Benny felt totally numb, but he could not make himself look away. Something deep inside demanded that he stand there and look at every inch of the dead man. It made him count the bites. It made him catalog all the things that had been taken from this man.
No. Within his mind a voice that did not feel like his own rebelled at the use of so weak and inaccurate a word as “taken.” The cold detachment required honesty in evaluation. No, the voice said, don’t lie to yourself. If you hide from the truth behind soft words, then you’ll be soft. Then you’ll be dead.
Nothing had been taken. Parts of this man had been consumed. Eaten.
That’s the truth of what you are seeing. That’s the truth of what zoms do.
As he listened to the voice, he also heard a sound. A sob. He blinked and looked around. Chong had walked away again and now he squatted down by the side of the road, arms crossed over his head, his whole body trembling.
Benny glanced again at the dead man, and then turned to go over to Chong, grateful to have a reason to turn away. It wouldn’t feel like cowardice if he was going to help Chong instead of looking at the corpse.
Be strong, whispered his inner voice, then faded into silence.
Benny sat down next to Chong and put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. He wanted to say something, but his inner vocabulary did not include any words that would make sense out of this moment.
“I-I’m sorry,” murmured Chong. He lifted his head and stared straight ahead. His face was streaked with tears and his nose was running. “I don’t-I mean, I can’t-”
“No,” said a low rasp of a voice, and they both turned to see Lilah standing there. The breeze blew her snow-white hair like streamers of pale smoke. “Tears don’t mean you’re weak.”
Chong sniffed and wiped his nose and said nothing.
Lilah sat down in front of Chong, laying her spear in the dusty weeds. “Benny,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Go away.”
Benny started to say something, but he did not. Instead he nodded and got to his feet. He had no idea what Lilah was going to say, or what she could say. Compassion, tenderness, and most other human emotions seemed to be beyond her. Or was he wrong about that?
Benny nodded to himself and walked back to where Nix and Tom stood.
“Tom… do you know what happened? Who did this?”
“No,” Tom said, but there was something in his tone that made Nix give him a sharp look.
“What?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“Come on, Tom,” Benny insisted. “If we’re going to be traveling out here, then you can’t treat us like this. You can’t protect us from stuff.”
“It’s not that,” Tom said slowly. “But… tell me something first.”
“Okay,” said Benny.
“That night last year, when we rescued the kids from the bounty hunters… how sure are you that you killed Charlie Pink-eye?”
If Tom had punched Benny straight in the face he could not have stunned him more.
“W-what?” he gasped.
“What are you saying?” demanded Nix.
“I’m not saying anything yet. Answer the question, Benny.”
Benny closed his eyes and the memory of that terrible fight was right there. Believing that Tom was dead, Nix, Benny, and Lilah had taken it upon themselves to rescue a group of children who had been kidnapped by Charlie Matthias and his bounty hunter cronies. It had been a foolishly risky plan, with more ways it could have gone wrong than right. The skies had opened and lashed Charlie’s mountaintop camp with heavy rains and shocking lightning. At Benny’s suggestion, Lilah had freed hundreds of the zoms that Charlie had tied to trees in the Hungry Forest. Using her own living flesh as bait, the ghost-voiced Lost Girl had enticed the legions of dead to follow her up the mountain and into the bounty hunters’ camp. Tom had showed up around the same time, having escaped a terrible death by a stroke of luck. During the ensuing battle, all the bounty hunters had died. Lilah had killed the Motor City Hammer-a cold revenge she had ached for since that horrible day years ago when her sister, little Annie, had died trying to escape from Gameland.
Charlie Matthias had slipped away from the slaughter in his camp and had come upon the fleeing children. He’d beaten Lilah and Nix to the ground and was seconds away from killing them all. Benny had managed to recover the length of black pipe that the Hammer had used to bash in Morgie’s head-and that Charlie and the Hammer had used to beat Nix’s mother to the point of death.
As Charlie went for him, Benny had faked him out and hit him with the pipe. The image, even the feel of the blow, were scorched into his memory. Benny wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“He fell all the way down the mountain, Tom.”
“But you never saw him land? Or heard him land?”
“No…,” Benny said dubiously.
“Damn.”
Nix grabbed Tom’s sleeve. “Why, Tom?”
Tom sighed. “I’ve seen two other men killed like this. Years ago, over by Hogan Mountain. Both of them were bounty hunters who tried to cut a slice of this territory.” He walked over to the dead man and looked at his bloodless face. “I never knew for sure who did it, but rumor had it that both men had been killed by Charlie Pink-eye.”
26
“THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!” BENNY AND NIX SAID IT AT THE SAME TIME.
“I hope you’re right,” said Tom.
“Charlie’s dead,” insisted Benny. “Unless he broke his neck when he fell, he’s a zom. He can’t be alive.”
Tom said nothing. He drew his knife and began cutting the corpse down.
“Tom,” said Nix, “Charlie’s dead. I know he is.”
“Okay,” said Tom. He slashed the ropes that held the man’s arms in place and let the body slide to the ground.
“Tom!” snapped Nix. “He’s dead.”
Tom pulled the man’s torso away from the truck and laid him out straight. “I’m not arguing with you, Nix.”
“But you believe us, don’t you? We saw him fall.”
“I believe you.”
“Then…”
“But you didn’t see him land.” He folded the man’s hands together over his stomach, then straightened and went to peer inside the truck. He rummaged for a moment and came back with a large piece of stained plastic sheeting. Without comment he wrapped the body in it and used rocks to weight down the corners.
“Tom!” barked Benny.
Tom turned angrily. “What do you want me to say, Benny? We didn’t stop to examine that side of the mountain. There could have been a slope or a ledge. There might have been enough thick brush to have slowed his fall. Or he could have fallen a hundred feet and been smashed to junk. I don’t know. We don’t know, and that’s the point. I’ve lived this long without giving in to assumptions.”
“But-,” Nix began, but Tom cut her off.
“No.” He sighed. “Now listen to me, both of you. You want to keep going, right? You don’t want to go back to town.”
“No!” snapped Nix. Benny, less sure about that, shook his head slowly.
“Okay,” said Tom, “then you have to learn to keep an open mind. Assumptions will get you killed. If Charlie is dead, then he’s dead. If he’s alive, then he’s alive. We don’t know for sure, but if we don’t allow the possibility of it, then we could get blindsided. Would either of you like it if Charlie was alive and got the drop on us? If he was willing to torture people and feed them to zoms just for cutting into his trade routes, try to imagine what he’d be willing to do to us. We killed his best friend, we led a zombie army against his crew, we made him an outlaw all through this part of the Ruin, he can’t ever come back to town… and you, Benny, beat him in a fight. You really want to wake up and find him grinning at you in the dark? Do you, Nix?”
They said nothing. Neither was able to.