Jonathan Maberry - Dust & Decay

“Damn,” Benny said under his breath.

Nix caught the direction of his stare. “What-?”

“It’s Zak,” he said quietly. “I think he’s hurt. He keeps looking out here.”

Nix opened her mouth to say something stinging about Zak, but then she clamped her jaws shut.

Benny looked at the front of the Houser place, and everything was quiet. People were starting to edge carefully up to the porch. He turned back to Zak’s house, chewing his lip in indecision.

Then, before he knew he was going to do anything, he was walking toward Zak Matthias’s house.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

First Night

That’s what people call the day the dead rose. According to Tom, it started in the morning in a few places, but by night it had spread all over.

No one knows why it started.

No one knows where it started. Tom says that the first report he heard of was a news story out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

By dawn of the next day it had spread all over the world. A state of emergency was declared. Tom says that it was too little and too late.

By noon of the following day all communication was lost from over sixty cities in the United States, and more than three hundred worldwide. No one was counting how many towns and villages were overrun.

The radios and TV stations stopped broadcasting on the fifth day. Cell phones were already dead by then.

After that there was no way to know how bad things were.

BENNY WALKED AROUND TO ZAK’S BACK DOOR. HE KNEW THAT WHEN Big Zak got drunk he usually passed out on the living room couch, so the back of the house seemed like the best place to steal a peek inside.

“Benny!” Nix called as she ran to catch up. “What’s going on?”

“I-,” he began, but he had nowhere to go with it. How could Nix, of all people, understand and accept that Benny wanted to see if Zak Matthias was okay? This house represented everything she’d lost. Benny believed that if their roles were reversed she’d feel the same.

He gave her a meaningless smile-almost a wince-and stepped up onto Zak’s back porch. Nix stayed on the grass by the steps. Benny set his bokken down-no way Zak would open the door if Benny was standing there with a big stick-and cupped his hands around his eyes so he could peer in through the kitchen window. There were no lanterns lit.

The kitchen was empty. No sign of Zak.

Benny gave the door a faint tap-tap .

Nothing. Benny hesitated. What did he really want to say to Zak? Zak’s uncle had murdered Nix’s mom. Benny had killed Charlie. Well, probably killed him. He’d hit him with the Motor City Hammer’s black iron pipe and watched Charlie fall a hundred feet into darkness.

How would any of that open a doorway into a conversation?

Gee, Zak, anyone get murdered today?

He knocked again anyway.

A figure moved behind the curtain and turned the handle. The door opened, and Benny drew a breath, not sure which words were going to come out of his mouth.

It wasn’t Zak.

It was Big Zak.

Not as big as Charlie Pink-eye, but big enough. He wasn’t an albino like Charlie, but he had pale skin and pale blond hair. He was every bit as scary as Charlie, though.

Especially now.

The whole front of Big Zak’s shirt glistened with bright red blood.

“I-I-,” Big Zak croaked, but there wasn’t enough left of his throat to manage more. He took a single trembling step out onto the porch and then fell right on top of Benny. The big man’s weight crushed Benny to the porch boards, driving all the air from his lungs, banging his head hard enough to fill the world with fireworks.

“Benny!” Nix screamed.

He heard his own voice screaming too.

Benny stared up at Big Zak’s face, which was an inch from his. There were scrapes and cuts all over it, and his eyes were wild with pain and terror. Benny struggled to push the crushing weight off of him.

“H-help… me…,” the man croaked. “P-please…”

And then the mad light went out of Big Zak’s eyes. All his weight sagged down, empty of tension, of control. Of life.

Benny panicked, wanting that slack, dead weight off him. He desperately shifted his hip under Big Zak and twisted his hips to move the dead man’s mass. As he worked the wrestling move, he wondered why Nix wasn’t helping. She was right there…

As if on cue, Nix yelled, “Benny! Watch out!”

Big Zak’s body slid partially off him, and Benny kicked his way out. “It’s a little late for ‘watch out’!” he snapped. “I already-”

But Nix was rushing at him with her bokken held high, her face twisted into a mask of mingled hate and fear.

“No!” he yelled. He scrambled backward and collided…

… into Zak.

Benny whirled and looked into the face of his former friend.

Into the pale, dark-eyed, and blood-smeared face of the thing that been Zak Matthias.

With a snarl of insatiable hunger, Zak lunged for Benny’s throat.

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO HAPPEN MUCH TOO FAST.

Zak grabbed the front of Benny’s shirt with icy white fingers and pulled. Benny jammed his palms against Zak’s chest just in time. Zak’s teeth snapped together an inch from Benny’s windpipe. Benny shrieked in terror. Zak moaned in hunger and frustration.

“Benny! Down!”

Suddenly there was a flash of brown hardwood and a sound like a watermelon falling off a wagon onto asphalt. Zak and Benny fell in opposite directions. Benny’s head hit the floor again, harder. Zak pitched backward away from him, his face gone, replaced by an inhuman mask of blood and damaged tissue.

Benny felt like his own head was shattered. He heard a voice screaming his name.

Nix?

Benny tried to say her name, but the world spun around him and all his internal lights went dark.

“BENNY-GET UP!”

The voice was a million miles away.

“Benny!”

His numb brain gave the voice a name. Nix. And… she was yelling at him. Why was she yelling? He tried to ask her, but it came out as a mumble of soft nonsense words.

Then she was pulling at him. Shaking him.

He cranked open one eye. It was like lifting a hundred pounds of bricks.

“Good morning, Nix,” he said in a completely reasonable tone of voice. “Would you like some toast?”

Nix slapped him across the face. Hard.

“Hey-OW!”

The slap cleared his battered brain, and he realized that Nix was bending over him, screaming right in his face.

“ZOMS!”

That did it.

His brain snapped back to full awareness. As Nix hauled him upright there was movement to his left, and Benny turned to see Big Zak getting slowly to his feet, blood dripping from rubbery lips and a ruined throat. The zom turned his slack face toward Benny and moaned like a lost soul.

More movement made Benny turn, and there was Danny Houser and his mother shambling across the lawn toward the porch. Both of them were mangled by bites. Both of them were dead. Zoms. Beyond them, inside the Houser place, there were shouts and screams and gunshots.

“Catch!” Nix scooped up Benny’s sword and threw it to him. Benny snatched it out of the air as Big Zak took a lumbering step toward him. Nix jumped off the porch and ran to intercept Danny, her sword held high.

Big Zak was too close for a perfect swing, so Benny changed direction and hit him with the heavy handle of the wooden sword. The blow caught Big Zak on the point of his jaw, and the impact sent shocks up through Benny’s wrists. Big Zak staggered backward.

Benny cut a look at Nix just in time to see her swing at Mrs. Houser and knock her sideways, but at the same instant Danny rushed forward and grabbed a fistful of Nix’s red hair. Benny took a reflexive step toward her, but then Big Zak grabbed his sweatshirt and jerked him off his feet. The zom dragged him forward and up, first to his toes and then completely off the floor. Even dead, Big Zak Matthias was a powerful man. Benny dangled from the zombie’s fists and for a moment he stared straight into the unblinking eyes of the dead man.