Dust & Decay

with rage.

“I frigging hate you, Benny. You pretend you’re my friend, but you took Nix and now you’re dumping me and going off together. You and that bitch, Nix.”

Benny stared in total shock, then he felt his own anger starting to rise. He scrambled to his feet.

“You can say whatever you want to say about me, Morgie,” he warned, “but don’t ever call Nix names.”

“Or what?” Morgie challenged, moving in almost chest to chest.

Benny knew that Morgie could take him in a fight. Morgie was always the toughest of the crowd, the one who never backed down. He had tried to stand up to Charlie and the Hammer at the Riley house, and nearly died for it.

Morgie shoved him again, but this time Benny was expecting it, and all it did was knock him back a few steps. As he staggered, his heel came down on the fishing rod, and there was a sharp crack!

They both stared down at it. They had caught a hundred trout with that rod. They had spent thousands of hours sitting on the banks of the stream, talking about everything. Now it lay snapped into two pieces that could never be mended. Benny’s heart sank. As symbolic incidents go, it had too much drama and no comfort at all, and he cursed the universe for making a joke like that at a time like this.

Morgie shook his head and turned away. He walked to the steps, climbed heavily up to the porch, and then stopped. He half turned, and in an ugly growl of a voice he said, “I hope you die out there, Benny. I hope you all die out there.”

He went inside and slammed the door.

Benny stood in the yard for a long time, staring at the house, willing Morgie to come outside. He would rather have fought him and gotten his ass kicked than have things end like this. He wanted to scream, to shout, to demand that Morgie come back outside. To take back those words.

But the door remained stubbornly shut.

Slowly, brokenly, Benny turned and walked back home.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Tools of the Zombie Hunter Trade

BOKKEN: A wooden sword developed by the Japanese. The name combines two words, bo (“wood”) and ken (“sword”). The bokken is used for training and is usually the same length and shape as the katana, the steel sword carried by samurai. Also called a bokuto.

My bokken is thirty-nine inches long and is made from air-dried hickory. It weighs five pounds.

Benny’s bokken is forty-one inches long and made from white oak. (So far he’s cracked three of them, and Tom is getting mad at him.)

16

WHEN THE FIRST PROMISE OF SUNRISE GLIMMERED BEYOND THE TREE LINE of the forest, Tom had them all rigged and ready at the gate.

Over the last few weeks Tom had gotten the mayor’s wife to sew each of them a vest made from very tough pre-First Night canvas. The vests had lots of pockets and were extremely durable. Benny filled his pockets with gum, all-weather matches, a compass, spools of wire and twine, and a hand line for fishing. He tried not to think about Morgie as he stuffed this last item into its pocket. Tried and failed.

As they checked their gear, Benny kept looking back toward town.

“He’ll be here,” Nix said.

But Morgie never came.

Tom bought each of them three small bottles of cadaverine and a pot of mint gel from a vendor at the gate. The cadaverine was a chemical harvested from rotting flesh-and Benny was almost completely sure that it was made from dead animals and not from other sources… like maybe dead zoms. Dribbling it on clothes and hair made the living smell like rotting corpses. Zoms did not attack other zoms, so the smell usually kept the wearer safe.

Chong sniffed the cadaverine and winced. “Charming.”

Tom handed them the mint gel and said to Chong, “When we use the cadaverine, it’s best to rub this on your upper lip. It overwhelms your sense of smell.”

Chong began unscrewing the cap, but Tom said, “Not yet. We’ll use the cadaverine and the mint as a last resort. We’ll conserve it for now.”

“Why?” asked Chong. “Why not buy a couple of gallons of it and take a bath in the stuff?”

Benny leaned closed and said under his breath, “Yeah, that’d make Lilah want to crawl all over you.”

Without changing expression, Chong murmured, “Feel free to fall over and die.”

Benny grinned. He was surprised he still could. He threw one last look back toward town. No Morgie. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and tried to let it go. The ache, the betrayal, the memory of Morgie’s last words. When he breathed, it felt like his lungs were on fire. He kept doing it until something in his mind shifted.

We’re leaving, he thought. It’s really happening.

At the same moment that he thought that, a second thought flitted through his mind. There’s no turning back now.

The juxtaposition of the two thoughts was deeply disturbing, and he recalled his musings yesterday when Nix asked him if he wanted to go. Part of him answered, I want to go, but a different part whispered, I am going. They were totally different answers.

Nix, intuitive as ever, caught his eye and with a look asked if he was okay. Without waiting for an answer, she cut a look back to the empty fence, and her shoulders slumped. She looked at Benny and nodded sadly.

Good-bye, Morgie, Benny thought.

“Okay,” Tom said, “here’s the way we’re going to do it. I lead, you follow. When I give instructions, I want you to pay attention. No screwing around.”

He was looking at Benny and Chong when he said this last part, and they affected to look like angels falsely accused of grievous sins.

“I’m serious,” Tom said. “I know that we’re all armed and you’ve each had some training, but in the Ruin you only get to make one mistake. And then you’re dead.”

Lilah made a noise low in her throat when Tom said that, and Benny unconsciously touched the point on his throat where she’d pressed her blade on the Matthias lawn after the fight with Big Zak and Zak Junior. Nix must have had the same thought, because she took a half step to stand between Benny and Lilah, and there was no trace of a smile on her face.

Tom adjusted the sling that supported his steel katana, then cleared his throat. “Once the fence guards draw the zoms down to the far end, we go out and head straight for the tree line. Single file. I’ll lead, then Nix, Benny, Chong, and Lilah. Got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Keep your weapons slung. Right now speed is more important than anything. The guards will try to keep the zoms distracted until we’re clear. After that, we’re on our own.”

“What if we run into a zom?” asked Chong.

“If we do, I’ll see it first. Let me handle it. If it comes at you from the side, Lilah will take care of it.” Tom gave them all a hard look. “I don’t want any heroics. I’m still pissed at you guys for going up on Zak’s porch. You should have called me or Captain Strunk. That’s not exactly the way to be warrior smart. I know you think you’re hotshots, but you are a long way from being real samurai. A skilled fighter doesn’t take needless risks. Do you understand?”

They nodded.