Page 1 (1/2)

PART ONE

ROAD TRIP

A journey of a thousand le step

--LAO TZU

1

BENNY IMURA WAS APPALLED TO LEARN THAT THE APOCALYPSE CAME with homework

"Why do we have to study this stuff?" he de into zoms, the zoms ate just about everyone, everyone who dies becomes a zom, so the moral of this tale is: Try not to die"

Across the kitchen table, his brother, Tom, stared at hi to be an idiot, or is it a natural gift?"

"I’m serious We knohat happened"

"Really? Then how coe tells anyone your age the truth about the living dead?"

"Telling us is one thing Essays and pop quizzes are a whole different thing"

"Because heaven forbid you should have to re we told you"

Benny raised his eyebrows ht here in the vast storehouse of knowledge that is enius, then what started the plague?"

"Easy one," Benny said "Nobody knows"

"What are the leading theories?"

Benny jabbed his fork into a big piece of buttered yam, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed noisily as he spoke It was a move calculated to annoy Tom in three separate ways Tom hated when he spoke with his mouth full He hated it when Benny cheith his mouth open And it would muffle most of what he said, which meant that Tom had to pay even more attention to the yam-packed mouth from which the muffled words came

"Radiation, virus, bioweapon, toxic waste, solar flares, act of God"

He rattled it off so there was no break between the words Also annoying, and worth at least another point on Benny’s personal Annoy-O-Meter

Toave Benny the look

Benny sighed and sed "Okay," he said, "at first people thought it was radiation from a satellite"

"Space probe," corrected Tom

"Whatever But that doesn’t make sense, because one satellite--"

"Space probe"

"--wouldn’t carry enough radioactive material to spread over the entire world"

"We think"

"Sure," conceded Benny, "but in science class they told us even if one of the old nuclear power plants did a whatchamacallit, there--"

"Meltdown"

"--wouldn’t be enough radiation to cover the entire planet even though it has more radioactive hed Benny smiled

"What conclusion can you draw from that?"

"The world wasn’t destroyed by radioactive alien space zombies"

"Probably wasn’t destroyed by radioactive alien space zombies," Tom corrected "How about a virus?"

Benny cut a piece of chicken and ate it Toreat cook, and this was one of his better meals Yareen kale A loaf of stea bread made from the last of the winter wheat sat near where Benny could plunder it

"Chong’s dad says that a virus needs a living host, and zous was sustaining the virus"

"Do you knohat a bacteriuy that makes you sick"

"God, I love it when you display the depth of your knowledge It makes me proud to be your brother"

"Kiss rinned at each other

It had been nearly sevenhatred and distrust of Tom had transformed into affection and respect That process had started last summer, shortly after Benny’s fifteenth birthday On some level Benny knew that he loved Tom, but since Tom was his brother and this was still the real world, the chances of Benny ever using that L ere so to throw up"

Not that Benny was afraid of the L hen it came to someone better suited for it, namely the fiercely red-haired queen of freckles, Nix Riley Benny would like very much to toss that word up for her to consider, but he had yet to do so Shortly after the big fight at the bounty hunters’ ca up the subject, Nix had threatened bodily harm if he said that word Benny had zipped hiscompletely why the moment had been so inappropriate Charlie Pink-eye Matthias and the Motor City Hammer had murdered Nix’s mother, and the insane events of the days that followed hadn’t allowed Nix to properly react Or grieve

Those days had been the weirdesthappiness The e in the saave Nix her tireat lady Sweet, funny, kind, and always a little sad Like everyone else in Mountainside, Jessie Riley had suffered terrible losses during First Night Her husband, her two sons

"Everyone lost soh they’d been toddlers, Benny and Chong were the only ones a said that it was all a blur of screams and shouts, but Benny re hih a first-floorto Tom--as a twenty-year-old cadet at the police acade that had been Dad co away, his terrified heartbeat ha like a dru Benny

Until last year Benny had reht in a twisted way All his life he had believed that Tom had simply run away That he had not tried to help Mom That he was a coward

Now Benny knew different Now he knehat kind of torment Tom had suffered to save hih theto Tom, she had already been bitten She was already lost To he could have done He ran, and in running had given value to Mom’s sacrifice, and that had saved them both