by J M Lassen
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 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 back to the Samurai days of ancient Jap
an. 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 away.”
“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 the whole 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… Margie 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 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.”