Jonathan Maberry - Rot & Ruin

The match ignited the bed linen, and fire spread with frightening speed. Benny used his knife to slash at the rear wall of the tent. Even in his haste he did it the smart way-cutting the bottom of the wall, right where the lacing was wrapped around the aluminum frame-and then he pushed the canvas up and slithered out like a snake. The canvas fell back into place, so that the back of the tent appeared undamaged.

The shouts were almost on top of him as he shimmied on his belly through the mud and slid over the edge of the plateau. He froze and tried to melt into the landscape, as if he was just another lump in the big, wet, muddy mountain.

The shouts increased in volume, and he risked a quick backward look.

The tent was ablaze.

Vin Trang and Joey Duk stood staring at the blaze. Other bounty hunters ran from all parts of the camp, some shouting, some laughing. Nobody was firing a gun. No one seemed to be looking out into the woods or down the slopes. Vin turned to Joey and yelled something very loud in Vietnamese, then shoved his friend violently in the chest. Joey went staggering back, slipped in the mud, and fell hard on his ass. The others burst out in uproarious laughter. Vin, not content with knocking Joey down, snarled like a cat and jumped atop Joey, then started hammering at him while behind them the tent burned.

This was even better than Benny could hope for. Vin obviously thought Joey had left something burning in the tent and was pummeling him for having lost all of his possessions.

“There is a God,” Benny said to himself as he slipped away into the shadows, “and apparently He has a warped sense of humor.”

He moved off into the darkness and circled halfway around the camp. Even with the heavy downpour, he could still hear the shouts and laughter. He had a sudden flare of panic. Had Nix heard it too? Would she think this was the diversion that Benny had planned? If so, she was going to start too soon!

He ran faster.

Then his foot came down wrong in a puddle that was deeper than it looked, and Benny pitched forward, sliding face-first through the mud. His hands opened, and he watched in absolute horror as the little tin of matches went sailing into the rain and out of sight.

“NO!” he shouted.

It was small a blessing that no one heard him. It almost didn’t matter, because without those matches, he and Nix were probably going to die.

Nix cut open the side of the tent and crawled quickly inside. The pen was just outside, and she knelt, knife in hand, and peered out into the rain. The twelve-year-old girl had the other kids clustered together, and they were as calm as they could be under the circumstances. She must have told them about what she’d seen, because they were not wailing. Each of them stared into the storm with huge eyes that were filled with tears and hope.

One of the guards walked past, and Nix watched as he went several paces down the center path of the camp and stretched his head to try and catch what was going on over at Vin Trang’s tent. She’d hoped he would have gone all the way over, but he stayed relatively close to his post.

“Here goes,” Nix whispered to herself and then crept out of the tent and crabbed sideways in a low crouch, until her shoulder bumped up against the pen rail. The kids gasped, but Nix shushed them. She reached through the wood slats of the pen and touched several of them, assuring them of her reality. Nix slid along the pen rail to the back corner and watched the guard. He was still craning to listen through the hammering of the rain.

Nix straightened and then climbed quickly and quietly over the rail. She dropped down in the mud and then huddled next to the crowd of kids. In the gloom and with all the mud, she blended in. When the guard cut a quick look over his shoulder, all he saw were children hunkered down in a bunch. He grunted to himself and turned back to watch the fun. Vin and Joey were beating the hell out of each other, and everyone was yelling and cheering them on.

Nix showed her knife to the oldest girl. The girl’s eyes went wide, but she understood. Nix gritted her teeth and attacked the bundle of ropes, and in less than a minute the whole bundle of ropes was cut.

Nix pulled the twelve-year-old girl close. “Go over the rail and down the slope. There’s a path down there. Follow it all the way down to the creek. Don’t leave the path and don’t stop. You understand?”

“Yes! But, who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Nix snapped. “Just run!”

The girl scrambled over the edge of the pen and reached out to pull the first of the children over.

Then something big and dark moved out of the rain, and they all looked up in horror.

Charlie Pink-eye stood there above them. He held a pistol in one hand, and the barrel was pointing straight at Nix’s face.

“WELL, I’LL BE A ONE-EYED SKUNK,” YELLED CHARLIE PINK-EYE SO LOUD that Benny could hear him through the rain, the laughter, and the noise of the fistfight. All of the men who were clustered around the burning tent stopped and turned to see their boss standing by the pig pen, pointing a gun at the red-haired girl who had escaped the day before. They laughed as if this was some new form of entertainment, and the whole mass of them broke into a run to go share in the fun. Vin pushed Joey away from him, and the pair, bruised and bloody, got to their feet and staggered along as well.

Benny came out of hiding and ran low and fast to the shadowy cleft between two of the wagons. There was a big bonfire that had been sheltered from the rain by a thick stand of tall pines. He craned his neck to see what was happening.

“Move one muscle, little darlin’,” said Charlie, “and I’ll cut my losses and leave you for zom meat. Don’t think I won’t.”

Benny’s heart froze in his chest at those words. He climbed onto the side of the wagon for a better view. Despite the rain, his mouth went dry at what he saw. Nix, covered in mud, stood inside the pen, and Charlie stood on the other side of the rail, his pistol held in one rock-steady hand. Stark terror and raw hatred commingled on Nix’s face, transforming her beauty into a mask equally as feral as Lilah’s, but in some indefinable way, more savage. Perhaps it was because Lilah had never been civilized, and any thought she felt was immediately and unthinkingly displayed on her face, whereas Nix had always been controlled and self-aware. What Benny saw now was her unguarded, naked emotion.

Two of the men climbed over the fence and closed in on Nix from either side. It was clear they did not consider her a major threat, but they were nonetheless cautious of the big-bladed hunting knife she held. Charlie used the barrel of his gun to gesture to the knife Nix held clutched in her fist. “Drop that pig sticker, little darlin’.”

Nix did not drop the knife. She clutched it to her chest, cutting desperate looks to her left and right for some way out.

Charlie swung the barrel of the pistol away from her and aimed it at the twelve-year-old. “Drop the knife, girl, or I’ll put a hole in this little cutie.”

The girl, seeing her death, straightened and held her head high. Then she spat into the mud at Charlie’s feet.

Charlie thumbed the hammer back.

Nix dropped the knife. It struck point-first into the mud and stopped there, standing straight out from the ground like King Arthur’s sword. Nix looked down at it with regret. One of the men laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.

Benny darted through the shadows until he could see the big bonfire on the other side of the wagon. Working quickly, he opened the satchel and removed a few items that he hoped he’d live long enough to use, and then he tossed the bag with a slow underhand pitch, straight into the fire. It struck the center of the blaze and kicked up a huge tower of sparks, but when the men in the crowd turned to see what had happened, Benny was already back into the darkest corner of shadows, totally invisible.