Jonathan Maberry - Fire & Ash

Nix sat down, but caught him staring at her. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

“Just this,” he said, and blew her a handful of kisses.

“You are too corny for words,” she said, but she was smiling. “You were in the blockhouse a long time today. What did they talk about?”

Nix’s smile leaked away as he told her about Chong.

“I thought Lilah said that he was alive !”

“He is alive.”

“But… he tried to bite you.”

“Okay, so he’s sick, he’s messed up — but he’s still Chong.”

“How? How is he still Chong? He’s totally infected, Benny. They’re keeping him in a cage, for God’s sake.”

Benny’s face grew instantly hot. “What are you saying? You think they should put him down like a dog?”

“Not like a dog, Benny. He’s a zom and—”

“And what ? They should quiet him?”

Nix sat back and folded her arms tightly across her chest. “What do you think is going to happen, Benny? Do you think that Chong is going to suddenly snap out of it?”

“Maybe he will!” Benny yelled.

“Maybe he can’t.”

“I can’t believe you’re giving up on him, Nix. This is Chong. Chong! He’s our friend.”

“Was that really Chong down in that cage? Would Chong try to take a bite out of you?”

Benny whammed the table with his fist. “He’s not a zombie, Nix. He’s sick and he needs our help.”

“What help?” she demanded, her voice jumping a whole octave. “What can we possibly do for him?”

Benny had to fish for how to answer her. When he spoke, his voice was a hot whisper. “We need to give the scientists time to figure it out.”

“Okay. Fine. What happens in the meantime? We go visit him like he’s a zoo animal?”

“Why are you being such a bitch?”

Nix stood up so suddenly that her belt buckle caught the edge of her plate and flipped it over, flinging eggs everywhere. Surprise, embarrassment, and anger warred on her face.

“I—”

“Save it,” snapped Benny as he got up and stalked away.

He made it almost all the way to the door before Nix caught up to him. He heard her coming and quickened his stride, but she ran the last few steps, caught his sleeve, and spun him around. Before he could say anything, she stuck a finger in his face.

“You listen to me, Benjamin Imura. I love Chong every bit as much as you do. I loved Tom, too. And I loved my mother — but people die. In this world, people die. Everyone dies.”

“Well, thank you, Lady Einstein. Here I was thinking that everyone lived forever and every day was apple pie and puppies.” He glared at her. “I know people die. I’m not stupid, and I’m not kidding myself about how much trouble Chong’s in. Maybe he can’t come back, maybe he’s already too sick… but I heard him speak today, and even though it was only one word, it proves that some part of him is still there. He’s not gone yet, and I won’t give up on him. Not until there’s no hope and no chance at all.”

“Benny, I—” she began, but he shook his head and turned away.

He pushed past some monks who were on their way into the mess hall. Behind him he heard Nix call his name, but she did not follow him outside.

His name was Morgan Mitchell, but everyone called him Morgie.

Morgie was big for his age, looking more like eighteen than fifteen. Beefy shoulders, arms heavy with muscle, and a dusting of beard smudging cheeks and chin.

His clothes were soaked with sweat, and his eyes were filled with shadows.

An old truck tire hung by a rope from a limb of the big oak tree. The weathered rubber was scarred by thousands of impacts from the bokken — the wooden sword Morgie held in his hands. Each blow made the tire dance and swing, and Morgie shifted this way and that to chase it, to continue hammering it, to smash at it over and over again. The force of each blow threw echoes against the rear of the house that stood vacant and silent at the other end of the yard. The bokken was hand-carved from a piece of hickory. It was his sixth sword. The first five had cracked and broken in this yard, defeated not by the tire but by the force of the hands that swung the wood, and by the muscle in arms and shoulders and back.

And by pain.

Each blow hurt. It wasn’t the shock that vibrated back from the point of impact and shivered through Morgie’s muscles and bones. It wasn’t that at all. The pain was in his heart. And he hammered at it every day. Several times a day. The training leaned him, burning away childhood fat, revealing muscles forged in a furnace of grief and regret.

Morgie knew he was being watched, but he didn’t care. It was like that all the time, almost every day. Randy Kirsch, mayor of Mountainside and former neighbor of the Imuras, sat on his porch. Two men sat with him, each of them drinking coffee from ceramic mugs.

“Two ration dollars says he breaks another sword today,” said Keith Strunk, captain of the town watch.

“Sucker’s bet,” said Leroy Williams, a big black man sitting to his left. He was a corn farmer who’d lost his right arm in a car crash after bringing a group of people through a horde of zoms after First Night. “Kid’s working on some real fury down there. He’ll break that sword or knock the tire out of the damn tree.”

The mayor glanced at his watch. “He’s been at it for two hours now.”

“Makes me sweat just watching him,” said Strunk.

They all nodded and sipped their coffee.

The thump, thump, thump of the sword was constant.

“You ever find out what happened between him and Benny?” asked Strunk. “Heard they had some kind of fight right before Tom took those kids out of town.”

The mayor shook his head.

“I heard it was over the girl,” said Leroy. “Little Phoenix. Remember, Morgie went courtin’ at the Riley place that night Jessie was killed. Morgie got his head near stove in by Marion Hammer. And then seven months later Nix goes off with Benny.”

“Ah,” said Strunk. “A girl. That’ll do it.”

They all sighed and nodded.

“I don’t think it’s just the girl,” said Mayor Kirsch. “I think it was that fight. I heard Morgie knocked Benny down.”

“If they were fighting,” said Leroy, “then they were fighting over the Riley girl.”

They all nodded again.

Captain Strunk said, “Morgie asked me the other day if I’d let him join the town watch. When I told him he was too young, he got a job as an apprentice fence guard.”

“Ugly work for a boy,” said the mayor. “And he asked me for an application to the Freedom Riders. He wants to roll out with Solomon Jones and that crew.”

“Thought you had to be eighteen for that,” said Leroy.

“You do. But he’s trying to get a special dispensation because he trained with Tom Imura.”

“Ah,” said Strunk.

Leroy grunted. “Maybe they should let him in. Tom trained those kids good… and besides, look at him. Kid’s bigger and tougher than any eighteen-year-old I know.”

“Tom did a good job,” said Strunk as they watched Morgie hammer away at the tire. “Bet Tom would be proud of him.”

The wooden sword whipped and flashed and pounded, again and again and again.

Benny walked along the trench — well away from Lilah — until the weight of the sun’s heat slowed him to a less furious pace. Finally, drenched in sweat and feeling about as low as he could feel, he stopped, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stood there, staring across the trench at the dead. A few of them moved restlessly, but the rest stood as still as if they were the tombstones of their own graves.