throw himself off the roof than answer.
“Sure.”
“Is he right? If Tom wasn’t going to go, if it was just Lilah and me… would you go?”
“Without Tom?”
“Yes.”
He settled back and looked at the clouds for almost a minute before he answered. It was a good question. The crucial question, and he’d wrestled with it and chewed on it since they’d seen the jet last year. Did he want to go?
Benny weighed his feelings very carefully. The answer was not a thing he could just reach inside and grab. It was buried deep, hidden in the soil of his subconscious and his needs and desires. On some level he knew that he needed to know who he was before he could rationally and accurately answer that question, and since last September he had been constantly trying to explore who he was. Especially in terms of who he was at this moment. If he didn’t know who he was now, how could he know who he would be out there in the Ruin? What if he wasn’t up to the challenge? What if after being out there he realized that he preferred the comforts of Mountainside? What if he wasn’t a crusader for change after all?
Ugly, troublesome questions, and he had no real answers at all.
The ugliest part was that the one thing he was sure of was that he could find those answers only out in the Ruin. For good or ill.
“Yes,” he said eventually. “Yes… I’d go with you no matter what.”
Nix smiled and took his hand. “I believe you.” She added, “If you’d answered right away I would have known you were lying. Telling me what I wanted to hear. I’m glad you respect me enough to think it through.”
He said nothing, but he squeezed her hand.
“Benny?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you scared?”
“About tomorrow? Yeah,” he said, “I’m freaking terrified.”
“Me too.” After a moment she said, “It’s so big, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Leaving everything behind. Everyone we know.”
“Yeah.”
Five minutes rolled by, and the last of the clouds melted into endless blue. A lone hawk floated high above them.
Nix said, “I want to ask you one more thing.”
He tensed, but said, “Okay.”
Nix took his face in both of her hands. “Do you love me, Benny?”
Those five words sucked all the air out of planet Earth and left Benny gasping like a trout. His eyes wanted to look left and right to see if there was a way out of this. Maybe he could jump off the roof. Even with everything that had happened since last year, he had never worked up the courage to tell her that he loved her, and she had never even gone within pistol shot of the
Her eyes were filled with green mystery and… and what? Challenge? Was this a test that was going to get him fried when he gave the wrong answer? Nix was devious and complicated enough for that sort of thing. Benny had grown up with her; he knew.
That wasn’t it, though, and on some level he knew it.
No, when he tried to put a label on what he saw in her eyes, the one that seemed to fit best… was hope.
Hope. Suddenly his heart started beating again, or at least beating differently.
God… maybe if he jumped off the roof right now he would fly.
Benny licked his dry lips and swallowed a dry throat and in a dry voice said, “Yes.”
Nix’s eyes searched his, looking for a lie.
Somehow that made Benny feel stronger. He leaned toward her, letting her see everything she could find in his eyes.
He squeezed her hand. “Nix… I love you so much.”
“You do?” she asked in a voice that was as fragile as a butterfly’s wing.
“Yes. I love you. I really do.” It felt strange to say aloud. Enormous and good and delicious.
But Nix’s brow furrowed. “If you love me, then swear on that.”
They were back to the question about leaving. Benny bowed his head for a moment, unable to bear the weight of what she was asking. Nix hooked a finger under his chin and lifted his face toward hers.
“Please, Benny…”
“I swear it, Nix. I love you and I swear on that.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she kissed him. Then Benny was on his knees, his arms wrapped around her, and both of them were crying, sobbing out loud under the bright blue sky. Even then, even with the terrible shared awareness of what lay behind them and before them, neither Benny nor Nix would ever be able to explain what it was that was breaking their hearts.
Benny thought about what Nix had said in the cemetery. That leaving was like dying.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Questions:
Can zoms experience fear?
Do they know they’re dead?
Can they feel any emotions? (Do they hate the living?)
14
“JUST SO I’M CLEAR ON THIS,” SAID CHONG IN HIS CALMEST AND MOST reasonable voice. “You want to take us camping in the Rot and Ruin?”
“Yes,” said Tom. “Just an overnight trip.”
“Out where the zoms are?”
“Yes.”
“Out where there are three hundred million zoms?”
Tom smiled. “I doubt there are that many of them left. I doubt there’s more than two hundred million zoms left.”
Chong peered at him with the flat stare of a lizard. “That’s not as much of a comfort as you might think, Tom.”
“Hundred million fewer things that want to eat you,” said Benny. “Put it in the win category.”
“Hush,” said Chong, “there are grown folks talking.”
Benny covertly offered a rude gesture.
They were in Benny’s yard. Nix sat nearby, wiping down her wooden sword with oil and trying not to smile. Lilah sat cross-legged on the picnic table, strip-cleaning her Sig Sauer automatic pistol. Again.
“Are you going?” Chong asked her.
Lilah snorted. “Better than staying here. This town is worse than the Ruin. If they go,” she said, indicating Tom, Benny, and Nix, “why would I want to stay here?”
Benny caught Chong’s wince.
