Bits & Pieces (Benny Imura 5)

Anyway, when Tom’s outside training with his sword, he sometimes does it with no shirt on. It’s funny, but when he wears a shirt he looks kind of skinny, but when he takes it off, he’s got all these muscles. They aren’t huge—not like Mr. Williams, who has muscles on his muscles on his muscles. Tom’s muscles are more like Mr. Olivetti, our gym teacher at school.

When Tom’s in his yard working with his sword, Mrs. Kirsch seems to find a lot of reasons to water her flowers, even if it just rained. Or to put seed in the bird feeder, even after they’ve migrated south. Sometimes she has her friends over. They sit on the porch and seem to drink a lot of wine no matter what time of day it is.

I don’t get it. I mean, sure, Tom’s cute, but he’s old. If he was twenty on First Night, then he’s at least thirty-four. That’s almost as old as my mom. Kind of gross.

Now Benny . . .

Yeah, that’s different.

He’s older too, but only by a year. He just turned fifteen.

Benny’s so cute. God.

He doesn’t mess around with swords, though. And he can’t stand Tom. He thinks Tom’s a jerk. He thinks Tom ran away and didn’t try to help their folks when the outbreak happened.

Benny said he ran away and left them there to die.

Benny hates Tom.

I asked Mom about that, and she said that Benny’s wrong. She says Tom is a hero because he saved Benny. That he saved a lot of people.

I don’t know what to believe. Benny seems so sure.

It makes me wonder, though . . . what exactly is a hero?

I’ll have to

look that up too.

Jack and Jill

Stebbins County, Pennsylvania

During the Outbreak

(On First Night, fourteen years before Rot & Ruin)

1

Jack Porter was twelve going on never grow up.

He was one of the walking dead.

He knew it. Everyone knew it.

Remission was not a reprieve; it just put you in a longer line at the airport. Jack had seen what happened to his cousin, Toby. Three remissions in three years. Hope pushed Toby into a corner and beat the crap out of him each time. Toby was a ghost in third grade, a skeleton in fourth grade, a withered thing in a bed by the end of fifth grade, and bones in a box before sixth grade even started. All that hope had accomplished was to make everyone more afraid.

Now it was Jack’s turn.

Chemo, radiation. Bone marrow transplants. Even surgery.

Like they say in the movies, life sucks, and then you die.

So, yeah, life sucked.

What there was of it.

What there was left.