Dust & Decay

by Jonathan Maberry

  “That’s true enough,” answered Preacher Jack. “You and your little pack of sinners and murderers.”

  “By that you mean my brother, Benny? And Nix Riley, Louis Chong, and Lilah?”

  “Sinners all.” Preacher Jack nodded.

  “Where are they, Matthias?” Tom demanded.

  “Oh,” said Preacher Jack, not looking at the pits, “they’re waiting for their chance at redemption.”

  Tom crumpled up the bounty sheet and dropped it off the porch into the dust. “This is between you and me. Leave the kids out of it.”

  The preacher spat on the ground. “This is between your family and mine. You killed two of my sons and my grandson. Don’t pretend you don’t understand that, Tom Imura. It was you who made it about families. You owe me a blood debt.”

  Tom ignored the jeering catcalls of the guards and the nervous buzz of the crowd. He locked eyes with Preacher Jack. “Charlie dealt the cards, Matthias, don’t you pretend he didn’t. He ran these hills like they were his personal kingdom, and he didn’t care who got hurt as long as he got what he wanted. He was a parasite, a thief, a murderer, and an abuser of children.”

  “You don’t dare—,” began White Bear, but his father touched his arm.

  “Let the man have his say. Then we’ll see what justice wants from this moment.”

  As he said it, he let his eyes flick toward the pits.

  Down below, completely hidden in the shadows, Benny and Nix stared upward as if they could see what was happening. The voices were muffled. Benny’s heart beat like a drum, and in the dark Nix grabbed his hand to give it a powerful squeeze.

  “Nix,” Benny breathed, “is that Tom?”

  Tom walked to the edge of the porch so everyone could see him. “Years ago Charlie and his thugs tried to raid Sunset Hollow. That was my home, my family’s home. I marked the place as off-limits. Everyone respected that except Charlie. He never respected anything … but things didn’t work out so well for him. I gave him and his men a chance to walk away. They didn’t take it. Later, when it was just Charlie kneeling in the dirt begging for his life, I let him live because he swore to me—swore to God above—that he’d change his ways, that he wouldn’t do this sort of thing again. That he wouldn’t hurt people again. I let him live, Matthias. I showed him mercy, but as soon as he slunk away he started back up worse than ever.”

  “I’ve heard that story before,” said Preacher Jack. “It was a lie then and it’s a lie now. No one ever beat Charlie in a fair fight.”

  Tom ignored that. “Last year Charlie opened a new Gameland, and he went hunting for the one person who might tell me where it was. Lilah. The Lost Girl. To find her he broke into Jessie Riley’s house. He beat that good woman to death and kidnapped her daughter, Nix. You know what happened then.”

  “Yes, I know. You laid false charges on Charlie, then you and yours went out and ambushed him in the woods and killed him when he wasn’t looking.”

  “False charges? I was there, Matthias. I held Jessie Riley in my arms when she died. I know what happened. Charlie asked for what he got, and my only regret is that it wasn’t from my own hand.”

  “Yes … that hell-spawn brother of yours, that devil’s imp, managed some trickster ambush and killed my firstborn son.”

  The crowd buzz intensified. There were dozens of versions of the battle at Charlie’s camp, and small arguments broke out as facts and suppositions were thrown out.

  White Bear spun around and roared, “SHUT UP!” His bellow echoed off the walls of the Wawona Hotel. The crowd cowered into silence.

  Preacher Jack took a threatening step toward Tom. “You had your say, such as it was. Now hear me on this, Tom Imura. Your time is over. Your reign of corruption, bullying, terrorism, and murder is done. I call a blood debt on you and yours, and like a farmer who burns a whole field to kill an encroaching blight, I will burn the name of Imura from this world. Your sins against my family are uncountable, and so I curse you and yours for all generations.” As he spoke he turned in a slow circle to likewise address the shocked and silent crowd. “Anyone who stands with you falls with you. So say I and so say mine.”

  Silence owned the moment except for the constant low moans of the dead strapped to the chairs under the circus tent.

  Down in the Pits of Judgment, Benny whispered, “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nix. “We have to let Tom know we’re here!”

  Behind them the shadows were filled with hungry moans.

  “Don’t make a sound,” Benny whispered. Calling out to Tom was a good plan, but not at the moment. Not unless Tom was right there with a ladder ready to let them climb out, and from what Benny heard, that wasn’t the case. If they called to him now, it might be a fatal distraction for Tom.

  Benny and Nix felt their way along the walls of the tunnel. It was absolutely pitch black. Even the torchlight from the main corridor faded and died within a few yards. They fought to keep their breathing as silent as possible, listening for the scuff of a shuffling dead foot or the soft moan of hunger. Except for the powder, they had no weapons left, and Charlie was still out there along with at least fifteen zombies. Maybe more. Time was running out.

  Tom Imura sighed. “I tried,” he said, shaking his head. He reached over his shoulder and slowly drew his sword. All around the arena the guards, already alert, raised their weapons, edged forward, and pointed guns at Tom’s heart. He ignored them as he straightened his arm and pointed the tip of his sword at Preacher Jack and White Bear. Firelight gleamed along the smooth steel and sparkled on the wicked edge. “Hear me on this,” Tom said, his voice clear and strong. “You’ve spoken your piece and you’ve laid your curse, Matthias. Now hear mine. Not a curse … but a promise. I speak to everyone here, so listen to what I have to say.” He paused and surveyed the crowd. “Walk away,” he said. “Lay down your weapons, throw away your betting slips, and walk away. Gameland is closed. Walk away.”

  White Bear stared at him. “Says who?”

  “Says the law.”

  “This is the Ruin! There is no law.”

  Tom’s sword pointed at him, the tip as unwavering as if Tom was a statue made of steel. His eyes were fixed on White Bear. “There is now.”

  Preacher Jack snorted. “You have no right. You have no power. The Matthias clan is the only power in the Ruin … now and forever.”

  “Walk away,” Tom said again, turning now to the crowd. “Last chance. Everyone here gets a pass if you walk away. Everyone except Preacher Jack and White Bear. To use their words: If you stand with them, you fall with them. Walk away.”

  “You’re a fool and a madman,” declared White Bear. “You come here alone and make some kind of brainless grandstand play.” He gestured to one of his guards, a beefy man who had been a running back for the Oilers before First Night. “Take that stupid sword away from him and drag his ass over here.”

  The guard racked the slide on his pump shotgun and grinned. “Absolutely, boss.”

  Tom lowered his sword and raised his empty left hand, pointing his index finger like a gun at the approaching guard. He raised his thumb as if it was a pistol’s hammer.

  “Last chance,” he said to the man.

  “You’re freaking crazy, Imura,” said the guard. “You always were.”

  “Your call.” Tom dropped his thumb and said, “Bang.”

  There was a sharp crack and the guard was plucked off the ground and flung backward. He landed on his back, gasping, eyes wide, blood pumping from a dime-size hole in the center of his chest. Tom blew across the tip of his finger as if he had really shot the man. The crowd sat stunned, unsure how to even react. Even Preacher Jack and White Bear were frozen in place.

  “I warned you,” Tom said, his smile gone now, his voice suddenly harsh and bitter. “You should have listened.”

  And then the killing began.

  78

  “BENNY!” CALLED NIX SUDDENLY. SHE SPOKE IN A WHISPER, BUT IT seemed danger
ously loud. “I think I found something.”

  “What is it?” he said, fumbling blindly in the dark to try and cross to her side of the tunnel. Then he heard her cry out in revulsion at the same moment that he caught the smell. The stink of rotting flesh. They had worn cadaverine so long that they had become used to it, but their cadaverine was gone and this stink had not come from a bottle. “Nix … ?”

  She pulled him down to where she knelt and pressed something hard and round into his hand. Benny knew at once what it was. A bone. He felt around and discovered other bones. Bones that had been completely cleaned of flesh, and some that the zoms had not finished stripping.

  “God!” Benny said, and almost dropped it.

  “Benny,” Nix whispered, her lips right against his ear. “It’s heavy… .”

  He grunted as he got her meaning, but it still disgusted him. He felt the shape and length of the bone. A heavy thigh bone. About eighteen inches long, with bulbed heads at both ends; one end much bigger where it hinged into the hip. He weighed it in his hand.

  There was an awful sound behind them. They had made too much noise. The zoms were coming.

  “Hurry!” Benny said, and they clattered among the bones and found another thigh bone for him and a pair of stout shinbones for Nix. The darkness was filled with moans and the shuffle of slow feet. Time was up.

  “At least we’ll go out fighting,” Benny said.

  Nix jabbed him sharply with the bone. “Don’t give me a hero speech, Benny Imura. I want to get out of this.”

  Even though she couldn’t see it, Benny grinned in the dark. Crazy, brave, unpredictable, wonderful Nix Riley. He loved her so much that he wanted to shout. So he did shout. He gave a huge, wild war whoop as he raised his grisly weapons and charged down the tunnel to meet the living dead. Nix gave a weird, high, ululating cry and followed him.

  The arena guards bellowed in fury and raced toward Tom.

  “NOW!” bellowed Tom, and gunfire erupted from four windows in the hotel, and the front rank of guards went down in a bloody tangle. Hector Mexico leaned out of a second-floor window and lobbed a pair of fragmentation grenades into the stands. The crowd started to scatter, but some were too slow. The explosions were enormous. Then there was a chorus of screams from the guards over by the tent, and immediately the screams were drowned out by the moans of the living dead as dozens of zoms swarmed over them. The crowd did not immediately understand what was happening even as the dead shambled out into the arena; then they saw the two men in carpet coats and football helmets hacking and slashing at the cloth strips that held the zoms in their chairs. The men were laughing as they worked.

  Then the back doors of the hotel burst open, and Solomon Jones led the team of free and unaffiliated bounty hunters out into the fray. Magic Mike, LaDonna Willis and her twin sons, Vegas Pete, the hulking Fluffy McTeague in his pink carpet coat, Basher with his baseball bats, and all the rest.

  Tom leaped from the porch and slammed into the stalled and shocked guards, his sword mirror-bright for a moment longer—and then it was laced with red.

  Lilah stared in shock from the top of the left-hand bleachers.

  Tom!

  She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Tom Imura, against all odds, leading a charge of armed fighters against Preacher Jack and the crowds at Gameland. It was insane. It was impossible. And yet it was real.

  She stared past the panicked spectators. She had all the items she had taken from the sports shed, along with a bucket of pitch and a lantern. Wasting no time, Lilah used a fishing hook on a line to snag a deflated soccer ball, dipped it in the pitch bucket, set it ablaze with the lantern, and hurled it far over the crowd. It splatted against the back of one of the guards, who was immediately wreathed in yellow and orange flames. The man’s shrieks rose into the air louder than any other sound. Immediately the row of spectators in front of Lilah spun around, their faces showing a mixture of fear, shock, and anger.

  Lilah gave them a wicked smile as she pelted them with burning balls. The screams of the spectators drowned out those coming from below, and now the entire set of bleachers was in full panic. Was Chong here too? She looked around but could not see him. Lilah bared her teeth in a feral grin, lit another ball, and threw it.

  Sally Two-Knives was in no condition for hand-to-hand combat, but she could pull a trigger. She stared down the barrel of an army sniper rifle, laid the crosshairs on one of the Gameland guards, squeezed the trigger, and grinned like a harpy.

  Crack! The kick of the gun hurt her, but she took that pain and turned it to bitter ice inside her heart. Sally had lost her children to the zoms during First Night. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, and every night she dreamed about what it must have been like for April and Toby as the monsters came for them. The people here made the horrors of the zombie plague into a game. They forced children to fight for their lives. Children.

  She squeezed the trigger again. Crack! There was no trace of remorse in her eyes. Not so much as a flicker. The heavy kick of the gun hurt, but she used that pain to fuel her rage. Sally found another target and fired. Crack. And another.

  Benny and Nix crashed into the first of the zoms. It was too small to be Charlie Pink-eye, which meant that it didn’t have a nail vest or an armored skullcap. Benny rebounded from it and swung first one thigh bone and then the other at his own head height. There was a light crack as the first club hit something—an outstretched hand, perhaps—and then a much heavier CRACK as the second one slammed into something too solid to be a head. A shoulder? Benny raised both clubs and brought them down above the shoulder level, and there was a wet crunch. Then the zom was falling, brushing past Benny as it collapsed.

  “On your left,” Nix said from that side, and he heard the whoosh and crunch of her clubs. Bone-club met lifeless skin and shattered the undead bones beneath it. Fighting wild and blind, they pushed forward, taking turns to smash one-two, one-two, breaking arms and wrists and fingers in order to reach skulls and necks. Benny’s arms ached, particularly his bruised left arm, but he kept going, kept swinging. Nix was growling like a hunting cat, grunting with each hit.

  Then there was light! Not the reflected glow of the torches at the edges of the pit, but huge yellow light. A ball of fire came bounding into the tunnel. Literally a ball of fire. Benny saw that it was some old sports ball, a cricket ball or a softball, that burned with intense flames as it rolled. Benny could smell smoke and the stink of pitch.

  The flames illuminated the T juncture of the tunnels, and Benny’s heart sank as he saw that there were zombies in every direction. At least twenty of them, and five rows back on his left was the towering form of Charlie Pink-eye.

  A second flaming ball dropped through the ceiling twenty yards down, and it landed on the back of a zombie in a business suit. The creature caught fire almost at once.

  Benny shot Nix a quick look. Was this some new twist on the game? Did Preacher Jack want to burn them or kill them with smoke if the zoms couldn’t do the trick? Or was Tom trying to help in some way they didn’t understand? Either way it didn’t matter; there was no way to fight past all the dead who clogged the tunnels.

  White Bear shoved his father out of the way as Magic Mike charged at him, firing shot after shot from a nine-millimeter pistol. A round plucked at the bearskin cloak, and White Bear grabbed a mortally wounded spectator and shoved him in the direction of the shooter. Magic Mike tried to dodge, but the startled spectator slammed into him and then both went down.

  White Bear leaped over the dying man and landed hard atop Magic Mike. He grabbed the bounty hunter’s hair and chin and snapped his neck with a vicious twist. He was grinning as he heard the bones break.

  Chong crouched inside the hotel, safe behind the bricks of the rear entrance foyer. He wanted to see Nix, Benny, and Lilah emerge safe from the pits or wherever they were, but he had no desire at all to join this fight. He wanted to be back in Mountainside, safe in his room with his stacks of books. Or maybe
fishing in the creek with Morgie.

  Lilah.

  You’re a town boy, she had said back on the road. You’re useless out here.

  There was a flash, and Chong watched as fireballs suddenly arced over the field and dropped into the sea of battle on the field. At first he was alarmed, thinking that this was another trick of White Bear; but then he saw the figure that rose above the row of burning corpses at the top of the bleachers. A magical figure out of some ancient myth. Gorgeous, long-limbed, incredibly lovely, and totally alien.

  Lilah!

  There was a sudden ripple of gunfire—the harsh chatter of an automatic rifle and the single pops of handguns—and then Chong saw the Lost Girl spin away, the last flaming ball dropping from her hands as she plummeted limply away into the darkness.

  Chong screamed her name. “Lilah!”

  “No …,” he whispered a moment later. They had just shot her. He had just watched her die. Chong grabbed his bokken and ran screaming into the madness.

  Tom began cutting his way through the crowd toward White Bear. He wanted that man. And his psychotic father. Tom wanted to destroy the Matthias plague for good. His sword was like a living thing in his hand, moving without conscious thought. A man rushed at him with an ax, and suddenly the man was falling, his face gone. Another man raised a pistol, but hand and pistol suddenly flew away amid a piercing shriek. Three zoms came at him—two shambling slowly and one moving with unnatural speed. Then they were gone, falling in pieces. The sword sculpted a crooked path through the melee and nothing, alive or dead, could stand before him.

  Four guards rushed up to shield Preacher Jack with their own bodies, and in a tight knot they ran from the center of the arena to the protection of a far corner. There was a crack, and one of the guards fell, half his face shot away. “Go … GO!” growled Preacher Jack, and the others did not hesitate or falter. They ran. Crack and another went down, his thigh pumping blood. Then they were in a cleft formed by the edge of the bleachers and a wagon. There was no angle for gunfire from the hotel.