“You’re a bounty hunter? That’s what you’re trying to tell me? That’s what I’m supposed to believe?”
The teen shrugged. “Believe what you want.”
The guard gave a big braying laugh. “And who are you supposed to be apprenticing to?”
The cold green eyes were steady and unblinking. “My brother,” he said.
“Yeah? And who’s your brother?”
“Tom Imura,” said the boy.
The mocking grin froze on the guard’s face, and then slowly, slowly, it drained away. The guard’s eyes flicked from the teen to the red zone that separated the fence line and the broad green fields that flanked them from the town.
“Tom Imura?” echoed the guard in a small voice. “You’re Tom Imura’s kid brother . . . ?”
“Yes,” said Benny Imura. “My brother told me to come down here. He told me to do what I’m doing. Do you want me to go tell him that you said I couldn’t?”
It wasn’t said as a threat. Benny never raised his voice, never changed his expression. The guard stood near him, looking down at him, his mouth now working silently in an unconscious parody of the zombie.
“I’d like to be left alone,” said Benny. “If that’s not breaking any rules.”
“Um . . . no. No, that’s fine,” said the guard. He unconsciously backed away from Benny, and his beefy shoulders bumped lightly against the chain-link wall.
Instantly the zombie lunged at him, thrusting her withered fingers through the links, clawing at the guard’s shirt, biting at the chain-links with rotted gray teeth.
The guard cried out in alarm and tried to simultaneously pull himself away and close the shotgun breech; but before he could do either, Benny was out of his chair. Benny grabbed the guard’s shirt with both hands and yanked him forward, away from the fence, away from the twisting pale fingers. As the guard staggered forward, his weight crashed toward Benny, but the teenager pivoted his hips and shoved the guard away from him so that the man staggered several yards toward the red zone. The shotgun fell to the grass with a muffled thud.
The moment seemed to freeze in place. The guard lay shocked and wide-eyed on the ground near the shotgun; the zom stood erect and motionless, her hunting frenzy stilled with no prey to attack. Benny Imura stood between them, legs planted wide, arms wide, palms pointing calmingly out toward guard and zom.
The guard looked up at the teenager as Benny slowly lowered his arms.
“You have to be careful around them,” said the boy. “They bite.”
Then Benny offered his hand to the guard and helped him up. He didn’t touch the fallen shotgun, leaving it to the guard. Once he was up and dusted off, the guard checked the shotgun barrels and gave Benny a long, considering glare.
“I ought to chase you the heck out of here,” he said.
“Because zoms are dangerous?” asked Benny, and now there was definitely wry humor in his eyes. Humor and something else that the guard at first could not identify. Some bigger emotion.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny.”
They regarded each other for half a minute of silence, and then the guard chuckled and smiled. A small, rueful smile. Benny’s smile was slower in coming, and smaller. But it was there.
And it was then that the guard identified the other emotion that hid behind the kid’s green eyes. It was sadness. A vast and terrible sadness.
“You were out there,” said the guard quietly. “Weren’t you?”
Benny nodded.
“In the Ruin?”
Another nod.
“With Tom? When all that stuff happened to Charlie and the Hammer?”
One more nod, slower than the others.
The guard cleared his throat. He glanced at the chair, which had fallen over when Benny rushed in to save him from the zom. Without another word, the guard bent to pick up the chair. He righted it, glanced at the fence and the zom, then moved the chair back about six inches.