‘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 First Night. 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 tried to keep 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 practised 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 ste
pped 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 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 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 mounta
in. 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.
The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology Page 21
