by J M Lassen
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 pits 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 Stash. “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. Stash 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 oddsmakers 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 side-stepped 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 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.
XI
“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.”
“U
h-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.