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"Why do you want to see it?"
"Why don’t you?"
"I …" He kneas on soround here There were all kinds of deadfalls and rabbit holes built into her question He didn’t knohere she was going with this, but he was sh to knoas about to put his foot soht about it," he said, and that was true enough "Look, I kind of get your point You’re frustrated because this town’s our world, it’s all we have Okay That sucks and I don’t like it either But how are we going to change that by studying zoms?"
"Do you remember in history class when Mr West-Mensch talked about war? He said that history shows that it’s easier to conquer than to control What was the line Chong likes so much?"
"‘They won the war but lost the peace,’" Benny supplied "But I forget which war Mr West-Mensch was talking about"
"Heabout this one The last one First Night was like a sneak attack, followed by a systematic invasion Like the Germans in the early part of the Second World War We lost because ere totally unprepared for the attack, and by the time we understood the nature of the attackers, it was too late to organize a counterattack"
"Are you quoting someone?"
"No Why?"
"I don’t know … It just sounds pretty sophisticated"
"For a girl?" The challenge was ain
"No," Benny said "For soer than nored the iht noe hold our own We’re not losing the war anymore, because the enemy has reached the limits of how it can come at us We build fences, and they can’t dismantle fences We know that anyone who dies will come back as a zom, and so we have all these precautions around the sick and dying We have guns and weapons, we have carpet coats, cadaverine We have the beginnings of a whole new science of warfare against the enemy"
"Okay So?"
"So … we could take back whole sections of the country"
Benny nodded He told her about his brief conversations on this topic with Toone very deep, though; and neither of them had the passion in their voices that he heard in Nix’s
"Out in the Pacific there are islands not that far off the coast I read a book about theuel Catalina Some of them had only a few thousand people on theh people, enough weapons and kno, to take them away from the zoms Zoms can’t swim; they can’t use boats We could take those islands The book said that there’s farmland on several of them"
"It would take years to do all that"
"We have years We have nothing but time, Benny Years and years and forever, because that’s all we have left"
"How’s all that better than e have here? We have farht for"
"Because out there on the islands, eventually there would be nothing left but people Even if there was an outbreak where soht and zoht Not anywhere close Everyone knows the basics of how to control a zorade We’re a culture of zombie hunters, Benny, even if most of the people here don’t want to accept it, or pretend otherwise"
Benny thought about that, tried to poke holes in it, but couldn’t
"If there was nothing left but people," Nix continued, "ouldn’t have to live in fear all the time There wouldn’t be any need for bounty hunters, either It would be a real world again" She looked toward the east, as if she could see the fence line fro the zo that pens us in We’re trapped here Trapped isn’t ‘alive’ Trapped isn’t ‘safe’ And it isn’t ‘free’"
Benny looked at her, at the side of her face as she stared toward the unseen fence line Nix was so pretty, so s Open your mouth you idiot, he told himself Just tell her
"Nix," he said softly, but he had no idea what he would say next
"What?" She still stared to the east, watching as ulls came from that direction and flew over them toward the unseen coastline behind them
"I do want to see the ocean"
Nix turned toward him
He said, "The ocean, the islands to the west, or whatever’s on the other side of the Rot and Ruin to the east Maybe what’s in another country Whatever’s there, I want to see it I don’t want to livefor the right way to say it "You’re right If we don’t get out of this toe’re going to die here And I don’t ed birds I mean all of us Mountainside was how Toht But now it’s--"
She finished it for him "Now it’s a coffin No rooh his inner voice screamed at him to say more, he couldn’tinto her green eyes After a long tiht brush of fingertips on his cheek
"One of us is the stupidest person in the whole orld, Benny Imura," she said Then she rose and went inside to wash up
23
THE CLOUDS SWEPT OVER THE MOUNTAINS AND ACROSS THE VALLEY, blotting out the sun Morgie, Chong, and Nix stayed for roasted corn and harill in the yard, but as the first fat raindrops splatted down, they bolted for home The wind picked up, and the Imura brothers ran to close the shutters and button up the house By the ti continuously, throeird shadows across the lawn and stabbing in through the slats of the shutters
"This is going to be a bad one," Toed out of their workout clothes, washed, and shambled back into the kitchen in pajama bottoms and T-shirts The te black tea, flavored with fresh mint leaves They drank it with honey-almond muffins Nix’s mother had sent over
"How come Mrs Riley sends us stuff so often?" Benny asked, halfway through his third"She thinks she owes me, and this is how she repays the debt"
"Does she owe you?"
"No When a friend does a favor for a friend, it isn’t with the expectation of repay her out of Ga tio But I think it makes Jessie feel better to send us what she can"
Benny nodded, uncertain what to make of To baker"
"She’s a pretty ahtened "Really?" he said with a grin
"You can wipe that sht now, because Jessie and I are just friends She’s one of the few people I really trust And that is the end of that discussion"
Benny grinned all the way through the rest of his h to rattle the teacups
Tom left the room and came back with his boots, rain slicker, and his sword The real one, not the wooden training bokken He set them by the back door
"What’s that for?"
"That last one sounded like a lightning strike There are trees near the north wall of the fence"