“Or can’t say it,” the Mayor interjected.
“-and out in the Ruin you were a force to be reckoned with.”
“I’m not the sheriff of these here parts,” Tom said in a comical Old West accent.
“Might as well be,” said Strunk. “You could have my job anytime you want it.”
“No thanks, Keith, you’re the law here in town, and you do a great job.”
“Again, that’s my point,” said Strunk. “You know that I won’t ever step one foot outside of that fence. No way.”
“The bottom line,” barked the mayor, “is that we both feel that once you leave, this part of the Ruin is going to turn into a no-man’s-land. Traders are going to get hijacked, and if the bounty hunters band together with no one to stop them, then they are going to own this town. Maybe all the towns.”
There was a brief silence, and then Benny heard Tom sigh.
“Randy, Keith… I appreciate the problem, but it’s not my problem. If you’ll remember, I proposed a militia for the Ruin. I made very specific recommendations for a town-sanctioned force that would police this part of the Ruin and all the trade routes. Let’s see, how long ago was that? Eight years? And then again a year later. And the following year, and-”
“Okay, okay,” growled Mayor Kirsch. “Rubbing our noses in it doesn’t help us find an answer.”
“I know, Randy, and I don’t mean to be a jerk about this… but I’m leaving next week. Leaving and not coming back. I can’t be the one to solve your problems. Not this time.”
Both men harangued Tom, but he cut them off with a curt wave of his hand.
“If you bothered to read my proposal,” he said, “you’d have seen that I made several recommendations for how to handle things. Not all the bounty hunters are like Charlie. There are some people you can trust-granted, only a handful, but I trust them completely.” He began counting on his fingers as he ran through some names. “Solomon Jones, Sally Two-Knives…” He counted off twenty names.
“Oh, please,” said Mayor Kirsch, making a face. “Half of them are psychos and loners who refuse to come into town and-”
“They don’t need to come into town,” cut in Tom. “Meet them at the fence line and talk business. Deputize them. Pay them. And, here’s a thought, treat them with a little respect and maybe they’ll show some loyalty to you and the town.”
“Maybe they behave themselves around you,” said Strunk, “but I hear wild tales.”
“Really? Well, what wild tales have you been hearing about Gameland? It’s back in operation again. Without a militia of any kind, what are you going to do when kids start disappearing? How would you feel about your own kids vanishing off the street and getting dragged off to fight in a zombie pit? Don’t pretend that doesn’t happen in town. Ask Nix Riley.”
There was more, but the three of them began walking toward the garden gate and the road to town. Benny closed the door.
Great, he thought, just what we need. Another reason to feel bad about leaving.
12
THE NEXT DAY WAS THE VIEWING AND FUNERAL FOR THE HOUSER FAMILY. More than two hundred people showed up. Benny and Nix went together. She had been sad and quiet since yesterday, and the day suited her mood. Clouds obscured the sun and turned the air wet and cool, but no rain fell. The trees were filled with crows and warblers and grasshopper sparrows. A grackle-scruffy and dark-landed on the closed coffin of Danny Houser and mocked the sermon like an uncouth heckler, until the grave digger chased him away with a shovel.
Pastor Kellogg wore a black robe and held a heavy and very battered old Bible. There was a rumor around town that the pages of the Bible were stained with blood because the pastor had been forced to use the Good Book to beat the head in of one of his parishioners who had been zommed out and attacked him. It was a lurid story, but Benny believed it was true. There were a lot of stories like that in town. Everyone who had survived First Night had one.
The mayor and his wife were there, dressed in formal clothes, and even Captain Strunk of the Town Watch was in a suit.
Benny did not own a suit, but he wore his best pair of dark blue jeans and a clean white shirt. Nix wore a pretty dress that Fran Kirsch, the mayor’s wife, had sewn for her. The dress was a richer shade of blue than Benny’s jeans, and the bodice was embroidered with wildflowers and hummingbirds. The colors made Nix’s red hair and green eyes look more intense.
Tom wore a black shirt and jeans and kept his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses he’d recently bought from a trader. He did not say a word the whole time. Chong and his family stood nearby, but Lilah was not with them. Only when Benny looked around during one of the hymns did he see her standing on the far side of the graveyard fence. She wore a dress made from some charcoal-colored cloth embroidered with tiny white flowers. Lilah’s snow-white hair danced in the light breeze, and her eyes were in shadow. She looked as cold and beautiful as a ghost.
Benny saw that Chong was staring openly at her.
Morgie Mitchell came to the funeral too, but like Lilah he stood apart from the others.
When the burial was over, only a handful of people walked to the other side of the cemetery for the Matthias service. Nix took Benny’s hand as they threaded their way through the tombstones.
“You know what this feels like?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“It’s like we’re at our own funerals.”
Benny almost stopped, but Nix pulled his hand.
“Think about it… in a couple of days we’ll be gone too. Nobody in town will ever see us again. Someone else will be living in your house, just like somebody else is living in mine now. By Christmas we’ll be an anecdote. By next year people will start forgetting our names. I’ll be ‘the redheaded girl whose mama was murdered.’ You’ll be ‘that bounty hunter’s kid brother.’” Her voice was soft, pitched for just him to hear. She trailed her fingers over the curved top of a tombstone. “Ten years from now they won’t even remember that we lived here.”
“Morgie and Chong will remember.”
“Remember what? That we left them behind? That they weren’t able to escape with us?”
“Is that what this is? An escape?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’ll be like being born into another world. I don’t know.”
He glanced at her as they walked down the slope to the Matthias plot, but Nix didn’t return his look. Although she was with him, she was wandering somewhere down deep in her thoughts.
Tom and Chong followed behind. Lilah did not.
Zak’s family was Catholic, so Father Shannon performed the service. He was an ancient little man with healed-over burns on his face. Like Pastor Kellogg, the little priest carried with him an awful reminder of First Night.
Father Shannon looked at the sparse gathering and then around at the cemetery, as if hoping more people were coming, but no one was. He sighed, shook his head, and launched into another reading of the same prayer for the dead. Nix still held Benny’s hand, and her grip tightened to an almost crushing force, grinding his hand bones together. It hurt, but Benny would rather have cut that hand off than take it back at that moment. If it would help Nix through this, he’d give her a pair of pliers and a vise so she could do a proper job.
The priest read the prayers and made the sign of the cross and talked a lot about redemption.
Benny leaned close to Nix and whispered, “He sounds like he thought Zak and his dad were as guilty as Charlie.”
“Maybe he’s like some other people around here. They seem to think that the whole Charlie Pink-eye craziness finally died out with the last of his family.” She shook her head. “People can be so blind.”
Benny nodded. He would have given her hand a comforting squeeze, but there was no feeling left in his fingers.