Jonathan Maberry - Rot & Ruin

Benny watched Lilah as she busied herself with what probably passed for her daily routine. Her first concern was security, and she checked the hang of the drapes to prevent any trace of light from showing through. Even a pinpoint of firelight would be visible for miles in the absolute darkness of these mountains at night. Then Lilah strung two lines across the entrance. The first was a length of twine on which dozens of empty tin cans and pieces of broken metal were strung. When it was in place, it lay against the drapes. If anyone moved the cloth, the metal would kick up a jangling din, loud enough to wake her. The second line was a length of silver wire she positioned at mid-shin level. It was virtually invisible in the gloom, but once someone passed the drapes, they would trip over it. Between the noise and this delaying trick, whoever broke in would not be sneaking up on a sleeping girl, but would be sprawled on the ground while a practiced killer hunted them in the dark.

“Did you ever have to use that trip wire?” he asked. He and Nix and their friends had learned all about simple booby traps in the Scouts. They were great for slowing down a zombie attack.

Lilah tested the tension on the trip wire, plucking it like a guitar string, so that it hummed. “Once,” she said. “It worked.”

“Zom or human?” asked Nix.

Lilah shrugged. “What does it matter?”

Once the entrance was rigged, she unbuckled her gun belt and placed it next to the pallet she used as a bed. She put the spear into an old umbrella stand in which there were various clubs, baseball bats, hockey sticks, and a long-handled axe.

“Lilah,” said Nix. “This place-all these things-it’s incredible. You brought all of this here by yourself?”

Lilah poured water into a cooking pot and began adding bits of meat and vegetables. “By myself. Who else?”

“How many of these books have you read?”

“All.” She smiled for the first time since they’d started walking. She leaned over and began stirring the mixture in the pot. “I… read, um, better than talk. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” said Benny enthusiastically. “Lilah, you’re amazing! Isn’t she amazing, Nix?”

Benny, caught up in the moment, turned to Nix, but her expression was a few hundred degrees colder than his. Benny’s common sense took a giant step back for an emergency re-evaluation of everything that had happened in the last few seconds. Lilah, lit by the soft glow of the cook fire, was bending over and smiling. The inadequate rags of her shirt were doing even less of their job. Benny, who, to his credit, hadn’t even been aware of all this, was suddenly very aware-and aware of the fact that Nix was watching both of them. The common sense part of him slapped his forehead and prayed for an earthquake or a timely invasion by a horde of zoms. Benny tried to salvage the moment by stretching his last question into a longer one. “… to have read so many books.”

As lame attempts go, this one was barely able to limp.

The grin he gave Nix was intended to be earnest, scholarly, and totally oblivious to the miles of cleavage Lilah was showing. Nix’s smile was chilly enough to kill houseplants.

And Chong fries Morgie for being thick , Benny thought, feeling the edges of his smile begin to crack.

To Lilah, Nix said, “George taught you to read?”

Lilah, who was unpracticed enough with people to misread the moment, nodded and sat back. “Yes. We had to read. All the time. ‘Knowledge is power,’” she recited in a voice that was clearly an attempt to imitate George’s.

They nodded. Benny took the opportunity to ask her some questions. “Lilah, have you been alone all this time? I mean… since Gameland?”

She nodded. “Alone.”

“How did you survive?” asked Nix.

Lilah turned cold eyes on her. “What I see,” she said, “I kill.”

“God,” said Nix.

Benny said, “What about the way-station monks? Do they help you at all?”

“Monks… We don’t talk. They have their, um, things. I have mine.”

“Tom said he saw you twice.”

“Tom,” she said, and shook her head.

“He looked like me. But he was older. Darker hair, darker skin. Tall. Carried a sword.”

The Lost Girl brightened and smiled in a way that Benny thought it showed she not only knew who Tom was but maybe betrayed something more than simple recognition.

“Sword man,” Lilah said. “Very, um, pretty.” She looked at Nix for approval. “Pretty?”

“Handsome,” Nix said. “Hot.”

Lilah liked that word. “Hot.” She turned to Benny. “But… dead?”

He nodded. “The Hammer shot him, and he fell into a bunch of zoms.”

Her smiled vanished. “Then he’s a walker.”

Benny couldn’t bear to think about that and changed the subject. “Lilah, Tom said that you could tell people where the new Gameland is.”

“What people?”

“People in our town. In Mountainside.”

She shrugged. “Why?”

“I think he was hoping to have Charlie arrested. Do you understand what that means? Arrested?”

“Read about. Old world stuff. Not our world.”

“No,” said Nix bitterly. She touched Lilah’s arm. “Tell us, though. What happened after they took you and Annie away from George?”

“George,” she said in a small, sad voice that was an echo of the child she had once been and would never be again. She sorted through her conflicted emotions and jumbled thoughts. “They hit George. Killed him, I thought. But… not?”

“No,” said Benny. “He was hurt, but he lived. As soon as he woke up, he started looking for you and your sister. He met Tom, and they looked together. They couldn’t find you. I guess George didn’t know where to look. How far is Gameland from here?”

“Far. Three days fast walk. Two mountains from here,” said Lilah. “Have to know how to, um… find it. Hard to find.”

“George never found it. All he heard were rumors of what goes on there. It tore him up.”

It took Lilah a second to understand that last comment, then she nodded. “George loved us. Loved him. He is… dead?”

“I think so. A monk told Tom that George hung himself.”

Lilah barked out a harsh laugh and shook her head. “No,” she said decisively.

“Tom didn’t believe it, either.”

They sat for a minute in silence.

“He was murdered,” Nix said eventually. “Do think it was Charlie?”

“Or one of his creeps,” said Benny. Lilah’s lip curled, but she said nothing.

“Lilah… tell us about Annie.”

“Annie.” Lilah’s eyes were as hard as knife steel, but they glistened wetly. “They took us. Lots of girls at Gameland. Boys too. They… make us fight .” She loaded that last word with enough venom to kill a hundred men.

“Did they make you fight?” Nix asked, and Benny winced, not wanting to hear the answer.

But Lilah shook her head. “Tried. Many times they tried. Fought them instead. Bit. Kicked. Thumbs to eyes. George taught me. Taught Annie.” She made a fist so tight, her knuckles creaked, and the lights in her eyes looked both dangerous and a little crazy. “Be tough, George said. Be tough and live. George always said that.”

“George was right,” Benny said. “I wish I’d met him. He sounds like a pretty great guy.”

Lilah gave Benny a slow up-and-down appraisal, perhaps re-evaluating him. Or maybe seeing him for the first time and getting who he was. She nodded, although Benny wasn’t sure if that was an agreement with what he’d said or a confirmation of some unspoken thought.

“So you fought?” Nix said, perhaps a little more sharply than was absolutely necessary.

Lilah’s eyes lingered on Benny as she said, “Yes.”