“What if…” He stopped and took a breath, thinking of the terrible heat and of the flames spreading so rapidly on dry skin and old clothes. “What if they could feel it?”
“They can’t, Benny,” said Nix softly. “They’re dead.”
“We don’t know what they are. The dead are dead, they don’t move, they rot and turn to dust. The zoms… they move around. Sure, they attack people, but that’s the point. Dead people can’t do that… so what are they really? Why do they moan? Are they trying to communicate somehow? Are they trying to say something? Or… does being a zom hurt?”
“Hurt?”
“From what’s happened to them, and what’s still happening. The wounds that killed them, the decay… can they feel it?”
“They’re rotting, Benny. Their bodies move around, but there’s no intelligence.”
He shook his head. “We don’t really know that, Nix, and don’t pretend we do. Tom’s seen them turn door handles and climb steps. He says that some of them pick up stuff to use as weapons. Sticks and stones. The one last night beat on the door. That says something. That says there’s something going on inside.”
“Benny, a squirrel will pick stuff up. A cat will swat at stuff. It doesn’t mean-”
“That’s just it!” he cried. “Even if they’re only like a squirrel or a cat, or even if they’re only as smart as a bug, Nix… even bugs feel pain.”
She shook her head and looked at the twisted wreckage of zombie corpses lying in the ash. “No,” she said. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy thinking like that. Tom’s quieted thousands of zoms. He never said anything about them feeling pain.”
“How would he know?”
“Tom would know,” she said firmly. Benny listened to her words, but he also heard something in her voice. A tremor of doubt.
He nodded and Nix looked relieved, thinking that he was agreeing with her. Benny stepped onto the ash and walked slowly over to the way station. The building was a total loss. Only the front wall still stood; the rest lay in heaps. Benny touched a finger to the outside wall. It was almost cool and covered with a thin film of soot. He nodded again, considering things very carefully, and then used his finger to write a message.
T / L / C
WE’RE FINE. HOPE YOU ARE TOO.
HEADING ON. YOU KNOW WHERE TO
LOOK FOR US.
W.S.
B / N
“W.S.?” Nix murmured. “Warrior smart?”
“Yeah. I want him to know we’re using what he taught us.”
“So… we’re heading east?”
“I guess,” he said. “To Yosemite. It’s that or go back to town. I sure don’t want to wait around here. I don’t know what drove all those zoms down here last night, and I don’t want to find out.”
He hadn’t yet told her about the man he’d seen standing among the zoms. The man he was pretty sure was Charlie Pink-eye. How could he tell Nix that her mother’s murderer was still out here, still roaming the world free?
Benny knew he would have to tell her soon. But not here and not now.
Nix touched the wall below the first line.
“Yes, it was,” he agreed.
“We don’t belong there anymore.”
“No.”
She narrowed her eyes and surveyed the way ahead. Past the blackened ruins, toward the green expanse of the forest and the mountains in the east. “It’s funny,” she said. “I actually thought this part-getting started, I mean-would be the easy part. I expected it to get harder later, but I thought that this would be… I don’t know… kind of ordinary. We’ve been out to Brother David’s a million times… but we’re not even twenty miles from home.”
“I don’t know if anything’s going to be easy, Nix.”
She glanced at him, her lip caught between her even white teeth. She said, “Benny… if you say, ‘Let’s go back,’ I will. Right now. So help me, God… I’ll go back.”
He looked into her eyes and then turned and stared across the charred field of bones to the path that led up into the northwestern slopes. Then he drew a breath and let it out before he turned back. “You already said it, Nix,” he said. “We don’t belong there anymore.”
Doubt darkened her face. “Do we belong here?”
“I don’t know.” He knelt and used a handful of withered grass to wipe the soot from his finger. “Maybe we don’t belong anywhere. But I got to tell you, Nix, it cost us too much to get this far to go back now. We have to keep going.”
“We don’t have to prove anything, Benny.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I kind of think we do.” Then he smiled. The first real smile he’d worn since they left the tree. “Don’t ask me what it is, though.”
Then he kissed her. First, very lightly on the line of stitches that crossed her brow, and then more firmly on the lips.
She kissed him back, and it wasn’t merely reflex. She kissed him like she meant it. Then she stepped back and looked him with green eyes that were filled with a thousand mysteries. For once Benny felt like he understood some of them.
He smiled and held out his hand, and Nix took it. Together they turned away from the charred graveyard of the dead and headed east. The road before them was tangled in weeds, but the sun glimmered like a promise on every blade of grass.
As they walked away they did not see the figure that stepped from behind a stand of fire-blackened pines. It was a tall man. Thin as a scarecrow in a black coat, with white hair that fluttered in the hot wind. He watched the two teenagers as they walked along the road.
The man moved as silently as a shadow as he crossed the field to the way station. He stopped and those cold eyes read the message written in the soot. His lips moved as he read the words, and then he chuckled softly to himself.
He stood for a long time with his lips pursed, considering the words. Then he used the hard, flat palm of his hand to wipe them out. All that remained was a smear of soot. The figure turned and looked at the road. Nix and Benny were tiny dots now, and as he watched they vanished into the far woods.
The man smiled and, quiet as death, followed.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Tom on Quieting Zoms
Tom Imura: “Put a bullet through the brain stem and you switch off your zombie. The same holds for a sword or ax cut, or sufficient blunt force trauma. However, if you inflict minor damage to the brain stem, you may remove some of the zombie’s functions… he might be unable to bite or unable to maintain balance. The bottom line here is that the real off buttons for a zombie are the brain stem and the motor cortex.”
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