Jonathan Maberry - Rot & Ruin

“Benny!”

Tom’s voice shook him back to the moment, and he saw his brother running toward him. The last of the bounty hunters were trying to make a stand by the bonfire, and a wall of zoms was closing in on them.

“The east path!” Tom yelled, pointing with his bloody sword, and Benny turned toward the path the children had taken. It was the only path clear of the dead. Lilah had said it was the best one for their escape, because it was elevated-part of an ancient rock wall that had long ago collapsed, and unlike all of the other paths, it didn’t directly connect with the forest. It had been their planned escape route, but in all of the turmoil, Benny had become confused.

“RUN!” Tom yelled, and even as he said it, Apache came tearing out of the shadows and galloped at full speed along the path, sensing the direction of safety. Benny began backing up, but he was still looking at the camp. There were more than a thousand zoms closing in now, and only eight bounty hunters. After all they’d done, after all the harm they had caused, Benny felt a flicker of compassion for them, and he knew that this was the same thing Tom must have felt when he’d spared Charlie’s life years ago. Back in Sunset Hollow, whatever that was.

But there was no saving these men. Lilah and Nix knew it, because they ran along the path without a flicker of hesitation. Tom knew it, though when he caught up with Benny, he too turned and looked back for a moment.

“We can’t save them,” Tom said.

“No,” whispered Benny, but his reply was lost in the rain.

“Go catch up with the girls,” Tom said. “I’ll hold this trail until you’re well clear. Leave Apache for me, because when I leave, I’ll be in a hurry.”

Benny ran down the road and whistled for the horse, and Apache stopped, turned reluctantly, and trotted back to him. Benny tied the reins in a loose pull knot to a stunted tree.

“Tom, how did you… I mean… How are you alive ?”

Tom flashed him a grin. “Remember when you threw that bottle of cadaverine to me with the cap loose, and I spilled it all over myself? I think you saved my life. After I fell, I landed right in the middle of them, but they didn’t go for me. Not right away. The cadaverine gave me a couple of seconds, and I rolled under a car. I was stuck there for hours. I didn’t know where you were… or if you were alive.”

“Geez. How bad are you hurt? I saw a lot of blood…”

“I took some buckshot pellets. It’ll be fun getting them out, but it could have been a lot worse.”

The gunshots and screams were intensifying.

“Family reunion later, kiddo. Haul ass.”

Benny did just that. He turned and followed Nix and the Lost Girl out of the camp, leaving the dying to the dead.

But as he rounded the bend in the path, Benny skidded to a stop. Nix and Lilah stood on either side the road, and fifty yards beyond them was the twelve-year-old girl and the other children. Standing like a monster from some old fairy tale-covered with mud and blood, fierce and terrible-was Charlie Pink-eye.

He held the pistol at arm’s length, but his gun hand was no longer steady. He was breathing hard, and his red eye leaked tears of blood. There were deep gashes on his cheeks, and his shirt was torn open to reveal a body that was crammed with muscles and crisscrossed by scar tissue.

“Damn you all to hell,” he said in a low hiss. “You took everything I had away from me. You led those monsters here! You turned against your own kind .”

Benny’s lips curled back, but Nix got her words out first. “You’re not our kind, you freak. You killed my mother! You’re not even human.”

She pointed her pistol at Charlie and fired, but he read her intent and ducked to one side, and the shot went wide by five inches. The slide locked back with a hollow click, the magazine empty. Growling with frustration, Nix threw the pistol at Charlie and caught him on the shoulder, but he only winced. Lilah tried to gut him with her spear, but the big man moved so fast that only the tip of the blade grazed him. Even so, it drew a hot red line across his abdomen, and he howled in pain. He used one fist to club the spear down, so that the point dug into the mud, and with his other fist he punched Lilah in the stomach. She collapsed to her knees and threw up into the weeds. Nix made a grab for Lilah’s spear, but Charlie backhanded her to the edge of the path, so that she stood wobbling on the edge of a sheer drop, her arms pinwheeling for balance.

And then Benny moved. He ran to Nix and grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from the ledge and then he rushed at Charlie. He still had the Hammer’s club, and Benny swung it hard at Charlie’s head. The bounty hunter was actually starting to smile at the obviousness of the attack, but Benny was tired of being obvious, tired of being beaten up, clubbed down, tossed aside like something that, in the grand scheme of things, just plain didn’t matter. He turned the swing into a fake, checked the hit, and used his left hand to punch Charlie in the nose. It wasn’t a very powerful blow, but it doesn’t require power to break a nose. Charlie’s head rocked back as his nose flattened and blood flew from his nostrils.

And that’s when Benny hit him with the pipe.

He grabbed the weapon with both hands and swung it in a sideways arc that fourteen years ago would have sent a baseball into the bleachers in any major league park in the country. The swing had everything Benny had to give: rage and hate, hurt and fear, passion and confusion. And it also had love and grief. For Nix and her mother. For Lilah and her sister, Annie. For the twelve-year-old girl and the kids who huddled around her. For George Goldman, the quiet hero. For Tom and the heartbreak he felt over Jessie Riley. For people named and unknown who had fallen victim to this man. This abomination.

He hit Charlie Matthias only once.

And once was enough.

The big man took a single wandering sideways step, all sense and control knocked out of his head by the blow. He staggered past Nix, who was crouched down holding Lilah against her. He swung around in a sloppy turn, fighting for balance that was no longer his to own, and then his next step came down three inches past the edge of the path. Below his big foot was a drop that plunged a hundred yards into darkness. Charlie Matthias shot Benny one last, momentary glance of desperation and fear.

Benny would like to have seen guilt there or some last minute awareness and acceptance of the wrongness of all that he had done. That would have been nice. That would have been closure.

All he saw in Charlie’s eyes was hatred.

Then Charlie fell.

With the rain, with the last few pops of gunfire from the camp, and with the moans of the hungry dead, they never heard him land. Benny stood on the edge of the trail, and for all that he could see or hear, he might as well have been on the edge of the world. He held the Hammer’s club out at arm’s length, opened his hand, and let the weapon fall. There would be a need for weapons, he knew that; but there would be other weapons. This one, like the man it had killed, was unclean.

He turned to the others and sank to his knees by Nix and Lilah. They both stared past him to the edge of the road, their eyes wide. Benny rested his head on Nix’s shoulder, and she gathered him to her. Lilah wrapped her arms around them both. Then there were other arms-the twelve-year-old girl and the children.

Tom Imura sat on Apache’s back and stared at the huddled mass. He’d heard the single gunshot behind him and had come as fast as he could. He read the scene and understood what he was seeing.

He heard Benny and Lilah and Nix and the others as they wept.

Tom bowed his head and he too wept.