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“Chief badass of the whole damn Rot and Ruin,” supplied Digger.
“In so many words,” agreed White Bear. “Y’see, when we heard that your brother Tom was clearing out of the area, we figured it was a ripe moment to come in and make some changes. Time to stop screwing around with the silly rules they got in nowhere places like Mountainside and Haven and suchlike. Charlie was getting ready to do that too, but he was … um … reluctant to make his move with Tom in the mix.”
“That’s because he was afraid of Tom!” snapped Benny.
The smile flickered on White Bear’s face. “Boy, you don’t need teeth or both eyes to go into a zom pit. Say another word about Charlie and I’ll do you ugly before I feed you to—”
“Bear,” said Preacher Jack quietly. It was all he said, but it stopped White Bear for a moment. The big man nodded and took a breath.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, but he fixed his wicked eye on Benny. “Charlie wasn’t afraid of nobody on God’s green earth, you little snot. He was a man of honor, and he showed respect to your brother. Not fear … respect.”
Benny didn’t want to make things worse, so he said, “Okay. I understand that.”
White Bear gave a single, curt nod. “Tom Imura may be a pain in my butt, but he’s a warrior, and I won’t put the lie to it and say he isn’t.” Heap and Digger grunted agreement, and even Preacher Jack nodded. “But Tom’s leaving, and he’s as much as said that this area ain’t his concern no more. That means it’s fair game, and what was Charlie’s is mine by right, and so I’m moving in and taking over. I got big plans for this area. Big plans. Good plans, and you want to know the funny part? The real knee-slapper of a joke?”
“Um … sure,” said Benny.
“I’ll bet your brother would even approve of what I got in mind.”
Nix made a sound low in her throat, but White Bear didn’t hear it.
Benny said, “What do you mean?”
“It’s long past time for people to stop being afraid of the dead,” said White Bear. “The, um, Children of Lazarus.” He shot a sideways look at Preacher Jack, and Benny caught a flicker of disapproval on the older man’s face. “We have to share a world with them, but there’s room for everyone to have what they want.”
“How?”
“We’re going to reclaim the Ruin, kids. As much of it as we can. We’re moving the dead out of here. We’ll herd them all—”
“‘Guide’ them,” corrected Preacher Jack.
“Okay, guide them out of these hills. We’ll put people to work building new fence lines, but we’ll do it at rivers and gorges and natural barriers. We’ll take back farmable lands, we’ll run cattle again. Not just a few hundred head like they got in town—we’ll run tens of thousands of heads. We’ll plant a million acres of food. And we’ll figure out how to start the machines again. Mills and factories, tractors and combines. Maybe some tanks, too, to keep everything working smooth.”
“Who’s going to do all that labor?” asked Nix dubiously.
White Bear grinned. “There’s a lot of lazy people sitting behind the fences. Me and my crew have been working all these years, taking all the risks. Now it’s time that other people broke a sweat and got their hands dirty.”
“You’re talking slave labor,” said Nix.
“It’s not slave labor,” protested White Bear, trying to look innocent, “it’s cooperative labor. No different from the ration dollar system we got now. They want to eat, then they’ll work. They work, and we’ll protect ’em.”
Benny turned to Preacher Jack. “What about the Children of Lazarus? I thought you said that t
his world was theirs now?”
The preacher’s lips twitched. “Don’t confuse philosophy with practicality, child.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means that the dead don’t need farmland and clean water,” said White Bear. “They’s already been raised up to the Lord, so to speak. All they need is to be. So … we’ll just herd—I mean guide—them to areas where they can be without chowing down on us. Hell, nobody’s using Utah and Arizona and New Mexico. Who needs fricking deserts? We’ll keep ’em there, and they won’t know or care.”
“Such is the will of God,” agreed Preacher Jack, and the two thugs with him murmured, “Amen.”
“How are you going to guide millions of—” Benny almost said “zoms” but caught himself. “How are you going to guide all those dead?”
“It was the dead who gave us the idea,” said White Bear. “’Bout a year ago they started moving in packs. Swarming, you might say.”
Nix frowned. “Flocking?”
