Damage & Decay

Chapter 12

Part One: Family Business

"I don't know what's waiting for us when we die– something better, something worse. I only know that I'm not ready to find out yet."

- Charles De Lint, The Onion Girl

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"Won't they attack us?" Eren whispered.

"Not if we're smart and careful. The trick is to move slowly. They respond to quick movements. Smell, too, but we have that covered."

"Can't they hear us?"

"Yes, they can," Armin said. "So once we're in the town, don't talk unless I do, and even then--less is more, and quieter is better than loud. I found that speaking slowly helps. A lot of the dead moan . . . so they're used to slow, quiet sounds."

"For the better or worse, Eren . . . this is part of nature too."

"That doesn't make me feel good, Armin."

"This is the Ruins, kiddo. . . . Nobody feels good out here. Now hush and keep your eyes open."

They slowed their pace as they neared the first houses. Armin stopped and spent a few minutes studying the town. The main street ran upward to where they stood, so they had a good view of everything. Moving very slowly, Armin removed the envelope from his pocket and unfolded the erosion portrait.

"My client said that it was the sixth house along the main street," Armin murmured. "Red front door and white fence. See it? There, past the old mail truck."

"Uh-huh," Eren said without moving his lips. He was terrified of the zombies that stood in their yards not more than twenty paces away.

"We're looking for a man named Harold Simmons. There's nobody in the yard, so we may have to go inside."

"Inside?" Eren asked, his voice quavering.

"Come on." Armin began moving slowly, barely lifting his feet. He did not exactly imitate the slow, shuffling gait of the zombies, but his movements were unobtrusive. Eren did his best to mimic everything Armin did. They passed two houses in which zombies stood in the yard. The first house, on their left, had three zombies on the other side of a hip-high chain-link fence. Two little girls and an older woman. Their clothes were tatters that blew like holiday streamers in the hot breeze. As Armin and Eren passed by them, the old woman turned in their direction. Armin stopped and waited, his hand touching the handle of his sword, but the woman's dead eyes swept past them without lingering. A few paces along, they passed a yard on their right in which a man in a bathrobe stood, staring at the corner of his house as if he expected something to happen. He stood among wild weeds and creeper vines that had wrapped themselves around his calves. It looked like he had stood there for years, and with a sinking feeling of horror, Eren realized that he probably had.

Eren wanted to turn and run. His mouth was as dry as sand and sweat ran down his back and into his underwear.

They moved steadily down the street, always slow. The sun was heading toward the western part of the sky, and it would be dark in four or five hours. Eren knew they could never make it home by nightfall. He wondered if Armin would take them back to the gas station . . . or if he was crazy enough to claim an empty house in this ghost town for the night. If he had to sleep in a zombie's house, even if there was no zombie there, then Eren was sure he'd go completely mad-cow crazy.

"There he is," murmured Armin, and Eren looked toward the house with the red door. A man stood inside, looking out of the big bay window. He once had sandy hair and a sparse beard, but now the hair and beard were nearly gone, and the skin of his face had shriveled to a leathery tightness.