Dust and Decay (Benny Imura 2)

It never connected.

Preacher Jack was old—in his sixties, with a face as lined as a road map and a body as frail-looking as a stick bug—but he stepped into the blow and caught the wooden sword with one calloused hand. The sudden stop jolted Benny, but the shock of it, the seeming impossibility of it, froze him into the moment. He stared at the hand that gripped his sword and then looked up into Preacher Jack’s face. That smile never wavered.

“Surprise, surprise,” whispered the preacher. With his free hand he punched Benny full in the face. Benny reeled back, bright blood spurting from his nose and lips. He suddenly fell, and his flailing left arm struck Nix across the temple. They both crashed to the grass.

Worms of flame twisted through the air in front of Benny’s eyes, and his whole head seemed to be filled with bursting fireworks. Next to him, Nix groaned softly and rolled onto her side.

The two bounty hunters were on their feet now, and they glared down in fury at Benny. The big white man raised his leg to stomp Benny, but Preacher Jack stopped him with a small click of his tongue. “Digger, Heap—take their toys,” said the preacher. The two men seethed for a moment, their hands opening and closing. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

They shot frightened looks at the old man and immediately bent to strip Nix and Benny of knives and anything else that could be used as a weapon, including their fishing line and storm matches. The men were rougher than they needed to be, and their searching hands were far more personally intrusive than necessary. Nix yelped in pain and indignation and kicked the pig-eyed man named Heap in the thigh, missing her intended target by inches. Heap snarled at her and stepped back.

Preacher Jack stood over them. “Oh, how strange the world must be to you young people. Strange, and wondrous and full of mysteries,” he murmured. Weird shadows swirled in his pale eyes. “I know what questions must be screaming inside your heads right at this very moment, indeed I do.”

Benny spat blood out of his mouth. “You don’t know anything about us.”

“Actually, my young buck, I know more about you than you know about me … and that’s going to be so unfortunate for you.”

“Tom will kill you,” said Nix with real heat.

“Oh … I pray he tries.”

Digger and Heap chuckled.

Nix wiped blood from her eyes. “Tom’s going to find us and—”

“Of course he’s going to find you, girl. Lord oh Lord but we’ve made it easy for him to find you. To find me.” Preacher Jack stepped closer and squatted down so that he was nearly eye to eye with Benny and Nix. “Mmm … didn’t expect that answer, did you? Tell me … what is it you think is going to happen? Do you think you’re going to be rescued by the big bad Fast Tommy? Tom the Swordsman, Tom of the Woods … Tom the Killer? Is that what you think?”

“Why are you doing this?” pleaded Nix. “Why can’t you people just leave us alone? All we want to do is leave this place.”

“Leave? And go where?”

Nix pointed east. “Far away from you and all this stuff. We don’t want any part of it.”

“You want to go east?” Something moved behind Preacher Jack’s eyes, and for a moment he almost looked afraid. Then his eyes hardened. “Oh, my foolish little sinners, you don’t want to go east. There’s nothing out there for you.”

“Yes there is,” Nix said. “There’s—” She stopped, cutting off her own words.

“What were you going to say? That there’s a plane? A big, shiny jet plane?” Preacher Jack shook his head. “I might be doing you a kindness to keep you from that path. Only thing you’d find east of here is horror and heartache.”

“As opposed to the good times and bunnies we have here,” said Benny. However, despite his snarky comment, Preacher Jack’s words—and that look that had passed behind his eyes—opened an ugly door of doubt deep in Benny’s soul. Had Nix caught it too?

“Why?” Nix demanded again. “Why are you doing this?”

Preacher Jack drove the tip of Benny’s bokken into the soft ground and leaned on it, laying one cheek against the polished hardwood. “Now that’s a wonderful question, little girl. Why indeed? Why did I come out of ‘retirement’? Until December of last year I was content to tend to my flock. I was at work in the fields of the Lord, seeing to the Children of Lazarus.”

“Zoms,” breathed Benny, wanting the word to wipe the smile off Preacher Jack’s mouth.

“Ah yes, the tactic of provoking your enemy. Did Tom teach you that? Or is it your own natural sinfulness that leads you to insult a servant of God? No … don’t answer, boy, because if I hear that word come out of your mouth, I’ll cut off your tongue and nail it to your forehead. Don’t think I’m joking, little Benjamin, ’cause it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve stilled the offending tongue of a sinner. Ain’t that right, boys?”

“Amen to that, padre,” they said.

Benny, wisely, said nothing.

Preacher Jack nodded approval. “When word came to me that Tom Imura had murdered Charlie Matthias and Marion Hammer, well … I knew that the Lord was calling me to do other work.”

“Tom didn’t murder anyone!” declared Nix. “Charlie Pink-eye was the murderer! He killed my mother!”

“Shhh, little girl. I believe you’d find it hard to speak lies with your lips sewn shut.”