They left Mountainside on a gray morning in late September. Tom led the way, often walking alone as a way of dealing with his own sadness and loss. Benny and Nix followed behind, vigilant of the world around them and the threats it offered, but feeling safe and strong in each other’s company. Even if neither of them was ready to say so.
They found the way station where Brother David and the two young women lived. Over lunch Benny and Tom and Nix told their story. The monk and the girls exchanged long looks, their faces sometimes sad at the news of pain and death, and sometimes hopeful as they considered a future without Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer.
“Nix,” Benny said, “do you mind staying here?”
“No,” she said. “Tom told me that you have a job to do.”
“He told you?”
She gave him a funny look. Deep and penetrating. “He told me everything, Benny. I understand about what he does … what you do. About the family business. About the need for closure.”
Benny touched her face. “Nix, I—”
“Benny Imura,” she said with a rare flicker of a smile on her mouth, “if you are going to say something like ‘I love you’ and you choose here, in a way station out in the Rot and Ruin to do it, so help me, I will kick your ass.”
There was a fragile quality about her smile and a glimmer of the old Nix woven into the complexity of this new Nix. He loved both versions, but he valued his butt and had no doubts that she could kick it completely and with great enthusiasm.
“As if I would say something so stupid,” he said.
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Can I at least ask for a kiss without being stomped and humiliated?”
He could, and she proved it.
Benny and Tom left at noon. They walked for several hours, rarely talking. The sun broke through the clouds as they cut through a grove of trees that were heavy with apples. Tom picked a few, and they ate them and still said almost nothing until they reached the wrought-iron gate of a community that was embowered by a high red-brick wall. A sign over the gate read: SUNSET HOLLOW.
Outside of the gate there was trash and old bones and a few burned shells of cars. The outer walls were pocked with bullet scars. To the right of the gate someone had used white paint to write: “This Area Cleared. Keep Gates Closed. Keep Out.” Below that were the initials TI.
Benny pointed. “You wrote that?”
“Years ago,” Tom said.
The gates were closed, and a thick chain had been threaded through the bars and locked with a heavy padlock. The chain and the lock looked new and gleamed with oil.
“What is this place?” Benny asked.
Tom tucked his hands into his back pockets and looked up at the sign. “This is what they used to call a gated community. The gates were supposed to keep unwanted people out and keep the people inside safe.”
“Did it work? I mean … during First Night?”
“No.”
“Did all the people die?”
“Most of them. A few got away.”
“Why is it locked?”
“For the same reason as always,” Tom said. He blew out his cheeks and dug into his right front jeans pocket for a key. He showed it to Benny and then opened the lock, pushed the gates open, and then restrung the chain and clicked the lock closed with the keyhole on the inside now.
They walked along the road. The houses were all weather damaged, and the streets were pasted with the dusty remnants of fourteen years of falling leaves. Every garden was overgrown, but there were no zombies in them. Some of the doors had crosses nailed to them, around which hung withered garlands of flowers.
“Your job’s here?” Benny asked.
“Yes,” said Tom. His voice was soft and distant.
“Is it like the other one? Like Harold Simmons?”
“Sort of.”
“That was … hard,” said Benny.
“Yes, it was.”
“Tom … I never wanted this. I mean, we all played games. Y’know, Kill the Zoms. Stuff like that. But … this isn’t how I imagined it.”
“Kiddo, if you were capable of imagining this without having seen it, I’d be scared for you. Maybe scared of you.”
Benny shook his head. “Doing this over and over again would drive me crazy. How do you do it?”