Damage & Decay

Chapter 8

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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They walked for miles under the hot sun. The peppermint gel ran off with their sweat, and had to be reapplied hourly. Eren was quiet for most of the trip, but as his feet got sore and his stomach started to rumble, he turned cranky.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"How far is it?"

"A bit."

"I'm hungry."

"We'll stop soon."

"What's for lunch?"

"Beans and jerky."

"I hate jerky."

"You bring anything else?" Armin asked.

"No."

"Jerky it is, then."

The roads Armin picked were narrow and often turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt.

"We haven't seen a zom in a couple of hours," Eren said. "How come?"

"Unless they hear or smell something that draws them, they tend to stick close to home."

"Home?"

"Well . . . to the places they used to live or work."

"Why?"

Armin took a couple of minutes on that. "There are lots of theories, but that's all we have--just theories. Some folks say that the dead lack the intelligence to think that there's anywhere other than where they're standing. If nothing attracts them or draws them, they'll just stay right where they are."

"But they need to hunt, don't they?"

"'Need' is a tricky words. Most experts agree that the dead will attack and kill, but it's not been established that they actually hunt. Hunting implies need, and we don't know that the dead need  to do anything."

"I don't understand."

They crested a hill and looked down a dirt road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.

"Have you ever heard of one of them just wasting away and dying of hunger?" Armin asked.

"No, but--"

"The people in town think that the dead survive by eating the living, right?"

"Well, sure, but--"

"What 'living' do you think they're eating?"

"Huh?"

"Think about it. There're more than three hundred million living dead in America alone. Throw another thirty-odd million in Canada and a hundred ten million in Mexico, and you have something like four hundred and fifty million living dead. The Fall happened fourteen years ago. So--what are they eating to stay alive?"

Eren thought about it. "Mr. Smith says they eat each other."

"They don't," said Arming. "Once a body has started to cool, they stop feeding on it. That's why there are so many partially eaten living dead. They won't attack or eat one another even if you locked them in the same house for years on end. People have done it."