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“Lord, thank you for the blessing of these young heroes. Thank you for letting us know that honor has not vanished from our green Earth. Thank you for restoring hope to those who need it.”
I guess it was meant as a compliment, because before dinner she and Mr. Chong bullied Tom and Benny into telling the whole story—again—of how they rescued me from Charlie Pink-eye, how we met Lilah, and how the bunch of us took back the kids Charlie’s gang was taking to Gameland.
So, sure, she was trying to be nice, but it felt really weird. No one said much of anything all the way through dinner. Except for when Benny asked Chong to pass the mashed potatoes, I don’t think anyone said two words until Mr. Chong cut the apple pie Tom brought.
I know I couldn’t speak at all. My face burned all night. And Benny didn’t look at anyone. Only Lilah seemed unaffected by it, but she didn’t say much because she never says much.
Over pie, Mrs. Chong tried to apologize, but I don’t think she really understood what there was to apologize for. She’d been trying to be nice.
Here’s the thing about that, though. Okay, so we rescued those kids, and that’s pretty great. And we stopped Charlie and the Hammer from kidnapping more kids to take to Gameland, and that’s cool too.
But what Mrs. Chong doesn’t really get is how we did all that. I mean, she doesn’t understand what we had to do that night.
She thinks we were all being heroes.
We weren’t.
We were being killers.
That’s the thing nobody gets.
Maybe I don’t even understand it. Sometimes in order to be a hero, you have to do some really terrible things. Maybe that’s why guys like Tom, who really is a hero, hate being called one.
It reminds him of the things he’s had to do.
I know that I don’t consider myself a hero. I never will.
I killed people that night.
Bad guys, sure, but people.
How can I possibly want to cheer about that?
How could anyone?
Overdue Books
(One year after First Night; thirteen years before Rot & Ruin)
Kamiakin High School
Washington State
The poster on the wall read:
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.
BOOKS CONTAIN KNOWLEDGE.
READ.
BECOME POWERFUL.
Walker paused to read it every time he came into the library.
Even when he was dog-tired.
Even when he was covered in black gore from killing zoms.
