Jonathan Maberry - Rot & Ruin

Benny pointed. “You wrote that?”

“Years ago,” Tom said.

The gates were closed, and a thick chain had been threaded through the bars and locked with a heavy padlock. The chain and the lock looked new and gleamed with oil.

“What is this place?” Benny asked.

Tom tucked his hands into his back pockets and looked up at the sign. “This is what they used to call a gated community. The gates were supposed to keep unwanted people out and keep the people inside safe.”

“Did it work? I mean… during First Night?”

“No.”

“Did all the people die?”

“Most of them. A few got away.”

“Why is it locked?”

“For the same reason as always,” Tom said. He blew out his cheeks and dug into his right front jeans pocket for a key. He showed it to Benny and then opened the lock, pushed the gates open, and then restrung the chain and clicked the lock closed with the keyhole on the inside now.

They walked along the road. The houses were all weather damaged, and the streets were pasted with the dusty remnants of fourteen years of falling leaves. Every garden was overgrown, but there were no zombies in them. Some of the doors had crosses nailed to them, around which hung withered garlands of flowers.

“Your job’s here?” Benny asked.

“Yes,” said Tom. His voice was soft and distant.

“Is it like the other one? Like Harold Simmons?”

“Sort of.”

“That was… hard,” said Benny.

“Yes, it was.”

“Tom… I never wanted this. I mean, we all played games. Y’know, Kill the Zoms. Stuff like that. But… this isn’t how I imagined it.”

“Kiddo, if you were capable of imagining this without having seen it, I’d be scared for you. Maybe scared of you.”

Benny shook his head. “Doing this over and over again would drive me crazy. How do you do it?”

Tom turned to him as if that was the question he’d been waiting for all day. “It keeps me sane,” he said. “Do you understand?”

Benny thought about it for a long moment. Birds sang in the trees and the cicadas buzzed continually. “Is it because you knew what the world was before?”

Tom nodded.

“Is it because if you didn’t do it… then maybe no one would?”

Tom nodded again.

“It must be lonely.”

“It is.” Tom glanced at him. “But I always hoped you’d want to join me. To help me do what I do.”

“I… don’t know if I can.”

“That’s always going to be your choice. If you can, you can. If you can’t, then believe me, I’ll understand. It takes a lot out of you to do this. And it takes a lot out of you to know that the bounty hunters are out there, doing what they do.”

“How come none of them ever came here?”

“They did. Once.”

“What happened?”

Tom shrugged.

“What happened?” Benny asked again.

“I was here when they came. Pure chance.”

Benny looked at him. “You… killed them,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

Tom walked a dozen steps before he said, “Not all of them.” A half dozen steps later he added, “I let one of them go.”

“That was Charlie, wasn’t it? That’s what he was talking about.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you let him go?”

“To spread the word,” Tom said. “To let the other bounty hunters know that this place was off-limits.”

“And they listened? The bounty hunters?”

Tom smiled. It wasn’t boastful or malicious. It was a thin, cold knife-blade of a smile that was there and gone. “Sometimes you have to go to some pretty extreme lengths to make a point and to make it stick. Otherwise you find yourself having to make the same point over and over again.”

Benny stared at him. “How many were there?”

“Ten.”

“And you let one go.”

“Yes.”

“And you killed nine of them?”

“Yes.” The late afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees threw dappled light on the road and painted the sides of all of the houses to their left with purple shadows. A red fox and three kits scampered across the street ahead of them. “I let the wrong one go.”

“How could you have known? With one of the other guys, even Vin or Joey… It might not have been any different.”

“Maybe. But I don’t get to play that game. I made a choice, and a lot of people suffered because of it.”

“Tom… when you made that choice, you’d already beaten Charlie, right?”

“Yes. He was hurt and disarmed.”

“Then you did the right thing, I think. You can’t know the future. You believed him when he said that he’d change his ways, right?”

Tom nodded.

Benny said, “I would have done the same thing, Tom, because I don’t ever want to live in a world where something like mercy… or maybe it’s compassion… is the wrong choice. Just ’cause Charlie said you were wrong to let him live, it doesn’t make him right.”

Tom didn’t answer, but he nodded and gave his brother a small, sad smile. They stood there, taking each other’s measure perhaps for the very first time. Taking each other’s measure and getting the right values.

Tom pointed, and Benny turned toward the front door of a house with peach trees growing wild in the yard. “This is it.”

“There’s a zombie in there?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “There are two.”

“We have to tie them up?”

“No. That’s already been done. Years ago. Nearly every house here has a dead person in it. Some have already been quieted, the rest wait for family members to reach out and want it done.”

“I know this sounds gross, but why don’t you just go house to house and do it to every one of them? You know… quiet them. Release them.”

“Because a lot of the people here have family living in our town. It takes a while, but people usually get to the point where they want someone to go and do this the way I do it rather than as part of a general sweep. With respect, with words read to their dead family, and then let the dead rest in their own homes. Closure isn’t closure until someone’s ready to close the door. Do you understand what I mean?”

Benny nodded.

“Do you have a picture of the… um… people in there? So we know who they are? So we can make sure.”

“There are pictures inside. Besides… I know the names of everyone in Sunset Hollow. I come here a lot. I was the one who went house to house and tied the dead up. Some monks helped, but I knew everyone here.” Tom walked to the front door. “Are you ready?”

Benny looked at Tom and then at the door.

“You want me to do this, don’t you?”

Tom looked sad. “I want us to do it.”

“If I do my part… then I’ll be like you. I’ll be doing this kind of thing.”

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“I don’t know, Benny. I told you that I think I’m done with this too. But I don’t know if that’s true. Besides, we don’t know the future, remember?”

“What if I can’t?”

“If you can’t, I’ll do it. Then we go to the way station for tonight and head home in the morning. After that… maybe you and Nix and I will talk about going east. That jet had to land somewhere.”

“Tom, I know I’ve asked this already, but why don’t people from town come out to places like this and just take them back? We’re so much stronger than the zoms. This place is protected. Why don’t we take everything back?”

Tom shook his head. “I ask myself that every day. They think they’re safe in town.”

“That’s not true. Ask Mr. Sacchetto. Ask Nix’s mom. It’s stupid.”

“Yes,” Tom said, “it surely is.”

He turned the doorknob and opened the door. “Are you coming?”