Dust and Decay (Benny Imura 2)

“It’s Zak,” he said quietly. “I think he’s hurt. He keeps looking out here.”

Nix opened her mouth to say something stinging about Zak, but then she clamped her jaws shut.

Benny looked at the front of the Houser place, and everything was quiet. People were starting to edge carefully up to the porch. He turned back to Zak’s house, chewing his lip in indecision.

Then, before he knew he was going to do anything, he was walking toward Zak Matthias’s house.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

First Night

That’s what people call the day the dead rose. According to Tom, it started in the morning in a few places, but by night it had spread all over.

No one knows why it started.

No one knows where it started. Tom says that the first report he heard of was a news story out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

By dawn of the next day it had spread all over the world. A state of emergency was declared. Tom says that it was too little and too late.

By noon of the following day all communication was lost from over sixty cities in the United States, and more than three hundred worldwide. No one was counting how many towns and villages were overrun.

The radios and TV stations stopped broadcasting on the fifth day. Cell phones were already dead by then.

After that there was no way to know how bad things were.

6

BENNY WALKED AROUND TO ZAK’S BACK DOOR. HE KNEW THAT WHEN Big Zak got drunk he usually passed out on the living room couch, so the back of the house seemed like the best place to steal a peek inside.

“Benny!” Nix called as she ran to catch up. “What’s going on?”

“I—,” he began, but he had nowhere to go with it. How could Nix, of all people, understand and accept that Benny wanted to see if Zak Matthias was okay? This house represented everything she’d lost. Benny believed that if their roles were reversed she’d feel the same.

He gave her a meaningless smile—almost a wince—and stepped up onto Zak’s back porch. Nix stayed on the grass by the steps. Benny set his bokken down—no way Zak would open the door if Benny was standing there with a big stick—and cupped his hands around his eyes so he could peer in through the kitchen window. There were no lanterns lit.

The kitchen was empty. No sign of Zak.

Benny gave the door a faint tap-tap.

Nothing. Benny hesitated. What did he really want to say to Zak? Zak’s uncle had murdered Nix’s mom. Benny had killed Charlie. Well, probably killed him. He’d hit him with the Motor City Hammer’s black iron pipe and watched Charlie fall a hundred feet into darkness.

How would any of that open a doorway into a conversation?

Gee, Zak, anyone get murdered today?

He knocked again anyway.

A figure moved behind the curtain and turned the handle. The door opened, and Benny drew a breath, not sure which words were going to come out of his mouth.

It wasn’t Zak.

It was Big Zak.

Not as big as Charlie Pink-eye, but big enough. He wasn’t an albino like Charlie, but he had pale skin and pale blond hair. He was every bit as scary as Charlie, though.

Especially now.

The whole front of Big Zak’s shirt glistened with bright red blood.