Rot and Ruin (Benny Imura 1)

Lilah’s eyes twinkled. “Yes. Very funny. Your faces!” She laughed, and the sound of it drew another series of long moans from the dead.

“What is this place?” Nix demanded.

Benny told her. Lilah listened and nodded, and Nix looked horrified. Lilah pointed out a few trees where the ropes had been cut and the zoms taken.

“God …,” Nix said, “Charlie’s harvesting them. ”

“Sometimes,” Lilah said, “I come here. Cut some loose. Let them go. ”

“Why?”

“I do it when I think Charlie is coming. ”

“An ambush. Sweet,” Benny said with a grin. “Sick and twisted … but sweet. Oh, and … sorry for calling you a bitch. ”

She shrugged. “Been called worse. Don’t care much. ”

Nix could not take her eyes off of the legions of living dead. “How many of them are in here?”

Lilah considered, shrugged. “Three thousand. More. ”

“It’s horrible. ”

Lilah shrugged again and turned to Benny. “You think it’s horrible?”

“I’m not sure what I think about it,” he said.

/> To Nix, Lilah said, “Two times I came here and let them go. Cut all ropes. ”

“Why?”

“To free them. They followed me to the field. By the water. ”

“Geez,” Benny said, “those were the zoms we ran into by Coldwater Creek. You let them go?”

Lilah nodded. “Sometimes … seeing them. Tied. Makes me sad. I untie and lead them away. ”

“You lead them? How do you do that without getting chomped?” Benny asked.

She looked at him as if he was a moron. “They’re slow. I’m not slow. ” Then she pinched the skin of her forearm. “They follow flesh. ”

Benny swallowed hard, trying to imagine a horde of zombies, shambling along after this beautiful and crazy Lost Girl.

Lilah looked up through a small opening in the canopy of leaves at the position of the sun. “Time to go. ”

With that, she turned and walked deeper into the Hungry Forest. Each zombie she passed craned its neck and tried to bite her, but the Lost Girl did not appear to notice. Or care.

Benny and Nix lingered a moment longer, caught up in all of the different ways in which this place was wrong. Whether the zoms were tied to the trees or taken for bounties or freed to wander, the horror of it was overwhelming.

The zombies closest to them moaned incessantly, biting the air, as if aching to feed on just the smell of living flesh.

“Your girlfriend is deranged,” said Nix.

“She’s not my girlfriend, thank you very much. And I believe Tom said the expression was ‘touched by God. ’”

“She’s touched all right. Come on, this place is way beyond creepy. Let’s get out of here, Benny,” Nix said. “Right now. ”

“With you on that,” he agreed, but as they hurried along the path to catch up, Benny kept looking back, compelled to lock this image in his mind. There was something about it that was starting to shove ideas around in his head. Weird and wicked ideas.