Rot and Ruin (Benny Imura 1)

“Not all of anything is the same. There are always differences, always changes. ”

“Zombie evolution?” Benny joked, but Tom shrugged.

“Maybe. We don’t know. ”

“How can we not know?”

“Benny … it’s not like anyone’s made a formal scientific study of zombies. Get real. Who would do that? How would they do it? Mind you, I think they should do it, but as I already said, the people around here don’t spend much active thought on what happens beyond the fence line. Any information on differences in zombies comes from the kind of people who go out into the Ruin. Bounty hunters, the way-station monks, the traders who go from town to town. A few others. And the loners. ”

“Loners?”

“There are people who live out in the Ruin. They’re individuals who want to be alone and would rather deal with the threat of the zoms than rejoin society. ”

“Why?”

“That’s hard to answer, because they’re not a ‘type,’ if you know what I mean. Each one of them has their own reasons. I know some of them. A few are friends. Some never make contact with anyone with a pulse. ” He inhaled through his nose. “And a few of them are very bad people. I know of some that I wouldn’t come within fifty yards of without a weapon in my hand. ”

“Why?”

“Because some of them will kill anyone they meet. Human or zom, they don’t care. They’ve staked out a spot, and I guess it’s their version of paradise, or maybe their corner of hell, and it’s more than your life’s worth to trespass. ”

“How can you tell what are the no-trespass zones?”

“Smart question. The borders are usually marked. Staked out, so to speak. It’s very tribal. I know of a family, living high in the hills, who have driven a line of stakes into the ground all around their place and topped each stake with a head. ”

“Human heads or zoms?”

“After the crows have been at them, it’s hard to say, but I wouldn’t want to bet a torn ration dollar that they only kill zoms. ”

“Is that how the Lost Girl lives?”

Tom didn’t answer immediately, but instead shifted back to his narrative. “I kept moving, following an old travel map that Jessie had marked for me. By nightfall on the third day, I reached the town where the Rileys lived. The place had been hit hard by First Night and what happened after. There was a big road—an interstate highway that ran past it—and it was choked with rusted vehicles. Zoms had been smashed by cars and trucks; run over by people trying to flee or by people who were trying to kill zoms. Even after all that time, you could see where cars skidded away from an impact with a zom and went off the road, or collided with other cars. I guess once a few accidents blocked the road, the cars behind them got jammed up and then the zoms must have closed in and attacked. It was strange, too, because there were clear signs that some of the zoms used stones and heavy sticks to smash through the windows. ”

“Zoms using tools?”

“Sounds weird, right? But I’ve seen it a couple of times. It’s another one of the variations, and I can’t explain it any more than I can explain why they don’t rot away completely. ” Tom took a muffin and bit off a piece, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then continued. “There were some military vehicles there, too, and I could tell there had been a huge battle. Everything had been chopped by heavy caliber rounds or blasted by grenades and rockets. Even with that there were very few bodies, of course, because the dead would have reanimated. That’s why we didn’t win the war. By the time the authorities realized that it was only damage to the motor cortex of the brain or to the brain stem that could permanently put them down, a lot of the combat units had been overwhelmed by zoms they’d hit with body shots. I saw a couple of those early fights, and I saw machine gunners emptying their weapons at the walking dead, chopping off arms and legs and tearing out huge chunks of hips and torsos, and the zoms just got back up and kept coming. Or they crawled toward the troops. I guess the soldiers permanently dropped half of the zoms they faced, but some of the dead got up three, four times, advancing a little closer each time until … well, you know. We lost. There were plenty of bones, though, skeletons from people that had been attacked by crowds of zombies and devoured, or from zoms that had been killed by head shots. ”

“What about walkers?” Benny asked, referring to mobile zombies.

“Most of them must have followed survivors out of town. But … there were still plenty of zoms in town. As I walked along the streets I could see some inside of stores or houses. I counted about twenty of them that had fallen into empty swimming pools and couldn’t climb out. Plus there were a lot of them stuck inside of cars. A few banged against the glass as I passed, but they couldn’t do anything to me … though I moved away fast, so the noise didn’t attract the walkers. The worst, though, were zoms who were trapped under the wheels of cars, their legs or hips crushed, so that they were alive from the waist up but stuck there forever. ”

“God …,” Benny said. “Did you find the Rileys?”

“Sure. They were in their house, just like Jessie said they were. Front and back doors were closed. The family had owned a couple of big dogs—two German shepherds—and there’d been a terrible fight in the living room. The Rileys must have turned on the animals, and the dogs fought like dogs will. They had old bites all over them. The father was missing his hands, and the oldest son, Danny, had almost no throat left. The dogs made a fight of it, but …” He left the rest unsaid. “Because of the damage, the zoms were very weak. I tied them up and quieted them without a fuss. I was in and out in twenty minutes. ”

“Did you have to read a letter? From Nix’s mom?”

“Yes. She wrote a long letter. It was very …” Tom stopped, shook his head. “Jessie really loved her husband and sons. The letter was almost too hard to read, you know? By the time I was finished, I was telling myself that I was done, that I would never—could never—do that sort of thing again. ”

“But you still do. ”

“I still do. ”

“Do you like this stuff?”

Tom winced. “‘Like’? Only a psychopath would like to do what I do. ”

“So why do it?”