And once was enough.
The big man took a single wandering sideways step, all sense and control knocked out of his head by the blow. He staggered past Nix, who was crouched down holding Lilah against her. He swung around in a sloppy turn, fighting for balance that was no longer his to own, and then his next step came down three inches past the edge of the path. Below his big foot was a drop that plunged a hundred yards into darkness. Charlie Matthias shot Benny one last, momentary glance of desperation and fear.
Benny would like to have seen guilt there or some last minute awareness and acceptance of the wrongness of all that he had done. That would have been nice. That would have been closure.
All he saw in Charlie’s eyes was hatred.
Then Charlie fell.
With the rain, with the last few pops of gunfire from the camp, and with the moans of the hungry dead, they never heard him land. Benny stood on the edge of the trail, and for all that he could see or hear, he might as well have been on the edge of the world. He held the Hammer’s club out at arm’s length, opened his hand, and let the weapon fall. There would be a need for weapons, he knew that; but there would be other weapons. This one, like the man it had killed, was unclean.
He turned to the others and sank to his knees by Nix and Lilah. They both stared past him to the edge of the road, their eyes wide. Benny rested his head on Nix’s shoulder, and she gathered him to her. Lilah wrapped her arms around them both. Then there were other arms—the twelve-year-old girl and the children.
Tom Imura sat on Apache’s back and stared at the huddled mass. He’d heard the single gunshot behind him and had come as fast as he could. He read the scene and understood what he was seeing.
He heard Benny and Lilah and Nix and the others as they wept.
Tom bowed his head and he too wept.
EPILOGUE
SUNSET HOLLOW
THEY WALKED IN SILENCE, SIDE BY SIDE, HEADING SOUTHEAST. MILES FELL away behind them. They passed another gas station, where Tom greeted another monk. They didn’t linger, though. The day was burning away.
Benny’s hand was still wrapped in tape. One of his knuckles was cracked and his wrist was sprained, but in the two weeks since the fight at the camp, he’d healed quickly. Tom looked like an Egyptian mummy. Doc Gurijala had pulled forty-one shotgun pellets out of him, and there were at least ten that he couldn’t reach without doing more harm than good. Tom told him to leave them.
Lilah was healing, too, although more slowly. When Charlie had punched her in the stomach, he’d clipped her rib cage and broken three bones. She was staying with Lou Chong’s family. They had the room, and Chong’s aunt was a nurse. If Lilah was impressed by the town and all it had to offer, she didn’t show it. And getting her to part with her spear nearly caused a minor war at the Chong residence.
Benny was surprised to see that Nix and Lilah were bonding, and the two girls spent hours sitting apart from Benny and Chong, heads bowed together, talking. Nix never told him what they talked about.
One night, while walking back from Chong’s, Benny said, “I’m trying to see things from her perspective. She must not know where she belongs.”
“She belongs with us,” said Nix.
“Even if we leave? Wouldn’t she be better off staying here with the Chongs or the Kirsches?”
Nix shook her head. “Would they understand what she’s been through, Benny?”
“Do we? Nix … we don’t even really know her.”
She shrugged and brushed a curly strand of red hair from her face. “Maybe not. But we know her better than anyone else.”