Dust & Decay (36 page)

Lilah drifted away and came back in a few minutes. When she did, she found a fresh cup of tea at the far end of the table. The Greenman was shelling nuts into a small wooden bowl. He paused and pushed a bowl of water, a bunch of flowers, and a pair of tweezers to within her reach, always careful not to move quickly or get too close.

“If you want to help,” he said, “I’ll tell you how.”

Lilah looked at the flowers and then at him. She nodded.

“Use the tweezers to remove each petal and place it in the water. Let it float. Be careful not to get your skin oil on the petals. We want them pure. Once you fill the bowl, we’ll cover it with cheesecloth and set it out in the sunshine for four hours. We have that much sun left. After that, we’ll strain the water through a coffee filter into some jars. I’ll add a little brandy, and we’ll set it in my root cellar.”

“Why?” It was the first word she had spoken in hours.

“We’re making flower essences. We’ll add walnut and
Mimulus ringens
.” He nodded to the thick bunch of large purple flowers with yellow centers. “It’s very rare for those to bloom this early. Usually don’t see them until June or later, but we needed it now and nature provided. Funny … but I didn’t know why I picked them yesterday. Now I understand.”

“What is it for?”

The Greenman smiled. His face was heavily lined, but when he smiled, all those creases conspired to make him seem much both younger and timeless. “For courage, Lilah,” he said.

Lilah tensed. “You know my name?”

“Everyone in these hills knows your name,” he said. “Lilah, the Lost Girl. You’re famous. The fearsome zombie hunter. The girl who helped bring down Charlie Pinkeye and the Hammer.”

She shook her head.

“I know, I know,” said the Greenman with a gentle laugh. “No one is really who people think they are. It’s unfair. When they give us nicknames and create a story for us, everyone expects us to be that person and to live up to that legend.”
He went back to shelling walnuts. “Tom knows something about that. Out here, people see him as either a hero or a villain. Never anything in between, not for Tom. He hates it too. Do you know that? He doesn’t want to be anyone’s hero any more than he wants to be a villain.”

“Tom isn’t a villain.”

“Not to you or me, no. Not to the people in town. But to a lot of the people out here—people like Charlie and his lot—Tom’s the boogeyman.”

“That’s stupid. They’re the villains.”

“No doubt.” He nodded to the flowers. “Those petals won’t jump into the bowl by themselves.”

Lilah stared at the purple petals for a moment, then picked up the tweezers and began pulling them off. She tore a few before she got the knack. The Greenman watched, nodded, and picked up another walnut. “Who are you?” she asked. “I mean really.”

“Most of the time I’m nobody,” said the Greenman. “When you live alone, you don’t need a name. I don’t need to tell you that.” She said nothing, but she gave a tiny nod. “I used to be Arthur Mensch—Ranger Artie to the tourists in Yosemite. That was before First Night.”

“When the world changed and everything went bad,” she said.

“A lot of folks see it that way,” said the Greenman, “but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don’t know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn’t change. She healed.
We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen. Even in Yosemite the air was never this fresh.”

“The dead—,” she began.

“Are part of nature,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Because they exist.”

She thought about that. “You don’t think they’re evil?”

“Do you?”

She shook her head. “People are evil.”

“Some are,” he admitted. He set the walnut shells aside and began shaving the walnut meat with the cheese grater. “People are all sorts of things. Some people are evil and good at the same time. At least according to their own view of the world.”

“How can people be good and bad?”

His dark eyes sought hers. “In the same way that people can be very brave and very, very afraid. They can be heroes and cowards from one breath to the next. And heroes again.”

Her eyes slid away. “I did something bad,” she said in a tiny voice. “I ran away.”

“I know.” It was acceptance of information but in no way a judgment.

“I—I haven’t been afraid of …” Lilah swallowed. “I haven’t been afraid of the dead for years. Not since I was little. They just … are. Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

“Last night, though … there were so many.”

“Was that it? Was it just that there were a lot of them?
From what Tom told me, you used to play in the Hungry Forest. What was different about last night?”

The cat came out of the woods, jumped up on the table, and settled down with its legs tucked under its fur. Lilah began plucking more petals. “I left Benny and Nix behind at the way station. I just … ran.”

“Were you running from the dead? Because there were so many?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” he said gently. “You do.”

Lilah looked at the purple flower petal caught between the iron jaws of the tweezers. “This stuff gives courage?”

“Not really.” The Greenman smiled. “It helps you find where you left the courage you had. Courage is tricky, oily. Easy to drop, easy to misplace.”

“I thought that if you had courage you always had it.”

The Greenman laughed out loud. The cat, who had been dozing, opened one eye and glared at him for a moment, then went back to sleep. “Lilah, nothing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.”

She digested this as she worked. “What about love? Is that elusive too?”

“I have two answers for that,” he said, “though there are probably more. One answer is the big answer. Love is always there. It lives in us. In all of us. Even Charlie Pink-eye, bad as he was, loved something. He loved his friend Marion Hammer. He had a family. He had a wife, once. Before First Night. Everyone loves. But that’s not what you meant and I
know it. The other answer, the smaller answer, is that when we love something we don’t always love it. It comes and goes. Like breath in the lungs.”

“I don’t understand love.”

“Sure you do,” said the Greenman. “Tom told me about Annie, and about George. I met George once, a long time ago, when he was out looking for you. He was a good man. A genuine person, do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes.” Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.

“He loved you, and I believe—I know—that you loved him. Just as you loved Annie. No, you understand love just fine, Lilah.”

She said nothing.

“Or do you mean another kind of love?” he asked, arching one eyebrow. “Boy-girl love? Is there someone you love? Is there someone who loves you?”

She shook her head, then shrugged. “There is a boy named Lou Chong.”

“Benny Imura’s friend? Tom told me about him, too. A smart boy.”

“He can be stupid, too!” Her words were quick, and she stopped and shook her head again. “In town … Chong is smart. He knows science and books and stars and history. I can talk to him. We talked on his porch, at nights. Every night since I lived there. Seven months. We talked about everything.”

“He sounds nice.”

“He is … but out here … he isn’t smart.” She threw down the tweezers. The cat gave a disgusted grunt, stood up, turned around, and lay back down.

“Tell me,” said the Greenman as he reached over, picked up the tweezers, and handed them to her. After a long pause, she took them.

Lilah told him everything that had happened since Tom led them out of town. By the time she was done, all the flower petals had been plucked and were floating in water.

“If Chong loves you,” said the Greenman, “do you love him?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped, then, more softly, “I don’t know how to.”

The Greenman chuckled. “You wouldn’t be the first to feel that, but maybe the first to admit it. So … what does this have to do with running away from Benny and Nix? Take a breath. Think about it. Answer when it feels right.”

She took the breath. “Benny kept saying that Chong ran away because of me. That I made him because of what I said.”

“What did you say?”

“Back on the road … I told Chong that …” She wiped her eyes. “I told him that he was a stupid town boy and he shouldn’t be out here. I wanted him to go home. I told him to go home. Then, when Benny told me it was my fault … I … it made me forget how to use my spear. Or my gun. My hands wouldn’t think anymore.” She shook her head. “I’m not making sense.”

“Yes,” said the Greenman, “you are.”

“I made Chong run away.”

The Greenman leaned on his forearms and regarded her with a kindly smile. “A wise man once said that we can’t make anyone feel or do anything. We can throw things into the wind, but it’s up to each person to decide how they want
to react, where they want to stand when things fall. Do you understand?”

She shook her head.

“It’s about responsibility. Chong felt responsible for what happened. Your words didn’t force him to run away.”

“I wish I could … un-say them.”

“Yep. I’m sure. But it’s still on Chong; it was his choice to run. He could have stayed, no matter what you said. Just as you could have stayed after what Benny said. It doesn’t make it right that hard words were said, but it doesn’t make you or Benny wrong for saying them. That’s yours to settle with yourself. Chong chose his path. Benny chose his when he spoke. You chose yours when you ran.”

“But it was the wrong choice!” she cried.

“That’s your call, honey,” he said. “Do you know why you ran away?”

She shrugged. “Before … I met Benny and the others … I knew the world. How it was. Zoms and bounty hunters and me. My cave, the way of hunting. Quieting zoms. Fighting men. Traps and hunting and all of that. It was just me and everything else. Me. I knew me. I knew what wasn’t me. But after I met them, things became … complicated. I had people. I had to care about them.”

“And that scared you because the last time you cared about someone was with Annie and George? No, don’t look surprised, Lilah. I lost people too. Everyone did. After you lost them, you stepped away from humanity. Not by choice, but out of a need to survive. You became used to being alone and not caring for or about anyone. Then you met Benny and Nix and you started to care.”

“It hurts to care!” she yelled as loud as her damaged voice would allow. Then, more quietly, she added, “It’s scary, and I never used to be afraid. If I lived, I lived. If I died, who would know? Who would care? Annie and George were gone. Without them it was like I had … armor. I don’t understand it.”

“You probably do on some level.”

“Benny said that Chong only came along because he loved me.” She shook her head in amazement at the thought. “I don’t understand that. I mean … I read books about love and romance, but it’s not the same.”

“No,” he conceded. “It surely is not. How does that make you feel, though? To have someone love you?”

She shook her head again. “Annie loved me. George loved me.”

“And you loved them … but now they’re dead,” said the Greenman softly. “And you probably feel guilty about that.” Lilah gave him a sharp look, but he continued. “I’m guessing here, but you probably feel guilty because you had already escaped from Gameland and you didn’t get back in time to save Annie. And George died while he was out looking for you. Are you afraid that if Chong loves you, and if you fall in love with him, that he’ll die too?”

“He’s … already gone.” Her face screwed up, but she forced herself not to sob. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Last night we went outside, and the trip wires were down. All those zoms were there. Too many of them. I—I looked into all those dead eyes. I saw Chong. In my mind … dead. Tom, too. Benny and Nix. I saw them all dead. Everyone I care about. Dead. I felt like I was dead too.”

“Ah,” said the Greenman gently. “That’s called terror. It’s confusion and a little paranoia and a nice big dose of panic. Everyone has those moments. Everyone. Even heroes like Tom.”

“But I ran away. I can’t take that back. I ran away and left Benny and Nix there. I didn’t help them, and I didn’t go looking for Chong. He left because of me. Because of how I treated him. Because of what I said to him. Benny said so.”

“Benny’s just a boy,” the Greenman said, “and I’ll bet he’s just as confused and scared as you. Sometimes people say terrible things when they’re scared. They don’t mean to, but they can’t help it. They lash out because if they can see that their words hurt someone else, it makes them feel as if they aren’t completely powerless.”

“That’s stupid!”

“No, it’s unfair, but for the most part it’s unintentional. If Benny’s anything like Tom, he’s probably kicking himself for what he said. He’d probably give a lot to roll the clock back to yesterday and make it right to you.”

“He can’t! He said it.”

“That’s true. He said it, and it hurt you, and with everything else that’s going on, all of you are probably in the same place. Confused, scared, and doing things you wish you could undo.”

Lilah wiped her eyes again. “I’m sorry for what I said to Chong. I do wish I could take it back.”

The Greenman stopped working for a moment. “Let me tell you a truth, little sister. No matter what choice you make, it doesn’t define you. Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later;
just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there’s ever a choice you’ve made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.”

“I can’t undo it, though.”

“That’s not what I said. I’m pretty sure undoing it would involve time travel, and I don’t happen to have a time machine.”

She almost smiled at that.