Dust & Decay

by Jonathan Maberry

  The closest zom was an enormous fat man in the shreds of a blue hospital gown. He had almost no face left. Nix tried to dodge and kick, hoping to break the man’s knee, but her aim was off and her foot rebounded from the monster’s fat thigh. It swiped at her and she had to leap backward to keep from being caught. Benny tried the same kick attack and hit the knee, but the fat man’s leg wouldn’t break. As it wheeled on this new attacker, the second zom—a prissy-looking woman with gray hair in a bun and her intestines hanging out—threw herself on Nix.

  Nix screamed and brought her feet up just in time, catching the zom on the chest and in the gooey mass of its entrails. The zombie scrabbled at Nix’s vest with white fingers and kept darting forward to try to bite.

  Benny was too busy to help. The fat zom shambled toward him, its bulk blocking the narrow tunnel. It pawed at him as Benny chopped at it with the hatchet, knocking bloodless chunks of flesh from its face and chest.

  With a final scream of wild rage, Nix swung her hatchet and buried the long glass spike in the zombie’s eye socket. The monster reeled back, shuddered, and then fell, tearing the handle out of Nix’s hand.

  Benny stopped trying to get away and instead put one foot on the wall and used it to launch himself at the zom, hitting it high on the chest and driving it backward with both hands. The monster’s heels hit the other zom and he toppled backward, with Benny holding onto its shirt all the way to the massive thump! The zombie never stopped grabbing for him, and the creature was immune to the shock of the impact beyond a shudder that rippled through its layers of dead fat. The creature bit down on Benny’s ragged shirtsleeve and began shaking it the way a terrier shakes a rat. Benny hammered at it with the hatchet until he tore through the remaining tendons of the zom’s face and the lower jaw simply fell off.

  Benny gaped at the monster for a moment, then threw his weight sideways and went into a sloppy roll that nonetheless brought him to his feet. As he turned he saw Nix working her hatchet back and forth to free it from the dead zom’s eye socket. It came free with a dry glup sound, and then the two of them were running again.

  Nix threw him a single, crazy smile of triumph as they ran.

  Is she … enjoying this? The impossible thought banged around inside Benny’s head.

  The crowd was going crazy up there, but mostly applauding now. People threw stuff down at them—unshelled peanuts, cigarette butts, balled-up betting slips. White Bear was laughing with a deep-chested rumble, thoroughly enjoying the show. As they ran past another opening, Benny shot a quick look up and saw Preacher Jack. He did not know the man well enough to be able to read the subtleties of his expressions, but what Benny saw at that moment required no interpretation. It was a look of pure, malicious joy.

  Why? Benny wondered. We’re winning.

  When they rounded the next bend, that question was answered in the most horrible possible way. The next corridor was a dead end that ran twenty feet into a blank wall.

  There were at least a dozen zoms in there. But that wasn’t what made Benny slam to a halt and stare in abject terror. It wasn’t what pulled a scream from the deepest pit of Nix’s soul.

  The thing that plunged the world into absolute nightmare was the huge creature that rose up before them in the dark. A great and terrible zombie. Bigger than any they had faced. It was massive, corded with muscle and covered with scars from countless battles as a human. It wore a leather vest from which the tips of hundreds of sharp steel nails jutted out like a terrible cactus. Iron bands studded with steel points circled its neck and wrists, and a skullcap of gleaming steel covered its head and tapered down the neck to prevent any injury to the brain stem. When its lips curled back, Benny and Nix could see that someone—some madman—had filed its teeth to razor spikes.

  Even all that, from its size to its fearsome armament, was not the worst thing about it. It was Nix who spoke the word that made it all beyond horrifying.

  She spoke its name.

  “Charlie …”

  75

  OUTSIDE THE HOTEL …

  Lilah found a shed filled with old sporting equipment. Deflated balls, old fishing rods, Frisbees. She stared at the junk … and smiled.

  Yes, she thought, this is perfect.

  Inside the hotel …

  “Tom!” Chong called from the hallway. He had just come back from escorting all the captive children into another room.

  “I told you to stay with the kids,” barked Tom.

  “Um … the kids are fine. Really.” Chong wore a quirky and bemused smile. “But … there’s something else. You’d better come.”

  Tom turned from the guard. The man had collapsed into a weeping, cringing pile, and looking at him disgusted Tom. He jabbed the guard with a toe. “Stay!”

  The man nodded and held his hands up, palms out.

  Tom crossed to the door and stepped out into the hall. His hand flashed toward his sword, and a war cry almost tore itself from his throat. Then he froze in total shock.

  The hall was full of people. All of them were heavily armed. Tom’s mouth hung open. One of the people reached out a hand and gently pushed on Tom’s chin to close his mouth.

  “You’re going to catch flies with that,” said Sally Two-Knives with a wicked grin.

  Tom looked around, seeing faces that could not be here. “I don’t—I mean—”

  “You owe me two ration dollars,” said Fluffy McTeague to Basher. “I told you he wouldn’t know what to say.”

  Farther down the hall, J-Dog and Dr. Skillz were removing the dog collars from the kids. They looked up and grinned.

  “Kahuna!” said J-Dog.

  “Yo, brah!” said Dr. Skillz.

  “How are you here?” exclaimed Tom.

  Sally and Solomon filled him in on the discussion they’d had in the woods. “We started gathering everyone up,” said Solomon, shaking Tom’s hand. “You’re a popular guy, brother. Everybody’s either looking to warn you or looking to trade you to White Bear for serious cash money.”

  “I saw the bounty sheet. Not just me … they want my brother and his friends. Dead or alive.”

  “Worth more alive,” said Hector Mexico. “Dead? Eh, not so much.”

  “We don’t want you to leave, boss. End of an era,” said Basher. “No way we were going to let White Bear write the last chapter of Fast Tommy’s story.”

  Tom frowned. “So … this is a rescue party?”

  “Par-teeee!” chanted J-Dog and Dr. Skillz.

  “But this isn’t even your fight.”

  Solomon Jones answered that. “It’s always been our fight, Tom. And with you gone—dead or gone east—then it’s going to be our war.”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Son,” Solomon said with a smile, “don’t you know when the universe cuts you a break?”

  “Not lately, no.”

  “Well, get used to it, ’cause the cavalry has arrived.”

  “Only downside,” said Sally, “is that there are twenty of us and about four hundred of them. And I’m not going to be much good in a fight once I run out of bullets.”

  Now it was Tom’s turn to smile. “Are you kidding? Didn’t you guys see what was in the front room?”

  Basher shook his head. “No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs.”

  “Then you may be the cavalry,” said Tom, “but I’m Santa Claus. Let’s go downstairs and open some presents.”

  76

  CHARLIE PINK-EYE LOOMED IN FRONT OF BENNY AND NIX. SIX FEET SIX inches of him. One eye was a milky pink, the other one—once as blue as his father’s—was black and dead. His skin, once the creamy white of an albino, had turned the color of a mushroom: gray-white and blotched with fungus and decay. Flies buzzed around him, and maggots wriggled through flaps of his dead flesh. He snarled and took a lumbering step forward. And now Benny understood what he had seen out in the field by the way station. It hadn’t been Charlie leading an attack of zoms … Charlie
had been a zom himself, part of a swarm led there by Preacher Jack. Led there … and led away before the fire could consume him. When Benny had seen Charlie smile, it wasn’t a smile at all but the snarl of a hungry zombie.

  It was grotesque. It was bad enough that Charlie had not fallen a thousand feet to smash himself to ruin at the base of the mountain. It was worse still that he had become one of the monsters that he and the Motor City Hammer used to hunt. What was far, far worse was that Charlie’s own father and brother had kept him alive as a zom, armored him like a gladiator, and put him down here in the shadows to be their pet monster. Their Angel of Death for a new and corrupt Eden. Even though Benny understood few of the mysteries of any religion, he knew with perfect clarity that this was a sin that could never be forgiven. This was blasphemy.

  “Nix,” Benny whispered, “run!”

  But Nix did not run. She couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot, staring with horror at a nightmare monster version of the thing that had murdered her mother.

  “Charlie,” Nix murmured again. Benny looked at her, and his heart sank to see that the madness that had swirled in her eyes now owned her. This was what she had feared. Charlie, the monster who had murdered her mother. Charlie, alive or undead, but still moving through her world. Still hunting her. On some level Nix had come to believe that this would happen. This very thing.

  When Benny had struck Charlie on the ridge and sent him tumbling into the darkness, Nix had not been a part of it. Charlie had overpowered her and Lilah; and it was a combination of dumb luck and warrior rage that had guided Benny’s hand as he swung the Motor City Hammer’s iron club. Charlie had fallen, but they hadn’t found his body. He was never quieted. For Nix, there was no closure. In some twisted way Charlie had escaped. And that had broken something inside Nix’s head. Maybe in her soul, as well. And with a flash of insight Benny realized that Nix’s desire to leave Mountainside was as much about running away from the possibility of facing Charlie, alive or dead, as it was about finding a new life.

  Charlie Pink-eye took a lumbering step toward them. Benny snarled and pushed Nix back.

  “God …” Nix’s voice was small and fragile.

  Benny let out a bellow of fury and swung his hatchet, trying for a killing shot through the eye socket. Instead the glass blade dug into the front of Charlie’s cheek, punching through the sinus. The zoms in the dead-end tunnel moaned with raw hunger and shuffled forward, but Charlie’s massive body blocked the way. With a feral growl Charlie lashed out and knocked Benny sideways into the wall. The glass blade of the hatchet snapped, and the handle fell from Benny’s fingers. The blow was so fast and strong that for an insane moment Benny wondered if Charlie was somehow still alive. It was impossible, though. No … no, this thing was dead. Still … it was fast. Too fast. And so powerful!

  Benny slid to the floor. Charlie bent down, grabbed Benny’s vest, and pulled him off the floor. Razor teeth gleamed like daggers in the torchlight. As Charlie pulled him close, Benny could see the gleaming tips of the nails that covered the monster’s body like a porcupine. Benny raised a knee and managed to get the flat of his shoe against the zom’s lower stomach—the only area not covered by the nail vest. He kicked out, trying to squirm out of the grip with leverage, aiming blows to dislocate the jaw or break the neck. He tried every trick of combat and physics Tom had taught him. The nail heads scratched him, and soon Benny was bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts. Then two dozen. Blood flew from the injuries, and though none of them were serious, the smell of fresh blood in the air seemed to drive Charlie and the other zombies wild. They snarled and moaned and bit the air.

  Charlie’s big head darted forward, and his razor teeth bit down with devastating force—but not on Benny’s flesh.

  Suddenly Nix was there, squeezing in between Benny and the monster, and she rammed her hatchet up into its mouth. The rows of filed teeth chomped down on the weapon and crunched on glass and wood. Nail tips pressed into Nix’s vest. The canvas was sturdy, but it wasn’t designed for this kind of protection. Not even a carpet coat would work if she didn’t get out of there soon.

  Charlie flung Benny away and grabbed Nix instead. Benny crashed to the ground again. Pain exploded in his shoulder, numbing him all the way to his fingertips. The other zoms tried to reach past Charlie to get to Nix. Wax-white hands poked through the crooks of Charlie’s elbows and reached over his shoulders and around his sides, clawing at Nix’s vest and hair. In their attempts to grab her, they were also pulling her into the nail vest.

  Benny hauled himself to his feet, saw his broken hatchet, dove for it, and came up with the splintered wood in his right hand. Nix still had her hatchet buried in Charlie’s mouth, and he was actually trying to chew his way through it to get to her. Benny rushed to Nix and looped his bad left arm around her waist while he chopped and pounded at the white hands with the hatchet handle. He broke fingers and wrists and some of the white hands flopped away, useless to their owners. One creature had a solid handful of Nix’s hair, and Benny could not shatter its wrist, so he did the only other thing he could do: He used the remaining bits of glass still tied to the hatchet and sawed through her hair. She sagged forward, but Charlie still had her.

  Benny rammed the sharp end of his hatchet handle up under Charlie’s chin. He drove it with such force that it punched through into the zom’s mouth and pinned his jaws shut. At least for the moment. Immediately, Nix brought her knees up and aimed her feet just below the nail vest, then kicked out with all her force as Benny pulled with all of his. They burst free from Charlie’s grasp and fell backward; Benny hit the ground first, and Nix landed hard on top of him, driving most of the air from his lungs.

  For the moment Charlie ignored them and clawed at the wooden spike that sealed his jaws shut. The other zoms pushed forward to get past him.

  “Dust!” Benny croaked, and Nix tore a pouch of plaster dust from her vest and flung it at them. The dust exploded into a white cloud that swirled thickly around the zoms.

  Benny didn’t know if the powder would do anything more than distract them for a moment. They had thought to use it against Digger and Heap, but for now it gave them a slender doorway of time. Nix grabbed Benny’s wrists and hauled him to his feet, slapped his shoulders to spin him, and then shoved him forward, keeping her hands on his back as he stumbled away from the zoms.

  “Nix—are you okay?”

  She gave him a wild-eyed stare. “I need to kill him,” she answered in a fierce whisper.

  “I know,” he said, though they both knew that it was virtually impossible, and it was suicide to try. “Come on, let’s go.”

  During this brief but awful fight they had been only dimly aware of the shouts and laughter from above. There were plenty of boos now. Defeating Charlie, however briefly, seemed to have turned the crowd against them. That or maybe the sheep were too afraid of Preacher Jack and White Bear to show any other reaction.

  White Bear bent down into one of the pit openings, grinning like a ghoul. “Run as fast as you want, but there’s no way out.”

  Nix pivoted and flung one of the pouches at him. White Bear got his hand up to block it, but the pouch flapped open and he was showered with white plaster dust. He reeled back, coughing and gagging and cursing. There was a quick ripple of surprised laughter, but it died down immediately as White Bear wheeled on Benny and Nix with a murderous glare.

  They ran from under the pit opening, vanishing into the shadows. They heard zoms ahead of them, and they realized they were running back toward the main pit. They scrambled into a turn. Behind them Charlie Pink-eye was shambling toward them, the spike of wood no longer pinning his jaws shut.

  That left the dark side tunnel. “No lights,” Benny said.

  Nix chewed her lip, looking up and down the corridor. The front of her vest was dotted with drops of blood from where the tips of the nails had cut through her clothes and into her skin. Pain twisted her mouth as she said, “No choice.”

  They ran into the dark
ness. Above them the crowd became suddenly silent.

  “God!” panted Nix. “What now?”

  77

  PREACHER JACK STOOD NEXT TO WHITE BEAR, BOTH OF THEM SCOWLING down into the pits. “This is taking too long,” said the old man.

  “Kids are pretty good,” replied White Bear. “I’m actually starting to enjoy this.”

  Preacher Jack snarled, “They should be dead by now.”

  “Lighten up, Dad … Charlie’s got their number. Those kids are Happy Meals, you’ll see.”

  Preacher Jack leaned closer still. “You listen to me, boy, if they find that bell and we have to let them go, then—”

  White Bear laughed deep in his chest. “Dad, for a man of faith you could use some more for your own kin. I got everything under control, and …”

  His words trickled down and stopped as he realized that the crowd had suddenly fallen silent. The people weren’t looking into the Pits of Judgment. They were staring in shock at the back of the hotel. Preacher Jack and White Bear whipped their heads around to see a figure standing on the porch. He had a pistol in a belt holster and a long Japanese sword slung over his back.

  “Imura,” murmured Preacher Jack; then he threw back his head and bellowed the name. It echoed all around the arena. “Imura!”

  Beside him, White Bear grinned like a happy ghoul. He stepped forward and pitched his voice for all to hear. “Well, ain’t this just a treat? Come to watch the fun and games, Tom?” He laughed, but only the guards laughed with him. The people in the bleachers shifted in shocked and uncomfortable silence. Preacher Jack held up his hand, and every face turned toward him.

  “Why am I here?” answered Tom with a faint smile. He spoke loud enough for the crowd to hear him. He held out a copy of the bounty sheet and showed it to everyone. “It’s pretty clear that you wanted me here.”