“I—,” Benny began, but Nix cut him off.
“My mother taught me that words only mean what we want them to mean, mister.” Her voice was cold and precise.
“Oh, that’s a nice sentiment, but it’s a crooked mile from the truth. Reality is that words are full of power. The good clean power of the Lord and dark, twisted magic.”
“Everybody uses the word ‘zom,’” said Benny, though he knew that wasn’t true. Brother David never used it and didn’t like to hear it, and Benny had no problem editing himself around the monk … but now he felt like yelling “Zom-zomzom!” at the top of his lungs.
Preacher Jack’s dark eyes twinkled. “The word is offensive to many, and to the—”
Tom cut him off. “No offense is intended. We can’t speak for anyone else, but if offense is taken from what my brother and his friends say, then that burden is on the listener.”
“Is it indeed?” Preacher Jack’s smile never wavered. “That’s a no harm, no foul way of seeing things, Brother Tom, and I respect it. However, it is in the nature of free will that we can agree to disagree.”
Tom ignored that, and instead said, “Do you know anything about what happened to this man?”
The preacher knelt beside the dead man. He made some indistinct humming sounds for a moment, then cocked an eye up at Tom. “What in particular do you want to know, Brother Tom? The man has received the ministrations of the Children of Lazarus and has gone to his maker. He’s been quieted courtesy of the white-haired young miss’s knife. I’m not sure there’s more of this story to tell.”
“Lilah didn’t quiet him,” blurted Nix. “He never reanimated.”
Preacher Jack swiveled his head like a praying mantis to look at her. “Now is that a fact, girlie-girl?”
“Don’t call me that,” Nix snapped.
“Oh, I am sorry. Is that phrase offensive to you?”
Oh boy, thought Benny. He wanted to brain this guy with his bokken.
Before Nix could serve up an acid reply, Tom said, “When we found this man, it was clear he’d been dead for at least a day, and he did not reanimate. I’m asking if you know anything about that.”
“No, Brother Tom,” said Preacher Jack as he stood, “I can’t say as I do.”
“Any idea who fed him to the dead?”
Benny noted that Tom used “dead” instead of “zoms.”
“That is also a mystery to me,” said Preacher Jack. “Why on earth would anyone do such a thing?”
“Any idea who he was?” Tom asked. “I hear you’re living out at Wawona. Did he come through there?”
“I never laid eyes on this poor sinner before.”
Tom almost smiled. “Sinner? If you haven’t seen him before, then how do you know he was a sinner?”
“We’re all sinners, Brother Tom. Each and every living, breathing resident of this purgatory. Even humble men of the cloth such as my own self. Sinners all. Only the Children of Lazarus are pure of heart and immaculate of soul.”
“How’s that work?” asked Benny skeptically. “They eat people.”
“They are the meek raised up from death to inherit this new Garden of Eden.” He opened his arms wide to include the green and overgrown expanse of the Rot and Ruin. “They have been reborn in the blood of the old world, washed clean of their sins, and they now walk in the light of redemption. It is only us, the dwindling few, who cling to old ways of sin and heresy and godlessness.”
“Um …,” Benny began, but realized that he was no candidate for a religious debate.
Lilah stepped forward. Her eyes looked a bit jumpy, and Benny realized that she was probably unnerved by having her weapon taken away from her so easily. The only other person who had defeated her was Charlie Pink-eye. “You are saying that we are all sinners? That we deserve whatever happens to us?”
“It’s not what I am saying, little miss; it’s what the Good Book says.”
“Being eaten by zoms is in the Bible?” Nix asked, giving him a frank stare; and Benny liked that she leaned on the word “zoms.”
“Not in words that crude.” He patted the book inside his coat. “But yes … the fate of all mankind is laid out in chapter and verse.”
“Where?” demanded Lilah. “Where does it say that in the Bible?”
Something shifted in the preacher’s eyes. Benny thought it was like a snake looking out through the eyeholes of a mask.
“It’s in there for those who read the scriptures,” the preacher answered quietly. “But I bet that you’ve never taken the time to—”
“You’d lose that bet, mister.”
Everyone turned. It was Chong who had spoken up. He had retrieved Lilah’s spear from the bushes and handed it to her. She accepted it without glancing at him.
Preacher Jack gave Chong an up-and-down evaluation with his eyes and dismissed him with a twitch of his smiling mouth. “I doubt that, son. From what I heard, this young lady’s been living hard and wild in these mountains, far from any church or congregation.”
“How does that matter? Does a sheepdog stop being a sheepdog if there’s no herd or shepherd?” Chong gave his dry lips a nervous lick. “Don’t raise theological questions unless you’re prepared to debate them.”
Preacher Jack’s smile still did not dim. “Well, well, well … what have you stumbled upon, Jack? A Sunday School class trip all the way out here in the Rot and Ruin?”
“Hardly that,” said Tom quietly.
“Then what?”
Chong, Lilah, Nix, and Benny all started to speak, but Tom snapped his fingers, a sound as sharp and urgent as a pistol shot. He gave a hand gesture, a palms-down press as if he was patting the air. It was one of the warrior hand signals he had taught them over the last seven months. Be silent but be ready.
“We’re out here on personal business,” said Tom mildly. “Family business. We don’t discuss that business with strangers.”
“Is that what we are, Brother Tom?” asked Preacher Jack with a hint of reproach in his voice. “Are we strangers?”
Tom said, “If we’d met in town or at Wawona, or in the sanctuary of one of the way stations, then I suppose I’d feel comfortable enough to swap stories. That’s not the case. I find a man tortured and fed to the dead. That’s suspicious. Then you step out of nowhere.”
“I—”
Tom stopped him with a raised hand. “Let me finish. I offer no hostility and mean no disrespect, but I am not in a position to trust a stranger.” He nodded toward Benny and the others. “Manners are going to have to take a backseat to common sense and safety.”
“So I see.”
“I’m going to ask one more time … do you know anything about who this man is, why he was killed, or why he didn’t reanimate?”
Preacher Jack hooked his thumbs into his belt, and Benny noted that this put the heel of his right hand on the pommel of his knife. Having seen how fast the man could draw that knife, Benny had no illusions that the gesture was accidental. He carefully tightened his grip on the bokken.
“I don’t believe that I have any of the answers you seek,” murmured the man in the dusty coat.
“Then I think we’re done here.”
“Done with me or done with this poor sinner?”
“With both.” Tom took a small step back.
Preacher Jack nodded. “Perhaps we’ll meet again under more pleasant circumstances, Brother Tom.”
“That would be nice, sir, but unlikely. You see, we’re heading east.”
For the first time Preacher Jack’s smile flickered. “What? You’re leaving these mountains? When will you be coming back?”
“I don’t expect that we will.”
That wiped the smile completely from the preacher’s face. He looked disappointed and even a little bit angry at this news, and Benny watched Tom as his brother watched the change in Preacher Jack’s expression.
“Something wrong?” asked Tom, his own face and voice neutral.
The smile returned, te
ntatively at first and then with all its twitchy vibrancy. “Wrong? Why, no, except that it would surely have been a blessing to sit down, break bread, and try this whole meeting again in a more civilized way. I fear we got ourselves off on the wrong foot here. Knives and hard words and all.”
Now Tom smiled, and it looked genuine, at least to Benny.
“Yeah.” Tom laughed. “I guess this wasn’t the most genial encounter.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, it could have been worse.”
“Yes,” said Preacher Jack with a glitter in his eyes, “it surely could have.”
They stood there, eight feet apart with a dead man lying on the ground between them, and Benny had the impression that there were all sorts of conversations going on at the same time. Words that were not being spoken but that were mutually understood. Except to Benny and, from the look on her face, Nix as well.
Preacher Jack bowed to Nix and Lilah. “If by word or deed I have done anything to offend you fine ladies,” he said, removing his hat and bowing low once more, “then I am truly sorry and most humbly beg forgiveness. The Ruin is not a charm school, and in hard times we often forget who we are and where we came from.”
Lilah said nothing, but her honey-colored eyes lost some of their intensity. Nix gave a single curt bob of her head.
Preacher Jack turned to Benny. “Peace to you, little brother.”
“Um … yeah, sure. Back atcha.”
Preacher Jack ignored Chong altogether, but he fixed Tom with a knowing smile. “I won’t offer my hand again, Brother Tom, for fear that it will once more be left hanging in the wind. So I’ll tip my hat and bid you all a farewell. May the Good Lord keep you from snakes and snares and the evil that men do.”
With that the preacher replaced his hat, tugged his lapels to adjust the hang of his jacket, and walked back into the woods, where he vanished so quickly into the shadows that the whole encounter might have been a dream. Tom and the others stood where they were for a full five minutes, listening first for Preacher Jack’s soft footfalls and then to the forest as the ordinary sounds one by one returned.
Benny let out a chestful of air and turned to Tom. “What was that all about?”
“I really don’t know,” said Tom.
Benny could see that Tom was troubled. He followed his brother over to the edge of the road, and they both squatted to study the dirt of the game trail along which Preacher Jack had gone. Benny watched as Tom used a twig to measure the man’s shoe impressions. “Good-quality hiking shoes,” murmured Tom. “Pre–First Night, which means they’re either scavenged or purchased for a tidy stack of ration dollars.”
Benny nodded and bent low to study the pattern of the shoes, just as Tom had taught him. The tread was pretty well worn, and there was a crescent-shaped nick out of the right heel.
“That nick is pretty distinctive,” Benny said, earning him an approving nod from Tom.
“It’s as good as a fingerprint. Remember it.” Then Tom called the others over to look at it too, pointing out the unique elements of each sole.
“Why bother?” asked Chong. “Is he our enemy?”
“I don’t know what he is,” admitted Tom, “but out here it’s a good idea to observe as many details as you can. You never know what’s going to be useful.”
“Was that really Preacher Jack?” asked Nix.
Tom rose and squinted down the game trail. “Well … he fits the description Dr. Skillz gave me. At least physically.”
“Is it okay if I say that he was the single creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been face-to-face with decaying zoms?”
Tom nodded. “Yeah, Nix, you can say that and mean it.”
“I don’t like him,” growled Lilah, her fists clenched tightly around the shaft of her spear. “If I see him again …” She let the rest hang in the air.
“I think it’s a good idea if we all watch our backs,” suggested Tom.
“Are you sure he’s really a preacher?” asked Chong.
Tom shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything about him. Not one thing.”
He looked up at the sky.
Benny started to ask something, but Tom shook his head.
“We’re burning daylight,” Tom said. “We need to get to the way station, and I need to think while we’re doing it. We’ll talk then. For now, we’ll go at Scout pace. That means we walk two hundred paces, run three hundred, walk two hundred. It’ll chew up the miles.”
And it’ll keep us too busy to ask questions, whispered Benny’s inner voice. Smart.
“Nix—this is up to you. Can you handle the pace? No screwing around: yes or no?”
“Yes,” she said with real fire. “And I promise to tell you if I can’t keep up.”
Without another word, Tom turned toward the southeast and set off.
The others followed. Running and walking and running. They didn’t have time to ask questions, but about ten thousand of them occurred to Benny, and he knew that the same questions would be occurring to Nix.
Who was Preacher Jack?
Was he connected to the dead man? Who had killed the man? And why? Could Charlie Pink-eye still be alive? Was he out in these same hills? Did he know they were out here?
And, maybe more important than any of those questions: How come the dead man had not reanimated? Since First Night, everyone who died, no matter how they died, came back to life.
Why hadn’t he?
What did it mean?
The questions burned in Benny’s mind as he ran.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
How many people are still alive out there?
Tom says that there’s a network of about five hundred bounty hunters, traders, way-station monks, and scavengers in central California. And maybe as many as two hundred loners living in isolated and remote spots. Sounds like a lot, but it’s not. Our history teacher said that California used to be the most populous state and that there used to be almost forty million people living here.
28
THEY LEFT THE OLD ROAD AND FOUND WHAT USED TO BE A HIGHWAY, so they turned and followed that. Despite the fact that his toe was hurting like crazy and his clothes were thoroughly soaked with sweat, Benny still mustered the energy to look left and right, left and right, checking every shadow under every tree for some sign of movement that could be either zoms or worse.
Charlie’s dead, he told himself, but his inner voice—the less emotional and more rational aspect of his mind—replied, You don’t know that.
He cut looks at Nix, who was also sweating heavily and yet seemed able to keep going, despite the pain and the injury. It wasn’t the first time that her strength amazed and humbled him.
They ran and walked, ran and walked.
During one of the walking times, Benny leaned to Nix. “What the heck was that?”
“Preacher Jack,” she said, and shivered. “I feel like I need a bath.”
Benny counted on his fingers. “We know—what—seven religious people? I mean people in the business.”
“You mean clerics? There’s the four in town, Pastor Kellogg, Father Shannon, Rabbi Rosemann, and Imam Murad …”
“… and the monks at the way station: Brother David, Sister Shanti, and Sister Sarah. Seven,” finished Benny. “Except for the monks, who are a little, y’know …” He tapped his temple and rolled his eyes.
“Touched by God,” Nix said. “Isn’t that the phrase Tom uses?”
“Right, except for them, everyone else is pretty okay. I mean the monks are okay too, but they’re loopy from living out here in the Ruin. But even with different religions, different churches, they’re all pretty much the kind of people you want to hang with during a real wrath-of-God moment.”
“Not him, though,” said Nix, nodding along with where Benny was going with this. “He’s scarier than the zoms.”
“‘Zoms’ is a bad word, girlie-girl,” Benny said in a fair imitation of Preacher Jack’s oily voice.
“Eww … don’t!” Nix punched hi
m on the arm.
They walked another few paces as the road bent around a hill.
“Weird day,” Benny said.
“Weird day,” Nix agreed.
Around the bend were dozens of cars and trucks that had been pushed to the side of the main road, which left a clear path down the center. Some of the cars had tumbled into the drainage ditch that ran along one side. Others were smashed together. There were skeletons in a few of them.
“Who pushed the cars out of the way?” asked Chong.
“Probably a tank,” said Tom. “Or a bulldozer. Before they nuked the cities, back when they thought this was a winnable war.” He gestured to the line of broken cars, many of them nearly invisible behind clumps of shrubbery. “This is a well-traveled route. Traders and other people out here. All these cars have been checked for zoms a hundred times.”
Nix wasn’t fooled, and she gave Tom a sly smile. “Which doesn’t mean they’re safe. We have to check them every time, don’t we?”
Tom gave her an approving nod. “That’s the kind of thinking—”
“—that’s going to keep us alive,” finished Benny irritably. “Yeah, we pretty much get that.”
To Tom, Nix said, “He’s cranky because he didn’t think of it first.”
“Yes, I did,” Benny lied.
They moved on.
As the sun began edging toward the western tree line, they crested a hill and looked down a long dirt side road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.
“Take a closer look,” suggested Tom, handing Benny a pair of high-power binoculars.
Benny focused the lenses and studied the scene. The surrounding vegetation was dense with overgrowth, but there was a broad concrete pad around the cluster of small buildings. An ancient billboard stood against the wall of trees. It had long ago been whitewashed, and someone had written hundreds of lines of scripture on it. Rain had faded the words so that only a few were readable.
“This is Brother David’s place?” asked Chong in a leaden voice. Between the catastrophe with the rhino and finding the dead man, and then the weird encounter with Preacher Jack, Chong seemed to have lost his humor and virtually all trace of emotion. He barely spoke, and when he did his voice lacked inflection. It was like listening to a sleepwalker.