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Rot & Ruin

Book #1 of Rot & Ruin

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About The Book

In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn't want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.

Excerpt

Rot & Ruin 1
BENNY IMURA COULDN’T HOLD A JOB, SO HE TOOK TO KILLING.

It was the family business. He barely liked his family—and by family he meant his older brother, Tom—and he definitely didn’t like the idea of “business.” Or work. The only part of the deal that sounded like it might be fun was the actual killing.

He’d never done it before. Sure, he’d gone through a hundred simulations in gym class and in the Scouts, but they never let kids do any real killing. Not before they hit fifteen.

“Why not?” he asked his Scoutmaster, a fat guy named Feeney who used to be a TV weatherman back in the day. Benny was eleven at the time and obsessed with zombie hunting. “How come you don’t let us whack some real zoms?”

“Because killing’s the sort of thing you should learn from your folks,” said Feeney.

“I don’t have any folks,” Benny countered. “My mom and dad died on First Night.”

“Ouch. Sorry, Benny—I forgot. Point is, you got family of some kind, right?”

“I guess. I got ‘I’m Mr. Freaking Perfect Tom Imura’ for a brother, and I don’t want to learn anything from him.”

Feeney had stared at him. “Wow. I didn’t know you were related to him. He’s your brother, huh? Well, there’s your answer, kid. Nobody better to teach you the art of killing than a professional killer like Tom Imura.” Feeney paused and licked his lips nervously. “I guess being his brother and all, you’ve seen him take down a lot of zoms.”

“No,” Benny said with huge annoyance. “He never lets me watch.”

“Really? That’s odd. Well, ask him when you turn thirteen.”

Benny had asked on his thirteenth birthday, and Tom had said no. Again. It wasn’t a discussion. Just “No.”

That was more than two years ago, and now Benny was six weeks past his fifteenth birthday. He had four more weeks grace to find a paying job before town ordinance cut his rations by half. Benny hated being in that position, and if one more person gave him the “fifteen and free” speech, he was going to scream. He hated that as much as when people saw someone doing hard work and they said crap like, “Holy smokes, he’s going at that like he’s fifteen and out of food.”

Like it was something to be happy about. Something to be proud of. Working your butt off for the rest of your life. Benny didn’t see where the fun was in that. Okay, maybe it was marginally okay because it meant only half days of school from then on, but it still sucked.

His buddy Lou Chong said it was a sign of the growing cultural oppression that was driving postapocalyptic humanity toward acceptance of a new slave state. Benny had no freaking idea what Chong meant or if there was even meaning in anything he said. But he nodded agreement because the look on Chong’s face always made it seem like he knew exactly what was what.

At home, before he even finished eating his dessert, Tom had said, “If I want to talk about you joining the family business, are you going to chew my head off? Again?”

Benny stared venomous death at Tom and said, very clearly and distinctly, “I. Don’t. Want. To. Work. In. The. Family. Business.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little late now to try and get me all excited about it? I asked you a zillion times to—”

“You asked me to take you out on kills.”

“Right! And every time I did you—”

Tom cut him off. “There’s a lot more to what I do, Benny.”

“Yeah, there probably is, and maybe I would have thought the rest was something I could deal with, but you never let me see the cool stuff.”

“There’s nothing ‘cool’ about killing,” Tom said sharply.

“There is when you’re talking about killing zoms!” Benny fired back.

That stalled the conversation. Tom stalked out of the room and banged around the kitchen for a while, and Benny threw himself down on the couch.

Tom and Benny never talked about zombies. They had every reason to, but they never did. Benny couldn’t understand it. He hated zoms. Everyone hated them, though with Benny it was a white-hot consuming hatred that went back to his very first memory. Because it was his first memory—a nightmare image that was there every night when he closed his eyes. It was an image that was seared into him, even though it was something he had seen as a tiny child.

Dad and Mom.

Mom screaming, running toward Tom, shoving a squirming Benny—all of eighteen months—into Tom’s arms. Screaming and screaming. Telling him to run.

While the thing that had been Dad pushed its way through the bedroom door that Mom had tried to block with a chair and lamps and anything else she could find.

Benny remembered Mom screaming words, but the memory was so old and he had been so young that he didn’t remember what any of them were. Maybe there were no words. Maybe it was just her screaming.

Benny remembered the wet heat on his face as Tom’s tears fell on him as they climbed out of the bedroom window. They had lived in a ranch-style house. One story. The window emptied out into a yard that was pulsing with red and blue police lights. There were more shouts and screams. The neighbors. The cops. Maybe the army. Thinking back, Benny figured it was probably the army. And the constant popping of gunfire, near and far away.

But of all of it, Benny remembered a single last image. As Tom clutched him to his chest, Benny looked over his brother’s shoulder at the bedroom window. Mom leaned out of the window, screaming at them as Dad’s pale hands reached out of the shadows of the room and dragged her back out of sight.

That was Benny’s oldest memory. If there had been older memories, then that image had burned them away. Because he had been so young the whole thing was little more than a collage of pictures and noises, but over the years Benny had burned his brain to reclaim each fragment, to assign meaning and sense to every scrap of what he could recall. Benny remembered the hammering sound vibrating against his chest that was Tom’s panicked heartbeat, and the long wail that was his own inarticulate cry for his mom and his dad.

He hated Tom for running away. He hated that Tom hadn’t stayed and helped Mom. He hated what their dad had become on that First Night all those years ago. Just as he hated what Dad had turned Mom into.

In his mind they were no longer Mom and Dad. They were the things that had killed them. Zoms. And he hated them with an intensity that made the sun feel cold and small.

“Dude, what is it with you and zoms?” Chong once asked him. “You act like the zoms have a personal grudge against you.”

“What, I’m supposed to have fuzzy bunny feelings for them?” Benny had snapped back.

“No,” Chong had conceded, “but a little perspective would be nice. I mean . . . everybody hates zoms.”

“You don’t.”

Chong had shrugged his bony shoulders and his dark eyes had darted away. “Everybody hates zoms.”

The way Benny saw it, when your first memory was of zombies killing your parents, then you had a license to hate them as much as you wanted. He tried to explain that to Chong, but his friend wouldn’t be drawn back into the conversation.

A few years ago, when Benny found out that Tom was a zombie hunter, he hadn’t been proud of his brother. As far as he was concerned, if Tom really had what it took to be a zombie hunter, he’d have had the guts to help Mom. Instead, Tom had run away and left Mom to die. To become one of them.

Tom came back into the living room, looked at the remains of the dessert on the table, then looked at Benny on the couch.

“The offer still stands,” he said. “If you want to do what I do, then I’ll take you on as an apprentice. I’ll sign the papers so you can still get full rations.”

Benny gave him a long, withering stare.

“I’d rather be eaten by zoms than have you as my boss,” Benny said.

Tom sighed, turned, and trudged upstairs. After that they didn’t talk to each other for days.

Reading Group Guide

A Reading Group Guide for

Rot & Ruin
By Jonathan Maberry


Discussion Questions

1. Consider what Tom says: “There’s the town and then there’s the Rot and Ruin. Most of the time they aren’t in the same world, you know?” Are there any divides you notice in your daily life where two things exist in “different worlds”?

2. On Benny’s first venture out into the Rot and Ruin, they encounter the “Children.” Tom later says, “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.” In what ways are they broken? Why do you think they choose to live as they do?

3. In what ways does the absence of electricity impact life in the new world? Are these changes all practical, or are some of the changes emotional, as well?

4. Secrecy, mystery and ignorance all play important roles in this story. In what ways do these themes impact the choices of the characters and also affect their emotions throughout the book? Are there differences between the three words? When in the book does each come into play?

5. What are the differences in the attitudes and outlooks of the characters who survived and remember First Night, and those who did not live in the old world and are unable to remember it?

6. Various forms of entertainment and gambling are mentioned in the book: from the zombie cards to Gameland. How does your opinion of these activities change over the course of the book? What do you take to be the author’s commentary on entertainment in the new world?

7. Consider what Tom tells Benny: “We let fear rule us and guide us, and that’s never the way to win. Never.” Describe a moment when Benny faces fear in the book. What happened? Why? How might it have been different if he did/didn’t let fear take over in that moment?

8. Benny tells Tom that Nix has “collected everything she can about zoms” in her diary. Make a list that describes all the characteristics about zombies in the book. How are they different from how you imagined zombies to be before reading the book? How are they different from living humans? Why do you think the author choose to characterize and differentiate zombies in these ways?

9. Benny is “sad and disgusted” when he realizes that people “pretend that there was no wasteland of zombies outside.” Why is it problematic to pretend that there is no Rot and Ruin?

10. Does Gameland remind you of anything in today’s world? Do you think it might have been based on something from the real world’s past? Why or why not?

11. In what ways does Nix help Benny throughout his journey? In what ways does she pose obstacles to him? How does Benny’s view of her evolve throughout the book? How do his feelings toward her affect him?

12. Lilah says that “knowledge is power.” In what ways do you think that holds true—or doesn’t—in the new world of the novel?

13. Toward the end of the book, Lilah, Nix, and Benny have a short debate about which area is safer—the town or the Rot and Ruin. How did your perception of each area change throughout the book? Can you definitively say which one is safer? Why or why not?

14. Did the book change your opinion of the word “evil”? How would you have defined it before reading and how would you after? Can you point to specific actions or moments in the book that you would characterize as evil?

15. Friendship and family play important thematic roles in the story, including the relationship between Benny and Tom, as well as that of Benny, Lilah, and Nix, as well as in the memories of kin turned into zombies. How do the roles of family and friends affect the actions of characters throughout the book? How do various connections change between characters? What did the book teach you about the meaning of both family and friends?


This guide has been provided by Simon & Schuster for classroom, library, and reading group use. It may be reproduced in its entirety or excerpted for these purposes.

About The Author

Photograph by Jonathan Maberry

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and adventure; and he writes for adults, teens, and middle grade. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The WolfmanThe X-Files Origins: Devil’s AdvocateMars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV, including V Wars, which is a Netflix original series. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including the X-Files books, Aliens: Bug HuntOut of TuneHardboiled HorrorBaker Street IrregularsNights of the Living Dead, and others. He lives in Del Mar, California. Visit him at JonathanMaberry.com and on Twitter (@JonathanMaberry) and Facebook.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (September 14, 2010)
  • Length: 464 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781442402324
  • Grades: 7 and up
  • Ages: 12 - 99

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Raves and Reviews

"Thrilling, enticing, and surprisingly touching, Rot & Ruin will grip readers from beginning to end, and make them question who the real monsters are. It had me hooked from page one."--Heather Brewer, author of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series

"This is a romping, stomping adventure. And while most zombie novels are all about the brains, this one has a heart as well. With the dead prowling all around, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura learns the bittersweet lessons of life, love, and family in the great Rot & Ruin. Anyone with a pulse will enjoy this novel, and anyone with a brain will find plenty of food for thought inside."--Michael Northrop, author of Gentlemen

"George Romero meets The Catcher in the Rye in this poignant and moving coming of age novel set during zombie times. I welled up at the end, then smiled through my tears when I realized there was going to be a sequel. Bravo, Jonathan Maberry. Can't wait to read more." --Nancy Holder, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked and Possessions

"This is no ordinary zombie novel. Maberry has given it a soul in the form of two brothers who captured my heart from the first page and refused to let go."--Maria V. Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of Poison Study

* "The delineation between man and monster, survivor and victim is fiercely debated in Maberry’s thoughtful, postapocalyptic coming-of-age tale...In turns mythic and down-to-earth, this intense novel combines adventure and philosophy to tell a truly memorable zombie story, one that forces readers to consider them not just as flesh-eating monsters or things to be splattered, but as people.“--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An impressive mix of meaning and mayhem."--Booklist

“Horror fans will appreciate the gorge-raising descriptions of the shambling zombies...while zombie-apocalypse aficionados will cotton to the solid world-building and refreshingly old-school undead. --Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"An action-packed, thought-provoking look at life—and death—as readers determine the true enemy."--Kirkus Reviews

Awards and Honors

  • Lincoln Award: Illinois Teen Readers' Choice Master List
  • ALA Best Books For Young Adults
  • Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award Master List
  • Garden State Teen Book Award Nominee (NJ)
  • Texas Lone Star Reading List
  • ALA Quick Picks Nominee
  • Keystone to Reading Book Award (PA)
  • Nutmeg Book Award (CT)
  • Cybils Award
  • South Dakota Young Adult Reading Program
  • Arkansas Teen Book Award Reading List
  • Bram Stoker Award Finalist
  • ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (Top Ten)
  • Gateway Readers Award (MO)

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