53
BENNY THREW HIS WEIGHT FORWARD JUST AS NIX BROUGHT HER BOKKEN down with all her strength. The white fingers shattered under the impact, and Benny was free. He fell onto hands and knees but got to his feet in a heartbeat and ran.
Nix backed away, still holding the wooden sword out in front of her.
“Come on!” yelled Benny, clumsily snatching up their carpet coats.
Brother David was trying to climb over the broken stone wall. Two other zoms shambled around the sides. Sister Shanti and Sister Sarah.
Nix’s face went pale with horror and grief. “Oh … Benny … no.”
“We can’t help them,” cried Benny. “Nix, come on … there’s nothing we can do.”
“We can’t just leave them.”
“Yes, we can. Come on!”
The zoms were coming toward them, but they were slow and awkward. Nix kept backing up until she stood with Benny near the wall of the old barn, a hundred yards away from the three zoms. Behind them the road unrolled into the distance toward Yosemite. Here … there was nothing left but tragedy.
And more questions.
“Nix,” Benny said softly. “Please …”
She lowered her sword. The zoms were picking their way through tall weeds and stones. The faces of the two young women were empty of all the light and peace that had been there the last time Nix and Benny had seen them. All the vitality and personality and joy that had made these women what they were, that had brought them a measure of contentment even out here in the Rot and Ruin, were gone. Stolen from them.
“Someone did this to them,” Nix said, her eyes fierce with hurt and anger.
“I know.” He handed over her carpet coat. They quickly put them on, looking at each other, their eyes speaking volumes. So much would have to be left unsaid for now. And if they kept going east, so many things might remain unanswered. Unanswered and unpunished.
Tom had said that the Children of God believed that zoms—the Children of Lazarus—were the meek who had been intended to inherit the earth. Benny did not know if that was true. At that moment he hoped so, because at least it meant that Brother David, Sister Shanti, and Sister Sarah were where and what they had always wanted to be.
That did not make the hurt any less for Benny and Nix. It did not make the rage burn any less hot.
The three zoms continued to lumber toward them. Benny and Nix kept backing up, moving past the rust-colored wall of the barn. Then they froze when they heard the squeal of ancient hinges as the barn door swung outward. Benny whirled, but he was a second too late as a zom lunged at him from the shadows. Waxy lips pulled back to reveal rotting teeth. Benny and the monster crashed to the ground, rolling over and over in the weeds. Two more zoms rushed at Nix. She swung her bokken, catching one across the face; but the second crowded past and grabbed Nix’s red hair.
It was all so fast. Even as Benny fought with the zom, a part of his mind was trying to understand what was happening. The zoms weren’t slow. They were rotted and decayed, but they weren’t slow; and the burly creature trying to tear his throat out was strong. Far stronger than any zom Benny had fought; stronger than any zom he had heard about.
It was impossible.
Gray teeth snapped at the neckline of his carpet coat. Benny drove his knee into the zom’s groin, not that he thought he could hurt it, but because Tom had taught him to always try and lift his opponent’s mass. The zom’s hips bucked up from the impact, and Benny tried to turn, but then he felt cold fingers wrap tightly around his ankle.
Another zom.
More of them were staggering out of the barn. Farmers and women dressed in nurses’ uniforms and men in logger’s shirts. Kids, too, one of whom still clutched a stuffed bear to her chest. It was horrible and heartbreaking and absolutely terrifying.
“Benny!”
He heard Nix scream his name, but there were three zombies clawing at him now—the big one on top of him, the one holding his ankle, and the little girl with the stuffed bear, who had dropped to her knees and was trying to chew through the sleeve of his carpet coat.
Benny thought, We’re going to die. His inner voice could offer no argument.
And then a sound split the air.
“WOOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
It was a huge, barrel-chested war whoop. The kind Morgie let loose when he hit a homer out past the line on McGoran Field. Benny could hardly see past the growling, biting zom, but he caught a flash of movement as something came from his left and slammed into the burly monster. The zom flipped off him. The figure kicked and stomped and then the other two zoms were rolling away and Benny was free. He spun around on the ground, coming up on all fours, the name rising to his mouth.
“Morgie!”
But as soon as he said it, even before he saw who it was, Benny knew that it wasn’t Morgie. It couldn’t be Morgie. The man who stood over him grinned through the grille of a New Orleans Saints football helmet. He was tall, thin, but wiry, with a carpet coat augmented with metal cut from license plates, each from a different state. He had a spear almost like Lilah’s, except that on the end opposite the blade was a round metal ball as big as Benny’s fist. He wore a pair of cheap black sunglasses and a good Cheshire cat grin.
Benny knew him from the Zombie Cards. Dr. Skillz.
There was a yell and a grunt, and Benny turned to see another man in similar garb taking the head off a zom with a powerful two-handed stroke of a heavy logging ax. J-Dog.
The two bounty hunters grinned at Benny. They were a little younger than Tom, so Benny figured that they had been teenagers during First Night. Tom had said they’d been surfers and beach bums once upon a time, but Benny had only a vague idea what a “surfer” was, and he’d never seen a beach except in books.
“Far out,” said Dr. Skillz. “Benjamin Imura and Phoenix Riley. Wassssabi?”
Dr. Skillz nodded. “Seriously, brah, and Jessie’s daughter’s gone all aliham.”
“Babelini!” agreed J-Dog, though he was smiling, not leering, when he said it. The surfers gave Benny the thumbs-up. “Good call, dude.”
“Huh?” asked Benny.
Dr. Skillz nodded. “Where’s the big kahuna? And … besides that, what are you Menehunes doing out here?”
“Trying not to die,” grunted Nix as she swung her bokken at a zom who charged at her from J-Dog’s blind side. The zom went flying backward with a shattered jaw.
“Dudette’s no Barbie, brah,” said J-Dog, and his partner nodded.
“I know, right? Kahuna was on when he said little cat’s hyper-fierce gnar gnar.”
Nix turned to Benny. “What language are they speaking?”
“Surferese, I think.”
She made a face. “Guys?” she warned. “Zoms?”
J-Dog turned, and if he was concerned about the ten zoms circling them, he managed not to show it. In fact, he managed to look bored. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Good point.” He turned to Dr. Skillz. “Dude?”
“Dude,” he agreed, as if his partner had just said something profound. To Benny he said, “You and the crippler chick hang back. We’ll jack these land-sharks.”
“What?” Benny and Nix asked at the same time.
Dr. Skillz pointed and in plain English said, “Stand over there. Out of the way. Dig?”
Nix pulled Benny to a safe distance.
“Watch out!” warned Benny. “These zoms are different.”
“Different how, brah?” asked J-Dog.
Two of the zoms suddenly rushed at him. J-Dog’s smile flickered for a moment, but even in the presence of zoms moving with nearly human speed, he wasn’t stunned to immobility.
“Whoa,” said Dr. Skillz. “That’s new.”
J-Dog stepped toward the rushing creatures and swung the ax low and wide. The big blade sheared through the knee of the first zom and the calf of the second, and they both went down in a snarling tangle. Dr. Skillz darted past him and with two lightning-fast swings crushed their skulls with the iron ball on the end of his spear.
“Dog,” said Dr. Skillz, adjusting his shades, “these land-sharks are seriously truckin’.”
“Chyeah,” snorted J-Dog. “What’s that all about?”
There were eight zoms left.
“Dude—four on the left,” said J-Dog. “Go agg.”
Dr. Skillz grinned. “Always aggro.”
They waded in, ax and spear whirling and striking and smashing and cleaving. Benny and Nix stumbled backward from the carnage as pieces of desiccated flesh and brittle bone pelted them.
“Dude!” called Dr. Skillz, and J-Dog pivoted as one of the zombie children jumped at him, trying to bite his thigh. J-Dog twisted out of the way and quieted the little zom with a stomp of his steel-reinforced boot. And then, suddenly and inexplicably, it was all over. Not one of the zoms was moving, and not one of them was whole. J-Dog and Dr. Skillz stood in the center of a circle of gory detritus. Dr. Skillz looked around, nodding to himself. “Dude,” he said.
J-Dog nodded in agreement. “Totally, dude.”
They turned to Nix and Benny, pulling off their helmets. Dr. Skillz had long brown hair and a soul patch under his lower lip; J-Dog had long black hair and a goatee. They were both very tan, and when they smiled, their teeth were eye-hurtingly white.
Benny cleared his throat.
“Dude?” he suggested.
My mom said that everyone who survived First Night has PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. Chong says it should be called PFNSD, post–First Night stress disorder, which he insists is PTSD plus something called “survivor’s guilt.”
Some people pretend like everything is okay with them, as if they aren’t messed up from what happened. Mom said that this is just a symptom of damage. There has never been a trauma as bad as First Night. Even if you combined all the wars and plagues together, they wouldn’t be as bad, so everyone has to be affected.
Other people seem to know that they’re supposed to be a little crazy, so they take the craziness and make it work for them. Tom says that’s why so many people, especially those who deal with zoms out in the Ruin all the time, took weird nicknames. He says, “It’s easier to be like a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.” It took me a long time to understand that.
Tom’s friends J-Dog and Dr. Skillz are like that. After I met them, I could see in their eyes how hurt they are. And how scared. But they play a kind of game. The “surfer dude” game, and that insulates them against reality. It’s like wearing a carpet coat. A bite will still hurt, but it won’t kill you.
It makes me wonder in what way I’m crazy.