they were inside the wagon but outside the fence. Did they just shut down their higher reasoning? Did they drug themselves so they slept through the journey? Or was the denial so deep that they somehow regarded entering and exiting the shuttered wagons in the same way they would passing through a doorway? Maybe to them there simply was nothing in between.
It was like a plague, but different from the one that had destroyed the world. This was an emotional pandemic that blinded the eye and deafened the ear and darkened the mind so that there simply was no world other than what existed inside each fenced town.
Most people had long ago stopped talking about First Night; and although no one said it aloud, it was pretty clear that they felt that they were all just waiting for everything else to end. Society had collapsed, the military and government were gone, nearly seven billion people had died, and the zombie plague was still running at full strength. They all knew that their fellow citizens of Mountainside believed that the world had ended and what was left was just the clock winding down to a final and inevitable silence.
It was a horrible thought, and until the big fight at Charlie’s camp last year, Benny had been as adamant as Nix in wanting to break free of the town and find someplace where people wanted to be alive. Someplace where people believed that there was a future.
Then there had been that fight. Benny had been forced to kill people.
To kill.
People.
Not just zoms.
How was that going to open the way to a future?
There were so few people left. Barely thirty thousand left in California, and no way to know if there were any more anywhere else. How was killing going to increase that number? It was insane.
Only here, only when he was alone and looking into the eyes of the person he was becoming, could Benny admit the truth to himself.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said.
His mirror image and his inner voice repeated that truth, word for word. They were all in total agreement.
He got dressed and went downstairs and stood for a long time looking at the map of Mariposa County and Yosemite National Park. He heard voices and went to the back door and listened. Tom was in the yard, talking across the rail fence to Mayor Kirsch and Captain Strunk. Benny cracked the door so he could hear what they were saying.
“It’s not just a few people, Tom,” said the mayor. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
“It’s not a secret, Randy,” Tom said. “People have known I was leaving since Christmas.”
“That’s my point,” replied Captain Strunk. “The scouts and traders are saying that a bunch of rough-looking characters have been moving into the area since Charlie died.”
“Everyone in the Ruin is a rough-looking character. Goes with the territory.”
“Come on, Tom,” Strunk said irritably, “don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying. And don’t pretend that you don’t know what an influence you’ve had on things out in the Ruin. There may not be much in the way of law out there, but while you were going out on regular closure jobs, most of the rough trade tended to behave themselves.”
Tom laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“This isn’t a joke,” said Strunk. “People respect you in town, even if most of them don’t say it-”
“Or can’t say it,” the Mayor interjected.
“-and out in the Ruin you were a force to be reckoned with.”
“I’m not the sheriff of these here parts,” Tom said in a comical Old West accent.
“Might as well be,” said Strunk. “You could have my job anytime you want it.”
“No thanks, Keith, you’re the law here in town, and you do a great job.”
“Again, that’s my point,” said Strunk. “You know that I won’t ever step one foot outside of that fence. No way.”
“The bottom line,” barked the mayor, “is that we both feel that once you leave, this part of the Ruin is going to turn into a no-man’s-land. Traders are going to get hijacked, and if the bounty hunters band together with no one to stop them, then they are going to own this town. Maybe all the towns.”
There was a brief silence, and then Benny heard Tom sigh.
“Randy, Keith… I appreciate the problem, but it’s not my problem. If you’ll remember, I proposed a militia for the Ruin. I made very specific recommendations for a town-sanctioned force that would police this part of the Ruin and all the trade routes. Let’s see, how long ago was that? Eight years? And then again a year later. And the following year, and-”
“Okay, okay,” growled Mayor Kirsch. “Rubbing our noses in it doesn’t help us find an answer.”
“I know, Randy, and I don’t mean to be a jerk about this… but I’m leaving next week. Leaving and not coming back. I can’t be the one to solve your problems. Not this time.”
Both men harangued Tom, but he cut them off with a curt wave of his hand.
“If you bothered to read my proposal,” he said, “you’d have seen that I made several recommendations for how to handle things. Not all the bounty hunters are like Charlie. There are some people you can trust-granted, only a handful, but I trust them completely.” He began counting on his fingers as he ran through some names. “Solomon Jones, Sally Two-Knives…” He counted off twenty names.
“Oh, please,” said Mayor Kirsch, making a face. “Half of them are psychos and loners who refuse to come into town and-”
“They don’t need to come into town,” cut in Tom. “Meet them at the fence line and talk business. Deputize them. Pay them. And, here’s a thought, treat them with a little respect and maybe they’ll show some loyalty to you and the town.”
“Maybe they behave themselves around you,” said Strunk, “but I hear wild tales.”
“Really? Well, what wild tales have you been hearing about Gameland? It’s back in operation again. Without a militia of any kind, what are you going to do when kids start disappearing? How would you feel about your own kids vanishing off the street and getting dragged off to fight in a zombie pit? Don’t pretend that doesn’t happen in town. Ask Nix Riley.”
There was more, but the three of them began walking toward the garden gate and the road to town. Benny closed the door.
12
THE NEXT DAY WAS THE VIEWING AND FUNERAL FOR THE HOUSER FAMILY. More than two hundred people showed up. Benny and Nix went together. She had been sad and quiet since yesterday, and the day suited her mood. Clouds obscured the sun and turned the air wet and cool, but no rain fell. The trees were filled with crows and warblers and grasshopper sparrows. A grackle-scruffy and dark-landed on the closed coffin of Danny Houser and mocked the sermon like an uncouth heckler, until the grave digger chased him away with a shovel.
Pastor Kellogg wore a black robe and held a heavy and very battered old Bible. There was a rumor around town that the pages of the Bible were stained with blood because the pastor had been forced to use the Good Book to beat the head in of one of his parishioners who had been zommed out and attacked him. It was a lurid story, but Benny believed it was true. There were a lot of stories like that in town. Everyone who had survived First Night had one.
The mayor and his wife were there, dressed in formal clothes, and even Captain Strunk of the Town Watch was in a suit.
Benny did not own a suit, but he wore his best pair of dark blue jeans and a clean white shirt. Nix wore a pretty dress that Fran Kirsch, the mayor’s wife, had sewn for her. The dress was a richer shade of blue than Benny’s
