FAMILY BUSINESS

BY JONATHAN MABERRY

I

Benny Imura couldn’t hold a job, so he took to killing.

It was the family business. He barely liked his family—and by family, that meant his older brother Tom—and he definitely didn’t like the idea of “business.” Or work. The only part of the deal that sounded like it might be fun was the actual killing.

He’d never done it before. Sure, he’d gone through a hundred simulations in gym class and in the Scouts, but they never let kids do any real killing. Not before they hit fifteen.

“Why not?” he once asked his Scoutmaster, a fat guy named Feeney, who used to be a TV weatherman back in the day.

“Because killing’s the sort of thing you should learn from your folks,” said Feeney.

“I don’t have any folks,” Benny countered. “My mom and dad died on the First Day.”

“Oh, hell,” said Feeney, then quickly amended that, “Oh, heck. Sorry, Benny—I didn’t know that. Point is, you got family of some kind, right?”

“I guess. I got ‘I’m Mr. Freaking Perfect Tom Imura’ for a brother, and I don’t want to learn anything from him.”

Feeney had stared at him. “Wow. I didn’t know you were related to him. Your brother, huh? Well, there’s your answer, kid. Nobody better to teach you the art of killing than a professional killer like Tom Imura.” Feeney paused and licked his lips nervously. “I guess, being his brother and all, you’ve seen a lot of killing.”

“No,” Benny said, with huge annoyance. “He never lets me watch!”

“Ask him when you turn thirteen. A lot of kids get to watch when they hit their teens.”

Benny had asked, and Tom had said no. Again. It wasn’t a discussion. Just, “No.”

That was years ago, and now Benny was six weeks past his fifteenth birthday. He had four more weeks’ grace to find a paying job before county ordinance cut his rations by half. Benny hated being in that position, and if one more person gave him the “Fifteen and Free” speech, he was going to scream. He hated that as much as when people saw someone doing hard work and they said crap like, “Damn, he’s going at that like he’s fifteen and out of food.”

Like it was something to be happy about. Something to be proud of. Working your but off for the rest of your life. Benny didn’t see where the fun was in that.

His buddy, Chong, said it was a sign of the growing cultural oppression that was driving humanity toward acceptance of a slave state. Benny had no freaking idea what Chong meant, or if there was even meaning in anything he said. But he nodded in agreement because the look on Chong’s face always made it seem like he knew exactly what was what.

At home, before he even finished eating his birthday cake, Tom had said, “If I want to talk about you joining the family business, are you going to chew my head off? Again?”

Benny stared venomous death at Tom and said, very clearly and distinctly, “I. Don’t. Want. To. Work. In. The. Family. Business.”

“I’ll take that as a no, then.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little late now to try and get me all excited about it? I asked you a zillion times to—”

“You asked me to take you out on kills.”

“Right! And every time I did you—”

“There’s a lot more to what I do, Benny.”

“Yeah, there probably is, and maybe I would have thought the rest was something I could deal with, but you never let me see the cool stuff.”

“There’s nothing ‘cool’ about killing,” Tom said sharply.

“There is when you’re talking about killing zoms!” Benny fired back.

That stalled the conversation. Tom stalked out of the room and banged around in the kitchen for a while, and Benny threw himself down on the couch.

Tom and Benny never talked about zombies. They had every reason to, but they never did. Benny couldn’t understand it. He hated zoms. Everyone hated them, though with Benny it was a white-hot, consuming hatred that went back to his very first memory—a nightmare image that was there every night when he closed his eyes. It was an image that was seared into him, even though it was something he had seen as a tiny child.

Dad and Mom.

Mom screaming, running toward Tom, shoving a squirming Benny—all of eighteen months—into Tom’s arms. Screaming and screaming. Telling him to run.

While the thing that had been Dad pushed its way through the bedroom door, which Mom had tried to block with a chair and lamps and anything else she could find.

Benny remembered his mom screaming words, but the memory was so old and he had been so young that he didn’t remember what any of them were. Maybe there were no words. Maybe it was just her screaming.

Benny remembered the wet heat on his face as Tom’s tears fell on him when he climbed out of the bedroom window. They had lived in a ranch-style house. One story. The window emptied out into a yard that was pulsing with red and blue police lights. There were more shouts and screams. The neighbors. The cops. Maybe the army. Benny thought it was the army. And the constant popping sounds of gunfire, near and far away.

But of all of it, Benny remembered a single, last image. As Tom clutched him to his chest, Benny looked over his brother’s shoulder at the bedroom window. Mom leaned out of the window screaming at them as Dad’s pale hands reached out of the shadows of the room and dragged her back out of sight.

That was Benny’s oldest memory. If there had been older memories, then that image had burned them away. Benny remembered the hammering sound that was Tom’s panicked heartbeat vibrating against his own chest, and the long wail that was his own inarticulate cry for his mom and his dad.

He hated Tom for running away. He hated that Tom hadn’t stayed and helped Mom. He hated what their Dad had become on that First Night all those years ago. And he hated what Dad had turned Mom into.

In his mind they were no longer Mom and Dad. They were the things that had killed them. Zoms. And he hated them with an intensity that made the sun feel cold and small.

A few years ago, when he found out that Tom was a zombie hunter, Benny hadn’t been proud of his brother. As far as he was concerned, if Tom really had what it took to be a zombie hunter, he’d have had the guts to help Mom. Instead, Tom had run away and left Mom to die. To become one of them.

Tom came back into the living room, looked at the remains of Benny’s birthday cake on the table, then looked at Benny on the couch.

“The offer still stands,” he said. “If you want to do what I do, then I’ll take you on as an apprentice. I’ll sign the papers so you can still get full rations.”

Benny gave him a long, withering stare.

“I’d rather be eaten by zoms than have you as my boss,” Benny said.

Tom sighed, turned, and trudged upstairs. After that they didn’t talk to each other for days.

II

The following weekend Benny and Lou Chong had picked up the Saturday edition of the Town Pump because it had the biggest help-wanted section, and over the next several weeks, they applied for anything that sounded easy.

Benny and Chong clipped out a bunch of want ads and tackled them one at a time, having first categorized them by “most possible money,” “coolness,” and “I don’t know what it is but it sounds okay.” They passed on anything that sounded bad right from the get-go.

The first on their list was “Locksmith Apprentice.”

That sounded okay, but it turned out to be humping a couple of heavy toolboxes from house to house at the crack of frigging dawn while an old German guy who could barely speak English repaired fence locks and installed dial combinations on both sides of bedroom doors and installed bars and wire grilles.

It was kind of funny watching the old guy explain to his customers how to use the combination locks. Benny and Chong began making bets on how many times per conversation a customer would say “What? Could you repeat that?” or “Beg pardon?”

The work was important, though. Everyone had to lock themselves in their rooms at night and then use a combination to get out. Or a key; some people still locked with keys. That way, if they died in their sleep, they wouldn’t be able to get out of the room and attack the rest of the family. There had been whole settlements wiped out because someone’s grandfather popped off in the middle of the night and then started chowing down on the kids and grandkids.

Zoms can’t work a combination lock. They can’t work keys either.

The German guy installed double-sided locks, so that the doors could be opened from the other side in a real, nonzombie emergency; or if the town security guys had to come in and do a cleanup on a new zom.

Somehow, Benny and Chong had gotten it into their heads that locksmiths got to see this stuff, but the old guy said that he hadn’t seen a single living dead that was in any way connected to his job. Boring.

To make it worse, the German guy paid them a little more than pocket lint and said that it would take three years to learn the actual trade. That meant that Benny wouldn’t even pick up a screwdriver for six months and wouldn’t do anything but carry stuff for a year. Screw that.

“I thought you didn’t want to actually work,” said Chong, as they walked away from the German with no intention of returning in the morning.

“I don’t. But I don’t want to be bored out of my freaking mind either.”

 

Next on their list was “Fence Tester.”

That was a little more interesting because there were actual zoms on the other side of the fence. Benny wanted to get close to one. He’d never been closer than a hundred yards from an active zom before. The older kids said that if you looked into a zom’s eyes, your reflection would show you how you’d look as one of the living dead. That sounded very cool, but he never got the chance for a close-up look, because there was always a guy with a shotgun dogging him all through the shift.

The shotgun guy got to ride a horse. Benny and Chong had to walk the fence line and stop every six or ten feet, grip the chain links, and shake the fence to make sure there were no breaks or rusted weak spots. That was okay for the first mile, but after that the noise attracted the zoms, and by the middle of the third mile he had to grab, shake, and release pretty damn fast to keep his fingers from getting bitten. He wanted a close-up look, but he didn’t want to lose a finger over it. If he got bit, the shotgun guy would blast him on the spot. Depending, a zom bite could turn someone from healthy to living dead in anything from a few hours to a few minutes, and in orientation, they told everyone that there was a zero-tolerance policy on infections.

“If the gun bulls even think you got nipped, they’ll blow you all to hell and gone,” said the trainer, “so be careful!”

They quit at lunch.

Next morning they went to the far side of town and applied as “Fence Technicians.”

The fence ran for hundreds of miles and encircled the town and the harvested fields, so this meant a lot of walking, mostly carrying yet another grumpy old guy’s toolbox. In the first three hours they got chased by a zom who had squeezed through a break in the fence.

“Why don’t they just shoot all the zoms who come up to the fence?” Benny asked their supervisor.

“ ’Cause folks would get upset,” said the man, a scruffy-looking guy with bushy eyebrows and a tic at the corner of his mouth. “Some of them zoms are relatives of folks in town, and those folks have rights regarding their kin. Been all sorts of trouble about it, so we keep the fence in good shape, and every once in a while one of the townsfolk will suck up enough intestinal fortitude to grant permission for the fence guards to do what’s necessary.”

“That’s stupid,” said Benny.

“That’s people,” said the supervisor.

That afternoon Benny and Chong were sure they’d walked a million miles, had been peed on by a horse, stalked by a horde of zoms—Benny couldn’t see anything at all in their dusty eyes—and yelled at by nearly everyone.

At the end of the day, as they trudged home on aching feet, Chong said, “That was about as much fun as getting beaten up in recess.” He thought about it for a moment. “No . . . getting beaten up is more fun.”

Benny didn’t have the energy to argue.

There was only one opening for the next job—“Carpet-Coat Salesman”—which was okay because Chong wanted to stay home and rest his feet. Chong hated walking. So Benny showed up neatly dressed in his best jeans and a clean T-shirt and with his hair as combed as it would ever get without glue.

There wasn’t much danger in selling carpet coats, but Benny wasn’t slick enough to get the patter down. Benny was surprised that they’d be hard to sell, because everybody had a carpet coat or two. Best thing in the world to have on if some zoms were around and feeling bitey. What he discovered, though, was that everyone who could thread a needle was selling them, so the competition was fierce and sales were few and far between. The door-to-door guys worked on straight commission, too.

The lead salesman, a greasy joker named Chick, would have Benny wear a long-sleeved carpet coat—low knap for summer, shag for winter—and then would use a device on him that was supposed to simulate the full-strength bite of an adult male zom. This metal “biter” couldn’t break the skin through the coat—and here Chick rolled into his spiel about human bite strength, throwing around terms like PSI, avulsion, and post-decay dental-ligament strength—but it pinched really hard, and the coat was so hot the sweat ran down inside Benny’s clothes. When he went home that night, he weighed himself to see how many pounds he’d sweated off. Just one, but Benny didn’t have a lot of pounds to spare.

 

“This one looks good,” said Chong over breakfast the next morning.

Benny read, “ ‘Pit Thrower.’ What’s that?”

“I don’t know,” Chong said, with a mouthful of toast. “I think it has something to do with barbecuing.”

It didn’t. Pit Throwers worked in teams to drag dead zoms off the back of carts and toss them into the constant blaze at the bottom of Brinkers Quarry. Most of the zoms on the carts were in pieces. The woman who ran orientation kept talking about “parts” and went on and on about the risk of secondary infection; then she pasted on the fakest smile Benny had ever seen and tried to sell the applicants on the physical-fitness benefits that came from constant lifting, turning, and throwing. She even pulled up her sleeve and flexed her biceps. She had pale skin with freckles that looked like liver spots, and the sudden pop of her biceps looked like a swollen tumor.

Chong faked vomiting into his lunch bag.

The other jobs offered by the quarry included “Ash Soaker”—“Because we don’t want zom smoke drifting over the town, now do we?” asked the freckly muscle freak. And “Pit Raker,” which was exactly what it sounded like.

Benny and Chong didn’t make it through orientation. They snuck out during the slide show of smiling Pit Throwers handling gray limbs and heads.

 

“Spotter” was next, and that proved to be a good choice, but only for one of them. Benny’s eyesight was too poor to spot zoms at the right distance. Chong was like an eagle, and they offered him a job as soon as he finished reading numbers off a chart. Benny couldn’t even tell they were numbers.

Chong took the job, and Benny walked away alone, throwing dispirited looks back at his friend sitting next to his trainer in a high tower.

Later, Chong told Benny that he loved the job. He sat there all day staring out over the valleys into the Rot and Ruin that stretched from California all the way to the Atlantic. Chong said that he could see twenty miles on a clear day, especially if there were no winds coming his way from the quarry. Just him up there, alone with his thoughts. Benny missed his friend, but privately he thought that the job sounded more boring than words could express.

 

Benny liked the sound of “Bottler” because he figured it for a factory job filling soda bottles. Benny loved soda, but it was sometimes hard to come by. But as he walked up the road, he met an older teenager—his pal Morgie Mitchell’s cousin Bert—who worked at the plant.

When Benny fell into step with Bert, he almost gagged. Bert smelled awful, like something found dead behind the baseboards. Worse. He smelled like a zom.

Bert caught his look and shrugged. “Well, what do you expect me to smell like? I bottle this stuff eight hours a day.”

“What stuff?”

“Cadaverine. I work a press to get the oils from the rotting meat.”

Benny’s heart sank. Cadaverine was a nasty-smelling molecule produced by protein hydrolysis during putrefaction of animal tissue. Benny remembered that from science class, but he didn’t know that it was made from actual rotting flesh. Hunters and trackers dabbed it on their clothes to keep the zoms from coming after them, because the dead were not attracted to rotting flesh.

Benny asked Bert what kind of flesh was used to produce the product, but Bert hemmed and hawed and finally changed the subject. Just as Bert was reaching for the door to the plant, Benny spun around and walked back to town.

 

There was one job Benny already knew about—“Erosion Artist.” He’d seen erosion portraits tacked up all over town, and there were thousands of them on every wall of each of the town’s fence outposts.

This job had some promise because Benny was a pretty fair artist. People wanted to know what their relatives might look like if they were zoms, so Erosion Artists took family photos and zombified them. Benny had seen dozens of these portraits in Tom’s office. A couple of times he wondered if he should take the picture of his parents to an artist and have them redrawn. He’d never actually done it, though. Thinking about his parents as zoms made him sick and angry.

But Sacchetto, the supervising artist, told him to try a picture of a relative first. He said it provided better insight into what the clients would be feeling. So, as part of his audition, Benny took the picture of his folks out of his wallet and tried it.

Sacchetto frowned and shook his head. “You’re making them look too mean and scary.

He tried it again with several photos of strangers the artist had on file.

“Still mean and scary,” said Sacchetto, with pursed lips and a disapproving shake of his head.

“They are mean and scary,” Benny insisted.

“Not to customers, they’re not,” said Sacchetto.

Benny almost argued with him about it, saying that if he could accept that his own folks would be flesh-eating zombies—and that there was nothing warm and fuzzy about that—then why couldn’t everyone else get it through their heads.

“How old were you when your parents passed?” Sacchetto asked.

“Eighteen months.”

“So you never really knew them.”

Benny hesitated, and that old image flashed once more in his head. Mom screaming. The pale and inhuman face that should have been Dad’s smiling face. And then the darkness as Tom carried him away.

“No,” he said bitterly. “But I know what they looked like. I know about them. I know that they’re zoms. Or maybe they’re dead now, but I mean—zoms are zoms. Right?”

After the audition, he hadn’t been offered the job.

III

September was ten days away, and Benny still hadn’t found a job. He wasn’t good enough with a rifle to be a Fence Guard, he wasn’t patient enough for farming, and he wasn’t strong enough to work as Hitter or Cutter. Not that smashing in zombie heads with a sledgehammer or cutting them up for the quarry wagons was much of a draw for him, even with his strong hatred for the monsters. Yes, it was killing, but it also looked like hard work, and Benny wasn’t all that interested in something described in the papers as “demanding physical labor.” Was that supposed to attract applicants?

So, after soul-searching for a week, during which Chong lectured him pretty endlessly about detaching himself from preconceived notions and allowing himself to become part of the co-creative process of the universe or something like that, Benny came and asked Tom to take him on as an apprentice.

At first Tom studied him with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

Then his eyes widened in shock when he realized Benny wasn’t playing a joke.

As the reality sank in, Tom looked like he wanted to cry. He tried to hug Benny, but that wasn’t going to happen in this life, so Tom and he shook hands on it.

Benny left a smiling Tom and went upstairs to take a nap before dinner. He sat down and stared out the window as if he could see tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and the one after that. Just him and Tom.

“This is really going to suck,” he said.

IV

That evening they sat on the front steps and watched the sun set over the mountains.

“Why do you do this stuff?” Benny asked.

Tom sipped his coffee and was a long time answering. “Tell me, kiddo, what is it you think I do?”

“Duh! You kill zoms.”

“Really? That’s all that I do? I just walk up to any zombie I see and pow!”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“Uh . . . no.” Tom shook his head. “How can you live in this house and not know what I do, what my job involves?”

“What’s it matter? Everybody I know has a brother, sister, father, mother, haggy old grandmother who’s killed zoms. What’s the big?” He wanted to say that he thought Tom probably used a high-powered rifle with a scope and killed them from a safe distance; not like Charlie and Hammer, who had the stones to do it mano a mano.

“Killing the living dead is a part of what I do, Benny. But do you know why I do it? And for whom?”

“For fun?” Benny suggested, hoping Tom would be at least that cool.

“Try again.”

“Okay . . . then for money . . . and for whoever’s gonna pay you.”

“Are you pretending to be a dope, or do you really not understand?”

“What, you think I don’t know you’re a bounty hunter? Everybody knows that. Zak Matthias’s uncle Charlie is one, too. I heard him tell stories about going deep into the Ruin to hunt zoms.”

Tom paused with his coffee cup halfway to his lips. “Charlie—? You know Charlie Pink-Eye?”

“He gets mad if people call him that.”

“Charlie Pink-Eye shouldn’t be around people.”

“Why not?” demanded Benny. “He tells the best stories. He’s funny.”

“He’s a killer.”

“So are you.”

Tom’s smile was gone. “God, I’m an idiot. I have to be the worst brother in the history of the world if I let you think that I’m the same as Charlie Pink-Eye.”

“Well, you’re not exactly like Charlie.”

“Oh, that’s something then.”

“Charlie’s cool.”

“ ‘Cool,’ ” murmured Tom. He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Good God.”

He threw the last of his coffee into the bushes beside the porch and stood up.

“Tell you what, Benny . . . tomorrow we’re going to start early and head out into the Rot and Ruin. We’ll go deep, like Charlie does. I want you to see firsthand what he does and what I do, and then you can make your own decisions.”

“Decisions about what?”

“About a lot of things, kiddo.”

And with that, Tom went in and to bed.

V

They left at dawn and headed down to the southeastern gate. The gatekeeper had Tom sign the usual waiver that absolved the town and the gatekeeping staff of all liability if anything untoward happened once they crossed into the Ruin. A vendor sold Tom a dozen bottles of cadaverine—which they sprinkled on their clothing—and a jar of peppermint goo, which they dabbed on their upper lips to kill their own sense of smell.

They were dressed for a long hike. Tom had instructed Benny to wear good walking shoes, jeans, a durable shirt, and a hat to keep the sun from boiling his brains.

“If it’s not already too late,” Tom said.

Benny made a rude gesture when Tom wasn’t looking.

Despite the heat, Tom wore a lightweight jacket with lots of pockets. He had an old army gun-belt around his narrow waist and a pistol snugged into a worn leather holster. Benny wasn’t allowed to have a gun yet, though Tom stowed an extra one in a pack. The last thing Tom strapped on was a sword. Benny watched with interest as Tom slung a long strap diagonally across his body from left shoulder to right hip, with the hilt standing above his shoulder so that he could reach up and over for a fast right-handed draw.

The sword was a katana, a Japanese long sword, which Benny had seen Tom practice with every day for as long as he could remember. That sword was the only thing about his brother that Benny thought was cool. Benny’s Mom—who was Tom’s adopted mother—was Irish, but their father had been Japanese. Tom once told Benny that the Imura family went all the way to the Samurai days of ancient Japan. He showed Benny picture books of fierce-looking Japanese men in armor. Samurai warriors.

“Are you a samurai?” Benny had asked when he was nine.

“There are no samurai anymore,” Tom said, but even back then Benny thought that Tom had a funny look on his face when he said that. Like maybe there was more to say on the subject but he didn’t want to say it right then. When Benny brought the subject up a couple of times since, the answer was always the same.

Even so, Tom was pretty damn good with the sword. He could draw fast as lightning, and Benny had seen him do a trick—when Tom thought no one else was looking—where he threw a handful of grapes into the air, then drew his sword and cut five of them in half before they fell to the grass. The blade was a blur. Later, after Tom had gone off to a store, Benny came down and counted the grapes. Tom had thrown six into the air. He’d only missed one.

That was cool.

Of course, Benny would rather be burned at the stake than tell Tom how cool he thought that was.

“Why are you bringing that?” he asked, as Tom adjusted the lay of the strap.

“It’s quiet,” Tom said.

Benny understood that. Noise attracted zoms. A sword was quieter than a gun, but it also meant getting closer. Benny didn’t think that was a very smart idea. He said as much, and Tom just shrugged.

“Then why bring the gun?” persisted Benny.

“ ’Cause sometimes quiet doesn’t matter.” Tom patted his pockets to do a quick inventory to make sure he had everything he needed. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

Tom tipped a couple of Fence Runners to bang on drums six hundred yards north, and as soon as that drew away the wandering zoms, Tom and Benny slipped out into the great Rot and Ruin and headed for the treeline.

Chong waved to them from the corner tower.

“We need to move fast for the first half mile,” cautioned Tom, and he broke into a jog-trot that was fast enough to get them out of scent range but slow enough for Benny to match.

A few of the zombies staggered after them, but the Fence Guards banged on the drums again, and the zombies, incapable of holding on to more than one reaction at a time, turned back toward the noise. The Imura brothers vanished into the shadows under the trees.

 

When they finally slowed to a walk, Benny was sweating. It was a hot start to what would be a scorcher of a day. The air was thick with mosquitoes and flies, and the trees were alive with the sound of chattering birds. Far above them the sun was a white hole in the sky.

“How far are we going?” Benny asked.

“Far. But don’t worry, there are way stations where we can crash if we don’t make it back tonight.”

Benny looked at him as if he’d just suggested they set themselves on fire and go swimming in gasoline. “Wait—you’re saying we could be out all night?”

“Sure. You know I’m out here for days at a time. You’re going to have to do what I do. Besides, except for some wanderers, most of the dead in this area have long since been cleaned out. Every week I have to go farther out.”

“Don’t they just come to you?”

Tom shook his head. “There are wanderers—what the Fence Guards call “noms,” short for nomadic zombies—but most don’t travel. You’ll see.”

The forest was old but surprisingly lush in the mid-September heat. Tom found fruit trees, and they ate their fill of sweet pears as they walked. Benny began filling his pockets with them, but Tom shook his head.

“They’re heavy and they’ll slow you. Besides, I picked a route that’ll take us through what used to be farm country. Lots of fruit growing wild.”

Benny looked at the lush pears in his hand, sighed, and let them fall.

“How come nobody comes out here to farm this stuff?” he asked.

“People are scared.”

“Why? There’s got to be forty guys working the fence.”

“No, it’s not the dead that scare them. People in town don’t trust anything out here. They think there’s a disease infesting everything. Food, the livestock that have run wild over the last fourteen years—everything.”

“Yeah . . .” Benny said diffidently. He’d heard that talk. “So, it’s not true?”

“You ate those pears without a thought.”

“You handed them to me.”

Tom smiled. “Oh, so you trust me now?”

“You’re a dork, but I don’t think you want to turn me into a zom.”

“Wouldn’t have to get on you about cleaning your room, so let’s not rule it out.”

“You’re so funny I almost peed my pants,” Benny said without expression.

Tom walked a bit before he said, “There’s town and then there’s the Rot and Ruin. Most of the time they aren’t in the same world, you know?” When it was clear that Benny wasn’t following, Tom said, “Think about it and we’ll talk later.”

He stopped and stared ahead with narrowed eyes. Benny couldn’t see anything, but then Tom grabbed his arm and pulled him quickly off the road. He led him in a wide circle through the groves of trees. Benny peered between the hundreds of tree trunks and finally caught a glimpse of three zoms shuffling slowly along the road.

He opened his mouth and almost asked Tom how he knew, but Tom made a shushing gesture and continued on, moving soundlessly through the soft summer grass.

When they were well clear, Tom took them back up to the road.

“I didn’t even see them!” Benny gasped, turning to look back.

“Neither did I.”

“Then how—?”

“You get a feel for this sort of thing.”

Benny held his ground, still looking back. “I don’t get it. There were only three of them. Couldn’t you have . . . you know . . .”

“What?”

“Killed them,” said Benny flatly. “Charlie Matthias said he’ll go out of his way to chop a zom or two. He doesn’t run from anything.”

“Is that what he says?” Tom murmured, then continued down the road.

Benny shrugged and followed.

VI

Twice more Tom pulled Benny off the road so they could circle around wandering zombies. After the second time, once they were clear of the creatures’ olfactory range, Benny grabbed Tom’s arm and demanded, “Whyn’t you just pop a cap in them?”

Tom gently pulled his arm free. He shook his head and didn’t answer.

“What, are you afraid of them?” Benny yelled.

“Keep your voice down.”

“Why? You afraid a zom will come after you? Big, tough zombie killer who’s afraid to kill a zombie.”

“Benny,” said Tom with thin patience, “sometimes you say some truly stupid things.”

“whatever,” Benny said and pushed past him.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Tom said, when Benny was a dozen paces along the road.

“This way.”

“I’m not,” said Tom, and he began climbing the slope of a hill that rose gently from the left-hand side of the road. Benny stood in the middle of the road and seethed for a full minute. He was muttering the worst words he knew all the time he climbed after Tom up the hill.

There was a smaller road at the top of the hill, and they followed that in silence. By ten o’clock they’d entered a series of steeper hills and valleys that were shaded by massive oak trees with cool green leaves. Tom cautioned Benny to be quiet as they climbed to the top of a ridge that overlooked a small country lane. At the curve of the road was a small cottage with a fenced yard and an elm tree so gnarled and ancient that it looked like the world had grown up around it. Two figures stood in the yard, but they were too small to see. Tom flattened out on the top of the ridge and motioned for Benny to join him.

Tom pulled his field glasses from a belt holster and studied the figures for a long minute.

“What do you think they are?” He handed the binoculars to Benny, who snatched them with more force than was necessary. Benny peered through the lenses in the direction Tom pointed.

“They’re zoms,” Benny said.

“No kidding, boy genius. But what are they?”

“Dead people.”

“Ah.

“Ah . . . what?”

“You just said it. They’re dead people. They were once living people.”

“So what? Everybody dies.”

“True,” admitted Tom. “How many dead people have you seen?”

“What kind of dead? Living dead like them or dead dead like Aunt Cathy?”

“Either. Both.”

“I don’t know. The zombies at the fence . . . and a couple people in town, I guess. Aunt Cathy was the first person I ever knew who died. I was, like, six when she died. I remember the funeral and all.” Benny continued to watch the zombies. One was a tall man, the other a young woman or teenage girl. “And . . . Morgie Mitchell’s dad died after that scaffolding collapsed. I went to his funeral, too.”

“Did you see either of them quieted?”

Quieted was the acceptable term for the necessary act of inserting a metal spike at the base of the skull to sever the brain stem. Since the First Night, anyone who died would reanimate as a zombie. Bites made it happen, too, but really any recently deceased person would come back. Every adult in town carried at least one spike, though Benny had never seen one used.

“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t let me stay in the room when Aunt Cathy died. And I wasn’t there when Morgie’s dad died. I just went to the funerals.”

“What were the funerals like? For you, I mean.”

“I dunno. Kind of quick. Kind of sad. And then everyone went to a party at someone’s house and ate a lot of food. Morgie’s mom got totally shitfaced—”

“Language.”

“Morgie’s mom got drunk,” Benny said, in way that suggested correcting his language was as difficult as having his teeth pulled. “Morgie’s uncle sat in the corner singing Irish songs and crying with the guys from the farm.”

“That was a year, year and a half ago, right? Spring planting?”

“Yeah. They were building a corn silo, and Mr. Mitchell was using the rope hoist to send some tools up to the crew working on the silo roof. One of the scaffolding pipes broke, and a whole bunch of stuff came crashing down on him.”

“It was an accident.”

“Well, yeah, sure.”

“How’d Morgie take it?”

“How do you think he took it? He was fu—He was screwed up.” Benny handed back the glasses. “He’s still a little screwed up.”

“How’s he screwed up?”

“I don’t know. He misses his dad. They used to hang out a lot. Mr. Mitchell was pretty cool, I guess.”

“Do you miss Aunt Cathy?”

“Sure, but I was little. I don’t remember that much. I remember she smiled a lot. She was pretty. I remember she used to sneak me extra ice cream from the store where she worked. Half an extra ration.”

Tom nodded. “Do you remember what she looked like?”

“Like Mom,” said Benny. “She looked a lot like Mom.”

“You were too little to remember Mom.”

“I remember her,” Benny said, with an edge in his voice. He took out his wallet and showed Tom the image behind the glassine cover. “Maybe I don’t remember her really well, but I think about her. All the time. Dad too.”

Tom nodded again. “I didn’t know you carried this.” His smile was small and sad. “I remember Mom. She was more of a mother to me than my mom ever was. I was so happy when Dad married her. I can remember every line on her face. The color of her hair. Her smile. Cathy was a year younger, but they could have been twins.”

Benny sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees. He brain felt twisted around. There were so many emotions wired into memories, old and new. He glanced at his brother. “You were older than I am now when—y’know—it happened.”

“I turned twenty a few days before First Night. I was in the police academy. Dad married your mom when I was sixteen.”

“You got to know them. I never did. I wish I . . .” He left the rest unsaid.

Tom nodded. “Me too, kiddo.”

They sat in the shade of their private memories.

“Tell me something, Benny,” said Tom. “What would you have done if one of your friends—say, Chong or Morgie—had come to Aunt Cathy’s funeral and pissed in her coffin?”

Benny was so startled by the question that his answer was unguarded. “I’d have jacked them up. I mean jacked them up.”

Tom nodded.

Benny stared at him. “What kind of question is that, though?”

“Indulge me. Why would you have freaked out on your friends?”

“Because they dissed Aunt Cathy. Why do you think?”

“But she’s dead.”

“What the hell does that matter? Pissing in her coffin? I would so kick their asses.”

“But why? Aunt Cathy was beyond caring.”

“It was her funeral! Maybe she was still . . . I don’t know . . . there in some way. Like Pastor Kellogg always says.”

“What does he say?”

“That the spirits of those we love are always with us.”

“Okay. What if you didn’t believe that? What if you believed that Aunt Cathy was only a body in a box? And your friends pissed on her?”

“What do you think?” Benny snapped. “I’d still kick their asses.”

“I believe you. But why?”

“Because,” Benny began, but then hesitated, unsure of how to express what he was feeling. “Because Aunt Cathy was mine, you know? She was my aunt. My family. They don’t have any right to disrespect my family.”

“No more than you’d go take a crap on Morgie Mitchell’s father’s grave. Or dig him up and pour garbage on his bones. You wouldn’t do anything like that?”

Benny was appalled. “What’s your damage, man? Where do you come up with this crap? Of course I wouldn’t do anything sick like that! God, who do you think I am?”

“Shhh . . . keep your voice down,” cautioned Tom. “So, you wouldn’t disrespect Morgie’s dad . . . alive or dead?”

“Hell no.”

“Language.”

Benny said it slower and with more emphasis. “Hell. No.”

“Glad to hear it.” Tom held out the field glasses. “Take a look at the two dead people down there. Tell me what you see.”

“So we’re back to business now?” Benny gave him a look. “You’re weird, man. Deeply weird.”

“Just look.”

Benny sighed and grabbed the binoculars out of Tom’s hand, put them to his eyes. Stared. Sighed.

“Yep. Two zoms. Same two zoms.”

“Be specific.”

“Okay. Okay—two zoms. One man, one woman. Standing in the same place as before. Big yawn.”

Tom said, “Those dead people . . .”

“What about them?”

“They used to be somebody’s family,” said Tom quietly. “The male looks old enough to have been a dad, more likely a granddad. He had a family, friends. A name. He was somebody.”

Benny lowered the glasses and started to speak.

“No,” said Tom. “Keep looking. Look at the woman. She was, what? Eighteen years old when she died? Might have been pretty. Those rags she’s wearing might have been a waitress’s uniform once. She could have worked at a diner right next to Aunt Cathy. She had people at home who loved her. . . .”

“Don’t, man—”

“People who worried when she was late getting home. People who wanted her to grow up happy. People—a mom and a dad. Maybe brothers and sisters. Maybe grandparents. People who believed that girl had a life in front of her. That old man might be her granddad.”

“But she’s one of them, man. She’s dead,” Benny said defensively.

“Sure. Almost everyone who ever lived is dead. More than six billion people are dead. And every last one of them had family once. Every last one of them were family once. At one time there was someone like you who would have kicked the ass of anyone—stranger or best friend—who harmed or disrespected that girl. Or the old man.”

Benny was shaking his head. “No, no, no. It’s not the same. These are zoms, man. They kill people. They eat people.”

“They used to be people.”

“But they died!”

“Sure. Like Aunt Cathy and Mr. Mitchell.”

“No, Aunt Cathy got cancer. Mr. Mitchell died in an accident.”

“Sure, but if someone in town hadn’t quieted them, they’d have become living dead, too. Don’t even pretend you don’t know that. Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about that happening to Aunt Cathy.” He nodded down the hill. “These two down there caught a disease.”

Benny nodded. He’d learned about it in school, though no one knew for sure what had actually happened. Some sources said it was a virus that was mutated by radiation from a returning space probe. Others said it was a new type of flu that came over from China. Chong believed it was something that got out of a lab somewhere. The only thing everyone agreed on was that it was a disease of some kind.

Tom said, “That guy down there was probably a farmer. The girl was a waitress. I’m pretty sure neither of them was involved in the space program. Or worked in some lab where they researched viruses. What happened to them was an accident. They got sick, Benny, and they died.”

Benny said nothing.

“How do you think Mom and Dad died?”

No answer.

“Benny—? How do you think—?”

“They died on the First Night,” Benny said irritably.

“They did. But how?”

Benny said nothing.

“How?”

“You let them die!” Benny said in a savage whisper. Words tumbled out of him in a disjointed sputter. “Dad got sick and . . . and . . . then Mom tried to . . . and you . . . you just ran away!”

Tom said nothing, but sadness darkened his eyes, and he shook head slowly.

“I remember it,” Benny hissed. “I remember you running away.”

“You were a baby.”

“I remember it.”

“You should have told me, Benny.”

“Why? So you could make up a lie about why you just ran away and left my Mom like that?”

The words my mom hung in the air between them. Tom flinched.

“You think I just ran away?” he said.

“I don’t think it, Tom—I remember it.”

“Do you remember why I ran?”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re a freaking coward, is why!”

“Jesus,” Tom whispered. He adjusted the strap that held the sword in place and sighed again. “Benny . . . this isn’t the time or place for this, but someday soon we’re going to have a serious talk about the way things were back then, and the way things are now.”

“There’s nothing you can say that’s going to change the truth.”

“No. The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we’re willing to believe.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“If you ever want to know my side of things,” said Tom, “I’ll tell you. There’s a lot you were too young to know then, and maybe you’re still too young now.”

Silence washed back and forth between them.

“For right now, Benny, I want you to understand that when Mom and Dad died, it was from the same thing that killed those two down there.”

Benny said nothing.

Tom plucked a stalk of sweet grass and put it between his teeth. “You didn’t really know Mom and Dad, but let me ask you this: If someone was to piss on them, or abuse them—even now, even considering what they had to have become during the First Night—would it be okay with you?”

“Screw you.”

“Tell me.”

“No. Okay? No it wouldn’t freaking be okay with me? You happy now?”

“Why not, Benny?”

“Because.”

“Why not? They’re only zoms.”

Benny abruptly got up and walked down the hill, away from the farm and away from Tom. He stood looking back along the road they’d traveled as if he could still see the fence line. Tom waited a long time before he got up and joined him.

“I know this is hard, kiddo,” he said gently, “but we live in a pretty hard world. We struggle to live. We’re always on our guard, and we have to toughen ourselves just to get through each day. And each night.”

“I freaking hate you.”

“Maybe. I doubt it, but it doesn’t matter right now.” He gestured toward the path that led back home. “Everybody west of here has lost someone. Maybe someone close, or maybe a distant cousin three times removed. But everybody has lost someone.”

Benny said nothing.

“I don’t believe that you would disrespect anyone in our town or in the whole west. I also don’t believe—I don’t want to believe—that you’d disrespect the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers who live out here in the great Rot and Ruin.”

He put his hands on Benny’s shoulders and turned him around. Benny resisted, but Tom Imura was strong. When they were both facing east, Tom said, “Every dead person out there deserves respect. Even in death. Even when we fear them. Even when we have to kill them. They aren’t just ‘zoms,’ Benny. That’s a side effect of a disease or from some kind of radiation or something else that we don’t understand. I’m no scientist, Benny. I’m a simple man doing a job.”

“Yeah? You’re trying to sound all noble, but you kill them.” Benny had tears in his eyes.

“Yes,” Tom said softly, “I do. I’ve killed hundreds of them. If I’m smart and careful—and lucky—I’ll kill hundreds more.”

Benny shoved him with both hands. It only pushed Tom back a half step. “I don’t understand!”

“No, you don’t. I hope you will, though.”

“You talk about respect for the dead, and yet you kill them.”

“This isn’t about the killing. It isn’t and never should be about the killing.”

“Then what?” Benny sneered. “The money?”

“Are we rich?”

“No.”

“Then it’s obviously not about the money.”

“Then what?”

“It’s about the why of the killing. For the living . . . for the dead,” Tom said. “It’s about closure.”

Benny shook his head.

“Come with me, kiddo. It’s time you understood how the world works. It’s time you learned what the family business is all about.”

VII

They walked for miles under the hot sun. The peppermint gel ran off with their sweat and had to be reapplied hourly. Benny was quiet for most of the trip, but as his feet got sore and his stomach started to rumble, he turned cranky.

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

“How far is it?”

“A bit.”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll stop soon.”

“What’s for lunch?”

“Beans and jerky.”

“I hate jerky.”

“You bring anything else?” Tom asked.

“No.”

“Jerky it is, then.”

The roads Tom picked were narrow and often turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt.

“We haven’t seen a zom in a couple of hours,” Benny said. “How come?”

“Unless they hear or smell something that draws them, they tend to stick close to home.”

“Home?”

“Well . . . to the places they used to live or work.”

“Why?”

Tom took a couple of minutes on that. “There are lots of theories, but that’s all we have. Just theories. Some folks say that the dead lack the intelligence to think that there’s anywhere other than where they’re standing. If nothing attracts them or draws them, they’ll just stay right where they are.”

“But they need to hunt, don’t they?”

“Need is a tricky word. Most experts agree that the dead will attack and kill, but it’s not been established that they actually hunt. Hunting implies need, and we don’t know that the dead need to do anything.”

“I don’t understand.”

They crested a hill and looked down a dirt road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.

“Have you ever heard of one of them just wasting away and dying of hunger?”

“No, but—”

“The people in town think that the dead survive by eating the living, right?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“What ‘living’ do you think they’re eating?”

“Huh?”

”Think about it. There’re more than three hundred million living dead in America alone. Throw in another thirty-odd million in Canada and a hundred and ten million in Mexico, and you have something like four hundred and fifty million living dead. The Fall happened fourteen years ago. So—what are they eating to stay alive?”

Benny thought about it. “Mr. Feeney says they eat each other.”

“They don’t,” said Tom. “Once a body has started to cool, they stop feeding on it. That’s why there are so many partially eaten living dead. They won’t attack or eat each other even if you locked them in the same house for years on end. People have done it.”

“What happens to them?”

“The trapped ones? Nothing.”

“Nothing? They don’t rot away and die?”

“They’re already dead, Benny.” A shadow passed over the valley and momentarily darkened Tom’s face. “But that’s one of the mysteries. They don’t rot. Not completely. They decay to a certain point, and then they just stop rotting. No one knows why.”

“What do you mean? How can something just stop rotting? That’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, kiddo. It’s a mystery. It’s as much a mystery as why the dead rise in the first place. Why they attack humans. Why they don’t attack each other. All mysteries.”

“Maybe they eat . . . like . . . cows and stuff.”

Tom shrugged. “Some do, if they can catch them. A lot of people don’t know that, by the way, but it’s true. They’ll eat anything alive that they can catch. Dogs, cats, birds, even bugs.”

“Well, then, that explains—”

“No,” Tom said. “Most animals are too fast. Ever try to catch a cat who doesn’t want to be caught? Now imagine doing that if you’re only able to shuffle along slowly and can’t strategize. If a bunch of the dead came upon cows in a pen or fenced field, they might be able to kill them and eat them, but all the penned animals have either long-since escaped or they died off in the first few months. No . . . the dead don’t need to feed at all. They just exist.”

They reached the gas station. Tom stopped by the old pump and knocked on the metal casing three times, then twice, and then four more times.

“What are you doing?”

“Saying hello.”

“Hello to . . . ?”

There was a low moan, and Benny turned to see a gray-skinned man come shuffling slowly around the corner of the building. He wore ancient coveralls that were stained with dark blotches, but incongruously, around his neck was a garland of fresh flowers. Marigolds and honeysuckle. The man’s face was in shade for a few steps, but then he crossed into the sunlight and Benny nearly screamed. The man’s eyes were missing, and the sockets gaped emptily. The moaning mouth was toothless, the lips and cheeks, sunken in. Worst of all, as the zombie raised its hands toward them, Benny saw that all of its fingers had been clipped off at the primary knuckles.

Benny gagged and stepped back, his muscles tensed to turn and run, but Tom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

“Wait,” said Tom.

A moment later the door to the gas station opened, and a pair of sleepy-eyed young women came outside followed by a slightly older man with a long brown beard. The were all thin and dressed in tunics that looked like they had been made from old bed sheets. Each wore a thick garland of flowers. The trio looked at Benny and Tom and then at the zombie.

“Leave him be!” cried the youngest woman as she ran across the dirt to the dead man and stood between him and the Imura brothers, her feet planted, her arms spread to shield the zombie.

Tom raised a hand and took his hat off so they could see his face.

“Peace, little sister,” he said. “No one’s here to do harm.”

The bearded man fished eyeglasses from a pocket beneath his tunic and squinted through dirty lenses.

“Tom . . . ?” he said. “Tom Imura?”

“Hey, Brother David.” He put his hand on Benny’s shoulder. “This is my brother, Benjamin.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Passing through,” said Tom. “But I wanted to pay my respects. And to teach Benny the ways of this world. He’s never been outside of the fence before.”

Benny caught the way Tom put emphasis on the word this.

Brother David walked over, scratching his beard. Up close he was older than he looked—maybe forty, with deep brown eyes and a few missing teeth. His clothing was clean but threadbare. He smelled of flowers, garlic, and mint. The man studied Benny for a long moment, during which Tom did nothing and Benny fidgeted.

“He’s not a believer,” said Brother David.

“Belief is tough to come by in these times,” said Tom.

“You believe.”

“Seeing is believing.”

Benny thought that their exchange had the cadence of a church litany, as if it was something the two of them had said before and would say again.

Brother David bent toward Benny. “Tell me, young brother, do you come here bringing hurt and harm to the Children of God?”

“Um . . . no?”

“Do you bring hurt and harm to the Children of Lazarus?”

“I don’t know who they are, mister, but I’m just here with my brother.”

Brother David turned toward the women, who were using gentle pushes to steer the zombie back around the far side of the building. “Old Roger there is one of Lazarus’s Children.”

“What? You mean he’s not a zom—”

Tom made a noise to stop him.

A tolerant smile flickered over Brother David’s face. “We don’t use that word, little brother.”

Benny didn’t know how to answer that, so Tom came to his rescue.

“The name comes from Lazarus of Bethany, a man who was raised from the dead by Jesus.”

“Yeah, I remember hearing about that in church.”

The mention of church brightened Brother David’s smile. “You believe in God?” he asked hopefully.

“I guess. . . .”

“In these times,” said Brother David, “that’s better than most.” He threw a covert wink at Tom.

Benny looked past him to where the girls had taken the zombie. “I’m like totally confused here. That guy was a . . . you know. He’s dead, right?”

“Living dead,” corrected Brother David.

“Right. Why wasn’t he trying to . . . you know.” He mimed grabbing and biting.

“He doesn’t have teeth,” said Tom. “And you saw his hands.”

Benny nodded. “Did you guys do that?” he asked Brother David.

“No, little brother,” Brother David said with a grimace. “No, other people did that to Old Roger.”

“Who?” demanded Benny.

“Don’t you mean ‘Why’?”

“No, who. Who’d do something like that?”

Brother David said, “Old Roger is only one of the Children who have been tortured like that. All over this county you can see them. Men and women with their eyes cut out, their teeth pulled, or jaws shot away. Most of them missing fingers or whole hands. And I won’t talk about some of the others things I’ve seen done. Stuff you’re too young to know about, little brother.”

“I’m fifteen,” said Benny.

“You’re too young. I can remember when fifteen meant you were still a child.” Brother David turned and watched the two young women return without the old zombie.

“He’s in the shed,” said the blonde.

“But he’s agitated,” said the redhead.

“He’ll quiet down after a spell,” said Brother David.

The women stood by the pump and eyed Tom, though Tom seemed to suddenly find something fascinating about the movement of the clouds. Benny’s usual inclination was to make a joke at Tom’s expense, but he didn’t feel like it. He turned back to the bearded man.

“Who’s doing all this stuff you’re talking about? To that old man. To those . . . others you mentioned. What kind of dirtbag’s are out here doing that stuff?”

“Bounty hunters,” said the redhead.

“Killers,” said the blonde.

“Why?”

“If I had an answer to that,” said Brother David, “I’d be a saint instead of a way-station monk.”

Benny turned to Tom. “I don’t get it . . . you’re a bounty hunter.”

“I guess to some people that’s what I am.”

“Do you do this kind of stuff?”

“What do you think?”

But Benny was already shaking his head.

Tom said, “What do you even know about bounty hunters?”

“They kill zombies,” Benny said, then flinched as he saw the looks of distaste on the faces of Brother David and the two women. “Well, they do! That’s what bounty hunters are there for. They come out here into the Rot and Ruin and they hunt the, um, you know . . . the living dead.”

“Why?” asked Tom.

“For money.”

“Who pays them?” asked Brother David.

“People in town. People in other towns,” said Benny. “I heard the government pays them sometimes.”

“Who’d you hear that from?” asked Tom.

“Charlie Matthias.”

Brother David turned a questioning face to Tom, who said, “Charlie Pink-Eye.”

The faces of the monk and the two women fell into sickness. Brother David closed his eyes and shook his head slowly from side to side.

“What’s wrong?” asked Benny.

“You can stay to dinner,” Brother David said stiffly, eyes still closed. “God requires mercy and sharing from all of His Children. But . . . once you’ve eaten I’d like you to leave.”

Tom put his hand on the monk’s shoulder. “We’re moving on now.”

The redhead stepped toward Tom. “It was a lovely day until you came.”

“No,” said Brother David sharply, then repeated it more gently. “No, Sarah . . . Tom’s our friend, and we’re being rude.” He opened his eyes, and Benny thought that the man now looked seventy. “I’m sorry, Tom. Please forgive Sister Sarah, and please forgive me for—”

“No,” said Tom. “It’s okay. She’s right. It was a lovely day, and saying that man’s name here was wrong of me. I apologize to you, to her, to Sister Claire, and to Old Roger. This is Benny’s first time out here in the Ruin. He met . . . that man . . . and had heard a lot of stories. Stories of hunting out here. He’s a boy and he doesn’t understand. I brought him out here to let him know how things are. How things fall out.” He paused. “He’s never been to Sunset Hollow. You understand?”

The three Children of God studied him for a while, and then one by one they nodded.

“What’s Sunset Hollow?” Benny asked, but Tom didn’t answer.

“And I thank you for your offer of a meal,” said Tom, “but we’ve got miles to go, and I think Benny’s going to have a lot of questions to ask. Some of them are better asked elsewhere.”

Sister Sarah reached up and touched Tom’s face. “I’m sorry for my words.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

She smiled at him and caressed his cheek; then she turned and placed her hands on either side of Benny’s face. “May God protect your heart out here in the world.” With that she kissed him on the forehead and walked away. The blonde smiled at the brothers and followed.

Benny turned to Tom. “Did I miss something?”

“Probably,” said Tom. “Come on, kiddo, let’s roll.”

Brother David shifted to stand in Tom’s path. “Brother,” he said, “I’ll ask once and then be done with it.”

“Ask away.”

“Are you sure about what you’re doing?”

“Sure? No. But I’m set on doing it.” He fished in his pocket and brought out three vials of cadaverine. “Here, Brother. May it help you in your work.”

Brother David nodded his thanks. “God go with you and before you and within you.”

They shook hands, and Tom stepped back onto the dirt road. Benny, however, lingered for a moment longer.

“Look, mister,” he began slowly, “I don’t know what I said or did that was wrong, but I’m sorry, you know? Tom brought me out here, and he’s a bit crazy, and I don’t know what . . .” He trailed off. There was no road map in his head to guide him through this conversation.

Brother David offered his hand and gave him the same blessing.

“Yeah,” said Benny. “You, too. Okay?”

He hurried to catch up to Tom, who was fifty yards down the road. When he looked back, the monk was standing in the road. He lifted his hand, but whether it was some kind of blessing or a gesture of farewell, Benny didn’t know. Either way it creeped him out.

VIII

When they were far down the road, Benny said, “What was that all about? Why’d that guy get so jacked about me mentioning Charlie?”

“Not everyone thinks Charlie’s ‘cool,’ kiddo.”

“You jealous?”

Tom laughed. “God! The day I’m jealous of someone like Charlie Pink-Eye is the day I’ll cover myself in steak sauce and walk out into a crowd of the dead.”

“Hilarious,” said Benny sourly. “What’s with all that Children of God, Children of Lazarus stuff? What are they doing out here?”

“They’re all over the Ruin. I’ve met travelers who’ve seen them as far east as Pennsylvania, and all the way down to Mexico City. I first saw them about a year after the Fall. A whole bunch of them heading across the country in an old school bus with scripture passages painted all over it. Not sure how they got started or who chose the name. Even Brother David doesn’t know. To him it’s like they always were.”

“Is he nuts?”

“I think the expression used to be ‘touched by God.’ ”

“So . . . that would be a yes.”

“If he’s nuts, then at least his heart’s in the right place. The Children don’t believe in violence of any kind.”

“But you’re okay with them, even though you kill zoms?”

Tom shook his head. “No, they don’t like what I do. But they accept my explanation for why I do it, and Brother David and a few others have seen how I do it, and whereas they don’t approve, they don’t condemn me for it. They think I’m misguided but well-intentioned.”

“And Charlie? What do they think of him? Can’t be anything good.”

“They believe Charlie Pink-Eye to be an evil man. Him and his jackass buddy the Motor City Hammer and a bunch of others. They think most of the bounty hunters are evil, in fact, and I can’t fault them for those beliefs.”

Benny said nothing. He still thought Charlie Matthias was cool as all hell.

“So . . . these Children, what do they actually do?”

“Not much. They tend to the dead. If they find a town, they’ll go through the houses and look for photos of the people who lived there, and then they try and round up those people if they’re still wandering around the town. They put them in their houses, seal the doors, write some prayers on the walls, and then move on. Most of them keep moving. Brother David’s been here for a year or so, but I expect he’ll move on, too.”

“How do they round up zoms? Especially in a town full of them?”

“They wear carpet coats and they know the tricks of moving quietly and using cadaverine to mask their living smells. Sometimes one or another of the Children will come to town to buy some, but more often guys like me bring some out to them.”

“Don’t they ever get attacked?”

Tom nodded. “All the time, sad to say. I know of at least fifty dead in this part of the country who used to be Children. I’ve even heard stories that some of the Children give themselves to the dead.”

Benny stared at him. “Why?”

“Brother David says that some of the Children believe that the dead are the ‘meek’ who were meant to inherit the earth, and that all things under heaven are there to sustain them. They think that allowing the dead to feed on them is fulfilling God’s will.”

“That’s sick.”

Tom shrugged.

“It’s stupid,” Benny said.

“It is what it is. I think a lot of the Children are people who didn’t survive the Fall. Oh, sure, their bodies did, but I think some fundamental part of them was broken by what happened. I was there, I can relate.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“I have my moments, kiddo, believe me.”

Benny gave him a strange look.

That’s when they heard the gunshots.

IX

When the first one cracked through the air, Benny dropped to a huddle, but Tom stood straight and looked away to the northeast. When he heard the second shot, he turned his head slightly more to the north.

“Handgun,” he said. “Heavy caliber. Three miles.”

Benny looked up at him through the arms he’d wrapped over his head. “Bullets can go three miles, can’t they?”

“Not usually,” said Tom. “Even so, they aren’t shooting at us.”

Benny straightened cautiously. “You can tell? How?”

“Echoes,” he said. “Those bullets didn’t travel far. They’re shooting at something close and hitting it.”

“Um . . . it’s cool that you know that. A little freaky, but cool.”

“Yeah, this whole thing is about me showing you how cool I am.”

“Oh. Sarcasm,” said Benny dryly. “I get it.”

“Shut up,” said Tom with a grin.

“No, you shut up.”

They smiled at each other for the first time all day.

“C’mon,” said Tom, “let’s go see what they’re shooting at.” He set off in the direction of the gunshot echoes.

Benny stood watching him for a moment. “Um . . . wait . . . we’re going toward the shooting?”

Benny shook his head and followed as quickly as he could. Tom picked up the pace, and Benny, his stomach full of beans and the hated jerky, kept up. They followed a stream down to the lowlands, but Benny noticed that Tom never went closer than a thousand yards to the running water. He asked Tom about this.

Tom asked, “Can you hear the water?”

Benny strained to hear. “No.”

“There’s your answer. Flowing water is constant noise. It masks other sounds. We’ll only go near it to cross it or to fill our canteens; otherwise quiet is better for listening. Always remember that if we can hear something, then it can probably hear us. And if we can’t hear something, then it might still be able to hear us and we won’t know about it until it’s too late.”

However, as they followed the gunshot echoes, their path angled toward the stream. Tom stopped for a moment and then shook his head in disapproval. “Not bright,” he said, but didn’t explain his comment. They ran on.

As they moved, Benny practiced being quiet. It was harder than he thought, and for a while it sounded—to his ears—as if he was making a terrible racket. Twigs broke like firecrackers under his feet; his breath sounded like a wheezing dragon; the legs of his jeans whisked together like a crosscut saw. Tom told him to focus on quieting one thing at a time.

“Don’t try to learn too many skills at once. Take a new skill and learn it by using it. Go from there.”

By the time they were close to where they’d heard the gunshots, Benny was moving more quietly and found that he enjoyed the challenge. It was like playing ghost tag with Chong and Morgie.

Tom stopped and cocked his head to listen. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for Benny to remain still. They were in a field of tall grass that led to a dense stand of birch trees. From beyond the trees they could hear the sound of men laughing and shouting and the occasional hollow crack of a pistol shot.

“Stay here,” Tom whispered and then he moved as quickly and quietly as a sudden breeze, vanishing into the tall grass. Benny lost track of him almost at once. More gunshots popped in the dry air.

A full minute passed, and Benny felt a burning constriction in his chest and realized that he was holding his breath. He let it out and gulped in another.

Where was Tom?

Another minute. More laughter and shouts. A few scattered gunshots. A third minute. A fourth.

And then something large and dark rose up in the tall grass a few feet away.

“Tom!” Benny almost screamed the name, but Tom shushed him. His brother stepped close and bent to whisper.

“Benny, listen to me. On the other side of those trees is something you need to see. If you’re going to understand how things really are, you need to see.”

“What is it?”

“Bounty hunters. Three of them. I’ve seen these three before, but never this close to town. I want you to come with me. Very quietly. I want you to watch, but don’t say or do anything.”

“But—”

“This will be ugly. Are you ready?”

“I—”

“Yes or no? We can head southeast and continue on our way. Or we can go home.”

Benny shook his head. “No, I’m ready.”

Tom smiled and squeezed his arm. “If things get serious, I want you to run and hide. Understand?”

“Yes,” Benny said, but the word was like a thorn caught in his throat. Running and hiding. Was that the only strategy Tom knew?

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now . . . follow me. When I move, you move. When I stop, you stop. Step only where I step. Got it? Good.”

Tom led the way through the tall grass, moving slowly, shifting his position in time with the fluctuations of the wind. When Benny realized this, it became easier to match his brother step for step. They entered the trees, and Benny could more easily hear the laughter of the three men. They sounded drunk. Then he heard the whinny of a horse.

A horse?

The trees thinned, and Tom hunkered down and pulled Benny down with him. The scene before them was something out of a nightmare. Even as Benny took it in, a part of his mind was whispering to him that he would never forget what he was seeing. He could feel every detail being burned into his brain.

Beyond the trees was a clearing bordered on two sides by switchbacks of the deep stream. The stream vanished around a sheer sandstone cliff that rose thirty feet above the treeline and reappeared on the opposite side of the clearing. Only a narrow dirt path led from the trees in which the Imura brothers crouched to the spit of land framed by stream and cliff. It was a natural clearing that gave the men a clear view of the approaches on all sides. A wagon with two big horses stood in the shade thrown by the birch trees. The back of the wagon was piled high with zombies, who squirmed and writhed in a hopeless attempt to flee or attack. Hopeless, because beside the wagon was a growing pile of severed arms and legs. The zombies in the wagon were limbless cripples.

A dozen other zombies milled around by the sandstone wall, and every time one of them would lumber after one of the men, it was driven back by a vicious kick. It was clear to Benny that two of the men knew some kind of martial art, because they used elaborate jumping and spinning kicks. The more dynamic the kick, the more the others laughed and applauded. When Benny listened, he realized that as one stepped up to confront a zombie, the other two men would name a kick. The men shouted bets at each other and then rated the kicks for points. The two kick-fighters took turns while the third man kept score by drawing numbers in the dirt with a stick.

The zombies had little hope of any effective attack. They were clustered on a narrow and almost water-locked section of the clearing; but far worse than that—each and every one of them was blind. Their eyes were of torn flesh and almost colorless blood. Benny looked at the zombies on the cart and saw that they were all blind as well.

He gagged but clamped a hand to his mouth to keep the sound from escaping.

The standing zombies were all battered hulks, barely able to stand, and it was clear that this game had been going on for a while. Benny knew that the zombies were already dead, that they couldn’t feel pain or know humiliation, but what he saw seared a mark on his soul.

“That one’s ’bout totally messed up,” yelled a black man with an eye patch. “Load him up.”

The man who apparently didn’t know the fancy kicks bent and picked up a sword with a heavy, curved blade. Benny had seen pictures of one in an Arabian Nights book. A scimitar.

“Okay,” said the swordsman, “what’re the numbers?”

“Denny did his in four cuts at three-point-one seconds,” said Eyepatch.

“Oh, hell . . . I got that beat. Time me.”

Eyepatch dug a stopwatch out of his pocket. “Ready . . . steady . . . Go!”

The swordsman rushed toward the closest zombies—a teenage boy who looked like he’d been about Benny’s age when he died. The blade swept upward in a glittering line that sheared through the zombie’s right arm at the shoulder, and then he checked his swing and chopped down to take the other arm. Instantly he pivoted, swung the sword laterally, and chopped through both legs an inch below the groin. The zombie toppled to the ground, and one leg, against all odds, remained upright.

The three men burst out laughing.

“Time!” yelled Eyepatch, and read the stopwatch. “Holy crap, Stosh. That’s two-point-nine-nine seconds!”

“And three cuts,” yelled Stosh. “I did it in three cuts!”

They howled with laughter, and the third man, called Denny, squatted down, wrapped his burly arms around the limbless zombie’s torso, picked it up with a grunt, and carried it over to the wagon. Eyepatch tossed him the limbs—one, two, three, four—and Denny added them to the pile.

The kicking game started up again. Stosh drew a pistol and shot one of the remaining zombies in the chest. The bullet did no harm, but the creature turned toward the impact and began lumbering in that direction. Denny yelled, “Jump-spinning back kick!”

Eyepatch leaped into the air, twisted, and drove a savage kick into the zombie’s stomach, knocking it backward into the others. They all fell, and the men laughed and handed around a bottle, while the zombies clambered awkwardly to their feet.

Tom leaned close to Benny and whispered. “Time to go.”

He moved away, but Benny caught up to him and grabbed his sleeve. “What the hell are you doing? Where are you going?”

“Away from these clowns,” said Tom.

“You have to do something!”

Tom turned to face him. “What is it you expect me to do?”

“Stop them!” Benny said in an urgent whisper.

“Why?”

“Because they’re . . . because . . .” Benny sputtered.

“You want me to save the zombies, Benny? Is that it?”

Benny, caught in the fires of his own frustration, glared at him.

“They’re bounty hunters, Benny,” said Tom. “They get a bounty on every zombie they kill. Want to know why they don’t just cut the heads off? Because they have to prove that it was they who killed the zombies and didn’t just collect heads from someone else’s kill. So they bring the torsos back to town and do the killing in front of a bounty judge, who then pays them a half day’s rations for every kill. Looks like they have enough there for each of them to get almost five full days’ rations. They’ll probably swap some of the rations for goods and services with people in town. Especially with women in town. Single moms will do a lot to get enough food for their kids. You following me?”

“I don’t believe you!” snarled Benny.

“Keep your voice down,” Tom hissed. “And, yes, you do believe me. I can see it in your eyes. I can tell you’re thinking about that—and then about what that dirtbag Charlie Pink-Eye told you and the other boys. I’ll bet he’s told you about all the women he’s screwed. How do you think an ugly ape like him gets women? Even he wouldn’t risk rape—not with the death penalty on that—and the only hookers in town are uglier than the zombies. No, Charlie and his buddies buy it with food rations from women who will do anything to feed their kids. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s not a lot better than rape.”

Blotches of fiery red had blossomed on Tom’s face as he said this in a fierce whisper. He stopped, took a few breaths, let the fury pass. When he spoke again his face was calmer but his words had as many jagged edges.

“The game these guys are playing? That’s ugly, right? It got you so upset that you wanted me to step in and do something. Am I right?”

Benny said nothing. His fists were balled into knuckly knots at his sides.

“Well, as bad as that is . . . I’ve seen worse. A whole lot worse. I’m talking pit fights where they put some dumb-ass kid—maybe someone your age—in a hole dug in the ground and then push in a zom. Maybe they give the kid a knife or a sharpened stick or a baseball bat. Sometimes the kid wins, sometimes he doesn’t, but the odds-makers haul in a fortune either way. And where do the kids come from? They volunteer for it.”

“That’s bull. . . .”

“No, it’s not. If I wasn’t around and you lived with Aunt Cathy when she was sick with cancer, what would you have done, how much would you have risked to make sure she got enough food and medicine?”

Benny shook his head, but Tom’s face was stone.

“Are you going to tell me that you wouldn’t take a shot at winning maybe a month’s worth of rations—or a whole box of meds—for ninety seconds in a zom pit?”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“No?”

“I never heard about anything like that.”

Tom snorted. “If you did something like that, would you tell anyone? Would you even tell Chong and Morgie?”

Benny didn’t answer.

Tom pointed. “I can go back there and maybe stop those guys. Maybe even do it without killing them or getting killed myself, but what good would it do? You think they’re the only ones doing this sort of thing? This is the great Rot and Ruin, Benny. There’s no law out here, not since First Night. Killing zoms is what people do out here.”

“That’s not killing them! It’s sick.”

“Yes it is,” Tom said softly. “Yes it is, and I can’t tell you how relieved and happy I am to hear you say it. To know that you believe it.”

There were more shouts and laughter from behind them. And another gunshot.

“I can stop them if you want me to. But it won’t stop what’s happening out here.”

Tears burned in Benny’s eyes, and he punched Tom hard in the chest. “But you do this stuff! You kill zombies.”

Tom grabbed Benny and pulled him close. Benny struggled, but Tom pulled his brother to his chest and held him. “No,” he whispered. “No. Come on, I’ll show you what I do.”

He released Benny, placed a gentle hand on his brother’s back, and guided him back through the trees to the tall grass.

X

They didn’t speak for over a mile. Benny kept looking back, but even he didn’t know if he was checking to see if they were being followed or if he was regretting that they’d done nothing about what was happening. His jaw ached from clenching it.

They reached the crest of the hill that separated the field of tall grass from an upslope that wound around the base of a huge mountain. There was a road there, a two-lane blacktop that was cracked and choked with weeds. The road spun off toward a chain of mountains that marched into the distance and vanished into heat haze far to the southeast. There were old bones among the weeds, and Benny kept stopping to look at them.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Benny.

Tom kept walking.

“I don’t want to do what you do. Not if it means doing . . . that sort of stuff.

“I already told you. I don’t do that sort of stuff.”

“But you’re around it. You see it. It’s part of your life.” Benny kicked a rock and sent it skittering off the road and into the grass. Crows scolded him as they leaped into the air, leaving behind a rabbit carcass on which they’d been feeding.

Tom stopped and looked back. “If we turn back now, you’ll only know part of the truth.”

“I don’t care about the truth.”

“Too late for that now. You’ve seen some of it. If you don’t see the rest, it’ll leave you—”

“Leave me what? Unbalanced? You can stick that Zen crap up your—”

“Language.”

Benny bent and snatched up a shinbone that had been polished white by scavengers and weather. He threw it at Tom, who sidestepped to let it pass.

“Screw you and your truth and all of this stuff!” screamed Benny. “You’re just like those guys back there! You come out here all noble and wise and with all that bull, but you’re no different. You’re a killer. Everyone in town says so!”

Tom stalked over to him and grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt and lifted him to his toes. “Shut up!” he snarled. “You just shut your damn mouth!”

Benny was shocked to silence.

“You don’t know who I am or what I am,” Tom growled, giving him a shake. “You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know the things I’ve had to do to keep you safe. To keep us safe. You don’t know what I—”

He broke off and flung Benny away from him. Benny staggered backward and fell hard on his ass, legs splayed among the weeds and old bones. His eyes bugged with shock, and Tom stood above him, different expressions warring on his face. Anger, shock at his own actions, burning frustration. Even love.

“Benny . . .”

Benny got to his feet and dusted off his pants. Once more he looked back the way they’d come and then stepped up to Tom, staring up at his big brother with an expression that was equally mixed and conflicted.

“I’m sorry,” they both said.

They stared at each other.

Benny smiled first.

Tom’s smile was slower in coming, though.

“You’re a total pain in my butt, little brother.”

“You’re a big dork.”

The hot breeze blew past them. Tom said, “If you want to go back, then we’ll go back.”

Benny shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Do I have to have an answer?”

“Right now? No. Eventually? Probably.”

“Yeah,” said Benny. “That’s okay, I guess. Just tell me one thing. I know you said it already, but I really need to know. Really, Tom.”

Tom nodded.

“You’re not like them. Right? Swear on something.” He pulled out his wallet and held up the picture. “Swear on Mom and Dad.”

Tom nodded. “Okay, Benny. I swear.”

“On Mom and Dad.”

“On Mom and Dad.” Tom touched the picture and nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

The afternoon burned on, and they followed the two-lane road around the base of the mountain. Neither spoke for almost an hour, and then Tom said, “This isn’t just a walk we’re taking, kiddo. I’m out here on a job.”

Benny shot him a look. “You’re here to kill a zom?”

Tom shrugged. “It’s not the way I like to phrase it, but yes, that’s the bottom line.”

They walked another half mile.

“How does this work? The . . . job, I mean.”

“You saw part of it when you applied to be an Erosion Artist,” said Tom. He dug into a jacket pocket and removed an envelope, opened it, and removed a piece of paper, which he unfolded and handed to Benny. There was a small color photograph clipped to one corner that showed a smiling man of about thirty with sandy hair and a sparse beard. The paper it was clipped to was a large portrait of the same man as he might be now if he were a zombie. The name Harold was handwritten in one corner.

“This is what people do with those pictures?”

“Not always, but a lot of the time. People have the pictures done of wives, husbands, children—anyone they loved, someone they lost. Sometimes they can even remember what a person was wearing on the First Night, and that makes it easier for me, because as I said, the dead seldom move far from where they lived or worked. Guys like me find them.”

“And kill them?”

Tom answered that with a shrug. They rounded a bend in the road and saw the first few houses of a small town built onto the side of the mountain. Even from a quarter mile away, Benny could see zombies standing in yards or on the sidewalks. One stood in the middle of the road with his face tilted toward the sun.

Nothing moved.

Tom folded the erosion portrait and put it in his pocket, then he took out the vial of cadaverine and sprinkled some on his clothes. He handed it to Benny and then gave him the mint gel after he dabbed some on his upper lip.

“You ready?”

“Not even a little bit,” said Benny.

Tom drew his pistol and led the way. Benny shook his head, unsure of how exactly the day had brought him to this moment, and then he followed.

XII

“Won’t they attack us?” Benny whispered.

“Not if we’re smart and careful. The trick is to move slowly. They respond to quick movements. Smell, too, but we have that covered.”

“Can’t they hear us?”

“Yes, they can,” Tom said. “So once we’re in the town, don’t talk unless I do, and even then, less is more and quieter is better than loud. I found that speaking slowly helps. A lot of the dead moan, so they’re used to slow, quiet sounds.”

“This is like the Scouts,” Benny said. “Mr. Feeney told us that when we’re in nature we should act like we’re part of nature.”

“For better or worse, Benny, this is part of nature, too.”

“That doesn’t make me feel good, Tom.”

“This is the Rot and Ruin, kiddo. Nobody feels good out here. Now hush and keep your eyes open.”

They slowed their pace as they neared the first houses. Tom stopped and spent a few minutes studying the town. The main street ran upward to where they stood, so they had a good view of the whole town. Moving very slowly, Tom removed the envelope from his pocket and unfolded the erosion portrait.

“My client said that it was the sixth house along the main street,” Tom murmured. “Red front door and white fence. See it? There, past the old mail truck.”

“Uh-huh,” Benny said, without moving his lips. He was terrified of the zombies who stood in their yards not more than twenty paces away.

“We’re looking for a man named Harold Simmons. There’s nobody in the yard, so we may have to go inside.”

“Inside?” Benny asked, his voice quavering.

“Come on.” Tom began moving slowly, barely lifting his feet. He did not exactly imitate the slow, shuffling gait of the zombies, but his movements were unobtrusive. Benny did his best to mimic everything he did. They passed two houses at which zombies stood in the yard. The first, on their left, had three zombies on the other side of a hip-high chain-link fence—two little girls and an older woman. Their clothes were tatters that blew like holiday streamers in the hot breeze. As Tom and Benny passed by them, the old woman turned in their direction. Tom stopped and waited, his pistol ready, but the woman’s dead eyes swept past them without lingering. A few paces along, they passed a yard on their right in which a man in a bathrobe stood staring at the corner of the house as if he expected something to happen. He stood among wild weeds, and creeper vines had wrapped themselves around his calves. It looked like he had stood there for years, and with a sinking feeling of horror, Benny realized that he probably had.

Benny wanted to turn and run. His mouth was as dry as paste, and sweat ran down his back and into his underwear.

They moved steadily down the street, always slowly. The sun was heading toward the western part of the sky, and it would be dark in four or five hours. Benny knew that they could never make it home by nightfall. He wondered if Tom would take them back to the gas station, or if he was crazy enough to claim an empty house in this ghost town for the night. If he had to sleep in a zombie’s house, even if there was no zombie there, then Benny was sure he’d go completely mad-cow crazy.

“There he is,” murmured Tom, and Benny looked at the house with the red door. A man stood looking out of the big bay window. He had sandy hair and a sparse beard, but now the hair and beard were nearly gone and the skin of his face had shriveled to a leather tightness.

Tom stopped outside of the paint-peeling white picket fence. He looked from the erosion portrait to the man in the window and back again.

“Benny?” he said under his breath. “You think that’s him?”

“Mm-hm,” Benny said with a low squeak.

The zombie in the window seemed to be looking at them. Benny was sure of it. The withered face and the dead pale eyes were pointed directly at the fence, as if he had been waiting there all these years for a visitor to come to his garden gate.

Tom nudged the gate with his toe. It was locked.

Moving very slowly, Tom leaned over and undid the latch. The process took over two minutes. Nervous sweat ran down Benny’s face, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of the zombie.

Tom pushed on the gate with his knee, and it opened now.

“Very, very slowly,” he said. “Red light, green light, all the way to the door.”

Benny knew the game, though in truth he had never seen a working stoplight. They entered the yard. The old woman in the first garden suddenly turned toward them. So did the zombie in the bathrobe.

“Stop,” hissed Tom. He held the pistol close to his chest, his finger lying straight along the trigger guard. “If we have to make a run for it, head into the house. We can lock ourselves in and wait until they calm down.”

The old lady and the man in the bathrobe faced them but did not advance.

The tableau held for a minute that seemed an hour long.

“I’m scared,” said Benny.

“It’s okay to be scared,” said Tom. “Scared means you’re smart. Just don’t panic. That’ll get you killed.”

Benny almost nodded, but he caught himself.

Tom took a slow step. Then a second. It was uneven, his body swaying as if his knees were stiff. The bathrobe zombie turned away and looked at the shadow of a cloud moving up the valley; but the old lady still watched. Her mouth opened and closed as if she was slowly chewing on something.

But then she, too, turned away to watch the moving shadow.

Tom took another step and another, and eventually Benny followed. The process was excruciatingly slow, but to Benny it felt as if they were moving too fast. No matter how slowly they went, he thought that it was all wrong, that the zombies—all of them up and down the street—would suddenly turn toward them and moan with their dry and dusty voices, and then a great mass of the hungry dead would surround them.

Tom reached the door and turned the handle.

The knob turned in his hand, and the lock clicked open. Tom gently pushed it open and stepped into the gloom of the house. Benny cast a quick look at the window to make sure the zombie was still there.

Only he wasn’t.

“Tom!” Benny cried. “Look out!”

A dark shape lunged at Tom out of the shadows of the entrance hallway. It clawed for him with wax-white fingers and moaned with an unspeakable hunger. Benny screamed.

Then something happened that Benny could not understand. Tom was there and then he wasn’t. His brother’s body became a blur of movement, as he pivoted to the outside of the zombie’s right arm, ducked low, grabbed the zombie’s shins from behind, and drove his shoulder into the former Harold Simmons’s back. The zombie instantly fell forward onto his face, knocking clouds of dust from the carpet. Tom leaped onto the zombie’s back and used his knees to pin both shoulders to the floor.

“Close the door!” Tom barked, as he pulled a spool of thin silk cord from his jacket pocket. He whipped the cord around the zombie’s wrists and shimmied down to be able to bring both of the zombie’s hands together and tie them behind the creature’s back. He looked up. “The door, Benny—now!”

Benny came out of his daze and realized that there was movement in his peripheral vision. He turned to see the old lady, the two little girls and the zombie in his bathrobe lumbering up the garden path. Benny slammed the door and shot the bolt, then leaned against it, panting as if he had been the one to wrestle a zombie to the ground and hog-tie it. With a sinking feeling, he realized that it had probably been his own shouted warning that had attracted the other zombies.

Tom flicked out a spring-blade knife and cut the silk cord. He kept his weight on the struggling zombie while he fashioned a large loop like a noose. The zombie kept trying to turn its head to bite him, but Tom didn’t seem to care. The biting teeth were nowhere near him—though Benny was still terrified of those gray, rotted teeth.

With a deft twist of the wrist, Tom looped the noose over the zombie’s head, catching it below the chin, and then he jerked the slack so that the closing loop forced the creature’s jaws shut with clack. Tom wound silk cord around the zombie’s head so that the line passed under the jaw and over the crown. When he had three full turns in place, he tied it tight. He shimmied farther down the zombie’s body and pinned its legs and then tied its ankles together.

Then Tom stood up, stuffed the cord into his pocket, and closed his knife. He slapped dust from his clothes as he turned back to Benny.

“Thanks for the warning, kiddo, but I had it.”

“Um . . . holy sh—!”

“Language,” Tom interrupted quietly.

Tom went to the window and looked out. “Eight of ’em out there.”

“Do-do we . . . I mean, shouldn’t we board up the windows?”

Tom laughed. “You’ve listened to too many campfire tales. If we started hammering nails into boards, the sound would call every living dead person in the whole town. We’d be under siege.”

“But we’re trapped.”

Tom looked at him. “Trapped is a relative term,” he said. “We can’t go out the front. I expect there’s a back door. We’ll finish our business here and then we’ll sneak out nice and quiet and head on our way.”

Benny stared at him and then at the struggling zombie, who was at the carpet.

“You-you just . . .”

“Practice, Benny. I’ve done this before. C’mon, help me get him up.”

They knelt on opposite sides of the zombie, but Benny didn’t want to touch it. He’d never touched a corpse of any kind before, and he didn’t want to start with one that had tried to bite his brother.

“Benny,” Tom said, “he can’t hurt you now. He’s helpless.”

The word helpless hit Benny hard. It brought back the image of Old Roger—with no eyes, no teeth, and no fingers—and the two young women who tended to him. And the limbless torsos in the wagon.

“Helpless,” he murmured. “God . . .”

“Come on,” Tom said gently.

Together they lifted the zombie. He was light—far lighter than Benny expected—and they half carried, half dragged him into the dining room. Away from the living-room window. Sunlight fell in dusty slants through the moth-eaten curtains. The ruins of a meal had long since decayed to dust on the table. They put him in a chair, and Tom produced the spool of cord and bound him in place. The zombie continued to struggle, but Benny understood. The zombie was actually helpless.

Helpless.

The word hung in the air. Ugly and full of dreadful new meaning.

Tom removed the envelope from his pocket. Apart from the folded erosion portrait, there was also a piece of cream-colored stationary on which were several handwritten lines. Tom read through them silently, sighed, and then turned to his brother.

“Restraining the dead is difficult, Benny, but it isn’t the hardest part.” He held out the letter. “This is.”

Benny took the letter.

“My clients—the people who hire me to come out here—they usually want something said. Things they would like to say themselves, but can’t. Things they need said so that they can have closure. Do you understand?”

Benny read the letter. His breath caught in his throat and he nodded as the first tears fell down his cheeks.

His brother took the letter back. “I need to read it aloud, Benny. You understand?”

Benny nodded again.

Tom angled the letter into the dusty light and read:

My dear Harold. I love you and miss you. I’ve missed you so desperately for all these years. I still dream about you every night, and each morning I pray that you’ve found peace. I forgive you for what you tried to do to me. I forgive you for what you did to the children. I hated you for a long time, but I understand now that it wasn’t you. It was this thing that happened. I want you to know that I took care of our children when they turned. They are at peace, and I put flowers on their graves every Sunday. I know you would like that. I have asked Tom Imura to find you. He’s a good man, and I know that he will be gentle with you. I love you, Harold. May God grant you His peace. I know that when my time comes, you will be waiting for me, waiting with Bethy and little Stephen, and that we will all be together again in a better world. Please forgive me for not having the courage to help you sooner. I will always love you. Yours forever, Claire.

Benny was weeping when Tom finished. He turned away and covered his face with his hands and sobbed. Tom came and hugged him and kissed his head.

Then Tom stepped away, took a breath, and opened his knife again. Benny didn’t think he would be able to watch, but he raised his head and saw Tom as he placed the letter on the table in front of Harold Simmons and smoothed it out. Then he moved behind the zombie and gently pushed its head forward so that he could place the tip of his knife against the hollow at the base of the skull.

“You can look away if you want to, Benny,” he said.

Benny did not want to look, but he didn’t turn away.

Tom nodded. He took another breath and then thrust the blade into the back of the zombie’s neck. The blade slid in with almost no effort in the gap between spine and skull, and the razor-sharp edge sliced completely through the brain stem.

Harold Simmons stopped struggling. His body didn’t twitch; there was no death spasm. He just sagged forward against the silken cords and was still. Whatever force had been active in him, whatever pathogen or radiation or whatever had taken the man away and left behind a zombie, was gone.

Tom cut the cords that held Simmons’s arms and raised each hand and placed it on the table so that the dead man’s palms held the letter in place.

“Be at peace, brother,” said Tom Imura.

He wiped and folded his knife and stepped back. He looked at Benny, who was openly sobbing.

“This is what I do, Benny.”

XIII

They left by the back door, and there were no problems. Benny’s tears slowed and stopped, but it took a while. They walked in silence, side by side, heading southeast. Miles fell away behind them. They passed another gas station, where Tom greeted another monk. They didn’t linger, though. The day was burning away.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” Tom said to the monk after gifting him with vials of cadaverine and a wrapped package of jerky. “We’ll need to stay the night.”

“You’re always welcome, brother,” said the monk.

They walked on for another fifteen minutes, through a grove of trees that were heavy with late season oranges. Tom picked a few, and they peeled and ate them and said almost nothing until they reached the wrought-iron gate of a community that was embowered by a high red-brick wall. A sign over the gate read SUNSET HOLLOW.

Outside of the gate there were trash and old bones and a few burned shells of cars. The outer walls were pocked with bullet scars. To the right of the gate someone had used white paint to write THIS AREA CLEARED. KEEP GATES CLOSED. KEEP OUT. Below that were the initials T. I.

Benny pointed. “You wrote that?” It was the first time he’d spoken a full sentence since leaving the house of Harold Simmons.

“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 the 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, re-strung 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 fifteen 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 other job’s here?” Benny asked.

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

“Is it like the other one?”

“Sort of.”

“That was . . . hard,” said Benny.

“Yes it was.”

“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.”

“What happened?”

“Maybe it’s better that I don’t tell you.”

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 two of them go.”

“Why?”

“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 two go.”

“Yes.”

“And you killed eight 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.

Benny opened his mouth to say something to Tom but didn’t. Tom stopped in the middle of the street.

“Benny, I don’t really want to talk about that day. Not now, not here, and maybe not ever. I did what I thought I had to do, but I’m not proud of it. Telling you the details would feel like bragging, and I think that would make me sick. It’s already been a long day.”

“I won’t ask, Tom,” said Benny.

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 released, 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 . . . release them.”

“Because most 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. With respect, with words read to their dead family. 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. “Yes. I guess I do.”

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

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“I don’t know, Benny. I hope not. But for a while? Yeah.”

“What if I can’t?”

“I told you. If you can’t, then you can’t, and we go to the way station for tonight and head home in the morning.”

“Tom, 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. Why don’t we take everything back?”

Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. I ask myself that every day. The people on the other side of the fence—for the most part they don’t even want to admit to themselves that the rest of the world exists. They feel safe over there.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yes,” Tom said, “it surely is.”

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

Benny came as far as the front step. “It’s not safe in there, is it?”

“It’s not safe anywhere, Benny.”

They were both aware in that moment that they were having a different discussion than the words they exchanged.

The brothers went into the house.

Tom led the way down a hall and into a spacious living room that had once been light and airy. Now it was pale and filled with dust. The wallpaper had faded, and there were animal tracks on the floor. There was a cold fireplace and a mantle filled with picture frames. The pictures were of a family. Mother and father. A smiling son in a uniform. A baby in a blue blanket. Brothers and cousins and grandparents. Two sisters who looked like they might have been twins but weren’t. Everyone was smiling. Benny stood looking at the pictures for a long time and then reached up and took one down. A wedding picture.

“Where are they?” he asked softly.

“In here,” said Tom.

Still holding the picture, Benny followed Tom through a dining room and into a kitchen. The windows were open and the yard was filled with trees. Two straight-backed chairs sat in front of the window, and in the chairs were two withered zombies. Both of them turned their heads toward the sound of footsteps. Their jaws were tied shut with silken cord. The man was dressed in the tatters of an old blue uniform; the woman wore a tailored suit and frilly white blouse. Benny came around front and looked from them to the wedding picture and back again.

“It’s hard to tell.”

“Not when you get used to it,” said Tom. “The shape of the ears, the height of the cheekbones, the angle of the jaw, the distance between the nose and upper lip. Those things won’t change even after years.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Benny said again.

“That’s up to you.” Tom took his knife from his pocket and opened it. “I’ll do one, and you can do the other. If you’re ready. If you can.”

Tom went to stand behind the man. He gently pushed the zombie’s head forward and placed the tip of the knife in place, doing everything slowly, reminding Benny of how it had to be done.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” said Benny.

“I’ve already said it,” said Tom. “A thousand times. I waited because I knew that you might want to say something.”

“I didn’t know them,” said Benny.

A tear fell from Tom’s eye onto the back of the struggling zombie’s neck.

He plunged the blade and the struggles stopped. Just like that.

Tom hung his head for a moment as a sob broke in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then, “Be at peace.”

He sniffed and held the knife out to Benny.

“I can’t!” Benny said, backing away. “Jesus fucking Christ, I can’t!”

Tom stood there, tears rolling down his cheeks, holding the knife out. He didn’t say a word.

“God . . . please don’t make me do this,” said Benny.

Tom shook his head.

“Please, Tom.”

Tom lowered the knife.

The female zombie threw her weight against the cords and uttered a shrill moan that was like a dagger in Benny’s mind. He covered his ears and turned away. He dropped into a crouch, face tucked into the corner between the back door and the wall, shaking his head.

Tom stood where he was.

It took Benny a long, long time. He stopped shaking his head and leaned his forehead against the wood. The zombie in the chair kept moaning. Benny turned and dropped onto his knees. He dragged a forearm under his nose and sniffed.

“She’ll be like that forever, won’t she?”

Tom said nothing.

“Yes,” said Benny, answering his own question. “Yes.”

He climbed slowly to his feet.

“Okay,” he said and held out his hand. His hand and arm trembled. Tom’s trembled, too, as he handed over the knife.

Benny stood behind the zombie, and it took six or seven tries before he could bring himself to touch her. Eventually he managed it. Tom guided him, touching the spot where the knife had to go. Benny put the tip of the knife in place.

“When you do it,” said Tom, “do it quick.”

“Can they feel pain?”

“I don’t know. But you can. I can. Do it quick.”

Benny took a ragged breath and said, “I love you, Mom.”

He did it quickly.

And it was over.

He dropped the knife, and Tom gathered him up, and they sank down to their knees together on the kitchen floor, crying so loud that it threatened to break the world. In the chairs, the two dead people sat slumped, their heads tilted toward one another, their withered mouths silent.

 

The sun was tumbling behind the edge of the mountain by the time they left the house. Together they’d dug graves in the backyard. Tom locked up the house and then relocked the chain on the front gate. Side by side they walked back the way they had come. The knife was in Benny’s pocket. He had asked Tom if he could keep it.

“Why?” his brother asked.

Benny’s eyes were puffy from crying but they were dry. “I guess I’ll need it,” he said.

Tom studied him for a long time. His smile was sad but his eyes were filled with love. And with pride.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s head back.”

Benny Imura looked back at the wrought-iron gates and at the words painted outside. He nodded to himself.

Together they walked through the gathering twilight back to the way station.