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“Oh. Crap.”
“What about that erosion artist?” asked Chong. “You can draw pretty good. Bounty hunters always need good erosion portraits.”
It was true. Erosion portraits were a solid business. Artists painted pictures of how people might look if they’d been zommed
out. Bounty hunters used the portraits to try to find the zom in question and put them down. Tom called it “giving closure,” but Benny thought that was a sissy way to phrase it. Charlie Pink-eye and his buddy, the Motor City Hammer, had cooler names for it. Bag-and-tag jobs. Shutdowns. Drops. Things like that.
“Maybe,” Benny said uncertainly. “Could be fun. Could be boring.”
“Better than shoveling horse poop at the stables.”
“Good point.”
They sipped their tea.
“Open it,” prompted Chong, changing the subject.
Benny grinned and tackled the knots. Just to be devious, Chong had tied a series of bizarre sailor’s knots in the twine. Stuff they’d learned in the Scouts. It took Benny five minutes to solve them, and he stuffed the twine down the back of Chong’s shirt. Then he unwrapped the parcel paper to reveal six packs of brand-new Zombie Cards.
“Dude!” cried Benny, grinning hard enough to sprain his face.
“I get your doubles,” warned Chong.
“Yeah, yeah . . . dude! This is soooo cool.”
Benny tore open the first pack and immediately struck gold. The very first card was of a man with a scarred and ugly face, short dark hair, and pistol butts sticking out of every pocket.
“Niiiiice!” said Chong. “Read the back.”
Benny flipped the card over and read the text:
The Bounty Hunters #95: “The Motor City Hammer.” The Hammer is half of the most famous and successful team of bounty hunters to work the Ruin since First Night. With his partner, Charlie Matthias, the Hammer has racked up more confirmed kills than anyone; and he’s rumored to have amassed a fortune from all the heads he’s taken!
Benny turned and gave Chong a high five. “Oh, man, I have soooo wanted this card. Now I have both Charlie and the Hammer.”
Chong was grinning too. “Just remember, I get the doubles.”
“Yeah, cool, no problem.”
They stared at the card for a long time. The Motor City Hammer was so dangerous, so tough, so everything that Benny wanted to be. Not like Tom. Nothing like Tom, even if they both did the same thing. It made Benny laugh to think that Tom considered himself a bounty hunter. As if he could ever be as tough or cool as the Hammer. What a joke. Tom the Coward couldn’t hold a candle to the Hammer. Or Charlie.
Never in a million years.
Benny turned over the next card, which was a double he already had, and he handed it to Chong. The Bride of Coldwater Creek. One of the most famous of the zoms still active in the Ruin outside town. He flipped over the next card, and the next, thinking about Charlie and the Hammer.
How insanely outstanding would it be to get a job with them? To apprentice with the toughest bounty hunters in the entire Ruin?
Benny kept grinning and nodding to himself.
Yeah, he thought, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to be exactly like them.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
ON BEING A HERO
(AFTER THE EVENTS OF ROT & RUIN)
The other day, when we were all at Chong’s house for dinner after training with Tom, Mrs. Chong said something strange. It was at the beginning of dinner, during grace. Only, instead of a regular grace prayer for food and abundance and all, she said this:
