Rot & Ruin

critters is way too easy. Am I right or am I right?”

A few people chuckled or nodded vaguely, but nobody said anything specific. It was one of those times when it wasn’t clear what the right answer would be.

Charlie plowed ahead. “So me and the Hammer decide to make this a bit more fair.”

“Fair,” agreed the Hammer.

“We laid down our weapons.”

“All of ’em?” Chong gasped.

“Every last one. Guns, knives, the Hammer’s favorite pipe, numchucks, even them ninja throwing stars that the Hammer took off that dead zom who used to run that karate school on the other side of the valley. We stripped down to our jeans and beaters and just went in, mano a mano.”

“Went in whut?” asked Morgie.

“It means ‘hand to hand,’” Chong said.

“It means ‘man to man,’” Charlie snapped.

Even Benny knew Charlie was wrong, but he didn’t say so. Not right to Charlie’s face, anyway. No one was that dumb.

Charlie threw Chong a quick, ugly look and plunged back into his story. “Anyways, we came up on them with just our knuckles and nerves, and we fair beat them zoms so bad, they died surprised, woke up, and died of shame all over again.”

Everyone burst out laughing.

Someone cleared his throat, and they all looked up to see Randy Kirsch, the town mayor, standing there, his arms folded, bald head cocked to one side as he looked from Benny to Chong to Morgie. “I thought you boys were supposed to be out job hunting.”

“I got a job,” Chong said quickly.

“I’m fourteen,” said Morgie.

“We just stopped in for a cold bottle of pop,” Benny said.

“And you’ve had it, Benjamin Imura,” said Mayor Kirsch. “Now you three run along.”

Benny thought Charlie was going to object, but the bounty hunter simply shrugged. “Yeah… you boys got to earn your rations just like grown folks. Skedaddle.”

Benny and the others got up and slouched past the mayor. Before they even reached the door Charlie was in full stride again, telling another of his stories, and everyone was laughing. The mayor followed the boys outside.

“Benny,” he said quietly, the hot sun glinting off the polished crown of his shaved head. “Does Tom know you’ve been hanging out here?”

“I don’t know,” Benny said evasively. He knew darn well that Tom had no idea that he spent a part of every afternoon listening to Charlie and the Hammer tell their stories.

“I don’t think he’d like it,” said Mayor Kirsch.

Benny met his stare. “I guess I really don’t care much what Tom likes and doesn’t like,” he said, then added “sir” to the end of it, as if that word could somehow improve the tone of voice he’d just used.

Mayor Kirsch scratched at his thick black beard. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again. Whatever he wanted to say, he kept to himself. That was fine with Benny, who wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.

“You boys run along now,” Kirsch said eventually. He stood on the porch of the general store for a while, but when Benny was all the way down the street and looked back, he saw the mayor go back into the store.

The mayor and his family lived next door to Benny, and he and Tom were friends. Mayor Kirsch was always talking about how tough Tom was and what a good hunter Tom was and what a fine example Tom set for all bounty hunters. Blah, blah, blah. It made Benny want to hurl. If Tom set such a fine example as a bounty hunter, then why didn’t the other bounty hunters ever tell stories about him? None of them bragged about how they’d seen Tom single-handedly kick the butts of four zombies at once. Even Tom didn’t talk about it. Not once had he ever told Benny about what he did out there in the Ruin. How boring was that? Benny thought the Mayor had a screw loose. Tom was no kind of role model to anyone.

Chong said he had to get ready for work. He was scheduled for a six-hour shift in his tower, and looked pleased about it. Benny and Morgie found their friend Nix Riley, a redheaded girl with more freckles than anyone could count, sitting on a rock down by the creek, writing in her leather-bound notebook. She had her shoes off and her feet in the water. The red nail polish on her toes looked like rubies under the rippling water.

“Hello, Benny,” said Nix with a smile, peering at him from under her wild red-gold curls. “How’s the job hunting going?”

Benny grunted and kicked off his shoes. The cold water was like a happy party on his hot feet. Morgie slouched around and sat on Nix’s other side, and began untying his clunky work boots.

They told Nix about Charlie and the Hammer, and about the mayor rousting them.

“My mom won’t let me anywhere near those guys,” said Nix. She and her mother lived alone in a tiny house by the west wall, over in the poorest part of town. Up until this past winter, Nix had always been a skinny, gangly kid who was more one of the guys than a girl. Like Chong, Nix was a bookworm and always had several books in her satchel, but unlike Chong, Nix wanted to write books of her own. She was always scribbling poems and short stories in her journal. Of all of them she’d always been the real geek, but that had changed over the last ten months. Now Nix wasn’t a stick figure anymore, and Benny found it weird being around her. Especially on hot days when she wore a tight T-shirt and shorts. He kept wanting to look at her-especially at what she was doing to that T-shirt-but it made him feel really awkward. Nix had always been like Morgie and Chong. Now she was a girl. There was no way to ignore that fact anymore.

What made it worse was that Benny was pretty sure Nix had a crush on him. He liked her, too, though he’d rather have an arm cut off than say so. Even to Chong. Dating a friend was an old taboo among his crew. He and Chong had sworn a blood oath on it when they were nine or ten. Nix was really cute, and he liked looking at her, but dating her would be like dating Chong. Besides, with a girl who he’d known since they were just out of diapers, there was no chance at all that she’d think he was mysterious and interesting. Sure, she already liked him, but what would happen if they started dating and she tried to discover his secrets, only to find out that he didn’t have any? Or, worse, what would happen if he asked her out and found out that Nix really didn’t have a thing for him? Benny couldn’t imagine dealing with rejection from someone who knew everything about him and who he’d be seeing all the time. The whole thing made Benny want to bang his head against a wall.

“How come?” asked Morgie. The question brought Benny back to the conversation.

“It’s complicated,” Nix said, looking down at the sunlight on the rippling water. “And Mom won’t tell me all of it, but I think she and Charlie had some kind of fight or something. She really doesn’t like him. I’m not allowed to be around him unless Mom’s there. Or Mayor Kirsch or Tom.”

She nudged Benny with her foot while she talked.

Benny pretended not to notice the nudge. He asked, “Why Tom?”

“Mom likes Tom.”

“Likes? You mean likes him like she likes your dog, Pirate, or likes likes?”

“Likes likes.” She cut him a sideways look. “Tom’s hot.”

“That’s sick,” Benny said.

“You look a lot alike, you know,” said Nix.

“Please kill me now,” Benny asked the heavens.

“Why can’t you be around Charlie without your mom or Tom?” Morgie asked. Unlike Benny, Morgie had become infatuated with Nix. And with more than her new figure. He actually liked her. Morgie had never made that oath about never dating friends, and Benny couldn’t quite grasp how he was able to fixate on Nix without feeling weird about it.

“She says that he doesn’t treat girls the right way sometimes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Benny, his voice sharper than intended.

Nix gave him a long considering stare. “You can be so naive sometimes.”

“I repeat, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that guys like Charlie seem to think that anything they put their hands on belongs to them. Mom’s afraid to be alone with either of them, and I wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with them either.”