“Mr. Sacchetto … ?”
The zombie took a shambling step toward him, raising fingers that were bone white and looked strangely disjointed, as if all of the knuckles were broken. Benny was frozen in place. He had never known anyone who had become a zom—not since the disease had taken his mother from him. He and Chong and Nix had talked about it, wondered about it, even joked about it, but even to them, even in this world, it was slightly unreal. Zoms were out there, real life was here in town, and deep inside, in a flash of understanding, Benny realized he had been just as detached from the realities of the world as everyone else. Even with people talking about quieting a relative who’d died. Even with all of the incontrovertible evidence in his face every day, Benny realized he never quite equated zombies with people. Not even his trip into the Ruin had done that, not completely. But now, as this zombie—this person—reached for him, the horrible truth of it hit him with full force.
For a dreadful moment Benny was frozen to the spot and frozen into this state of awareness. The creature’s eyes met his, and for a moment—for the strangest, twisted fragment of a moment—Benny could swear that there was some splinter of recognition, that some piece of Sacchetto looked out in blind panic through the eyes of the dead thing that he had become.
“Mr. Sacchetto,” Benny said again, and this time his voice was full of cracks, ready to break.
The zom’s mouth moved, trying to form words, and against all evidence and sense, Benny hoped that somehow the artist was in there. That he had been able, through some unimaginable way, to fight the transition from man to monster. But all that came from the dead throat was a low moan that possessed no meaning other than that of a hunger it could never understand and never assuage.
It nearly broke Benny’s heart. To see the husk of the person and to know that what had made him human was … gone. Benny felt like his head would break if he tried to hold that truth inside.
The zom stepped toward Benny, reaching with its broken fingers, and still Benny was frozen into the moment, rooted to the rain-slick kitchen floor. It was only when the very tips of the zombie’s cold fingers brushed his cheek that Benny came alive again.
He screamed.
It was terror and it was rage. The terror was for what was reaching for him—this dead and shambling thing; and the rage was for what had been taken from him—a friend, a person he knew.
Benny backpedaled away from those clutching fingers, his feet slipping and sliding on the floor until his back struck the edge of the doorway that led to the middle room. The impact galvanized him, and he spun off the frame and bolted toward the living room. He crashed into a small table and then flung it behind him, not bothering to look as he heard it crack against the zom’s shins. The monster fell over it, and Benny heard the thump of kneecaps and elbows on the hardwood, but no cry of pain. Nothing normal like that.
He burst into the living room and dove for the bag of training equipment. The best weapons were in the kitchen—knives, hammers, a toolbox. He had the wooden swords. They would have to do. Benny pulled at the rough canvas, his fingers clumsily scrabbling at the zipper, pulling it down, half tearing one of his fingernails, cursing, not caring about the pain. The bag opened, and he reached inside just as Sacchetto lumbered into the living room. Benny flicked a glance at the front door. It was locked, and he knew that he would never get the locks opened before the creature could get him. It was the reverse of what he had imagined for Tom.