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“I know,” he said. “I feel it too.”
“Do you understand it?” she pleaded. “I’ve been trying to, but I can’t put it into the right words.”
Go for it, whispered the inner voice. Tell her the truth.
Benny nodded. “I think so. At least … I understand why I haven’t said it. Since we left town, we’ve been in trouble. Our ‘road trip’ hasn’t exactly been a load of fun. Saying ‘I love you’ out here … don’t laugh, but it would feel like taking off my carpet coat and walking out into a crowd of zoms. Saying it out loud just makes me feel vulnerable. Is that stupid?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not stupid.”
“My turn to ask a question,” Benny said, and even though Nix stiffened, he plowed ahead. “Do you wish I hadn’t said it? At all, I mean?”
Strange lights flickered in the green depths of her eyes. “When you think the time is right,” she said, “try it again and see what happens.”
Benny’s insecurities wanted to read her comment in all the wrong ways, but his inner voice whispered a different suggestion to him. He said, “Count on it.”
She held out her hand. “So … want to go for a walk?”
“Well … it’s that or clean my room, but since my room is a tree …”
He took her hand, and they walked under the canopy of cool green leaves. Birds sang in the trees, and the grass beneath their feet glistened with morning dew. The first of the day’s bees buzzed softly among the flowers, going about their ancient and important work, collecting nectar and taking pollen from one flower to another. Cyclones of gnats spiraled up from the grass and swirled through the slanting sunlight. The loveliness of the forest was magical and fresh, but it was also immense. Neither of them spoke, unable to phrase their reactions to the rampant beauty and unwilling to trouble the air with the horrors that haunted their hearts.
Despite the warm reality of each other’s hands, they felt incredibly alone. Desolate. Even though they knew that Tom and Lilah and Chong were somewhere in this same forest, it was as if everyone else was on a different planet. Mountainside—home—was a million miles away. The jumbo jet could well have been on the far side of the world, or something from an old dream.
The rocky path wound down among trees and shrubs, and most of the way there was no evidence of what had happened last night except the smell of ash on the breeze. Then they rounded a bend, and all that changed.
“God …,” Nix said in a hollow whisper.
The field was a massive ruin. Trees had burned to stumps, bushes had been reduced to ash. The way station was nothing more than a blackened shell.
However, that was not the worst of it. Not by a long shot. Everywhere—on the field, collapsed over the glacial boulders, twisted into bony knots on the concrete slab by the station—were corpses. Last night they had been the living dead; now they were merely dead, the life force burned out of them by the conflagration Benny had set loose with a tiny match.
It was all so still. A blasted expanse of ash and cracked bones. Nix turned away.
Benny lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Nix touched his arm. “This isn’t your fault. You didn’t mean—”
“Yes I did, Nix.” He turned to her and brushed a strand of curly red hair away from her face. “I started the fire because I didn’t know what else to do. I killed all those …”
“Zoms, Benny. They’re zoms. You can’t kill them.”
“I know … but …”
She looked puzzled. “What?”
“They were people once.”
“I know.”
“What if …” He stopped and took a breath, thinking of the terrible heat and of the flames spreading so rapidly on dry skin and old clothes. “What if they could feel it?”
“They can’t, Benny,” said Nix softly. “They’re dead.”
“We don’t know what they are. The dead are dead, they don’t move, they rot and turn to dust. The zoms … they move around. Sure, they attack people, but that’s the point. Dead people can’t do that … so what are they really? Why do they moan? Are they trying to communicate somehow? Are they trying to say something? Or … does being a zom hurt?”
“Hurt?”
“From what’s happened to them, and what’s still happening. The wounds that killed them, the decay … can they feel it?”
