Fire & Ash

CHAPTER 75

The Black Hawk flew into hell itself.

The scene below could have belonged in no other place.

The main gates of Sanctuary hung open, the gate patrol cut to pieces. Most of the hangars were ablaze. Fire and smoke curled hundreds of feet into the air. The bridge was down, and steady streams of zoms poured across.

Not walked, not shambled, but ran.

Tens of thousands of them were already across. Some of the monks ran from them. Some had formed defensive lines between the hordes of the dead and the entrances to the hospice hangars, but they had no weapons. Some held mattresses and metal-framed cots in front of them in the desperate hope of fending off the dead and protecting the helpless; but as Benny and the others watched in abject horror, the R3 zoms tore these things out of the monks’ hands and dragged the screaming Children of God down.

A few monks knelt in the dirt, hands clasped in prayer, heads bowed while they allowed the dead to take them.

“Do something!” screeched Nix.

Joe flew low and opened up with the chain guns. Heavy bullets tore into the zoms, ripping arms and heads off. A few monks shook fists at them and tried to wave the helicopter off.

“What are they doing?” demanded McReady.

“Trying to protect the Children of Lazarus,” Joe said dully.

Even as the monks waved and shouted at the Black Hawk, the creatures they tried to protect overwhelmed them and tore them apart. It was sickening.

It was beyond horrible.

“Someone released the mutagen,” said McReady. “It has to be deliberate, but who would—?”

“Reapers,” said Benny. It was more than an answer; he pointed down into the melee to where reapers on quads chased a group of nuns, herding them into the arms of the dead.

McReady grabbed Joe’s arm. “Joe—”

“On it,” he said and he turned the guns on them. The quads exploded one after the other. However, the zoms swept past the burning quads and crashed like a wave onto the nuns. Joe kept firing, but there was no real point. There were tens of thousands of fast zoms swarming into the hangars, and hundreds of reapers ferreting out the monks and nuns. And it was clear this battle had been going on for too long already. Many of the zoms down there were the reanimated dead who had risen from their own murders.

Dr. McReady punched the dashboard. “No! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. The mutagen was intended for careful release after human populations were evacuated from an area. It’s only viable until after the host dies off. In a week even any residual powder exposed to the air will be inert. Damn it, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” She caved forward and put her face into her hands.

“Brother Peter said they wouldn’t attack until tomorrow,” said Benny.

Lilah grabbed his shirt. “And you believed him?”

But Nix shoved her back. “Stop it. We all believed him. This isn’t helping and this won’t get us to Chong.”

Joe steered the Black Hawk away from the hangars. Benny saw tears cutting jagged tracks down his grizzled face.

“Can you see Riot?” begged Nix. “I can’t see her anywhere.”

No one answered.

One figure staggered past the row of swings, but when Joe shone a spotlight on it, the face that looked up at them was not Riot’s or Eve’s. It was Sister Hannahlily. Her mouth was smeared with red, and she held a human arm in her hands. She hissed at the helicopter.

Sickened, Joe swung the light away.

They hovered for a moment over the bridge. There were now more of the dead on the monks’ side of the trench than on the other. Many more. A group of twenty reapers manned the bridge, herding the zoms over.

“Screw you,” growled Joe as he armed a Hellfire missile. “Go to hell.”

The missile blasted away from under the Black Hawk’s stubby wing and struck the rocky ground near the bridge. The blast was immense, and when the rotor wash blew the smoke away, there was a crater in the trench wall. The bridge was still there, but all around it were charred ashes that were unrecognizable as ever having been human.

Then they saw a ripple of flashes by one of the hangars. At first Benny thought it was a string of firecrackers set off by the flames.

“Those are guns,” yelled Nix. “The soldiers are fighting back.”

Joe swung the Black Hawk toward the gunfire. Zoms chased the machine, and reapers on quads and on foot raced across the tarmac in the same direction. He fired one more missile at a crowd of mixed zoms and reapers and then flew straight through the fire and smoke.

The gunfire was coming from inside the hangar where they’d met Colonel Reid. There were bodies on the ground surrounded by the hunched figures of zoms who feasted on their victims. Benny could not tell if any of those bodies belonged to Riot or Eve. The dead poured into the hangar, and there were living reapers among them, shoving the zoms forward, herding them, driving them from kill to kill.

Joe dropped almost to the ground and flew the helicopter slowly and carefully in through the open hangar doors. The gunfire was concentrated in one corner, and Benny could see a knot of soldiers moving in a tight cluster, toward a door set in the back wall. Some of them fired at the advancing horde of zoms; others fired toward the door to clear it. But there was no doubt that some zoms and reapers had already passed through that doorway.

“They’re inside the complex,” said Joe. “That door leads to a tunnel that connects all of these buildings.”

McReady looked up, her face going paler still. “The equipment… the lab.”

“Chong!” cried Lilah.

The look on Joe’s face was as feral and cruel as any monster as he opened up with the chain guns. He turned the helicopter in a slow circle and maintained continuous fire, creating a kind of hell Benny had never seen before. One man and one machine turned the entire hangar into a slaughterhouse. Reapers and zombies flew apart. Others were punched backward into each other or against walls. Shell casings fell like rain. But then the guns clicked on empty, the rounds exhausted.

Joe landed the Black Hawk in a swirl of blood-tinged smoke.

The group of soldiers were at the door now. They gunned down the last of the reapers in their way and vanished inside the entrance to the tunnel.

And they slammed the door shut behind them.

CHAPTER 76

“Everybody out,” bellowed Joe as he erupted from the pilot’s seat. “Now—now!”

They grabbed their weapons, but Lilah also scooped up two bags of the capsules. Benny saw this and grabbed a couple as well, shoving them into his backpack.

“You never know,” he said.

Joe snatched a machine gun from a rack and began stuffing extra magazines into his pockets. “Lilah, you’re with McReady. If you want your boyfriend back, kill anyone who even looks at her.”

Lilah bared her teeth.

“Nix, Benny, you two hold the line and watch my back. I have to get through that door, and it’s going to take a minute. If I don’t and things get weird, go back into the chopper and close the door. There are enough guns and ammo in there to stop an army.”

Then Joe clicked his tongue for Grimm, and as soon as the dog turned its massive armored head toward him, Joe quickly reached out and touched Nix on the shoulder.

“Family,” said Joe, and Grimm barked once in acknowledgment.

Joe touched Benny. “Family,” he said again.

Another bark.

“Protect,” said the ranger, and the dog gave a third deep-chested bark.

Joe rolled back the door of the Black Hawk and was firing before he even jumped out. That corner of the hangar was littered with the dead, but more were pouring into the hangar through the massive open doorway. There was a narrow slot, almost a cattle chute, formed by the wall and the helicopter, and this allowed only a couple of the dead to rush forward at a time.

Nix gave Benny a single brave smile. “Warrior smart,” she said.

“Warrior smart.”

And for no reason at all other than that the world was insane, they laughed.

The dead rushed forward, and Benny and Nix — last of the samurai — went to meet them.

Benny edged forward and left and his kami katana felt alive in his hands, like it wanted this, craved it. Or maybe it was that now that Benny’s own spirit had come fully alive in him, the part of his spirit that resided in the steel of the sword had come alive too. In either case, as the first zombies rushed at him, Benny met the attack with cut after cut after cut. Dead limbs flew, zoms that were suddenly legless crashed down in front of the creatures behind them. The dead collided and fell over one another, and Benny was there, holding his ground, the blade flashing and flashing. Nix positioned herself ten feet away and swung Dojigiri with equal ferocity.

Grimm leapt into the gap between them, spikes and blades bristling from head and shoulders and flanks. As the dead flung themselves forward, the monstrous mastiff cut them to pieces. Not with teeth, but with all that razor-sharp metal.

While all this happened, Benny felt another change occurring deep within him. His mind felt like it was detaching from the moment and from the normal flow of time. It drifted back to watch from a distance that offered a different perspective, more of a spherical view of the situation. One that allowed him to see his position, that position’s relevance to where Nix fought, the distance to where Joe knelt in front of the locked door, the opening of the chute, the numbers of the dead, the presence of the living reapers among the crowd. The big ranger worked feverishly to pick the lock.

All this was delicately separated from any emotional involvement, as if a surgeon’s deft cut with a scalpel had removed it so that it would not be impeded or influenced by any normal human involvement. It was how Benny imagined great chess players viewed a game. Clearly and from a distance.

He saw his own body, its posture, the spacing of his hands on the handle, the angle of his cuts. He saw small imperfections in the movements, and as he observed them his body made the corrections that increased the speed and efficiency of each cut.

The dead began to pile up in front of him, his enemies becoming his bulwark against the main body of the horde. Benny knew, with perfect clarity, that had he been in a fight with so many of the fast zoms even a month ago — even a week ago — he would have already died. Even a week ago. The change he’d felt earlier tonight had somehow snapped together all the disparate parts of him. All the aspects of himself that had been growing like weeds — fast, but wild and in different directions — suddenly came together within his soul. They were all there inside him. His experiences in the Ruin. The lessons from Tom and the lessons learned from both victories and defeats. The love he felt for Nix — and his new understanding of the forces at work in this red-haired warrior girl that he loved. The fierce anger at the injustices committed by the Night Church in the name of religion. The determination to have a future despite all the adult voices that kept crying out that there was no future to have. The faith in himself — in this person he had become. All of that coalesced inside a quiet space in Benny Imura’s mind.

There were sharp cracks as Lilah, standing guard over Dr. McReady, fired carefully aimed shots through the open gap between Nix and Benny. Every shot hit a target, but not every bullet struck the head. Unlimited and perfect head shots every time were an impossibility with a handgun, and Benny understood that now. It was a logical thing, and therefore it was open to his new perception.

This is how a samurai thinks, he mused. This is what it was like for Tom when he was in a battle. That’s why he always looked calm.

Even that thought was cataloged without emotional involvement. It was a truth, and it became part of his experience.

“Let’s go!”

The shout drew him back to his body, and Benny turned to see Lilah and Dr. McReady vanish through the opened door. Joe brought his rifle up as he stepped into the space between Benny and Nix.

“Grimm! Back!”

The dog spun around, retreated, and raced to Joe’s side, leaving the gap unguarded.

“I got this,” Joe yelled. “Get inside.”

Benny and Nix wasted no time. They spun too, and ran for the door as Joe hosed the opening of the chute with automatic gunfire. Then he jacked a round into the grenade launcher mounted below the rifle barrel and fired. Jacked and fired, jacked and fired. He angled the blasts toward the wall, well away from the Black Hawk, but the blast radius destroyed anything that stepped into the chute.

Then Joe spun and dashed for the door.

As he leaped through, Nix slammed it shut and Benny shot the bolt on the inside. Grimm howled in rage and triumph, and the echoes banged off the walls.

Outside, dead hands began pounding on the door.

CHAPTER 77

“Will the door hold?” asked Nix, her face flushed with fear and excitement.

“It’ll stop the dead,” said Joe, “but those reapers will figure a way in. No time to waste.”

They were in a stone hallway that led to a flight of stairs that plunged down into shadows. Joe tried the light switch and a few lights flickered on, but most of the bulbs had been smashed. Shell casings littered the floor, and the walls were smeared with blood along with some of the black mucus.

“Don’t get any of it on you,” warned McReady.

“Wasn’t planning to,” said Benny.

From below, they could hear a confusion of sounds. Gunfire, moans, shouts, and screams.

Lilah dropped the empty magazine from her pistol and slapped in a new one. “Chong’s down there.”

Joe touched her arm. “Listen to me, Chong is in the basement below the blockhouse. That’s three hundred yards from here, and there are a lot of doors between here and there. There’s also ten ways to get to those cells, or at least to the central corridor that leads down to the cells. We have to get down these steps and find the maintenance access door. We can use that and maybe slip past the zoms, maybe get ahead of them. You understand?”

She nodded.

Joe touched her cheek. “We’ll get to him.”

But there was a deadness in Lilah’s eyes, and Benny feared that the Lost Girl was already losing hope.

Nix said, “Wait, what about the soldiers? Where are they? Why aren’t they fighting back? All I saw were the guards who usually take care of the bridge… where are the rest of them? Where are the soldiers we just saw run in here?”

“That’s right,” said McReady. “There are two hundred men here….”

“There are forty-eight soldiers here,” Joe said. “And thirteen members of the medical staff.”

“Did the others ship out?”

Joe’s eyes were bleak. “I wish.”

Distant gunfire and screams seemed to answer for him. He put his rifle stock to his shoulder and went quickly and quietly down the stairs. Benny looked at the others, saw the varying expressions in their eyes. Joe’s last two words had punched everyone in the gut.

One by one they followed him down the bloodstained stairs. They found two dead soldiers who were just starting to reanimate. Joe put them down with precise single shots to their heads.

Benny went last, and as he ghosted along behind the others, he thought about all the bad things Joe’s words could mean. And he wondered if, in all this madness, they would ever find Riot and Eve. Were they alive? Were they dead? Had the wild former reaper somehow managed to battle her way through the sea of killers to defend the little girl she treasured?

If anyone could, Benny knew that she would.

The steps went down, turned a corner, went down again, and then ended in a round chamber from which four corridors spiked off in different directions. Joe paused and they all stopped to listen. The most intense sounds of battle came from the left-hand corridor. There were indistinct sounds from the middle two, and only silence from the one on the right. But the lights were out in that tunnel, and the edge of the wall leading into it was smeared with black goo.

“Let me guess,” said Benny sourly, “that one’s the one we have to take, right?”

Joe gave him a tight grin. “What’s wrong, you want to live forever?”

“Not forever. Maybe another seventy years, though.”

“Let me know how that turns out for you.”

“Flashlight?” asked Nix.

Joe clicked on the small light that was mounted on his gun and dialed it up to its widest beam; but the light was small and the illumination didn’t reach very far into the gloom. No one else had a flashlight.

“Don’t bunch up,” said Joe. “I don’t want a sword up my backside.”

They entered the hallway, following the blue-white splash of Joe’s flashlight. Once more Benny took up the rear position. No need to cede that responsibility to Lilah anymore. He felt capable of defending them.

But as they went deeper and deeper, the light from the staircase landing faded and then vanished, leaving everything behind Benny as black as the pit.

Don’t be cocky, he told himself. And don’t be scared. Sight isn’t your only sense. Listen to what the darkness has to tell you.

It was one of Tom’s lessons filtered through his own personal understanding.

He let the others move ahead so the sounds of their footsteps and the rattle of their equipment faded. He listened to the darkness.

Everything behind was silent.

Silent.

Until it wasn’t.

He heard a sound.

Soft. Quick.

In darkness the sound of running is often defined by the panting breath of the runner as much as by the slap of feet on the ground.

Unless…

Unless the runner did not need to pant, did not need to breathe.

Benny suddenly realized that the others were too far ahead, which meant that the meager spill of light from Joe’s flashlight was sending almost no reflected illumination this far back.

And something was coming.

Something was running toward him.

Silent.

Fast.

And he couldn’t see it.

CHAPTER 78

Benny had two seconds to decide.

Stand and fight in almost total darkness or…

He turned and ran.

He ran as fast as he had ever run before. He ran so fast that all he could hear was the harsh grating of his own breath in his ears. That sound blocked out the noise of whatever pursued him, which meant that almost at once he lost any sense of how close it was.

He ran and ran.

Up ahead Joe Ledger turned a corner and took his light with him.

The corridor became completely black.

Benny thought he could hear a sound behind him.

Not the rhythmic panting of another runner, but the low, continuous moan of something so hungry that it would run and run forever until it caught its prey and dragged it down.

“Joe!” Benny yelled.

He wanted to yell more, he wanted to yell for light, but he saved his breath for running.

And then there it was.

A splash of light so bright that it blinded him. He recoiled from it, throwing up an arm to block it.

Suddenly something slammed into him from behind.

The impact sent him crashing painfully into the wall. The sword fell from his hands and clattered to the ground. The air left Benny’s chest with a whoosh, and cold fingers clawed at his shirt and neck and tried to hook into the corners of his mouth.

The image of the tiny white worms in the black muck filled his brain as immediately and intensely as a grenade exploding. It galvanized Benny into action.

He spun along the wall until the zombie that clung to him was caught between him and the unyielding stone, then he planted a foot and kicked himself forward halfway to the opposite wall, then kicked out again, braced his foot on that wall, and thrust backward with all his strength. The ping-pong action sent Benny and his attacker crunching backward once more, but this time the impact was many times harder. The creature lost its grip and collapsed to the floor.

Joe’s light was getting closer, and everyone was yelling and running toward him.

The zom — a man dressed as an American Nation soldier — came off the ground at him, snarling and biting the air.

Benny kicked him in the chest and knocked him once more into the wall.

And then with a snarl of fury Grimm crashed into the zom. They fell sideways, and Benny ducked backward away from the wet pieces of things that flew and splatted against the wall.

“Off!” cried Joe, and the hulking monster froze. Red blood dripped from its spikes. The zom still had blood in its veins and tissues, proof that it had turned only minutes ago.

As Joe came running up and shone his light on the zom, Benny realized that he knew this man.

Sergeant Peruzzi.

Dead now, torn to pieces.

Benny heard Nix make a small, sad sound.

He’d been rude and threatening to Nix, but he didn’t deserve this.

No one did.

Benny glanced at Joe and expected to see the hard, dismissive face of a killer, but there was sadness in the big man’s eyes.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Lilah picked up Benny’s sword and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “I—”

But the Lost Girl got up in his face. “Chong is waiting for me. Don’t slow us down again.”

There wasn’t the slightest trace of compromise or mercy in her face.

All Benny could do was nod.

They turned and ran.

They passed two side corridors, but both were empty. Joe quickly explained that one led to the maintenance hangar and the other went to the generator room.

They went up a flight of stairs and along a corridor that was better lighted. There were two sets of heavy doors set fifty yards apart, and at each one they found blood and shell casings.

“Someone’s making a fight of this,” observed Joe. “Using doors and corridor bends as opposition points.”

There were no bodies, though. Nix pointed this out.

“Does that mean that they’re already inside?” she asked.

“With the mutagen, reanimation is very fast,” said McReady. “More of a transition from one state to another instead of death and a return to life. Anyone who died here could have been up in seconds.”

“Is anyone left?” asked Nix.

A new rattle of gunfire answered that question. It came from deeper inside the complex, along the path they were following. McReady and Joe listened, each of them judging distance. Their eyes snapped wide at the same time.

“God,” said Joe.

“The infirmary,” said McReady.

Everyone broke into a dead run as the gunfire continued, interspersed with moans and screams. To Benny every hallway and staircase looked the same, and he had the irrational feeling that they were running in circles.

Then one corridor ended with an air lock similar to the one they’d destroyed in the badlands. The door was ajar, held open by a slumped figure with a bullet hole in its forehead. A zom, Benny saw. There was red powder on its hair and face and black muck smeared on its mouth.

Beyond the air lock was a small chamber and then a second air lock, also blocked by the legs of a dead woman, whose head hung on an absurdly crooked neck. The woman was not one of the zoms from outside, nor was she was a reaper. She wore a soiled white lab coat over a military uniform.

“God — that’s Karen Lansky,” cried McReady. “She’s a nurse here.”

The sounds of battle were much closer now, but the intensity was less.

Fewer shots. Fewer screams.

Benny did not think this was a good sign.

As they gathered themselves to pass through the air lock, Benny bent and kissed Nix quickly on the lips.

“For luck,” he said.

“I know,” she replied, smiling. “But we won’t need it. We’re going to get Chong, find Riot and Eve, and get out of here.”

It was a strangely positive thing for her to say, but Benny saw no doubt in her eyes. She believed it.

It made him want to kiss her again.

Joe looked over his shoulder at them. “Benny — you’ve been bugging me for a month to tell you why the soldiers and scientists here haven’t done much to help you. Why they haven’t let you in here.” He looked grim. “Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.”

With that he stepped through the air lock, took a brief look, and immediately opened fire.

Lilah was right behind him, her pistol bucking in her hands as she fired and fired.

Benny and Nix adjusted their grips on their swords.

“C’mon, Doc,” said Benny, “we won’t let anything happen to you.”

The doctor’s eyes were skeptical. “Too late for that, kids. But… thanks.”

They heard two more shots, and then a sudden silence fell over the whole complex.

Joe Ledger called to them. “It’s clear,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s all over in here.”

They passed through the air lock and saw four reapers and five zoms lying in a tangle beyond where Joe stood. Gun smoke from the ranger’s rifle hung in a blue pall around him.

Benny and Nix stepped into another scene of horror and madness.

There was a bed right inside the door. A man lay in it, his eyes wide with fury and pain, his pajamas soiled with blood and muck, his limbs thrashing as he fought to rise. Not to escape — but to attack. Ropes held him to the bed, lashing his arms and legs and torso to the metal frame. Black spit flew from the man’s screaming mouth.

Benny stared past him at the occupant of the next bed. And the next.

And all the others.

Hundreds of beds. Each one filled. Each person thrashing and moaning and biting the air. Each one trapped there by ropes.

Their uniforms hung over the backs of chairs, or were draped over the ends of the beds. The uniforms of soldiers of the American Nation. The lab coats of scientists. The special jackets of pilots.

Nix’s sword drooped in her grasp until the tip of the blade made a hollow tink against the concrete.

This was why there had been no real resistance to the reaper invasion.

This was why the jet sat idle on the tarmac.

This was why the soldiers and the scientists were so bitter.

“They’re all infected,” Benny murmured. “All of them…”

He heard a sob and turned to see Dr. McReady trembling.

“No,” she said. “No…”

Joe swapped out his magazines, his face wooden. “The infection started three months ago,” he said. “A few guards on patrol by the siren towers got swarmed by a pack of R3’s. One fatality, but a couple of the others got the black blood on them. I don’t know if it got in someone’s eyes or mouth, or if it was on one of the soldiers’ hands and he touched his face. We’ll never know. But he brought the mutagen into Sanctuary with him. We sent word to the American Nation to quarantine this place. To write it off.”

He shook his head sadly.

“Sanctuary is dead.”

They all gaped at him.

Benny got up in Joe’s face. “You brought us here, damn it. Why bring us to a graveyard?”

Joe shook his head. “When I brought you here it was to save you from Saint John and Mother Rose. But we never let you inside. We kept you away from the plague until we could make sure you were uninfected. If it wasn’t for your friend Chong, I’d have taken you kids south to North Carolina. Now you’re inside the quarantine zone. You’re as trapped as everyone else at Sanctuary.”

CHAPTER 79

Six corridors away, a team of Red Brothers moved silently through the shadows, knives ready, eyes alert, killing anyone they met. Brother Peter ran with them, his face flushed with exertion, his clothes soaked with blood.

Two soldiers tried to hold a doorway, but Brother Peter ordered a pair of reapers to rush them. The men smiled at the chance to serve their brother, serve their god, and leaped like heroes into the darkness. They let out earsplitting roars as they charged straight into a hail of bullets. The rounds chopped into them, splattering the walls with blood, turning the killers into dancing puppets and finally into inhuman rag dolls.

But as they collapsed, Brother Peter, who had run up behind them at full speed, leaped over their corpses, a knife in each hand.

The soldiers did not have time to scream.

The rest of the Red Brothers swept through the doorway and into the lab complex. Gleaming machines, racks of sanitized instruments, cabinets of medicines, and banks of computers filled the room.

One scientist was there.

A woman, with gray hair tied in a bun and reading glasses that hung on a delicate chain around her neck.

She dropped to her knees as Peter and the reapers fanned out around her.

“Please,” she begged. “Don’t.”

Brother Peter knelt in front of her. “Why not, my sister? Tell me.”

Her eyes glittered with tears. “We’re so close,” she said. “We can cure this. We’re going to cure it. Please… just give us time. We can save everyone… please believe me.”

“Believe you?” mused the reaper. “My sister, I do believe you. I believe with all my heart that you can cure the plague that has come so close to destroying all human life.”

Her expression softened from abject horror to one of surprised hope. “Then you’ll leave us alone? You won’t hurt us? You won’t wreck everything?”

He set one of his knives down and used that hand to caress her face. It was an act of such gentleness, such tenderness, that the woman actually closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his rough palm.

“I said that I believed you, my sister,” said Brother Peter as he leaned close and rested his cheek on the top of her head. “And may god have mercy on you for the sins you have committed here in this place of blasphemy.”

Her eyes snapped wide.

Not because of his words.

They opened with shock because of the pain. She sagged back from him and looked down at the knife that Peter had buried in her chest.

“May you find forgiveness in the formless eternity of the darkness.”

“All praise to his darkness,” said the others.

Peter looked around at the reapers and then at the machines that filled the room.

“Destroy everything,” he said.

CHAPTER 80

The horror and sadness of what surrounded them was awful. On some level Benny had feared that the answer to the mystery of Sanctuary might be something like this, but he’d never allowed that thought to fully form. Now it was incontrovertible.

“Can you do anything for them?” asked Nix as she shrugged out of her pack.

“We can try,” said McReady, “but some of them… I think some of them have already gone too far over the line.”

However, she stood frozen, as if shocked by her own words and all that they implied.

Benny understood what she meant; he could see it. Some of the infected looked different from the majority of the poor people in the beds. The different ones had paler, grayer skin, and there was a quality missing from their eyes. All the infected had rage and hunger burning in their eyes, but for some that was all there was. Beyond those two things there was a blackness, like the empty shadows at the bottom of a ditch. Whatever indefinable quality that separated infected person from infected zom was gone, consumed by the insatiable appetites of the Reaper Plague.

For the rest, though…

The spark of humanity was still there. Flickering in a dark wind, but there nonetheless.

McReady still stood unmoving.

Then Lilah crossed to her in two quick strides, spun the woman, and slapped her across the face with shocking force. “Do something. Test the drug. Show me that it works before I give it to my town boy. Show me now or I’ll feed you to them.”

It was a vicious threat, and Benny had no doubts at all that Lilah meant it. Joe took a step toward the doctor, and Benny and Nix moved in the same instant and put the tips of their swords against his chest.

“Don’t,” warned Benny.

Joe gently pushed the sword blades aside. “And don’t you forget who your friends are.” To McReady he said, “Lilah gave you an order, Monica — not a request.”

McReady glared hot death at him, but then she snatched the backpack from Nix and hurried over to the bed of a woman who still had the spark of humanity.

“Help me,” said McReady, and Lilah was right there. “Hold her head steady, yes, just like that. I need her mouth open. Good…”

As Lilah followed the directions, McReady took two capsules from the bag and unscrewed them.

“Normally we’d let her swallow the capsules and wait for digestion and absorption through the stomach mucosa… but we don’t have that time. Hold her — she’ll buck. The first dose is painful. The parasites in the body will fight it.”

Lilah’s muscles bunched and flexed, and the woman’s head did not budge at all. McReady poured the powder into the gaping mouth.

“Water,” she called, and Nix was there with a canteen. She dribbled some of the water into the woman’s mouth and then directed Lilah to force the jaws shut.

Immediately the woman began thrashing ten times more frantically than before. Her muscles went rigid as iron, and her body arched and bucked with such force that Lilah had to lie across her to keep her from breaking her own bones. The screams were terrible, the worst Benny had ever heard. High, plaintive, piercing.

“It’s not working,” said Nix. “God, it’s not…”

Suddenly the woman went limp.

It was as quick as a heartbeat. Her body flopped back against the bed and she lay there, staring blindly at the ceiling, her chest rising and falling with alarming rapidity as air puffed in and out between gritted teeth.

They gathered around her bed, fists balled in tension, held breath burning in their chests.

“Come on,” McReady muttered. “Come on… come on…”

Then someone said, “God…”

They all stared.

The voice spoke again.

“God… help me…”

It was the woman.

Wasted, drenched with sweat, covered with her own filth, ragged, and worn to a skeletal thinness.

But it was a person who spoke.

Not a monster.

Joe snapped, “Everyone — two teams. Go.”

It was impossible. It was a task assigned in hell. It was the hardest thing Benny had ever done. But as Joe went through the room and quieted those whose life spark had burned out, the rest of them worked in pairs — Lilah holding patients for McReady, Benny holding for Nix.

It took forever.

Forever… And with every second Benny thought about Chong.

But they got two capsules into the mouths of every remaining person in the room.

Soldiers.

Scientists.

Support staff.

Flight crew.

One hundred and sixty-two people.

It took forever.

But they did it. Lilah kept saying to herself, It works. We can save my town boy. Over and over.

By the time they were finished, Benny could hardly stand. Nix was weeping openly. So were many of the patients.

Archangel was a miracle drug, they all knew that; but Benny had read too many science fiction novels where miraculous cures are instantaneous. He willed the infected to all suddenly snap out of it, for their eyes to clear, and for the thing that dwelled inside them to flee. Not all of them did. For some it was fast, for others amazingly slow. Reality is often harsher than fiction. Slower, and far less satisfying.

For most of the infected the Archangel pills triggered shrieks and convulsions, and it filled their eyes with screaming madness.

“You’re killing them!” Benny yelled.

“Shut up,” said McReady. “It’s the parasites — they are programmed to defend themselves.”

A few of the patients sagged back into panting semiconsciousness. Some turned aside and wept into their pillows, as if ashamed of the dark thoughts that had set up court in their heads. Some stared fixedly at the ceiling as if frozen in time.

Some died.

Benny began to untie one of the treated patients, but McReady stopped him, warning that a relapse, though unlikely, was possible. Observation for several hours would be needed.

They gathered around the bed of one of the worst cases. A soldier who screamed and thrashed and finally collapsed back, his eyes and mouth open, his chest suddenly silent. McReady snatched up a medical chart that hung on a hook at the end of his bed. “This soldier was bitten on patrol. Looks like he was already pretty far gone when they gave him the metabolic stabilizer.”

“Is he dead?” asked Lilah in a frightened voice.

“Yes.”

“We killed him,” breathed Nix.

McReady looked sad. “He had almost transitioned to a reanimate. All the parasitic eggs in his system must have hatched. The strain… it was simply too much for him, and his heart gave out.”

She examined the other fatalities.

“This one had a preexisting heart condition,” she said, reading another chart. “And this one looks like she had a stroke.”

Lilah said, “What about Chong? Will this… I mean will Archangel…?”

The doctor shook her head. “There’s no way to tell. It’s going to be different for every infected person. There will always be a risk.”

She sighed and rubbed her tired eyes.

“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I need to sit down and—”

“No!” growled Lilah as she grabbed a bag of capsules and glared at McReady. “We have to find my town boy. Right now.”

CHAPTER 81

Brother Peter entered a long, dismal chamber lined on both sides with iron-barred cells. All the cells were empty save one. The thing in the cage glared out at him from behind strings of matted black hair. His eyes were dark and bottomless. Pale lips curled back to reveal wet teeth.

“Hello, little brother,” he said. “Why do they have you in here? What sin have you committed that they’ve locked you away like an animal?”

The thing in the cage growled. It was an animal sound with no trace of humanity. There were gnawed bones on the floor, and its metal water dish was battered and twisted.

“Looks like he’s about to cross over,” observed one of the Red Brothers. “You want to leave him or let him go?”

The creature in the cage murmured a single word. “Hungry…”

“Still alive,” said the Red Brother.

“Then he’s still a sinner,” said Brother Peter as he turned to leave. “Send him into the darkness. Do it quickly, then bring the rest of the Red Brothers. I want to make sure that the sinners in the medical center have been dealt with.”

The reaper nodded and bowed as Brother Peter left.

There was a ring of keys on the wall, and the reaper fetched them and tried several before finding the one that unlocked the right cell. He drew a long knife and opened the cell door.

“Best to just let it happen, little brother,” said the reaper. “All your pain will be over soon.”

Screams filled the whole cell block.

CHAPTER 82

“The holding cells are right through here,” said Joe as he led the way.

“Why’d they put the boy in the cells?” asked McReady. “There were three or four beds left upstairs.”

“They didn’t want us to see that the whole staff was infected,” said Nix.

Joe nodded. “You know Jane Reid, Monica. She’s addicted to secrets.”

He turned the last corner and suddenly stopped dead as if he’d struck a wall. Then he took two clumsy steps backward.

Benny and Nix stared in abject horror. They all stared at Joe.

At his stomach.

“No…,” whispered McReady.

A knife was buried nearly to the hilt in Joe Ledger’s stomach. Blood pumped out of the wound and poured down the front of the ranger’s body.

A figure stepped out of the side passage.

Grimm barked in fear and surprise.

Nix screamed.

It was Brother Peter.

The right hand of Saint John.

Except for the saint himself, he was the most dangerous of the Night Church’s army of killers. An unsmiling monster with the face of an angel. A master killer.

The hallway behind him was crowded with reapers, who each had red handprints tattooed on their faces.

“R-run…,” cried Joe in a voice that was little more than a whisper. He dropped to his knees and his rifle clattered to the ground. “For God’s sake… run….”

CHAPTER 83

Grimm tensed to lunge, but Joe snaked out a restraining hand and clung to the dog. There were too many of the reapers. They would butcher the mastiff. But Grimm snarled and thrashed, incensed by the smell of fresh blood, craving carnage and revenge.

Brother Peter looked at them all and nodded to himself.

“I saw you little birds fly away in that big black machine,” he said softly. “Then I heard you come back. I thought my trick hadn’t worked.”

“What trick?” demanded Benny. Then he got it. “Your ultimatum… that was fake?”

“A necessary lie. I wanted you to take this sinner away from here.” He spat on Ledger, who huddled groaning and bleeding on the floor. “We didn’t want him here when we moved on Sanctuary. We knew what he was searching for and how desperately he wanted to find it. So we gave him a few useful little clues.” He pointed a finger at McReady. “But we did want her. We wanted you and this sinner to go find her and bring her back. You’ve been so resourceful that I had no doubt at all that you’d rescue the doctor and bring her — and her blasphemous cures — to me. And you have.”

He did not smile, but cruel lights danced in his eyes. He was enjoying this.

Benny looked past him. The men with him were huge, and they were all armed. Lilah and Nix’s guns were still in their holsters. The only way they’d have time and a chance to draw those guns was if he used himself as a shield to buy them two seconds. Would he last that long?

Benny was sure that Brother Peter would cut him down. He had no illusions about being able to beat this man. Would dying to slow Peter down be worth the sacrifice?

If Nix and Lilah couldn’t kill Peter and at least half the big reapers with bullets, then they would have no chance at all with their blades. It was a terrible moment, and Benny racked his mind to find some way out of it. What would a samurai do in this situation? What was the warrior-smart thing to do?

Joe coughed and rolled away from them, curling his body into a ball, face to the wall. Blood pooled under him.

“Odd,” said Brother Peter to the fallen ranger, “but we were all so frightened of you. You are the closest thing to a boogeyman that we reapers have.”

Joe said nothing. His body twitched and shuddered.

“Turn him over,” said Brother Peter to his men. “It’s fitting that he see how futile are the sins he has committed.”

Grimm lowered his head and kept uttering a menacing growl.

“Why can’t you leave us alone?” asked Nix. “Why is it that people like you always think they can force everyone to do what they want?”

Brother Peter placed one hand on his chest, fingers splayed. “I am a servant of god,” he said. “I do his will. I don’t want you to do anything.”

“Then let us go.”

A few of the reapers chuckled, but Brother Peter snapped at them. “No, my brothers. Don’t mock her — she’s young and doesn’t understand. None of them do — except for this fallen sinner and that great blasphemer there.” He pointed to Dr. McReady. “She understands.”

“How do you even know who she is?” asked Benny.

“I met her in the same way you did, little brother,” said Peter. “As a picture in a book. A book you stole from one of my reapers.”

“The Teambook…”

“My reaper was on the way to the wreck to plant it near the plane, where Ledger could find it, but instead he met you. That was a very fortunate encounter, and my reaper had been given several contingencies. Either plant the evidence for Ledger to find; or kill anyone from Sanctuary who comes near the shrine and plant the book among their possessions. You provided another alternative — killing the reaper, and that only made the story more plausible. You took the book back to Sanctuary. How perfect. It couldn’t have worked better if you’d rehearsed it. Then that bit of staged drama by the ravine. If you hadn’t gone after Sergeant Ortega, you would eventually have found another set of those coordinates. There are four sets, all carefully planted. It was inevitable that you find one, so we watched and waited and adapted our plan to what you sinners did.”

Benny felt sick, but at the same time none of this truly surprised him. Tom had always warned against coincidences, and now he understood why.

McReady said, “Look, mister, I don’t really know who you are, but I know enough about the Night Church. You think that we’re acting against your god’s will by trying to preserve life. But everything I learned as a doctor, every oath I took, was to preserve life, to hold all life as sacred. How is that a sin? How is acting according to my beliefs a sin, even if they’re different from yours?”

“Because your oaths were made to a false god,” said Brother Peter.

It was a pointless argument and everyone knew it. The reapers would not be swayed from their beliefs — if they could, they never would have invaded this facility. They were too deeply entrenched in their hatred of life.

“You’re going to kill them all, aren’t you?” said McReady flatly. “The people in the infirmary… you’re really going to slaughter them.”

“We are going to release them from their torment,” corrected Brother Peter.

“No—I’ve released them. I’ve given them the cure. They’re going to get well. Most of them, anyway. They don’t have to die now. You can’t just kill a bunch of sick people while they’re tied to their beds. It’s inhuman….”

“It’s the mercy of Thanatos….”

“All praise to his darkness,” echoed the reapers.

“But if their bonds are what’s troubling you, don’t worry,” continued Peter. “We’ll cut them loose so they can freely accept the kiss of the knives and the forgiveness of the darkness. Just as we released the thousands imprisoned on this side of the trench above us. We set all captives free.” He pointed back the way the reapers had come. “We even found a lonely wretch in a solitary cage back there and set him free — in both body and spirit.”

“You what…?” said Benny, looking past Brother Peter.

“In a cage?” echoed Lilah, her face going pale. “Chong—?”

“I’m afraid he was unable to tell me his name. I left one of my reapers to unlock his chains so he could go unfettered into the darkness that waits for us all.”

The scream that filled the hallway was terrifying. It was torn from such a deep place, such a shattered and broken place, that it lacked any trace of personality or language or humanity. It did not — could not — have come from a human throat.

And yet it did.

Lilah shoved Nix aside and leaped at Brother Peter, driving the spear through the air toward his heart. It was such a murderous blow that it would have torn a red hole straight through his body.

But Brother Peter was not there.

He moved so quickly that his body seemed to melt out of the way of the spear. Instead Lilah’s spear killed the reaper behind him, punching through stomach and spine and driving the man down to the floor.

Brother Peter lashed out with his empty hand; it caught Lilah on the side of the face and drove her to her knees. The impact was terrible, and anyone else would have collapsed there and then, but the rage in Lilah was too hot, the grief too awful. She dove at Peter’s legs, wrapping her arms around them and bowling him over. He fell, a cry of genuine surprise bursting from his mouth.

Benny snapped out of his shock at the same moment the reapers did. Two of them darted in to help Brother Peter, but Benny’s kami katana flashed and slashed, and the hands slapped against Lilah’s back but they were no longer attached to the reaching arms. Jets of red splashed the struggling figures.

In an instant the hallway was a circus of murder and mayhem.

“Grimm,” croaked Joe weakly, “hit, hit, hit!”

Reapers with axes and swords ran forward to try and kill Joe — the man they all feared — but Grimm met their charge. Benny had a split second’s view of heavy weapons chopping down and heard the heavy clang of knife edges against armor, the yelp of a dog, the scream of a man. Then he had no more time to do anything but fight.

Benny whirled and kicked one of the screaming reapers so that he fell backward into the knot of others; and Benny lunged again, thrusting his blade in and in again, first on one side of the man and then the other. Two reapers shrieked as red mouths opened in their chests.

Then the others surged forward, shoving the dying men at Benny, using them to block as they advanced. Suddenly Nix was there with Dojigiri, and the ancient blade cut low and high and low again, savagely slashing across knees and thighs.

In a wider hallway the reapers would have already won, but the confines of the narrow hallway made it impossible for the killers to surround them. Nix and Benny fought side by side, slashing the way a samurai does — not chopping with muscle but stroking the long length of their katanas, using the smooth draw of the edge to make the steel bite deep. Somewhere — a million miles away — Dr. McReady was screaming.

Benny was vaguely aware of Lilah and Peter rolling over and over on the bloody ground. The reapers of the Red Brotherhood surged forward, and suddenly it seemed as if the world was full of knives. He and Nix blocked and parried and retreated, fighting with all their skill simply to stay alive. These killers had rebounded from their immediate shock, and now Benny could understand why they were the elite of the Night Church. Each one of them was a superb fighter; any one of them might be enough to beat the two teenagers with swords and end things right here and now.

He caught a glimpse of Grimm. The dog was still on his feet, still fighting, his armor splashed with blood. Men, none of them whole, lay on the ground around him. A reaper had picked up Lilah’s spear and was trying to kill the mastiff with it. Grimm ran and jumped at him, propelling his two hundred and fifty pounds and forty pounds of spiked armor into the air. The reaper fell backward — and his body seemed to fly apart.

McReady’s screams took a sharper, higher note as something slammed into the back of the last reaper in the hallway. Something that bore him to the ground with such ferocity that the man’s head smashed against the stone floor. Something that leaped like a mad ape at the next man in line and tore at his throat with broken fingernails and strong teeth. Something that roared and howled and growled out a single terrifying word.

“HUNGRY!”

The Red Brothers turned.

Benny and Nix stared.

Grimm barked in fear.

The creature bared bloody teeth at them.

Nix was the only one who could find her voice.

“Chong!”

CHAPTER 84

Brother Peter was locked in a death struggle with Lilah, but he managed to shout an order to his startled men.

“Kill it!”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Yes, it snapped everyone out of their shocked tableau; but it switched the focus of the fight to the wrong place for a fraction of a second too long.

As the reapers lunged forward to subdue the savage monster that was Chong, they momentarily forgot Benny and Nix.

Tom Imura’s young samurai made them pay for that inattention.

Without a word, without even a shared look of agreement, Benny and Nix attacked. Their blades whipped and slashed with all the speed they could muster, all the skill they possessed, all the rage that burned in their hearts. They did not try for killing blows. That required more time than this fragile moment of opportunity offered. Instead they cut at tendons and muscle, across the backs of knees and the backs of arms. Men and weapons crumpled. Screams filled the corridor, the echoes punching the struggling figures from every direction.

Benny heard a meaty thud, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Lilah pitch sideways, reeling away from Brother Peter’s vicious punch. It was the second blow he’d delivered, and tough as she was, Lilah was still a teenage girl, while Brother Peter was an adult man in the full prime of his physical strength. She rolled against the wall, dazed and bleeding from nose and left ear.

Grimm attacked the knot of reapers from the side, slamming sideways against them to use his shoulder spikes. The Red Brothers stabbed at him and broke their blades on his armor.

A few yards away Brother Peter staggered to his feet. He was bloody and panting. One eye was puffed nearly shut, and there was a ragged bite mark on his cheek from when Lilah had savagely bitten him. He had a long, shallow cut across his chest that caused the whole front of his shirt to hang down, exposing muscles that were sharply defined beneath bloody skin. For all those injuries, however, the young reaper seemed unconcerned. He still held one short knife, and as he rose he drew another from a concealed pocket inside his clothes.

Reapers screamed as they were caught between the savagery of Chong’s feral attack and the whistling blades of Dojigiri and the kami katana. The surviving reapers were fighting back to back, trying to use their blades to stop the longer steel, but now they were on the defensive.

Grimm raced along the wall toward Brother Peter, but the reaper deftly sidestepped and kicked the dog in the side. Even with the armor, the kick was powerful enough to knock the mastiff into the wall, where he lay winded and whining.

With a snarl of annoyance, Brother Peter waded into the fight, blocking Nix’s blade with one knife and slashing at her with the other. Blood erupted from amid the freckles on Nix’s cheek, the slash bisecting the scar that ran from her hairline to her jaw.

Nix cried out in pain and retreated, cutting with redoubled speed, but everywhere her sword went, Brother Peter’s knives were there to deflect it. He moved so fast that it looked like he had eight arms. Metal rang on metal as he drove Nix back.

Benny wanted to jump in to help her, but the other reapers renewed their attack, forcing him back. Other killers surrounded Chong.

Suddenly a shot rang out and one of the reapers went spinning away, blood erupting from a hole in his throat.

For an irrational moment Benny thought it was Joe Ledger, but the ranger had only managed to get to his hands and knees and was leaning against the wall, gasping like a fish on a riverbank.

The shock of the gunfire temporarily stopped the fight in the hallway. The reapers backed away from Chong, uncertain of what was happening; and Chong scuttled away from them, bleeding, glaring, and confused.

A figure raced up from behind Dr. McReady, grabbed the scientist, shoved her away from all the fighting, and fired two more shots. Reapers dodged and yelled, and one of them fell with a wound in his shoulder. The newcomer wore a military uniform that was torn and bloodstained, and she had a wild look in her eyes.

Colonel Jane Reid.

She fired another shot and a reaper clutched his chest and fell, but then the slide locked back on Colonel Reid’s pistol.

Brother Peter saw this and dodged Nix’s cuts and ran at Reid, eyes blazing.

In a freakish way Benny could understand the reaper’s rage. Colonel Reid was the commander of Sanctuary, and this whole place stood as a symbol of everything the Night Church wanted to destroy. Killing her must be to Brother Peter what killing one of the archdukes of hell would have been for a crusading knight of old.

Benny stepped into the reaper’s path, his sword raised.

“Stop!”

If Brother Peter was impressed in any way by Benny and his sword, he did not show it. He merely looked impatient. Benny shuffled backward to keep his body between the reaper and the colonel.

“No,” he said.

All the fighting in the hallway stopped. Even Chong hung back, his body hunched like an ape’s, his eyes feral and watchful, bloody teeth bared.

Brother Peter stopped.

“If it is your wish to die a hero, boy,” he said, “then I will oblige you.”

“That’s not how it’s going to be.”

“Ah,” said the reaper, “is this the point where you make a lovely speech about how we can all walk away with our lives intact? Will you offer me and mine safe passage out of here if we leave you and these other sinners alive? Is that what this is?”

“No,” said Benny. Despite the shadows the hallway seemed bright. All sounds were so clear and distinct. If his body trembled with fear, at that moment Benny couldn’t feel it.

“Or,” said Brother Peter, looking coldly amused, “are you going to play the hero and challenge me to a winner-take-all duel? Two champions fighting for our separate causes. It’s very grand, but—”

“Not really.”

The reaper’s eyes darkened. “Then what is it? Did you simply want everyone to watch your great death scene?”

Grimm, who had finally struggled to his feet, uttered a long, low growl.

“No,” Benny said again. He licked his lips. “This isn’t a grandstand play, and it’s not a scene from a storybook. This is me, Benny Imura, just a kid from a small town, telling you that I’m going to kill you. Right here, right now.”

Brother Peter shook his head. “Why is it that you people can’t understand that we crave death — all death, including our own. Why do you persist in trying to unnerve us with threats?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” said Benny. “I don’t really care if you want to die or not. I don’t care if killing you is like giving you a puppy on your birthday. I don’t really care about anything, you big freak. I’m just telling you that I’m going to kill you.”

Brother Peter raised his arms out to his sides, as Saint John so often did in the moment before he taught another blasphemer the error of his presumptions. “Then go ahead, little sinner. If you think you can kill me… then kill me.”

Benny Imura looked into the dead eyes of this master killer.

“Sure,” he said.

And he attacked.

CHAPTER 85

Tom once told Benny this about fighting: “Pit two amateurs against each other and the fight will go on all day. They’ll break a lot of furniture and they’ll bloody each other up a bit, but at the end of it, no one’s likely to get badly hurt. However, in a fight between two experts — two people with some skill and a real determination to kill each other — then it’s all over in a second or two. Sportsmen duel, killers kill.”

It was all over in two fractured halves of one second.

In the first half of that second…

Brother Peter parried Benny’s sword with one knife, spun off the point of impact, and drove the other knife into Benny’s back. The blade tore through the tough body armor and skittered along the back of his rib cage, exploding a fireball of alien heat in Benny’s body.

But Benny was not shocked by the pain. Or the damage.

He was not surprised by being stabbed.

He expected it.

He’d planned for it.

Brother Peter was too good to be defeated in such a duel. Maybe Tom, at the top of his game, might have done it. Maybe a younger and faster Joe Ledger might have. But no one in that hallway — not Nix or Lilah, not Grimm, not Chong, or Colonel Reid even if she had more bullets — none of them could ever beat Brother Peter.

Benny knew that Brother Peter would parry his attack because Peter was expecting the attack. Benny knew the reaper would stab him, because Peter was too good not to. So Benny attacked and was parried, and he was stabbed. And he was ready for all that. His first move was a big, fast kirioroshi, a downward cut. His raised arms gave Brother Peter something to block but also kept the killer’s knives away from his own throat.

In the last half of that one second…

As the blade chunked into his back, Benny pivoted in place. A sloppy move filled with agony, but perfect in its selection. It used the force of the stabbing knife to power the turn as Benny swung his sword between himself and Brother Peter. A yoko-giri, a tight lateral cut that cleaved the air between them.

Except that there was not enough distance for the sword to pass unhindered.

Brother Peter was too close.

Too close to avoid that blade.

Too close to escape the moment and all its red truths.

The sword drew a line through both of the reaper’s biceps, and through the flat plates of the man’s pectoral muscles, and grated along the bones in his chest, grooving the sternum so deeply that it collapsed inward. Brother Peter coughed as those jagged bones did awful work inside his body.

The kami katana flew from Benny’s hands as he staggered past the point of impact. He managed a single reflexive step before the pain drove him down to his knees. He fell against Colonel Reid, who — like everyone else — stared in abject horror at what had just happened.

The second came and went, and in its wake there was wreckage that would last forever.

Brother Peter stood for a moment longer. The stern, unlined face of the man who had never smiled now wore its first smile. A bemused smile, as he looked down at his chest and saw the red mouth that stretched all the way across his body. He dropped to his knees with such force that the sound of bone on concrete was like gunshots.

Benny turned and looked at him. They were only three feet apart, both of them on their knees.

“You — you haven’t won,” said Brother Peter in a voice that was wet and trembling.

There was a sound — the sharp, harsh, metallic sound of someone working the bolt of a machine gun — and Benny saw Joe Ledger, still bleeding, his face gray with pain, leaning against the far wall. His weapon was in his hands, barrel pointed at the remaining reapers.

“Yes, we have,” said Benny, and his voice was firmer than he thought it would be. He expected to speak in a dying whisper, but the lights in his head were not going out. Not yet. “We have a cure now. We win.”

The reaper sneered at him, blood dribbling from between his lips. “Take your… cure… see if it will save… anyone…”

His words were torn apart by a fit of coughing that sent him crashing to the stones. He fell over and stared at Benny with glazing eyes, but his lips still moved. Despite the agony in his own body, Benny crawled to him and bent to listen.

“Your sins… are already… paid for…,” wheezed Brother Peter. “Even now… Saint John and our… army… are closing in on your… home.”

“Home? What are you talking about?”

Brother Peter was fading quickly, the lights burning out in his eyes. “Mountainside will burn.”

With that smile still on his lips, the reaper sagged back and seemed to settle against the cold stone. Benny wanted to grab him, to shake life back into him, to force him to live another moment longer so he could make sense of what he’d just said.

Mountainside will burn.

It was insane, impossible. How could the reapers know about Mountainside? Then he thought of the slip of paper he’d found that showed how many reapers were already in California. Two armies… one of forty-five hundred and another with over nineteen thousand of the killers. Already in California.

And they knew the name of Benny’s hometown.

They knew about Mountainside.

God…

How could his town defend itself? And with what? A tiny town watch and some fence guards? A frail chain-link fence?

Against an army of twenty-four thousand killers?

Suddenly Benny felt himself falling over.

He felt hands catching him. Women hovered over him.

Dr. McReady.

Colonel Reid.

They were both speaking at once, shouting, calling his name, yelling at each other.

Then the sound of gunfire drowned it all out.

Benny saw reapers trying to fight their way to Brother Peter; saw them suddenly jerk to a stop and dance like marionettes on the strings of a madman, their twitches and jumps purposeless. As they fell, their bodies riddled with bullet holes, Benny saw Lilah and Chong facing each other, both of them crouching like animals.

He bared his teeth at her.

She bared hers at him.

Chong attacked, pouncing like a panther; but the Lost Girl moved into the attack, slapping his head to one side, wrapping a muscular brown arm around his throat, bearing him to the ground, wrestling him, pinning him, screaming and screaming a single word that Benny fought to understand.

“Pills! PILLS!”

Nix stood there, torn between rushing to her and rushing to Benny.

Benny managed to raise one arm and made a pushing gesture toward Lilah.

She needs you, he wanted to say. Chong needs you. Help them.

Grimm stood by Joe Ledger, who had collapsed into a limp sprawl.

Benny tried to say something that would make sense of this moment.

He needed to tell Joe and Nix and Lilah about what Brother Peter had whispered to him.

Mountainside will burn.

But when he opened his mouth, all he could do was scream.

Then a hand of darkness wrapped its cold fingers around him and closed them into a fist.