“Yes. I love you. I really do.” It felt strange to say aloud. Enormous and good and delicious.
But Nix’s brow furrowed. “If you love me, then swear on that.”
They were back to the question about leaving. Benny bowed his head for a moment, unable to bear the weight of what she was asking. Nix hooked a finger under his chin and lifted his face toward hers.
“Please, Benny…”
“I swear it, Nix. I love you and I swear on that.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she kissed him. Then Benny was on his knees, his arms wrapped around her, and both of them were crying, sobbing out loud under the bright blue sky. Even then, even with the terrible shared awareness of what lay behind them and before them, neither Benny nor Nix would ever be able to explain what it was that was breaking their hearts.
Benny thought about what Nix had said in the cemetery. That leaving was like dying.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Questions:
Can zoms experience fear?
Do they know they’re dead?
Can they feel any emotions? (Do they hate the living?)
14
“JUST SO I’M CLEAR ON THIS,” SAID CHONG IN HIS CALMEST AND MOST reasonable voice. “You want to take us camping in the Rot and Ruin?”
“Yes,” said Tom. “Just an overnight trip.”
“Out where the zoms are?”
“Yes.”
“Out where there are three hundred million zoms?”
Tom smiled. “I doubt there are that many of them left. I doubt there’s more than two hundred million zoms left.”
Chong peered at him with the flat stare of a lizard. “That’s not as much of a comfort as you might think, Tom.”
“Hundred million fewer things that want to eat you,” said Benny. “Put it in the win category.”
“Hush,” said Chong, “there are grown folks talking.”
Benny covertly offered a rude gesture.
They were in Benny’s yard. Nix sat nearby, wiping down her wooden sword with oil and trying not to smile. Lilah sat cross-legged on the picnic table, strip-cleaning her Sig Sauer automatic pistol. Again.
“Are you going?” Chong asked her.
Lilah snorted. “Better than staying here. This town is worse than the Ruin. If they go,” she said, indicating Tom, Benny, and Nix, “why would I want to stay here?”
Benny caught Chong’s wince.
Damn, he thought, that’s got to hurt.
It was clear from the frank look on Lilah’s face that she had no idea that her words had just jabbed into Chong’s flesh. Benny doubted she had a clue as to Chong’s feelings.
“So that’s the plan,” Benny said brightly, trying to lighten the mood. “A last blast for the Chong-Imura Gang of Badasses.”
“Language,” said Tom, more out of reflex than anything else.
“‘Chong-Imura’?” echoed Nix with a roll of her eyes. “Gang? Oh, please.”
“Why camping?” asked Chong gloomily. “Why not just rub us all down with steak sauce and send us running into a herd of zoms?”
“I’m not actually trying to get you killed,” said Tom.
“Oh, of course not. Our safely is clearly your first concern.”
Tom sipped his iced tea. “We’re going to be out there for months. We have to provide for ourselves. Besides, it’s a good way to learn woodcraft.”
“Woodcraft?” asked Benny. “What, like making chairs and tables and stuff? How’s that-”
Chong elbowed him. “No, genius. Woodcraft is the art of living in the wild. Hunting, fishing, setting traps, finding herbs. That sort of stuff.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because,” Chong said with raised eyebrows, “when you open those things called ‘books,’ there are words as well as pictures. Sometimes the words tell you stuff.”
“Bite me.”
“Not even if I was a starving zom.” To Tom he said, “We learned some of that in the Scouts.”
“Camping out in McGoran Field is hardly the same as surviving in the Rot and Ruin,” chided Tom. “Lilah already knows how to do that. So do I. Benny and Nix learned a little when we were out in the Ruin, but they don’t know enough.”
“And I don’t know any,” concluded Chong. He sighed. “And I guess I don’t really need any. You know what my parents think about your trip.”
“You don’t have to come camping with us,” said Nix.
Chong sighed again. “No, I guess not.”
“The thing is,” said Tom, “the stuff Mr. Feeney taught you in the Scouts was all well and good, but it’s old world. That’s the problem with a lot of what you kids have been taught, and it’s the problem with a lot of the books they make you read in school. They’re good in themselves, but they aren’t part of this world. It’s important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present. I mean… has Mr. Feeney been outside the gate recently?”
“Not since a few weeks after First Night,” said Nix. “He got here around the same time as my mom, and I don’t think he ever left again.”
Tom nodded. “Right, which means that his knowledge is all based on camping in vacation spots and national parks as they were before the dead rose. He has no idea what it’s like out there in the wild.”
“The wild,” echoed Chong, and looked a little pale. Of his friends, Chong was the smartest and most well-read, but he was by far the least physical. Benny had to bully him into a game of soccer, and even then Chong preferred to be the goalie.
“When do we start?” Nix asked with enough enthusiasm to make Chong wince.
“First light,” said Tom. He narrowed his eyes at Benny. “And that means we are up, washed, dressed, packed, and at the fence by first light… not hiding under your pillow pretending that I haven’t been calling you to get up for two hours.”
Benny made a show of innocence unfairly attacked, but no one bought it.
“Dress for hiking,” Tom told them all. He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Chong. “Here’s a list of what you’ll need.”
Chong’s eyes flicked down the list. “There’s not a lot of stuff here, Tom.”
“You won’t want to carry a lot.”
“No… I mean, there’s stuff missing. Like… food.”
“We’ll forage and hunt. Nature provides, if you know how to ask.”
“No tents?”
“You’ll learn to build a basic shelter. All you need is a sleeping bag. We’ll be roughing it.”
“No toilet paper?”
Benny grinned. “That’s what ‘roughing it’ means, Chong.”
“We’ll use bunches of grass or soft leaves,” explained Tom.
Chong stared at him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Early man didn’t have toilet paper,” said Benny. “I’ll bet it even says so in one of your books.”
“Early man, perhaps,” Chong said icily, “but we did evolve.”
Tom laughed. “Go pack.”
15
THE HARDEST PART WAS SAYING GOOD-BYE.
Benny didn’t have a lot of close friends in town, but there was Morgie. Nix had already said good-bye to him. Now it was Benny’s turn.
He walked, hands in pockets, through the streets of town, looking at the familiar buildings and houses. There was Lafferty’s General Store, where Benny and his gang drank sodas and opened packs of Zombie Cards. There were three nine-year-olds sitting on the wooden steps with several packs on their laps, laughing, showing one another cool cards. Heroes of First Night. Bounty Hunters. Famous Zoms. Maybe even one of the ultrarare Chase Cards.
Benny turned onto Morgie’s street and saw the Mitchell house at the end of the block, perpetually in the shadow of two massive oaks. Morgie was sitting on the top step, stringing his fishing pole. His tackle box stood open beside him and his dog, Cletus, drowsed in a patch of sunlight.