WHEN THEY WERE FAR DOWN THE ROAD, BENNY ASKED, “WHAT WAS THAT all about? Why’d that guy get so jacked about me mentioning Charlie?”
“Not everyone thinks Charlie’s ‘the man,’ kiddo.”
“You jealous?”
Tom laughed. “God! The day I’m jealous of someone like Charlie Pink-eye is the day I’ll cover myself in steak sauce and walk out into a crowd of the living dead.”
“Hilarious,” said Benny sourly. “What’s with all that Children of God, Children of Lazarus stuff? What are they doing out here?”
“Brother David and his group are all over the Ruin. I’ve met travelers who’ve seen them as far east as Pennsylvania. Even all the way down to Mexico City. I first saw them about a year after the Fall. A whole bunch of them heading across the country in an old school bus pulled by horses, with Scripture passages painted all over it. Not sure how they got started or who chose the name. Even Brother David doesn’t know. To him it’s like they always were.”
“Is he nuts?”
“I think the expression used to be ‘touched by God.’”
“So that would be a yes.”
“If he’s nuts, then at least his heart’s in the right place. The Children don’t believe in violence of any kind.”
“But they’re okay with you, even though you kill zoms?”
Tom shook his head. “No, they don’t like what I do. But they accept my explanation for why I do it, and Brother David and a few others have seen how I do it. They don’t approve, but they don’t condemn me for it. They think I’m misguided but well-intentioned.”
“And Charlie? What do they think of him? Can’t be anything good.”
“They believe Charlie Pink-eye to be an evil man. Him and his jackass buddy, the Motor City Hammer. Bunch of others. Most of the bounty hunters, in fact, and I can’t fault the Children for those beliefs.”
Benny said nothing. He still thought Charlie Matthias was cool as all hell.
“So … these Children, what do they actually do?”
“They tend to the dead. If they find a town, they’ll go through the houses and look for photos of the people who lived there, and then they try and round them up if they’re still wandering around the town. They put them in their houses, seal doors, write some prayers on the walls, and then move on. Most of them keep moving. Brother David’s been here for a year or so, but I expect he’ll move on too.”
“Charlie said that he rounds up zoms, too. He told us about a place in the mountains where he has a couple hundred of them staked out. He said it was one of the ways he and the Hammer were making the Ruin a safer place.”
“Uh-huh,” Tom said sourly. “The traders call it the Hungry Forest. I think Charlie cooked up that name. Very dramatic. But it’s not the same as what the Children do. Charlie rounds up zoms and ties them to trees, so that he can find them more easily when he gets a bounty job.”