“Maybe,” Benny said dubiously.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Benny looked at her, surprised. “Really? You’re telling me that you can’t see their point?”
“Their point?”
“Shh, keep your voice down.”
Nix stepped closer. “Benny, what are you saying? That you agree with—?”
“What?” He almost laughed. “Agree? Are you nuts? I never said I agreed with anything. All I asked was whether you could understand their point.”
“What possible point could there be to a death cult?”
Benny stared at her. “You’re serious?”
She punched him on the arm. Hard. “Of course I’m serious.”
“First . . . ow. Second, I thought you were the one who was always all torn up about people back home being so depressed and fatalistic. You were always going on about how people have just given up. That’s why we’re out here, isn’t it? Trying to find some survivors who still believe that there is a future.”
“That’s my point,” she snapped. “We need to focus on being alive.”
“We do, sure, but that’s you and me and Chong and Lilah. Maybe a few others. Everyone else is still acting like they’re at a funeral for the human race.”
“That’s grief and depression,” said Nix, “not a freaking death cult.”
“Maybe those things aren’t all that far apart. C’mon, you’ve heard all those stories about how many people committed suicide after First Night. Mayor Kirsch said that almost half the people who settled Mountainside killed themselves within eighteen months.”
“It wasn’t nearly that many,” Nix said defensively, but it was a weak parry.
“Yes, it was. I heard Captain Strunk talking to Tom about it. Pastor Kellogg did a sermon about it.”
Nix holstered her pistol. “I must have missed church that day.”
“Okay, then what about the way-station monks? Some of them let themselves get bitten because they think it’s what God wants. They think the zoms are the meek that are supposed to inherit the—”
“I know,” she said bitterly.
Benny paused, studying her face. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me that you never thought about it?”
Nix’s head whipped around so fast that her flying hair brushed across Benny’s face. “I would never kill myself.”
“Whoa! Whoa, now. Who said anything about—?”
“You did. You asked me if I thought about killing myself.”
“No, I didn’t,” he insisted. “I asked if you ever thought about people in town killing themselves.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“It’s what I meant, and you know it.”
Nix narrowed her eyes at him in an expression that was half a glare and half an inspection of his eyes.
“Whatever,” she said, and turned away again. She drew her bokken, then stood there, pretending to study the landscape.
Benny stared at the back of her head and did not dare say anything else. Nix had been absolutely correct. He had asked her if she ever thought about killing herself.