Rot and Ruin (Benny Imura #1)

They rode their horses to the outside edge of the shoulder and stopped. The animals did not like the endless line of cars, although Benny didn’t see any zoms hiding among the dead machines.

Bones, however … There were plenty of those. Skeletons—long since picked clean by zoms, scavengers, and the elements—were scattered everywhere. Thousands upon thousands of skulls and rib cages, leg and arm bones, bleached white by the merci-less California sun. The cars themselves were slammed and smashed together. Some had burned, some were skewed sideways or overturned. A few had rolled off the highway and lay half hidden in the tall grass beside the road. Benny could see that the windows of all the cars were broken. Some had been smashed out by people escaping—or trying to—and some were smashed in by fresh zoms who still had enough of a functioning brain to pick up stones. There were plenty of stones. The roadbed was edged with countless white plum-sized rocks, placed for drainage, Benny knew, but used as weapons.

Benny nudged a cracked thigh bone with his toe. “Tom, how come there are so many bones? Didn’t most people turn into zoms?”

“Most did, sure, but there were still hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who died fighting. Died in ways that kept them from rising. Broken necks, crushed skulls, bullets in the brain. Arms and legs torn off. It’s not like back in town where we bury the dead. Here … Those that truly die just rot away until bones are all that’s left.”

Hundreds of the cars were pocked with bullet holes, and it was clear that at one point the helicopter had fired on the stalled vehicles. Tom saw where Benny was looking, and he pointed out a black shape rising from the side door of the crashed Black Hawk.

“They used their minigun. It’s a 7.62 mm, multibarrel machine gun that could fire three thousand rounds per minute.”

“Wasn’t enough,” Benny said.

“No,” Tom agreed.

On the far side of the line of vehicles was a vast meadow of tall grass and wild wheat that stretched into green and brown forever. Scattered here and there were hundreds of young trees—scrub pines, oaks, poplars, maples—rising above the sea of waving grass. The trees made it impossible to tell if the meadow was free of zoms, an assessment further spoiled by the constant breeze that made everything sway and shift.

A bird cawed, and Benny turned to see a threadbare crow perched on the broken vane of the downed helicopter.

“Which way do we go?”

“That’s the problem,” said Tom. “We need to cut across this road if we’re going to catch them before they reach their camp. God knows how many of their cronies they have there. If we cut the road here and then cross that big meadow, we can get ahead of them. On horseback … Yeah, we can get ahead of them.” He nodded toward the northeast corner of the big meadow where a mountain rose, green and gray. “Charlie’s camp is on the other side of that mountain. There’s half a dozen trails—man-made and game trails. I’m pretty sure I know which one they’d take. You know, the second time I saw Lilah was right over there. Halfway up the mountain. Rob Sacchetto and I were out here together. I wanted him to do sketches of some zoms I thought might be related to folks in town. We were up on the catwalk of that old ranger station, and I had a big high-powered telescope with me this time. I’d picked up Lilah’s trail that morning, and I left him there and went through the woods. I found her, and it took me half the day to first convince her that I didn’t want to hurt her and the rest of the afternoon convincing her that she didn’t want to hurt me.”

“You talked with her?”

“I talked. She didn’t say much, and just when I thought that she was going to open up, something spooked her and she vanished. God only knows where she went, because I lost her trail.”

“You found her twice around here,” Benny said. “She must live near here.”

“Maybe. She might have moved on since then. But let’s deal with first things first. We have to get the horses across this road.”

“But how?” Benny walked up and down the row of cars. There were some spots where he could squeeze through, and certainly he and Tom could climb over the vehicles … but he did not see one spot where a horse could pass. “Can we go around?”

“We’d lose half a day.” There was an overturned panel truck jammed at a right-angle to a big car that was riddled with bullet holes. “Escalade” was written on the fender in tarnished silver letters.

In the cleft formed by the two vehicles, there was a shaded spot big enough for the Imura brothers and their horses. They dismounted, and Tom looped the reins around the rear axle of the truck. “Stay here. I’m going to find us a way through. Keep your eyes and ears open. Watch for zoms, but more importantly, watch for Charlie Pink-eye and his crew.”

But Tom hadn’t gone a dozen steps before he suddenly stopped and crouched.

“Benny!” he hissed, and Benny ran over to see what Tom had found. On the blacktop, drying in the hot sun, was a small puddle of water. It was no larger than a dinner plate, but it was clear from the faded edges that it had been bigger and was shrinking in the heat. Tom touched it, sniffed his fingers.

“It’s not rainwater. Last night’s rain had a bit of a saltwater smell. This doesn’t smell at all. I think this is filtered drinking water.”

Benny could see it now—someone stopping in the sweltering afternoon to gulp down some water, letting the cold liquid splash on his throat and chest and fall to the ground. Tom stood and held his own canteen out at about six feet, tilted it, and let a little fall. The splash pattern was just about the same, even to how far the rebounding drops fell from the main impact point.

“Tall man. Charlie or the Hammer,” said Tom. “The Mekong brothers are both short.”

Benny was impressed, and he looked around for other evidence and immediately saw something that snapped wide his eyes. “Tom!”

On the ground ten feet away, there was half of a wet footprint, drying quickly under the sun’s glare. Not a man’s foot. This print was made by a small, delicate foot that wore no shoe.

“Nix,” Benny said.

“Has to be,” Tom confirmed, but he looked uneasily from the print back to the puddle.

“What’s wrong?”

“Distance is too far. If she stepped in the water, there should be a print closer to the puddle.” He quickly paced it off, shortening his stride to approximate that of a girl who stood barely five-two. “This is wrong. Even if she stepped in the puddle with only one foot, the distance is too far. The wet print should be here.” He tapped a spot on the blacktop with his toe.

“What’s that mean?”

Tom suddenly grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back into the shadows of the overturned truck.

“No one else but Charlie and his crew comes out this way, so I think it means that they somehow managed to get ahead of us. Charlie knows these hills better than me. He must have a pass or route that I don’t know about.”

“You mean … we missed them?”

“We have to get the horses through these cars. We’re falling behind again, and I don’t know how many more breaks we’re going to get.”

“Breaks? What breaks have we gotten so far?”

“Stay here,” Tom ordered, and he ran out in a low crouch, moving fast along the line of cars until he disappeared around some wreckage. He was gone for almost three minutes, during which Benny was ready to drag Apache and Chief up and over the vehicles. Tom returned but said nothing, and took off running in the opposite direction, heading down the line of cars. Benny watched him run, saw him stop every few hundred feet and use his arms to measure a gap, saw his shoulders sag a little more each time the gap wasn’t wide enough to allow a horse to squeeze through. He went almost half a mile, then turned in defeat and ran back. His face was set, jaw clamped hard around his disappointment.

“Nothing?”

“No. We’re going to have to do this the hard way. Rig towlines and use the horses to pull one of the cars enough to make a gap. Horses are half dead as it is.” He swore under his breath.

He went past Benny and looked at the puddle and Nix’s single footprint. Both had almost entirely evaporated. Benny saw something register on Tom’s face as he calculated the time that must have passed since the bounty hunters had come through here, based on the rate of evaporation. Benny couldn’t do the same calculation, but he didn’t have to. Tom snapped erect, and in a blur he drew his pistol.

At that same moment, Benny heard a strange sound behind and above him, and he turned and looked up as something weirdly disconnected to their present circumstances sailed through the hot air and landed on the blacktop just outside their shelter of wrecked vehicles. The thing looked like a great red snake but with many stubby legs; or like a gigantic centipede. It struck the ground and lay there, twisting and hissing and smoking. Benny stood with his mouth open, unable to process it. This was something from summer celebrations, from garden parties and New Year’s Eve.

“Firecrackers,” he said in a strangely conversational voice. Benny turned to see the look of concern on Tom’s face turn to a mask of absolute horror. He slammed his pistol into his holster and whipped out his sword.

As the first of the firecrackers began to explode, Benny’s surprise evaporated, and he caught up with everything. The puddle, the carefully placed footprint. They weren’t accidents, they weren’t clues. They were put there deliberately. To stall them, to draw their focus.

The firecrackers banged and banged, and the echoes bounced off every car and rolled out into the field of tall grass and the forest behind them. The barrage of bangs was so incredibly loud in the still air. Loud enough to wake the dead. Or at least call them.

Almost at once Benny saw movement in the trees and in the tall grass. Dark, slow shapes detached themselves from crevices between smashed cars or tottered out from the dappled depths of the woods. Behind Benny, the horses screamed.

They’d walked into another trap.

37

THE LAST FIRECRACKER POPPED AND A SEMI-SILENCE FELL. ALL BENNY COULD hear were the slow, scuffling steps of the zoms. The closest was still a quarter mile away, but they were coming from all directions. The path back to the creek was totally blocked.

“Tom Imura!” called a voice, and Benny and Tom turned to see Vin Trang step out of the tall grass on the far side of the road. He stood in the one spot that was farthest from the living dead, although a few turned stiffly toward him. Vin held a pistol in one hand and several thick strings of firecrackers in the other.

Tom’s lip curled, but when he spoke he sounded almost casual. “Where’s the girl, Vin?”

“Girl?” Vin laughed. “What girl?”

“Let’s not play games.”

There was a hissing sound to their left, and they saw a second string of firecrackers come arching out of the woods behind them. It landed on the blacktop and began popping. The zoms that were coming out of the cars began to moan.

“Tom,” Benny whispered.

“I know,” said Tom without moving his lips. He pitched his voice louder. “The girl!”

“She’s dead!” Vin yelled back. “Zoms got her.”

Benny almost cried out, but Tom gave him a fierce single shake of his head. “I’m looking at her footprint, Vin. Hasn’t even had time to dry yet.”

“What can I tell you?”

“Nice trap. Who thought of it?”

“I did.”

“You couldn’t zipper your pants without instructions, Vin. This has Charlie Pink-eye all over it.”

Vin barked out a short laugh. “What’s the girl to you? I thought you had the hots for Jessie. Granted, that little girlie has some potential, but she ain’t her mama yet.”

Benny ground his teeth and started to say something, but Tom touched him, gave him another shake of the head. He bent close and whispered. “Don’t let him get inside your head.”

“I want to tear his—”

“Me too, kiddo. But let me play this my way. You keep your eye on the zoms. Let me know when they get to within a hundred feet. That’s our red zone.”

Tom yelled, “Were you at Jessie’s last night, Vin? Isn’t that where you took the girl?”

“Jessie’s? I never been to Jessie’s place—although I wouldn’t mind paying a call. But Charlie’s the one with a sweet spot for Jessie.”

“You’re saying you weren’t at her place last night? That’s funny, Vin, ’cause Captain Strunk found your lucky charm there last night.”

“My lucky … ? What are you talking about? I lost that weeks ago.”

“You lost it at Jessie’s.”

“I was never at Jessie’s.”

“Then how come Captain Strunk found it on the floor?”

“Four hundred feet,” Benny whispered.

Another string of firecrackers began popping behind them, and Vin yelled something in Vietnamese. No more firecrackers came flying out of the woods.

Under his breath Tom said, “He just told Joey Duk to cut it out for a minute. I think I rattled him a little.”

“What was Strunk doing at Jessie’s place?” yelled Vin. “And what do you mean that he found my coin on the floor?”

“Mighty bad luck for you to drop your lucky coin at a crime scene, Vin.”

“Crime scene? But … hey, man … What crime? Joey and I don’t do crimes in town. You know that.”

“Tell that to the town watch. They want your head on a pole, Vin. Joey’s too.”