Dust and Decay
Page 24

They were on a slope that led up to a shadowy mass of trees that he could barely see by starlight. There were far fewer zoms up there, the lines of them visibly thinning. However, that was not what Nix was pointing to. A figure stood at the top of the path. Benny had to blink the stinging smoke out of his eyes to make it out. At first it looked like a tall shrubbery, but then it moved to stand more fully in the starlight, and Benny gasped.
From the height, he judged the figure to be a man, but otherwise it was impossible to tell. It seemed like he was wearing a small tree, but then Benny realized that the man wore a long coat onto which leaves and pinecones had been sewn. His face was entirely covered by a round mask made up of oak leaves. Benny knew who it was, even in the dark. He knew him from Tom’s description and from his own Zombie Cards.
It was the Greenman. Zoms walked past him, staggering out of the forest; a few even bumped into him as they stumbled down the grassy path. The Greenman did not move except to raise a slender finger to the “lips” of his mask.
Benny and Nix fell silent and stood as still as statues. Below them the wind was blowing the fire toward the fall of rocks. It was not spreading into the hills, and Benny was grateful for small mercies. He didn’t want to cause even more problems for Tom, and he certainly didn’t want to start a forest fire.
It took a long time for the zoms to pass. Benny tried to count off the seconds and minutes just to keep from going crazy. He wanted to gather Nix in his arms and hug her hard enough to make them both scream. He wanted noise and peace at the same time. Anything but what was all around them.
Then it was over. The last of the zoms—a sad-faced man wearing the stained rags of a house painter’s coveralls—tottered past. He had a butcher knife buried in his chest, but the blade was pitted with rust. The creature turned an empty face toward Benny for a long moment, and despite all the terror that still crouched in his chest, Benny felt sorry for him. He almost said as much. Then the zombie vanished into the smoke and gloom down on the field.
Nix tugged his sleeve, and Benny looked up to see that the Greenman was beckoning them with slow movements of his hand. Then he turned and walked toward the woods without waiting to see if Benny and Nix were following.
“Who is that?” Nix asked. “Is that Lilah? What’s she wearing?”
Benny shook his head. “It’s the Greenman.”
“Why’s he dressed like that?”
“Tom says that he found some way to blend into the forest. Even the zoms don’t see him.” He lowered his sword and reached out his hand. “Come on.”
Nix sniffed back tears and took his hand, giving him one of her fierce squeezes. “Where’s Lilah?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I saw her run … but then I lost her.”
“Do—do you think she got out?”
“Absolutely,” he said carefully. “Lilah’s used to taking care of herself.” Though as he said it he was remembering the mad, desperate look in her eyes. He wondered about his own sanity. After all, he had just set an enormous fire and was pretty sure he had seen Charlie Pink-eye standing alive but unharmed in the middle of a field of zoms. Benny debated for less than half a millisecond about whether to tell Nix about this now, and realized that it was something best saved for daylight. At the moment they needed safety and time to check for injuries. The burn on Benny’s shoulder felt white hot, and he was not 100 percent positive that the carpet coats had saved them from the teeth of the living dead. They could both be infected, and that thought nearly dropped Benny in his tracks.
Nix grabbed his arm and pulled him. “Come on,” she said, and they hurried up the hill after the Greenman. However, when they got to the top of the hill and entered the forest path, the strange figure was gone.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Zombies and fire
When some people tell stories of First Night, they say that they used fire to scare off the zoms. They say that zoms won’t cross a line of fire, that they’ll retreat from a torch. They say that if a zom catches fire, it will run away. Tom says this is wrong.
He says that a zom will walk through fire. He says that they are attracted to its light and movement. He says that he’s seen burning zoms walk as far as a hundred yards before the heat did so much damage to muscles and tendons that they couldn’t walk anymore.
And he says that when the army nuked the big cities, waves of radioactive zoms kept coming, and people sometimes died from the intense radioactivity before the zoms could bite them.
What ARE they?
40
“SOMETHING’S COMING!” WHISPERED SALLY TWO-KNIVES.
Tom Imura got quickly to his feet, his fingers curled around the handle of his sword. They were huddled together under the eaves of an olive tree that grew amid a cluster of tall boulders. As he crept to the edge of the largest boulder, Tom heard the soft hiss of Sally drawing one of her knives. He tuned that out and focused on the darkened woods beyond. Before setting up their temporary camp, Tom had gathered armloads of frail twigs and scattered them along any likely path of approach. The snap of a twig had brought them both to full alertness.
There was a second snap. And a third. Whoever was out there didn’t care about making sound. In this world that meant one of two things. Either the person was traveling with a party that was so heavily armed that he had no fear of attracting the attention of the living dead; or they were the living dead. Tom edged farther out and let himself go still, becoming part of the rock, the shadows, and the forest. He had reluctantly accepted some of Sally’s cadaverine only because it would have been virtually impossible to get her up into a tree for the night. With one injured arm and a bad stab wound, Sally would be lucky if she could walk. Forget climbing.
A moment later a figure stepped out from behind a bushy rhododendron. It was a boy, a teenager, possibly thirteen when he died. Now immortal in the cruelest sense of the word. His eyes roved across the gap between the boulders and the olive tree but did not linger on Tom. The creature’s mouth hung slack, the lips were rubbery. The boy wore a grimy and faded Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt and what looked like swim trunks with a pattern of flaming skulls. The teenager’s feet were bare, and the bloodless skin was so badly torn that Tom could see tendons and bones. He wanted to close his eyes or look away, but the boy was still a zom and he was still a threat.
Tom remained still as the dead teenager staggered along the trail and vanished into the gloom. He was about to go back inside the circle of rocks when he paused and straightened. Was the southeastern sky … red? The canopy of leaves was too thick to allow more than a glimpse of the sky, but it seemed to Tom that there was a reddish glow. Was it a trick of the light? He couldn’t tell.
Tom relaxed and moved back into the protection of the rocks.
“Zom?” asked Sally.
“Zom,” agreed Tom.
“You quiet him?”
“No.”
She chuckled. “Mr. Softy.”
He shrugged. Everyone who knew Tom was aware that he wouldn’t kill a zom unless it was part of a closure job or self-defense. This zom had not been aware of him or Sally and was therefore no immediate threat.
Tom settled down and passed her his canteen. She drank and handed it back.
“Been a lot more zoms in these woods lately,” she said. “Last week, ten days. Getting so you can’t take two steps without tripping over one.”
“Really?” Tom said, surprised. “This was always a quiet section. It’s why I brought the kids up here. What’s drawing the zoms here?”
“Not sure, but there’s lots of stuff coming out of the east lately. Weird stuff. I saw a small herd of zebras running along the same game trail as some elk. Bunch of monkeys, too. Haven’t seen a monkey since I took my kids to the San Diego Zoo a million years ago, but I’ve seen a slew of them lately.”
“I saw a rhinoceros,” Tom said, and told her about the encounter.
“Wow. A lot of these critters are coming out of the denser parts of Yosemite, but even more are coming from farther east. Don’t know why. Something out there is scaring wild animals enough to drive them here, and maybe the zoms are following the animals.”
Tom chewed his lip for a moment. “Y’know, Sal, I saw something today that really rattled me.” He told her about the man who had been tied to the truck and left for the zoms.
“Damn,” she said. “That’s one of Charlie’s old tricks, Tom, but you’ve seen that before. Maybe somebody’s copying Charlie’s act. White Bear or—”
“It’s worse than that,” Tom said, and told her the rest.
Sally gaped at him. “Are you sure about that? He didn’t have a broken neck? You’re positive no one quieted him?”
“Positive.”
“So what the hell does that mean?” she demanded.
“I have no idea,” Tom said. “Part of me hopes that it’s real, that it’s true … that maybe whatever this is … this plague … is finally coming to an end.”
“Yeah, and I keep hoping I’ll wake up and First Night never happened.”
He nodded. “The other part of me is scared by it, Sal.”
“You? Scared? Why?”
“Because right now I know how things are. A zom is a zom, and I know the rules of that. But if the game has changed, then nothing I know is certain.” He paused. “I’ve been teaching Benny the way things work … but what if everything I’m teaching him is wrong? What if he—”
“Stop,” she said, touching her fingers to his lips. “You’re talking like a parent now, and that’s my territory. Tom … the world is always changing. Always. We can’t give the next generation a set of guarantees. Best we can do is help them be smart enough and tough enough to deal with whatever comes. You know as well as I do that we’re not going to be there forever for them.”
“I know, but things are changing just when we’re leaving home.” Tom gave a moody grunt and sipped from his canteen. “I’m worried about Chong, too. At least Benny’s been out here before. Chong hasn’t. I have to find him.”
“You will,” she assured him, then added, “I wish I could go with you. But at least I can get to Brother David’s and tell Benny and the girls how things are. If I see J-Dog and Dr. Skillz, I’ll draw them a map so they can find you.”
“Why?”
“Backup. They’d like to see Gameland burn down as much as I would.”
Tom shook his head. “This is just a rescue mission, Sally. A snatch and grab, and then I’m out of there. I’m not going out there to assault Gameland.”
“Again,” she said with a wicked grin.
“Again. I burned it down once and Charlie rebuilt it. Now someone else is running it. Maybe White Bear … maybe Charlie, if he’s still alive. If I burn it down again, they’ll simply keep rebuilding it. There are too many corrupt people out here and in the towns to expect a moneymaker like that to stay closed. I can’t spend my life burning it down.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“I’m serious. I have kids to protect. Soon as there’s enough morning light to see, I have to find Chong and get him home, and then I’m going east with my brother and his friends.”
“Whatever you say, Tom.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’m sure you’re going to do whatever you think is best.”
“That’s right, and right now that means getting Chong back from whoever took him.”
Sally kept smiling. “And God help anyone who gets in your way.”
Tom Imura said nothing.
41
NIX AND BENNY WERE EXHAUSTED, SCARED, HUNGRY, AND HEARTSICK. The forest was too vast and too dark for them to mount a search for the Greenman.
Behind them, far below on the field, the fire was burning itself out. They were too far away to see much, though. Had the zoms all burned? Had the fire killed them, or would there be a legion of charred zombies haunting this mountain pass forever? It was a grotesque thought.
Now that the fire was fading, the sky was less intensely red. Benny wondered if Tom had seen the blaze. If so, what would he do? Was he already on his way back to the way station, or was he on the far side of the mountain with the massive forest and tall hills acting as a screen? The wind was blowing to the south, so Tom could not have smelled the smoke. He might not even know.
“Tomorrow,” said Benny, loosening the belt of the carpet coat to allow cool air to soothe him, “we’re going to have to try and go back. Tom will come back to the way station looking for us.”
Nix didn’t answer that. Even if Tom returned to the way station, the ashes of a zom and the ashes of two teenagers would look about the same.
“There’s a good tree,” said Nix, pointing to a crooked cottonwood. It had very strong lower branches and lots of other stout limbs reaching out in all directions. Benny scrambled up first to test it. Tom had taught him how to pick the right tree. The rule of thumb was that if a branch was as thick as your bicep then it should be able to take your weight. Benny had tested this on dozens of trees and found it to be a reliable guide. Tom had cautioned against some trees, such as sycamores, because they had a nasty tendency to split; and dead trees were to be avoided at all costs.
Benny shimmied up the trunk, letting his legs do the work and saving his arm muscles until he reached the lowest limb. After he tested the limbs and found a couple of good resting spots, he paused to catch his breath and control the impulse to scream. The burn on his shoulder hurt so bad it felt like he was still on fire. But every time he felt that he could not keep the screams inside, he thought of Nix sitting in silence on the tree stump as Lilah stitched her face. He decided that he would die before he dishonored her by caving into his own pain.