Damage & Decay

Chapter 9

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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When they were far down the road, Eren 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?"

Armin 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 Eren 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 Ruins. 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. 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?"

Armin 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 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."

Eren 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 heir 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 out here a safer place."

"Uh-huh," Armin 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."

"That sounds smart."

"I never said Charlie wasn't smart. He's very smart, but he's also very twisted and dangerous, and his motives are not exactly admirable. He also does a lot of bulk work--cleaning out small towns and such for traders. That doesn't make the people in town happy, because it confuses the issue of identification when you wipe out a whole town of zoms, but salvaging for stuff is more important. We've become an agricultural society. No one's made as much of an effort to restart industry, and some people seem to think we can salvage forever for almost everything we need. It's like in the old days, when people drilled for oil for cars and factories without making much of an effort to find renewable sources for energy. It's a pillage-and-plunder mentality, and it makes us scavengers. That's not the best place to be on the food chain. Charlie's happy with it, though, because a cleanup job is big money." He looked back over his shoulder in the direction they'd come. "The Children, on the other hand . . . They may be crazy and they may be misguided, but they do what they believe is the right thing."

"How do they round up zoms? Especially in a town full of them?"

"They wear carpet coats, and they know the tricks of moving quietly and using cadaverine to mask their living smells. Sometimes one or another o the Children will come to town to buy some, but more often guys like me bring some out to them."

"Don't they ever get attacked?"

Armin nodded. "All the time, sad to say. I know of at least fifty dead in this part of the country who used to be Children. I'd quiet them, but Brother David won't let me. And I've even heard stories that some o the Children give themselves to the dead."

Eren stared at him. "Why?"

"Brother David says that some of the Children believe that the dead are the meek who were meant to inherit the earth, and that all things under heaven are there to sustain them. They think that allowing the dead to feed on them is fulfilling God's will."

"That's stupid," Eren said.

"It is what it is. I think a lot of the Children are people who didn't survive the Fall. Oh, sure, their bodies did, but I think some fundamental part of them was broken by what happened. I was there, I can relate."

"You're not crazy."

"I have my moments, kiddo, believe me."

Eren gave him a strange look. Then he smiled. "I think that redheaded woman, Sister Sarah, has the hots for you. As disgusting a concept as that seems."

Armin shook his head. "Too  young for me. Though . . . I thought she looked a but like Nix. What do you think?"

"I think you should shove that right up your--"

And that's when they heard the gunshots.