Jonathan Maberry - Rot & Ruin

“You throw a good punch for a little pup,” he said. “How’s the hand?”

Benny said nothing. In fact, he had to clamp his mouth shut, because he was pretty sure that he had just broken his hand. Every one of the thousands of nerve endings in his fist was sending white hot flashes of pain to his brain, and his knuckles were swelling like balloons. He tried to block out the pain, tried not to let his eyes fill with tears. He concentrated on hating Charlie and tried to figure out a way to save Nix. The rain started falling again, and the wind was moaning louder than ever in the trees.

Charlie pointed to him. “I’m going to save you for last. After I kick your brother’s ass, I’m going to take the Lost Girl and see how she does in a zombie pit without any weapons. That goes for your redheaded friend, too. Think that’ll be fun? Afterward, I’m going to feed you to the zoms, one finger at a time.”

Nix made a lunge at Charlie, but Tom grabbed her shoulder and held her back.

“No, sweetie,” he murmured, “this animal is mine.”

Charlie gave him “a come and get it” gesture with both hands, then called to his men. “What kind of drugs are you taking, Tom? You’re frigging well surrounded and outnumbered. We’re not going to duke it out. This isn’t a fair fight. You’re just going to die. I don’t know how you escaped them zoms back on the highway, but you should never have come back here. Not alone.”

“No,” Tom agreed, “it isn’t a fair fight. And just so you know… I’m not alone.”

Charlie looked momentarily perplexed. A few of the bounty hunters exchanged looks and then everyone turned slowly around. The rain was falling steadily now, but the moaning in the forest had nothing to do with the wind.

The entire camp was surrounded by hundreds of the living dead.

Tom Imura looked at Lilah, and they both smiled.

THE ZOMS SHAMBLED INTO THE CAMP, AND THE MOAN THEY LET LOOSE was an unrelenting cry of hunger that now had the promise of being satisfied. The bounty hunters screamed and backed away, colliding with one another. Everyone who had a gun began firing.

“Benny!” cried Nix, and shoved him out of the way as a zom lurched toward him. She ducked under the zombie’s arms and kicked it savagely in the knee, but as it toppled, she shoved it into the arms of one of the bounty hunters. The man shrieked as the crippled zom bore him to the ground and clamped its rotting teeth onto his shoulder.

Lilah used the butt end of her spear to jab several of the zoms in the chest, knocking them away as she retreated. “With me!” she called, and Benny and Nix clustered next to her. Neither of them had a weapon. “Gun!” Lilah barked, but Benny looked around, expecting to see someone trying to shoot him. Nix, however, caught Lilah’s meaning and reached for the pistol in the Lost Girl’s holster. It was an automatic, and Nix racked the slide and took the gun in a firm two-handed shooter’s grip as the three of them kept backing toward the wagons.

Benny saw one of the zoms-it was the huge man in the tattered overalls of a mechanic-grab a bounty hunter by the throat and drive him back against a tree. The ropes that had once held the mechanic to the tree in the Hungry Forest still dangled from his wrists. Other shapes moved through the shadows behind him. Ropes dangled from withered necks and emaciated waists, and firelight sparkled in their dead, black eyes.

Benny felt a mix of savage pride and relief-it had been an insane plan, and it had taken longer than Benny had expected-but it was working. He should have trusted that Lilah would get it done.

But… Tom ! Nothing in his plan explained how his brother had returned from apparent death and had come here to save them. And it was clear from what Tom had said, and from the knowing look he’d shared with Lilah, that he had known that the zoms were closing in on the camp. How had he known? Had he met the Lost Girl and, after all of his attempts, finally spoken with her? Here, on this night of storms and blood?

Benny turned to find his brother, and there Tom was, right in the thick of it. Several zoms separated him from Charlie. Several bounty hunters tried to rush Tom at the same time that half a dozen zoms closed in on him, and it was in that moment that Benny finally saw, and understood , the kind of man Tom Imura was.

His whole body was a blur of coordinated movement. Big Jim Starr, one of Charlie’s fiercest men, grabbed Tom by the shoulder and spun him around, but Tom turned into the pull, and his left hand shot out with whiplike speed. Big Jim clutched a ruin of a throat and fell away, but before he even had time to fall, Tom slashed up and wide, then left and across, and two zoms seemed to fly apart. Joker Brills pulled a pistol and snapped off a shot, but Tom had seen him go for his gun and was moving before the barrel was properly aimed. Gun and gun arm flew into the air, and Tom pivoted and cut the legs from another zom, then rose and slashed Axeman Santiago across the chest in a double cut that left a deep red X across his torso. Tom whirled and cut, whirled and cut, and his attackers-both the living and the dead-fell before him. Benny could see Charlie watching all of this from the far side of the clearing, and there was a slack expression, somewhere between shock and awe, on his heavy features.

Then a powerful hand clamped onto Benny’s leg, and he was falling. As he went down he twisted around and saw the Motor City Hammer, staring at him with black and lifeless eyes as he pulled Benny toward his bloody mouth.

Benny screamed and kicked him in the face, over and over again, but the Hammer was beyond feeling pain. Then Nix stamped down on the Hammer’s wrist and put the barrel of the pistol hard against the zom’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The Hammer’s head jerked back, and he collapsed down, dead forever this time.

“Thanks!” Benny gasped as Nix hauled him to his feet.

“Here!” Lilah said. She knelt by the Hammer’s side and pulled from his belt the heavy metal club he always carried. She tossed it to Benny, who caught it with his swollen hand.

He yelped and cursed, but he managed to close his fist around it. Maybe it’s only sprained, he told himself, then he had no more time to think about it as Vin Trang rushed at him with a butcher knife in his fist. Joey Duk made a grab for Nix, and four zoms staggered toward Lilah.

“You and your brother are a pain in my-,” Vin began, but Benny didn’t want to hear it. He used the pipe to batter aside the knife and then rang the club off of Vin’s forehead. Vin’s eyes lost focus, and Benny closed the deal with an overhand swing that put Vin down. Benny didn’t know or care if he’d killed the man or not. He needed to help Nix and Lilah, but as he turned, he saw Nix moving backward and firing with each step. Her bullets punched into Joey Duk with such force that it made him look like a puppet, dancing on the strings of a demented puppeteer. The last shot caught him high and he pitched backward into the arms of three zoms-a nun and two men in business suits. The man collapsed under the zoms, screaming as they began to feast.

Nix stared at the fallen man, then down at the gun she held.

“God…,” she murmured, her voice sounding lost, and for a moment Benny thought that killing Joey had somehow broken her. But then a zom reached for her, and Nix calmly, coldly, turned and shot it between the eyes.

Another body fell past Benny, and he turned to see Lilah dispatch the last of the four zoms who had rushed her. Her face ran with rainwater, and she was grinning. Grinning.

That is one spooky girl, Benny thought. From all that Lilah had been through, she was “lost” in more ways than one. He wondered if there was any roadmap that would lead her toward some kind of normal life. Or was she too far out in the wilderness of her own experience for that?