Benny knelt beside the corpse for a second, the naked blade in his hand.
“This is probably cutting you a break,” he muttered, “but we may need this place again. ”
With that he plunged the tip of the blade into the back of the man’s neck, right below the skull. Quieting him. He pulled the blade free, lips curled in disgust, and then repeated the process with Turk. Then he wiped the blade clean on Turk’s shirt, slid the knife into the sheath on the gun belt, and climbed down to catch up with Nix and Lilah. His mind churned with what he had just done. Closure, of a kind, although it felt more like taking out the garbage than giving peace to the dead. Either way it was necessary work.
All part of the family business.
43
BENNY AND NIX FOLLOWED THE LOST GIRL INTO THE WOODS THAT surrounded the ranger station. She led them thirty yards up a crooked path that had been carved by rain runoff, making sure to step on rocks or fallen logs, leaving no footprints at all. Nix noticed that first and pointed it out to Benny, and they imitated her careful ways, though it meant that they went more slowly and with far less grace than the lithe Lilah.
Lilah suddenly stopped with her head cocked to listen.
“Hide!” she hissed with quiet urgency, and immediately she appeared to vanish into a tangle of wild roses. Nix pulled Benny down behind an ancient rhododendron, and they huddled together, trying to make themselves as small as rabbits.
“What is it?” Benny whispered, but Nix jabbed him in the ribs and pointed.
They had a good view of the open space at the base of the tower and the various game trails that crisscrossed in front of it. At first Benny didn’t see anything, but then the tall grass in the clearing shifted and a man stepped very cautiously out of hiding.
Charlie Matthias.
Nix gave a sharp inward hiss and grabbed Benny’s arm with such force that he thought she’d break the bones. Her fingernails dug into his flesh, and from that point of contact he could feel a shudder of disgust and murderous fury wash through her. Here was the man who had killed her mother. With his other hand Benny reached for the pistol at his hip, but Lilah appeared out of nowhere and touched his arm. When he looked at her, she shook her head and nodded to the other side of the clearing. Three more men stepped into the sunlight. The Hammer and the Mekong brothers. All of them carried guns.
The men walked to the foot of the ranger tower, casting cautious looks at the surrounding woods and checking the ground for footprints. When they passed the spot where Lilah had led Nix and Benny into the woods, the men saw nothing to attract their attention.
At the base of the ladder, the Hammer cupped his hands around his mouth and gave a short, sharp whistle that sounded like a woodland bird. He waited for a few seconds, then made the call again. He turned to Charlie and shook his head.
“Go on up and see what’s what,” Charlie growled to Vin. His voice carried easily in the clear morning air.
“Yeah, maybe I’ll find my lucky coin,” Vin said as he turned toward the ladder, but Charlie grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
“You have something to say, boy, you say it to my face. ”
Vin looked up at Charlie, and for a moment Benny thought that the smaller man was going to try something. He was holding his shotgun; he could have stepped back and brought the gun up into Charlie’s face. One act of courage or pride, and the devil would be on his way down. Nix gripped Benny’s wrist and gave it a pump, as if that would somehow encourage Vin to do the right thing.
In the end, however, Vin did the cowardly thing. He mumbled something and lowered both his eyes and his gun.
“Go about your business, then,” Charlie said flatly. “Git your skinny butt up that ladder and see what those two morons are doing,”
Vin shot a quick look at Joey Duk, but he didn’t let Charlie see his expression. He slung his shotgun across his back and began climbing as the other men trained their weapons on the catwalk. Vin went up carefully and slowly, and when his head and shoulders were just above the level of the platform, he froze. Benny could hear his curses floating through the trees.
“What is it?” demanded Charlie.
“You better get up here, boss. ”
With a growl, Charlie and the Hammer climbed to the catwalk while Joey remained at ground level to guard the ladder. Benny had to crab sideways a few yards to see the three men as they stood there, examining the bodies of their fallen comrades.
It was then that the reality of what he’d done hit Benny.
I killed a man.
Not a zombie … but a real, living human being.
He listened inside for his conscience to scream about the wrongness of it, but all he heard echoing through his internal darkness was the sound of Morgie’s trembling voice back at Nix’s house, and the sound of Tom’s voice as he held Jessie Riley. And the sound of Nix’s awful sobs last night. If his conscience had something to say about what he’d done, it didn’t dare say it loud enough to be heard. And some other part of him wished that he’d driven that wooden spike into the big man with the pale skin and the one red eye, who stood with his fists on his hips thirty yards away. If only Tom had taught him how to shoot. But then, he reflected, he knew enough about handguns to understand that thirty yards was a long way for any kind of accuracy. Even if he emptied the entire magazine at the catwalk, he might not hit anyone and would, in turn, draw deadlier fire from their long guns. Charlie had a rifle slung on his back.
He bent close to Nix and Lilah, and mouthed the words: “Stay or go?”
Lilah made a palms-down gesture. Stay.