“How?”
“You let them die!” Benny said in a savage whisper. Words tumbled out of him in a disjointed sputter. “Dad got sick and … and … then Mom tried to … and you … you just ran away!”
Tom said nothing, but sadness darkened his eyes, and he shook head slowly.
“I remember it,” Benny growled. “I remember you running away.”
“You were a baby.”
“I remember it.”
“You should have told me, Benny.”
“Why? So you could make up a lie about why you just ran away and left my mom like that?”
The words “my mom” hung in the air between them. Tom winced.
“You think I just ran away?” he said.
“I don’t think it, Tom. I remember it.”
“Do you remember why I ran?”
“Yeah, ’cause you’re a freaking coward is why!”
“Jesus,” Tom whispered. He adjusted the strap that held the sword in place, and sighed again. “Benny, this isn’t the time or place for this, but sometime soon we’re going to have a serious talk about the way things were back then and the way things are now.”
“There’s nothing you can say that’s going to change the truth.”
“No. The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we’re willing to believe.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“If you ever want to know my side of things,” said Tom, “I’ll tell you. There’s a lot you were too young to know then, and maybe you’re still too young now.”
Silence washed back and forth between them.
“For right now, Benny, I want you to understand that when Mom and Dad died, it was from the same thing that killed those two down there.”
Benny said nothing.
Tom plucked a stalk of sweet grass and put it between his teeth. “You didn’t really know Mom and Dad, but let me ask you this: If someone was to piss on them or abuse them—even now, even considering what they had to have become during First Night—would it be okay with you?”
“Screw you.”
“Tell me.”
“No. Okay? No, it wouldn’t freaking be okay with me. You happy now?”
“Why not, Benny?”
“Because.”
“Why not? They’re only zoms.”
Benny abruptly got up and walked down the hill, away from the farm and away from Tom. He stood looking back along the road they’d traveled, as if he could still see the fence line. Tom waited a long time before he got up and joined him.
“I know this is hard, kiddo,” he said gently, “but we live in a pretty hard world. We struggle to live. We’re always on our guard, and we have to toughen ourselves just to get through each day. And each night.”
“I hate you.”
“Maybe. I doubt it, but it doesn’t matter right now.” He gestured toward the path that led back home. “Everybody west of here has lost someone. Maybe someone close or maybe a distant cousin three times removed. But everybody lost someone.”
Benny said nothing.
“I don’t believe that you would disrespect anyone in our town or in the whole west. I also don’t believe—I don’t want to believe—that you’d disrespect the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers who live out here in the great Rot and Ruin.”
He put his hands on Benny’s shoulders and turned him around. Benny resisted, but Tom Imura was strong. When they were both facing east, Tom said, “Every dead person out there deserves respect. Even in death. Even when we fear them. Even when we have to kill them. They aren’t ‘just zoms,’ Benny. That’s a side effect of a disease or from some kind of radiation or something else that we don’t understand. I’m no scientist, Benny. I’m a simple man doing a job.”
“Yeah? You’re trying to sound all noble, but you kill them.” Benny had tears in his eyes.
“Yes,” Tom said softly, “I do. I’ve killed hundreds of them. If I’m smart and careful—and lucky—I’ll kill hundreds more.”
Benny shoved him with both hands. It only pushed Tom back a half step. “I don’t understand!”