and I told him that my mom was friends with Mr. Sacchetto, the erosion artist. He came over to the house with Tom a few times, and they talked about the Lost Girl.”
“You never told me about that.”
She shrugged. “Why would I? It didn’t seem to involve us. Just my mom and her friends talking. But when I told Zak, he kept asking me about it. What did my mom know about the Lost Girl? What had Tom and Mr. Sacchetto told her? Did I know where the Lost Girl was?” A tear rolled down her face, and she brushed it away. “I thought he was
