Dust & Decay Read Online Free

them behind the man’s back, securing them with cord that he pulled from his pocket. The whole thing was over in the blink of an eye.
    “Take him,” he barked, and two burly men crept nervously forward to lift the old zom to his feet and drag him away. “Put him in the toolshed. Don’t quiet him yet.”
    When Tom said that, he ticked his head toward the upstairs windows.
    One of the other men began climbing the steps, but Tom stopped him. “No … we still don’t know where Jack, Michelle, and Danny are.”
    Benny swallowed a lump the size of a hen’s egg.
    “Should we help?” asked Chong in a voice that clearly showed that he hated his own suggestion.
    “Definitely not warrior smart,” said Morgie under his breath.
    “I’ll help,” said Lilah in her icy whisper of a voice, and she pushed her way through the crowd. Most of the townsfolk shied back away from her as if she was something wild and dangerous, and Benny realized she was exactly that.
    Lilah exchanged a nod with Tom, and they crept cautiously into the house.
    “She’s definitely warrior smart,” observed Chong, “but crazy as a loon.”
    “Should we go in too?” asked Morgie. “Maybe they could use our help.”
    “Tom and Lilah? Need our help? Don’t be stupid,” replied Nix.
    Nix, Chong, and Benny turned their heads in unison to face him.
    Morgie colored. “Yeah … okay,” he conceded. “Kinda dumb, huh?”
    Chong laid a consoling hand on his arm. “No, Morgie,” he said, “not ‘kinda.’”
    Benny caught movement again at the Matthias place. He saw Zak turn away from the window, but something about Zak’s face made Benny stare. Zak’s eyes were surrounded by dark rings. As if his whole face looked bruised. Maybe a couple of black eyes. Big Zak?
    “Damn,” Benny said under his breath.
    Nix caught the direction of his stare. “What—?”
    “It’s Zak,” he said quietly. “I think he’s hurt. He keeps looking out here.”
    Nix opened her mouth to say something stinging about Zak, but then she clamped her jaws shut.
    Benny looked at the front of the Houser place, and everything was quiet. People were starting to edge carefully up to the porch. He turned back to Zak’s house, chewing his lip in indecision.
    Then, before he knew he was going to do anything, he was walking toward Zak Matthias’s house.
    FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
First Night
     
That’s what people call the day the dead rose. According to Tom, it started in the morning in a few places, but by night it had spread all over.
     
No one knows why it started.
     
No one knows where it started. Tom says that the first report he heard of was a news story out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
     
By dawn of the next day it had spread all over the world. A state of emergency was declared. Tom says that it was too little and too late.
     
By noon of the following day all communication was lost from over sixty cities in the United States, and more than three hundred worldwide. No one was counting how many towns and villages were overrun.
     
The radios and TV stations stopped broadcasting on the fifth day. Cell phones were already dead by then.
     
After that there was no way to know how bad things were.
     

6
     
    B ENNY WALKED AROUND TO Z AK’S BACK DOOR . H E KNEW THAT WHEN Big Zak got drunk he usually passed out on the living room couch, so the back of the house seemed like the best place to steal a peek inside.
     
    “Benny!” Nix called as she ran to catch up. “What’s going on?”
    “I—,” he began, but he had nowhere to go with it. How could Nix, of all people, understand and accept that Benny wanted to see if Zak Matthias was okay? This house represented everything she’d lost. Benny believed that if their roles were reversed she’d feel the same.
    He gave her a meaningless smile—almost a wince—and stepped up onto Zak’s back porch. Nix stayed on the grass by the steps. Benny set his bokken down—no way Zak would open the door if Benny was standing