Tom caught the sound and cut a look at Benny, who nodded.
Tom mouthed the words, “Keep your eye on him,” and Benny nodded again.
“Yup,” said Benny. “He was the first monk I ever met out here. It’s him and two girls. Sister Sarah and Sister Shanti.”
“And Old Roger,” added Nix.
“Who?” Chong asked.
“He’s a zom they take care of. Remember I told you?”
Chong nodded but didn’t comment.
They descended along a path that ran beside a mammoth line of white boulders dumped there ages ago by a glacier. A thin stream of water trickled between the rocks, but it was so small that it made no sound. Chong lagged behind the rest, and Benny slowed to keep pace with him. When Benny caught a look at Chong’s face, he almost missed his step.
There were tears at the corners of Chong’s dark eyes.
“Hey, dude. What’s—?”
Chong touched Benny’s arm. “I’m really sorry, man.”
Benny shook his head and started to protest.
“No,” Chong interrupted, “I should never have come. You guys are better off without me.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Benny said, though his voice lacked total conviction. “Besides, this way you get to spend a couple of days with Lilah—”
Chong dismissed that with a derisive snort. “Ever since the rhino thing, I’m less than dog crap to her.”
“C’mon, dude, she’s like that with everyone. I mean, she’s been trying to quiet me for a coupla days now.”
Chong merely shook his head. “I spoiled everything.”
“No way. Don’t even go there.”
“I’m sorry I came,” Chong insisted, but this time he said it more to himself. Benny was fishing for something encouraging to say when Tom stopped them all with a raised fist.
He scanned the terrain for a moment, then waved everyone over.
“Is everything okay?” Benny asked.
“Let’s find out,” Tom said guardedly.
Tom headed down the slope and the others followed. For Benny this was the first moment today that wasn’t wrapped in tension. He thought Brother David was halfway to being crazy, but he was one of the nicest people Benny had ever met, and the two girls with him were sweet-natured and pretty. All three of them were good cooks, too, and even after everything he’d seen, Benny was sure he could eat a full-size rhinoceros.
They came down onto the concrete pad, on which the single gas pump stood like a great rusted tombstone to a dead culture. Tom knocked loudly on the pump’s metal casing. The echoes bounced off the hills and came faintly back to them before melting into silence.
There was no response. Tom narrowed his eyes. “Stay here.” He walked carefully to the front door of the station and knocked. Nothing. “Brother David?” he called.
Absolutely nothing.
Scowling, Tom waved the others over and they approached with great caution, their weapons in their hands.
“Be ready,” Tom said as he reached for the door handle. It turned easily, and the door swung inward. Tom drew his pistol and moved silently inside. The others crept after him. Lilah broke to Tom’s right. Benny slipped in next, with Nix at his back, and they shifted to Tom’s left.
However, there was no need of caution.
“Where is everyone?” whispered Nix.
Tom shook his head and took a few tentative steps into the room.
Most of the front part of the station was set up for trading and an attempt at comfort. There were folding chairs, a wood-stove, and a table for meals. Benny, Tom, and Nix had stayed here several times and eaten the modest but well-cooked food offered by the Children of God; and Tom always brought some supplies as gifts.
The rest of the way station had been converted into living quarters for the monk and the two female disciples. There were bedrolls and plastic milk crates that served as bureaus and night tables. Sheets were strung on clothesline to provide marginal privacy. Garlands of flowers and herbs were hung from pegs set into the walls.
“Where are they?” Nix asked again.
“Lilah,” Tom said, “check the sheds.”
She nodded and slipped out the door without a word. It annoyed Benny a bit that Tom never asked him to do something like that, but this wasn’t the time to start an argument.
Nix crossed to the stove and looked into the pots, then held her hand above the burners. “It’s cold, but there’s food in the pots. Hasn’t gone bad yet.”
“Teacups on the table, too,” said Benny. “And it looks like all their stuff’s back there. That’s Sister Shanti’s traveling bag on her bed. Think they went out for a walk? A day trip or something?”
Tom shook his head. “No … looks like they just got up and walked out.” He knelt and picked up a pair of reading glasses. One of the lenses was cracked from side to side. “Brother David’s.” He frowned. “And there’s more. I sent a load of supplies here. Carpet coats, tents, cooking gear, extra rations, and some weapons. I don’t see any of it here.”
The door opened and Lilah came in. “Someone broke the lock on Old Roger’s shed. He’s gone … tracks lead east.”
“How long?” asked Tom.
“Late morning.”
Tom nodded again. “I think that’s when everyone left.”
They stood in the dusty sunlight, thinking that through, silently letting the implications shout at them.
“Okay … we don’t have enough daylight left to get back to town,” said Tom, “and I sure as hell don’t want to sleep up in the hills tonight. Too many weird things going on.”
“I’ll second that,” mumbled Benny.
“So we have two choices. We hole up here and fortify this place, or we push on to Sunset Hollow. If we run most of the way, we can make it by full dark.”
Benny was already shaking his head. Sunset Hollow was where he and Tom had lived before First Night. It was where the zombies of their parents had been kept by Tom for fourteen years; and it was where they were buried now. On one hand it had a high wall and a fence they could lock; on the other hand, Benny was sure that if he went back there he would go totally ape crazy.
“Nix can’t do all that running,” he said, fishing for a reasonable excuse. “And Chong has to go home tomorrow.”
“Don’t make this about me,” said Nix defiantly. “I’ll outrun your narrow butt any day of the week, Benny Imura.”
Benny winced.
“Stay here,” voted Lilah. “Five of us can hold this place.”
“There’s no back exit,” Tom replied.
Lilah considered that and said nothing. She turned and looked at the others, then frowned. “Where is Chong?”
They all turned to the door, each of them realizing that Chong had not come inside with them.
“Was he outside when you checked around back?”
She nodded but immediately rushed outside. Tom was a half step behind her.
Chong was nowhere in sight.
29
“THIS DAY CANNOT GET ANY WORSE,” TOM SAID UNDER HIS BREATH.
Benny shot him a look. It was the kind of statement that he would never dare make because the universe always seemed to take it as a challenge. He cupped his hands and called Chong’s name.
The echoes bounced around and came back empty.
“Oh, come on,” growled Tom with mounting frustration. “Somebody that smart can’t possibly be this dumb.”
“Maybe he went somewhere to go to the bathroom,” suggested Benny. “Chong’s pretty shy about that stuff … so maybe he—”
“Went to the bathroom where? In his damn parents’ house? There’s an outhouse twenty feet away, and there are bushes everywhere he could squat behind.”
“He was pretty upset,” said Nix. “Maybe he just wanted to be alone.”
Tom turned to her and gave her a long, withering stare. “Alone? In the Rot and bloody Ruin?”
She flushed bright red and immediately started calling Chong’s nam
e again. Tom did too. Only Lilah stayed silent. Her damaged larynx made it impossible for her to shout loud enough to do any good; but her honey-colored eyes missed nothing as she turned in a full circle and surveyed the surrounding forest.
Lilah shot Nix an evil look. “Are all boys this stupid?”
“Hey!” said Benny.
Nix didn’t answer. She called Chong’s name again, shouting it as loud as she could, even though it hurt her injury to do it. If he could hear the shouts, Chong did not answer.
Tom cursed with great vehemence for several seconds. “I am so going to kill him. I’m going to drag him back to town and chain him to his own front porch.”
“I’ll help,” offered Benny, who was as angry as he was scared.
Tom looked from the tree line to the sun and back again. “Damn it.” He turned to the others. “Okay, everyone spread out. Find Chong’s footprints. He has those wedge-soled boots. Keep your weapons in hand and stay in sight with at least one other person. You find anything, call out. Go!”
The four of them moved away from the front of the station as if they were propelled outward by an explosion.
He’s gone, whispered Benny’s inner voice. Be prepared for that.
Benny didn’t want to believe it, but his mind was replaying his last conversation with Chong, and Chong’s last words: “I should never have come.”
“Come on, you monkey-banger,” Benny muttered aloud as he scanned the dusty ground and picked his way through the broken concrete. “Stop screwing around.”
Then he found something that froze the blood in his veins. He straightened and yelled as loud as he could.
“HERE!”
Everyone came running. Benny saw the flash of sunlight on Tom’s sword as his brother ran up from his left, and the glitter on the wicked edge of Lilah’s spear as she closed in from the right. Nix came puffing up behind him. They all stopped and stared. No one said a word. The words had already been said.
They were scraped onto the side of a slab of concrete pushed almost vertical by tree roots. Chong had left them a message. Two words.
I’M SORRY.
Benny looked at what lay beyond the slab of concrete. Miles of white rock left by a glacier. White rock baking in the sunlight. The row of rocks split off into five separate threads that led high into the mountains and vanished into the gloom gathering under the forest canopy.
Benny remembered a basic fact of tracking that Tom had taught him: Rubber-soled shoes don’t leave tracks on rock.
There were five possible trails, and there were four of them. The sun was already behind the treetops, and it would be dark in two hours.
With a feeling of sinking horror, Benny realized that Chong, smart as ever, had picked a path away from them that was impossible to follow. In grief and shame, he had run away.
And there was nothing they could do about it.
30
LOU CHONG RAN AS FAST AS HE COULD OVER THE ROCKS. HIS HEART pounded, but it also ached. Benny would hate him for this. So would Nix and Tom. Lilah, however … well, Chong figured that Lilah would be happy to have him gone. Lilah despised weakness, and Chong felt that “weak” had quickly become his defining characteristic. At least out here in the Ruin.
He felt stupid and ashamed. He should never have agreed to come, and though he briefly thought that Tom was just as much to blame for even suggesting this trip, Chong believed the stuff that had gone wrong was all his own fault. He was fairly certain that Tom was on the verge of turning back, which meant that Chong would be responsible for screwing up what Nix and Benny really wanted. And for denying Lilah the freedom that she craved.
That was the process of logic that had spurred him to run, though now, deep in the woods, he could see that the logic was as thin as tissue paper and filled with holes. He remembered one of his father’s countless lessons about logical thinking: “When you add emotion to any equation, you can’t trust the results.” Shame and guilt were emotions, and the sum at the end of his logical calculations was as untrustworthy as his actions back on the road when the rhino first appeared.
“I’m not cut out for the Ruin,” he told himself as he ran. “I’m nobody’s idea of Mr. Adventure.” His words were pitched to sound funny, but his heart was breaking.
As he ran he made himself remember everything that Mr. Feeney had taught them in the Scouts and what he had read in books about the forests of the Sierra Nevadas. All the tricks about tracking and stalking. And about how to foil pursuit. There was a lot of that in books. The Leatherstocking Tales and old Louis L’Amour novels from long before First Night.
Chong knew about doubling back and leaving false trails. He knew how to circle around and cut his own trail. He knew how to keep from scuffing the rocks. Several times he jumped down from the rocks and ran into the tall grass, then carefully walked backward in his own footprints so that anyone following would think he ran into the field. When he reached the forest, he found a broken branch that still had some leaves on it, and as he ran he whisked the ground behind him to wipe out his trail.
Maybe Tom or Lilah could find him, but he didn’t think so. If they were alone and had all the time in the world, sure … but they had to watch out for Benny and Nix.
Chong even smiled to himself with how clever he was being. It felt good to do something right, even if the others would hate him for it. Better that than having them hurt again because of him. Especially if Charlie Pink-eye was still alive. It would be better for Benny and the others to keep going east, to get far beyond the reach of that maniac.
Chong knew enough about orienteering to know which way was northwest. And even though he hated physical exertion, he could climb a tree and lash himself to the trunk to wait out the night.
As it grew dark he slowed to a walk. The canopy of leaves was so dense he could catch only glimpses of the sky. Sunset couldn’t be more than an hour and a half away. It was time to find shelter.
He saw an upslope and took that, reasoning that high ground would give him a better view to help him pick a likely tree for the night, and allow him to see if he was indeed alone in this section of the forest. Chong was sure he could outrun a zom, but if one came after him, the creature would simply follow him to whatever tree he chose and stand there until the world ended. It could outwait him.
“No thanks,” he told himself, and almost jumped at the sound of his own voice. He drew his bokken. He was not as strong a swordsman as Benny, or as fast as Nix, but Chong knew that he was far from helpless, and holding the weapon recharged his confidence.
At the top of the hill he turned in a full circle. Shadows clustered around the base of each tree, and every time the wind blew Chong imagined he could see a ghastly shape lumbering his way. But he saw no zoms.
He spotted a stately cottonwood tree with a couple of branches low enough to grab and many more high up among the leaves. He ran down the hill and began climbing the slope atop of which was the cottonwood. He looked left and right, checking his surroundings, filling his mind with data, being smart and careful.
But he walked right past the two figures standing in the dense shadows beneath a massive old spruce. They, however, saw him.
Tom, Lilah, Nix, and Benny were miles away. Much too far away to hear Lou Chong’s screams.
31
BENNY STOPPED AS MOVEMENT CAUGHT HIS EYE FAR TO THE NORTH. A flock of birds leaped out of the distant trees like a cloud of locusts. They swirled and eddied in the air and then gradually settled back down among the dark green leaves.
“What was that?” asked Nix, catching the sudden jerk of Benny’s head but missing what he was looking at. She was kneeling among the rocks sixty yards from the way station, trying to determine if a smudge could be one of Chong’s footprints.
“Just some birds,” he said. Even so, Benny continued to stare.
Lilah climbed up on the rocks from the other side. “Where?”
Benny pointed. The trees were still for a five count, and then the birds jumped up
again. As a swarm they moved a hundred yards south and settled in different trees.
“Lilah,” Benny asked, “d’you think—?”
Before he could finish, Lilah turned and clapped her hands over her head several times to attract Tom’s attention. He was on the far side of the station, but he came at a run.
“What is it?”
Benny described what they’d seen. Tom didn’t immediately reply. He looked at the sun again and the long shadows cast by the western line of trees, then he turned and studied the area where Lilah had pointed.
“It’s got to be Chong,” decided Tom. “Direction’s right. Could be heading for the northern trade route.”
“Yeah,” Benny agreed. Tom had made them study every route and path in the Ruin.
Nix chewed her lip. “Tom, do you think Chong’s trying to go back home?”
“Sure. Where else would he go? The question has always been how. There are fifty ways to get to Mountainside from here, and all we know for sure is that he isn’t going the way we came.”
“Preacher Jack’s out there too,” said Nix.
Tom didn’t reply, but the muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched and flexed.
“C’mon,” cried Benny, grabbing at his bokken. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
“Sorry, kiddo,” said Tom, “but you and Nix would slow me down too much. It’s going to be dark soon, and I’m a lot faster alone.”
It was true, but Benny tried to come up with an argument to get around it.
“I’ll go,” said Lilah.
Tom shook his head. “No. You’re tough, Lilah, but I can’t allow it.” Lilah stiffened at the word “allow,” but Tom didn’t back down. “I admit that you’re good. You survived out here for years … but I’m still better at this. I’m bigger and faster, and I’ve been hunting these mountains for fourteen years. Besides, the Chongs left their son in my care. This is my fault, and it’s mine to make right. I also don’t want to argue about this. I want you to stay here with Nix and Benny. You can help them fortify this place. Remember, Sally Two-Knives is due through here tonight, and J-Dog and Dr. Skillz are in the area. Wait for them. Are we agreed?”