“You’re wrong.” The gun was getting impossibly heavy. Benny’s whole arm trembled.
“I can see it in your eyes, boy, you know I’m right. You’re so wrapped up in wanting to be a hero your ownself that you can’t admit it.” He took another step, and Benny yielded ground again. It was that or pull the trigger, and he couldn’t make himself do it. Not yet. Charlie said, “I know they teach you pups history in school. They teach you about the old world, about the heroes who built this great nation, blah, blah, blah. But do you think any general anywhere ever won a war without taking exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted? Or without letting his men have what they needed, whenever they needed it? All through history the winners ran rampant when they conquered a city or a country, and it was one big party—just as it should be. If a man is going to put his life on the line, then he deserves some benefits. It’s only fair.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not some general fighting an invading army. You’re not freeing anyone. You’re not fighting for anything!”
Charlie’s face darkened. “Oh I’m not, am I? Well, learn a little of your own history then. I was there when we found Mountainside. Me, Charlie Matthias. I helped build that stinking town. I scouted the first trade route through the Ruin. I brought the first wagons of supplies from the cities to help reinforce the fence. I was the one who raided the hospital and brought back half a ton of medical supplies. Most of the men who protect the traders and city scavengers now work for me or were trained by me. And I brought more survivors, including a couple hundred whole families out of the Ruin to Mountainside. I’ve saved more people than you ever met, my young pup. So don’t tell me I haven’t been fighting for anything.”
He took one more step, and this time Benny was too flummoxed to step back.
“Benny!” yelled Nix. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to confuse you.” She would have said more, but the Hammer flexed the massive muscles in his arm, and his biceps choked Nix to silence. Benny licked his lips.
Charlie said, “Once upon a time I met a group of travelers in these mountains, who were half dead and running from a pack of zoms. A group that included a skinny Japanese kid and his baby brother … and I showed them the path to Mountainside. So, boy, you want to get your facts right before you tell me that I ain’t been fighting the good fight. A hundred years from now, when they write the history of First Night and the years that followed, they’ll put my name down as the greatest hero of the zombie war. Me, Charlie Matthias.”
Benny did not want to believe Charlie, but he knew the big man was telling the truth. At least the truth as he knew it.
“Maybe you did all that,” Benny said, using his left hand now to support his trembling right. “But it still doesn’t give you the right to do the other things you’re doing.”
“Don’t it? Being ‘right’ is all about living up to a set of laws, and there are no laws out here in the Ruin. Even your worm-meat brother told you that much. The laws of places like Mountainside end at the gate, because nobody there has the guts to step past those fences and establish the law outside. Nobody but me, and since I’m the top dog out here, I get to make whatever laws I want.”