Jonathan Maberry - Benny Imura 02.1 - In the Land of the Dead.pdf

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The Fence
The teenager sat on a folding chair and stared through the fence at the zombie.
He was there most mornings. Sometimes in the afternoons, too.
At first the fence guards tried to chase him away.
“What the heck are you doing there, kid?” growled one, a new guard who didn’t
know who he was. The guard had come along the fence, a shotgun open at the breech
crooked over one arm, a wad of pink chewing gums in his open mouth. When the kid did
not move or even look at him, the guard came and stood right in front of him, blocking
out the sun, blocking eye-contact with the dead thing on the other side of the chain-link
fence. “Hey? You deaf or dead?” the guard demanded.
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Only then did the teenager raise his eyes to the big guard with the polished steel
shotgun. He had dark green eyes and brown hair, and the sunlight revealed streaks of red
in his dark hair. A good looking kid, fit and lean; the kind of kid the guard thought should
be fishing for trout up at the stream or trying to lay some lumber on a breaking ball down
at McGoran Field. He didn’t look like the morbid kind of teen he sometimes met here at
the fence; the kind who dressed in rags and painted their faces gray and pretended to be
zoms. The Gonnz, they called themselves. No, this kid looked like any other teenager
from town.
“You okay?” the guard asked, his tone still sharp.
The teen did not say a word. He simply stared into the guard’s eyes.
“You got to be careful around zoms, kid. They bite.”
Something flicked through the kid’s eyes; an emotion or reaction that the guard
could not identify.
The guard was tough, big chested and grizzled-faced, a former trade route rider
who had recently moved to Mountainside from Haven. The guard was used to staring
down other people. He was that kind of man. He’d been out in the Ruin, he’d fought
zoms, killed more than a few. No boy had ever stared him down, not even when the guard
had been a boy. He met the boy’s stare and stood his ground.
But it was the guard whose eyes broke contact first and slid away.
Before he did, the man’s stern face changed, the harsh lines of his scowl softening
into an uncertain frown. As he broke eye-contact, he tried to hide it by pretending to turn
and look at the zombie the kid had been staring at.
“What’s so special about this one?” demanded the guard. “You know her?”
The zombie was dressed in the tattered rags of a party dress. Most people who
worked the fence or ran the trade routes were pretty good at guessing how old a person
had been before they’d zommed out, and this one looked to have been forty or fifty. A
middle aged woman dressed for some event. Maybe a graduation, maybe a wedding. The
relentless California suns and fourteen brutal winters had bleached her rags to a paleness
in which only the ghosts of wildflowers could still be seen. The dress must have been
vibrant and pretty once. Expensive, too.
The guard turned back to the kid on the chair.
“Who was she?” he asked, and much of the gruffness was gone from his voice.
He suddenly thought he knew and he didn’t want to know. “She your mom, kid?”
The teenager stood up and moved his chair a few feet to the left so that he had a
clear view of the dead woman in the party dress.
“Hey,” said the guard. “Did you hear me? I asked--.”
“No,” said the kid. “She’s not my mother.”
The guard’s frown deepened. “Aunt?”
“No.”
“Someone from your family--?”
“I don’t know her,” said the teen.
The guard looked from the boy to the zom and back again.”
“Then what’s she to you?”
The teen didn’t answer. He sat down on his chair and rested his elbows on his
thighs and looked through the fence. The zombie in the faded party dress shuffled
clumsily through the tall grass, ignoring the guard and turning his dusty eyes on the boy.
She stopped a foot from the fence; her arms hung limply at her sides, fingers twitching
every once in a while. Her mouth opened and closed as if trying to speak. Or chewing on
some imagined meal.
“Geez, kid…haven’t you ever seen a zom before?” asked the guard.
The teenager nodded. “One or two.”
“So, what’s the fascination?”
The boy almost smiled. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Minutes passed slowly. Flies crawled over the zombies face. Sun-drowsy bees
droned by, looking for flowers in the shade of the guard tower a hundred yards along the
fence line. Five crows settled on the top bar of the fence and cawed to each other in their
own ancient language.
The boy and the zombie stared at each other as if the guard, the fence and the rest
of the world did not exist.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” the guard said. “Ain’t safe.”
After a long, thoughtful moment, the teen said, “I know.”
“There’s been a lot of trouble lately, and not just with the zoms.”
The teen nodded.
“Bunch of bounty hunters got themselves killed up in the hills last month.”
Another nod.
“Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer. Their whole crew. Got
ambushed. Someone killed the whole bunch of them.”
“Yes,” said the boy, “I heard.”
“If you heard, then you know it ain’t safe out there. Weird stuff happening out in
the Ruin, too. Zoms are all stirred up. People bee seeing stuff. Wild animals and such,
stuff nobody’s seen for years, and I’m not talking about wolves and bears. There’s talk
about animals out of old zoos and circuses from before First Night. Tigers and lions and-
-.”
The boy took a breath and exhaled it slowly and audibly. He turned to look at the
guard. “Is there a town law about sitting here?”
“Probably,” the guard said bluntly. “Especially for underage--.”
“I’m not underage,” said the boy. “I’m fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Then how come you’re here all the time? Shouldn’t you be working,
earning your ration dollars?”
Another ghost of a smile flitted over the teen’s mouth. “I am working.”
“Gimme a break. You’re just loafing out here.”
The teen shrugged.
“Okay,” said the guard in a challenging tone, “what kind of job are you working
at, sitting out here looking at zoms all day?”
The boy’s eyes burned with green fire. Cold and distant. “I’m a zombie hunter,”
he said.
That made the guard laugh. “Oh really?”
“Really. An apprentice, but, yeah…that’s what I do.”
“ You’re a bounty hunter? That’s what you’re trying to tell me? That’s what I’m
supposed to believe?”
The teen shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

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