Fire & Ash

CHAPTER 97

In three days and three hours Saint John brought the army of the Night Church to the gates of Mountainside.

After the battle of Haven, his army counted out to thirty-eight thousand reapers on foot, two hundred and ten on quads, and one hundred and forty-two members of his elite Red Brotherhood. The forests behind and around them teemed with flocks of the gray people. The handlers worked in teams, using supersonic calls from dog whistles to keep them from scattering. Many of them were well fed now, and their ranks had swelled from the thousands who had gone into the darkness at Haven.

He stood in the shade of the tall trees and looked across a broad field to the town that cowered behind a chain-link fence. There were guard towers, and Saint John could see people in them. There were other people behind the fence. Many of them. Some wore red sashes. Saint John knew that most or all of them would have guns.

That was fine.

Everything was fine.

As he stepped out into the field, the forest erupted with bodies who followed. The reapers of the Night Church, all of them armed with blades — knives, axes, swords, and spears. They moved into the sunlight in their thousands, standing in lines that stretched half a mile on either side of him like impossibly huge wings.

Six of Saint John’s chief aides walked with him, three on either side. They all had dabs of jelly smeared on their upper lips. As did Saint John. Pots of the mint gel were being passed among the ranks of reapers.

Saint John stopped thirty yards onto the field.

The place stank.

It was an appalling olio of smells too. Some of it was rotting flesh — but that was everywhere. There was also the stink of ashes from a massive fire pit north of the town where trash and the dead were burned. But the strongest smell was that of bleach. The field had been soaked in it.

“Why did they do that?” asked one of his aides.

“An attempt at chemical warfare, I suppose,” said Saint John. “It’s caustic. If they can hold us on this side of the fence for any length of time, then the vapors will make us sick.”

But he laughed at the worried expressions on the faces of his aides.

“That’s a chain-link fence,” he said. “Not a castle wall. And see? Their earthworks are not even finished.”

There were haphazard mounds of dirt all along the fence line, but they hadn’t been molded into barriers. It was a last-minute attempt that they’d been unable to finish. Perhaps they’d abandoned the effort in favor of soaking the ground with bleach instead.

“At least they tried,” he mused. “For their own pride, they have to go down trying. We’ve seen it in one way or another in every single town.”

And they had. One town had tried to stall them with a stampede of beef cattle. Another had used oxen to drag in enough wrecked cars to build a metal wall. And there had been a town that was built high among the trees. There had been moats, and earthworks, and even deadfalls filled with sharpened bamboo spikes. So many kinds of defense, so much effort.

Every one of those towns had burned.

The knives of the reapers had drunk deep on every street and in every house.

Saint John called for a quartermaster and gave instructions that every man and woman tie rags around their noses and mouths. With the mint gel killing the stink of the bleach and the rags protecting the lungs, everything would be addressed except the eyes. And what would happen there? The reapers’ eyes would tear. They would weep for the sinners in whose flesh they opened the red mouths.

How poetic that was.

How appropriate. The army of god wept in pity and in joy as they released the sinners from a world of iniquity into the purity of the eternal darkness.

It would create a wonderful legend, and legends are always useful.

He tied a cloth around his own mouth and nose and walked slowly forward. His aides walked a half step behind him. The sunlight made the red-hand tattoos on their faces glow like freshly spilled blood.

The field was a mess, the grass withered and dead from the bleach, the soil muddy and cut with a thousand crisscrossing wheel ruts. Saint John recognized those signs too. In several towns — if there was enough advance warning — wagons filled with children, the elderly, and the infirm were sent away. To other towns or to some secure building. Sometimes wagons of treasure were carted off as well by people who did not understand the nature of the glory that awaited them. But once the town fell, there would be plenty of time to follow each set of wheel tracks to whatever “safe” place they led to. Knives would be drawn there as well, and the red mouths would cry out in joy at the release offered by the reapers of god.

It was always the same. Even the iterations and variations were becoming commonplace.

Saint John was content in that. With each mystery that became a known quantity, a known tactic, his army became more confident, and the end result of god’s total dominion over a silent earth became that much more assured.

With his Red Brothers in tow, Saint John walked half the distance between the trees and the fence line.

And there he stopped. His eyes did not burn as much as he’d expected, and that was good.

He waited for almost five full minutes. He was a patient man, and this was part of the drama. Part of the legend.

He also knew that the longer this part took — the longer the heretics in the town made him wait out here like a tradesman at a side door — the angrier his reapers became. Once, when he was made to wait for two hours, the killing in the town was particularly brutal. Perhaps it would be here as well. His men had marched long and hard through desert and drought-stricken lands to reach these towns. Every moment of privation, every aching muscle, every skipped meal stoked the fires in the hearts of the thousands of reapers who waited in the woods. The people in this town already had a terrible day ahead of them. But if they made him wait too long, they would learn that even a terrible day could get very much worse.

Finally the gate opened.

People began coming out. They did not advance toward him, but instead fanned out along the fence line. And except for one figure in the middle, all the others wore red sashes. Saint John wondered what the sash represented. Was it a variation of a white flag?

The figure without the sash glanced at the people on either side of him, and even from that distance Saint John could see him take a breath to steady himself. His shoulders rose and fell.

Then a small group began walking toward him.

Within a few paces it became apparent that these were not town elders. Not sheriffs or the leaders of a town watch.

They were children.

Teenagers.

One boy walked in front. His hair was clipped very short, and he had a vaguely Japanese cast to his eyes. To his left and slightly behind were two other boys — one Chinese and the other white; to his right were three girls — a tall girl with white hair, a very short girl with wild red curls, and a girl with no hair at all.

“Sister Margaret,” breathed one of his aides.

Saint John studied the teenagers. He did not know the Chinese boy or the large white boy, nor did he know the white-haired girl. But the red-haired girl he recognized. His lip curled back in anger. She and the half-Japanese boy had been in the forest near Sanctuary. The boy was nothing to the saint, but the girl had had the cosmic effrontery to call herself Nyx — the name of the mother of Thanatos, all praise to his darkness. At first Saint John had believed her to be an actual physical manifestation of the mother of his god, and thought she might have been clothed in flesh in order to provide some kind of spiritual test for him. But in the end she was nothing more than a sinner whose flesh cried out for the purification of pain.

Saint John caressed the handle of his favorite knife, which was hidden beneath the folds of his shirt. His aides sensed his mood and shifted restlessly.

When the heretics were ten feet away, Saint John pointed to the teen with the Japanese eyes. “I know you, boy.”

The teen stopped, and the others stopped a few feet behind him. Except for the large white boy and Sister Margaret — the blasphemer who insisted on being called Riot — the others wore military-style bulletproof vests, with similar pads on their arms and legs. It made them look like black insects. Like cockroaches. However, they all had good knives strapped to their waists or thighs. The girls all wore gun belts. The Chinese boy had a compound bow and a quiver of arrows. The red-haired witch and the lead boy both wore katanas, positioned for fast draws. The Chinese boy carried something in his hand, an old-style megaphone, the kind that ran on batteries. Saint John was mildly impressed — working batteries were exceptionally rare.

“Show your manners,” said Saint John, pulling the cloth from his mouth. “Name yourselves.”

The boy cleared his throat. He gave a formal Asian-style bow, low and deferential.

“My name is Benjamin Imura,” he said. “Brother of Tom Imura, samurai of the Nine Towns.” He wiped away tears caused by the stinging chemical vapors.

The saint smiled and nodded. It was a very nice title and presentation.

“I am Saint John of the Knife, chief priest of the Night Church and sworn servant of the Lord Thanatos, all praise to his darkness.”

The boy bowed again in acknowledgment. The others took his cue and also bowed.

Saint John found that he liked this young man. He had manners, and that was rare in these troubled times.

“Do you know why I am here?” asked the saint.

“Yes, sir,” said Benny. He coughed and wiped more tears from his face.

“Have you come to offer terms for surrender?”

“Would it do any good?” asked the boy. “If we open our gate and let you come in, will you show us mercy?”

Saint John smiled. “The day will end more quickly.”

“Right… meaning we’ll be dead before noon and your guys can take a siesta.”

The smile faded.

“Look,” said Benny, “we both know how this works. You come out here and we talk. What’s it called? A parley? Okay, so we’re parleying. I know what your terms are. Join you or go into the darkness, right? You have seven more towns to pillage, so you probably want a bunch of us to — what’s the expression? Kneel to kiss the knife? Wow… creepy and unsanitary. How do I know where that knife’s been? Point is, some of us get to live if we agree to help you and your reapers slaughter everyone we know. I mean… that is the offer, right? That’s the plan?”

“You are dangerously close to—”

“To what? Seriously, man… what is it you want me to be afraid of? Torture? You’re already going to kill me. I don’t know if it really matters all that much if I spend the last few hours screaming. I’ll still be dead at the end of it. You want to threaten my friends and family? Go ahead… you’re just going to kill them, too.” Benny made a sour face of disapproval. “Maybe nobody’s told you, but offering different kinds of murder isn’t really a terrific sales pitch. Kill me now, kill me later, torture me… in the end all you really want is for us to be afraid of you. You dig the fear. You’re like a vampire, only you suck up the terror and pain. You want us to be afraid of you? Sure. You’re a serial killer psycho with an army. Pretty scary.”

“Are you finished?” asked Saint John.

“Why, what have you got?”

“You had a single chance for a peaceful death. The death of the knife. Handled with care and compassion, a blade is a mercy. Like a scalpel, it cuts away the infection of a life lived in sin. I came to offer you the quickest and cleanest of deaths. A single red mouth and you would feel nothing. The darkness would open its arms to enfold you and give you rest.”

“And I blew that with my smart mouth, I know, I get it,” said Benny. “It was kind of my intention.”

“Do you know what the penalty is for your impudence?”

“I have a pretty good guess. Does it involve lots of very fast dead guys with eating disorders?”

The white boy behind him snorted with laughter. The redhead and the Chinese boy were smiling. Saint John wasn’t fooled, though. He could see the fear that turned their eyes glassy and sent lines of cold sweat down their faces.

“The forests behind me are filled with my reapers and with uncounted legions of the dead who—”

“Why do you talk like that?” asked the Chinese boy, speaking for the first time. “Oh, hey, I’m Louis Chong. It’s just that I’m listening to this and I’m wondering why you sometimes talk like you’re in a fantasy novel. You have kind of a Lord of the Rings vibe going on, and it doesn’t really work. I mean, sure you have an actual army, and I guess the zoms are good stand-ins for orcs, but really, man, who uses words like ‘impudence’ and ‘uncounted’?”

“Yes,” said the white-haired girl, “it makes you sound stupid.”

The six teenagers all laughed.

Saint John’s Red Brothers growled in anger and drew their knives.

In the same heartbeat three guns and a bow were pointed at them.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Benny. “We all know that we’re mouthing off to you because we’re scared, and you’re letting us get away with it because you brought knives to a gunfight. Personally, I’d rather go back to the parley. Less flop sweat all around.”

Saint John made a small gesture with his left hand, and the reapers reluctantly sheathed their weapons.

“Oh,” said the redhead as she lowered her gun and slid it back into its holster, “speaking of knives.”

“Right,” said Benny in a bad imitation of having just remembered something. “I’m going to pull a knife and toss it to you. It’s not an attack, so let’s nobody get all weird about it.”

Saint John nodded, curious.

Benny reached around behind his back and slid a long knife from a leather sheath clipped to the back of his belt. He weighed it in his hand for a moment and then tossed it onto the ground in front of the saint.

Saint John recoiled from it as if it was a scorpion.

The Red Brothers gasped.

They all knew that knife.

Saint John picked it up and clutched it to his chest. Then he let out a terrible wail as he sank to his knees in pain and grief. Tears burned in his eyes as he recalled the day he gave this knife to a young man, first of the reapers.

“Peter…” The saint looked up pleadingly at the teenagers. “Where did you get this?”

“Where do you think I got it?” said Benny. “I took it from him after I sent him into the darkness.”

Saint John closed his eyes and bent forward as if the knife had been driven into his stomach.

“Feel that?” asked Riot coldly. “That’s what it feels like to lose someone you love.”

CHAPTER 98

Benny Imura looked at the madman kneeling in the dust.

His nose burned from the chemical vapors that rose from the ground, but he imagined that he could smell Saint John’s fear and pain.

Somewhere, deep in the darkness of his fractured heart, he found he liked it.

And with that realization came the screams of all his other parts. The kid that was lost in those shadows. The son who had quieted his parents. The brother to a fallen hero. The young man who had probably lost the love of his life. The traveler and friend, the climber of trees and the catcher of small, fierce fish. The collector of Zombie Cards and the apple-pie eater. Child and boy, teen and young man. All the many aspects of Benny Imura shouted a warning at him as he savored the pleasure of this evil man’s pain.

How scary are you willing to be in order to take the heart out of an enemy? Are you willing to be the monster in the dark? Are you willing to be the boogeyman of their nightmares?

The ranger had asked those questions.

He should have asked one more.

Are you willing to become a monster to defeat monsters?

But Benny already knew the answers to all those questions.

CHAPTER 99

Benny Imura felt his mouth turn into a sneer of absolute contempt.

“Get up,” he said.

It was not pitched as a request.

It was pitched as an order.

The Red Brothers bristled, their hands flexing on the handles of their knives and axes and swords. Benny shot them a look that told them clearly that their chance would come, but it wasn’t this moment. Those men saw something in Benny’s eyes that ignited flickers of fear in them. They helped Saint John to his feet.

“I will bathe in the blood of everyone you love,” said Saint John, but his voice was hoarse.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” said Benny. He held out his hand toward Chong, who handed him the bullhorn. Benny clicked the button and spoke into it. His voice boomed out, startling him with the towering volume of it. It echoed off the tree line and rolled down the field.

“Listen to me,” he said, speaking slowly and clearly. “My name is Benjamin Imura, and I speak for the people of Mountainside and the other towns. I know who you are and I know what you’ve had to do. Most of you were forced to join the reapers. Most of you don’t want to do the things you’re doing. Murdering innocent people. Killing little kids. I don’t believe that most of you ever wanted to do that, and it probably makes you sick to even think about it. I understand. I’ve done some pretty horrible things myself in order to survive.”

“They won’t listen to you,” said Saint John.

“Sure they will,” said Nix.

“I won’t let you…”

Lilah pointed her pistol at his face.

“Yes you will.”

“Kill me and my reapers will tear you to pieces.”

Lilah shrugged. “So?”

“You’ve been told a bunch of lies,” continued Benny. “You’ve been forced to accept those lies as the truth. But they are lies. Here is the truth. A scientist named Dr. Monica McReady has developed a cure for the Reaper Plague. It’s not perfect, but it works. My friend was infected with an arrow shot by one of your reapers. He got the plague and almost turned, but then Dr. McReady gave him medicine and he’s right here with me.”

Chong raised his bow and waggled it.

“The world hasn’t ended,” shouted Benny. “There is a new government in Asheville. People are reclaiming the world. The mutagen — the red powder you have — is going to wipe out the dead. It makes them faster, but it will also make them decay. In a week your flocks will fall apart. The plague is ending. We’ve survived it. Mankind has survived it. You and me, we’re going to be here when it’s over. That’s what we’ve all prayed for. That’s the grace of God, and it’s the work of good-hearted people. We’re being given a chance to make a new world.”

“You are wasting your breath,” said Saint John. Power was creeping back into his voice, and he still held Brother Peter’s knife.

“We need to end this war,” pleaded Benny. “You need to end this war. Lay down your weapons, tear those angel wings off your clothes, and walk away. On behalf of the Nine Towns I have been authorized to offer a complete and total amnesty. No questions, no punishments. Lay down your weapons and help us rebuild the world instead of helping a psychopath destroy it. Don’t be destroyed by his screwed-up view of the world. Open your eyes. Open your hearts. Be alive!”

None of the reapers moved. They stood in endless rows that faded back into the depths of the forest. No knives fell to the ground.

“I am offering you a chance. One chance. Walk away now… or burn in hell for what you’ve done.”

Benny lowered the megaphone.

Saint John smiled through his tears. “And you accuse me of being dramatic. ‘Burn in hell’?”

“I was in the moment,” said Benny, and he smiled too.

Neither smile held any warmth. Neither smile held a flicker of humanity.

“I’ll see you bleed,” said Saint John.

“I’ll see you in hell,” said Benny Imura.

Benny and his friends turned and walked away.

CHAPTER 100

As benny and his friends walked toward the gate, he studied the faces of the Freedom Riders who waited for them. Solomon Jones was there, and beside him was a tall dark-skinned woman with a Mohawk and a matched pair of army bayonets strapped to her thighs — Sally Two-Knives. And dozens of others, some of whom Benny knew from Zombie Cards and the battle of Gameland; some of whom were strangers.

Solomon clapped Benny on the shoulder. “That was some speech.”

“It was my first one,” said Benny, “and it’ll probably be my last. I wanted it to stick.”

Solomon grinned. “It was better than the one I gave to the mayors of the Nine Towns the other night. When I told them what was coming and told them about your plan, they wanted to put me in a straitjacket and give me tranquilizers.”

“Yeah, well.”

“But you should have seen their faces when I told them whose plan this was.” Solomon chuckled. “Little Benny Imura. Half of them didn’t even know Tom had a brother, let alone one who could come up with a plan like this. If there’s anyone left to talk about this, then believe me… people will think you’re absolutely out of your mind.”

“He was born crazy,” observed Morgie. “He’s been losing ground ever since.”

“Nice to know I’m among friends,” said Benny. “Shame none of ’em are mine.”

“That ‘walk away’ part of your speech was nice,” said Sally. “You cribbed that from what Tom said before we blew Gameland into orbit.”

“As I remember,” said Chong, “it didn’t work then, either.”

“You had to say it, though,” said Nix, coming to Benny’s defense. “You have to give people a chance.”

No one replied to that. It was a hopeful statement, but hope seemed to be lying dead somewhere out in the Ruin. For Benny, hope had died with a little girl back at Sanctuary. He looked for some inside his heart, but all he found there was a dark and murderous rage.

They passed through the gates. Benny turned to watch the guards pull it shut.

“God…,” he murmured. He looked around. Mountainside looked like it always looked. And after today he knew for sure that he’d never see it again.

“Benny…?”

He turned at the sound of her voice.

“You have to go, Nix,” he said. “There’s still time.”

She shook her head. “I can’t go.”

Benny felt his heart tearing in half. “Please, Nix… I can’t do this if you’re here. I can’t.”

“You have to,” she said. “We have to.”

Benny suddenly reached for her and pulled her close and clung to her. “Nix, please go,” he begged, his voice breaking into sobs. “Please don’t make me kill you, too.”

She started crying too. He could feel the heat of her, even through their body armor, even through the fear. She was so alive, and she deserved to go on living. Someone had to.

“Nix… please…”

She looked up at him with her green eyes. Her freckles were dark, the scars on her face livid.

“Benny,” she said softly, thickly, “I’m a samurai too.”

“Nix…”

“I won’t leave you,” she said, shaking her head stubbornly. “I won’t.”

He leaned his forehead against hers and they stood there, weeping, while all around them the town they grew up in prepared to die.

“Benny… Nix…,” said a voice, and they turned to see Morgie there. “They’re coming.”

Benny drew a breath and stepped back from Nix. He fisted the tears from his eyes and nodded. Nix sniffed back her tears. She nodded too.

Lilah, Chong, and Riot stood a few feet away.

“This is it,” said Benny. “They let me make the big speech out there because this was my crazy plan. But I wanted to say something else to you guys. First… I told Nix and I’m telling you, there’s still time to leave. You can follow the goat path up the mountain. Or you can go out the north gate on the quads. There’s enough fuel to get you at least a couple of miles down—”

“Don’t,” said Chong. “You know we’re not leaving. My family got out, that’s all I care about.”

Neither of them admitted the reality of that comment. Wagonloads of people had left. Thousands went on foot toward the next town. Only fighters were left here. If everything went wrong, then the reapers would follow the trail north and destroy that town, and the next, and the next. Distance couldn’t guarantee safety anymore. Only an end to the reapers could do it, and that would happen here or it wouldn’t happen at all.

The odds were that it wouldn’t happen, though. The odds were in favor of the Chongs, and everyone else, being hunted down by killers — alive and dead.

Benny turned to Lilah and Riot. “This isn’t even your town….”

“It ain’t about the town, son,” said Riot. “Excuse me for saying it, but I don’t give a rat’s hairy bee-hind about this town or any other town. I want to see that smug bastard and all his minions burn.”

“ ‘Minions,’ ” echoed Morgie. “Nice.”

There were shouts from the wall. “They’re coming! God… it’s the runners! They’re coming.”

Benny said, “Look, if we do this, then we’re not going to be the same people afterward. This is the line that Captain Ledger was talking about. We’re about to become monsters.”

“No,” said Chong, “that’s a myth; it’s a lie of bad logic. People who don’t understand, who haven’t seen what we’ve seen, say that if you use violence in defense, then you’re just the same as the people who attacked you, that you’re just as bad. But it’s not true. If they hadn’t started this, we’d never have thought this up. Benny — I grew up with you, I know how that weird little mind of yours works. If Saint John and Brother Peter and Mother Rose and all those maniacs hadn’t started a holy war, all you’d be thinking about would be Zombie Cards, fishing for trout, and what Nix looks like in tight jeans. Don’t even try to deny it.”

Despite everything, Nix blushed and Benny grinned.

“These people want to kill everything that we love.” Chong looked at Riot. “You want to talk about a line? They raided Sanctuary and slaughtered monks who never did anything but help everyone they met, and they killed sick people who couldn’t even lift a hand to defend themselves. And they murdered all those little children. Like Eve — they murdered Eve. There is no line, Benny. We’re not like them. If we’re risking our souls here, it’s to make sure that kind of wholesale slaughter doesn’t keep happening. I’m not saying we’re heroes… but we’re not like them.”

Morgie clapped him on the back and then held out his hand, palm down in the center of their circle. “Maybe I haven’t been with you guys through all that, but I’ve got your back right here, right now. Tom taught us to be samurai. He taught us to fight… so let’s fight. Warrior smart.”

Chong laid his hand atop Morgie’s. “Warrior smart.”

Lilah was next, placing her brown hand over Chong’s. “Warrior smart.”

“I ain’t a samurai,” said Riot, “but I’ve got my own dog in this fight. And I guess this was my war before it was yours. So, yeah… warrior smart.” She placed her hand over Lilah’s.

Tears still streamed down Nix’s face. “All that time I was writing down how to survive and how to fight in my journal, I thought it was to build and protect something. I didn’t think it was to destroy… but I guess we don’t always get to choose our wars. I love you all. Warrior smart.”

Benny was the last to reach out, and he placed his palm over Nix’s. Her fingers were icy from terror.

“I know Tom would think we’re all crazy,” he said. “But when he taught us to be warrior smart, this is what he meant.”

They held their hands there for a long moment, and then without another word they turned and headed off to take up their posts.

CHAPTER 101

Saint John could not put down the knife. His fist felt welded shut around the handle.

“Honored One,” said one of his aides. “Our scouts picked up the trail of a large group of refugees heading north. Thousands of them. The scouts guess they have a two-day lead.”

“Send the quads after them.”

“How many, Honored One?”

“All of them, and a reserve of five thousand on foot. Hunt them down and send them all into the darkness.” He touched the aide’s sleeve. “We are no longer recruiting. Everyone goes into the darkness.”

The aide bowed and left, and a few moments later the saint heard the sound of hundreds of quad engines roaring to life.

“You cannot escape the will of god,” he said to the morning air.

Another aide appeared at his side. He wore a silver dog whistle around his neck. “We’ve called up the flocks.”

“How many answered the call?”

“Eighty thousand of them. At least a third are runners. However, we’ve already almost used up Sister Sun’s red powder.”

Over the last few days, several quads had caught up with Saint John’s army, each one laden with plastic trash bags of powder. The last gift of Sister Sun, sent with the fastest quads by Brother Peter.

“Save it for later. We have enough runners for this nonsense.”

The aide pointed. “I sent two small flocks ahead to test the defenses.”

Saint John watched the dead run in a ragged line toward the fence.

“Send the rest.”

“And the reapers, Honored One?”

“Send them all in. I want that town erased from the earth. Tear it down, paint it in blood, and grind it into the mud.”

The aide smiled, nodded, and went off to relay the orders. Sending the gray people in along with the reapers was the kind of shock and awe the Red Brothers loved. It made for a quick fight, but a memorable one. He began shouting orders.

Saint John glanced at the reapers behind him. Many of them were ordinary foot soldiers, some of them quite new to the faith. As he looked at them, quite a few dropped their eyes or looked away. They all wept, and he wondered how many of those tears were from the chlorine stench or from their own terror.

Cowards, he thought. Timid in faith and in heart.

“Listen to me,” he bellowed. “The false one has tried to trick you with lies and promises. He has tried to test your faith and make you question your commitment to god. I say to you now, our god is an unforgiving god. If any man or woman strays from his duty or withholds his blade from the cause of righteousness, then that sinner will be stripped of flesh and left to the gray people. To defy me is to defy god. All hail to Lord Thanatos!”

“All praise to his darkness,” thundered the closest reapers, and that cry spread so that soon forty thousand voices shouted it.

Saint John was satisfied. His words might not have removed doubt, but they would make even the doubters crave to dip their knives in the blood of the heretics.

The Red Brothers acted as sergeants and yelled orders.

Saint John pointed with Brother Peter’s knife.

“Now,” he commanded.

And the army of the reapers surged forth.

They started out walking onto the field, many of them coughing and gagging from the chemical vapors. But soon they were running, shouting, crying out the name of their god. Screaming for blood.

CHAPTER 102

Benny Imura climbed to the observation platform of the east tower. The field was vanishing, to be replaced by a carpet of bodies. Leading the charge were two packs of R3’s. Even from this distance they looked terrifying. They were fresh corpses too, probably victims of the raid on Haven.

Somehow that made it worse. It made it more of a sinful act on Saint John’s part. It was a level of disrespect for the dead that offended Benny in ways he couldn’t express.

It fed his rage.

He held a pair of binoculars and watched as the zoms ran across the bleach-soaked ground. Reapers with dog whistles ran with them.

No one inside the gate moved. Not a muscle, not a finger. The entire town was absolutely still. Chong stood by the tower rail, an arrow fitted in place, the string pulled back.

Benny said, “Now.”

Chong loosed the arrow. The powerful compound bow sent it whipping through the air, fast and silent and true. The arrow struck the stomach of one of the reapers running with the zombie flock. He screamed and pitched backward.

The zoms turned at the scream and the movement and at the spurt of fresh blood. Through the binoculars Benny saw the confusion on the faces of the zoms. He saw how the moment of distraction changed their focus. They had come running out onto the field, driven by whistles, herded forward over the mud. They were not pulled by any smell of meat from behind the chain-link fence. Now that they were on the field, they couldn’t smell the human flesh at all. Bleach kills all sense of smell. The reapers, protected by their chemically treated tassels, herded them with sound alone.

But now the moment froze. The reapers still had their whistles, but the zoms’ sense of smell was gone.

The chemical protection of the tassels was gone.

The reapers stared into the eyes of the R3 zoms.

The zoms stared back at them.

The reaper with the arrow lay thrashing on the ground. Not dead. Benny did not want the man silent and still. He wanted screams. He wanted movement.

One of the zombies bared its teeth.

Then all of them did.

The reapers tried to blow their whistles.

But that was the wrong thing. They should have tried to run.

With shrieks like a pack of wildcats, the zoms leaped onto the reapers and bore them to the ground and tore them to pieces. All around them the reapers faltered and stared. Then the second flock of zoms, drawn by the screams, came running. They attacked anything that was close. Without a sense of smell to differentiate whole flesh from rotting meat, some of them threw themselves at other zoms.

Benny closed his eyes for a moment, not sure whether to be grateful or beg for forgiveness.

He opened his eyes again to see the forest walls vomit forth a horde of zombies. So many thousands of them that there was no need to count. They swarmed across the field. Some broke away from a straight charge to join the bloody melee. Most of them, though, kept running, drawn by the dog whistles, moving too fast for the effect of the bleach to overcome the call of the dog whistles.

Down at the fence, Sally Two-Knives raised her hand. The line of Freedom Riders held fast, guns ready. They stared in horror at the tide of death that was washing toward them. None of them believed that they’d live through the day. Over the last three days, each in their own way, they’d made peace with their world, their religions, or in the absence of any faith, with themselves. Just knowing that the main population of the town might be safe, and knowing that a cure for the plague existed, put iron in their backs and kept their hearts beating. Some of them wept in fear, but they blinked away tears and took aim.

Sally turned to Captain Strunk, who stood next to her. “Glad I never got to see what I’d look like as an old lady. There’s something about an octogenarian with biker tats and a Mohawk that just doesn’t work.”

“You look beautiful to me,” said Strunk. He sighted along the barrel.

Sally slashed down with her hand. “FIRE!”

Far out in the Ruin, many miles to the north, a line of quads raced along the highway. They rode four abreast, and the line of quads stretched back half a mile.

All along the road they saw signs of the passage of people fleeing in a hurry. Dropped dolls, lost shoes, articles of clothing that must have fallen from carts, muddy wagon tracks. It was four days’ walk to the next town. The quads would catch up with the heretics in less than an hour.

Up ahead two figures stood in the middle of the road.

The leader of the mobile infantry raised a clenched fist in the universal symbol to stop. The quads slowed and stopped a dozen feet from the two men.

The man on the left grinned at the reapers through the grille of a New Orleans Saints football helmet. He was thin and wiry, with a carpet coat armored with metal squares cut from license plates. He leaned on a spear that had a bayonet blade and a heavy metal ball on the bottom. Under his helmet he wore a pair of cheap black sunglasses.

The man on the right was in similar garb, except that he wore a San Diego Chargers helmet with a plastic shark glued to it. A heavy logging ax rested on one muscular shoulder.

The man on the left gave the reapers a wide, happy grin.

“Wassssabi?” said Dr. Skillz.

“Duuuuude,” said J-Dog, nodding to the leader’s quad. “Nice ride. Can I have it?”

The reapers laughed. There was the slithery sound of many knives being drawn from leather sheaths.

“No, seriously,” said Dr. Skillz. “Let him have the bike. He’s got a serious Davy Jones for some vroom-vroom.”

The leader looked blank. He leaned toward the reaper on his left. “Did any of that make sense?”

“They’re messing with you, brother. Let’s gut them and get moving.”

“Whoa, bad vibes, brah,” said J-Dog. “You need to drink a big chilltini.”

“And you need to get right with god,” said the leader. He gestured to his men. “Cut their throats and—”

The air was filled with the clickety-click of hammers being cocked and slides being racked. In the forest on either side of the road, figures moved. Men and women and teenagers. Hundreds upon hundreds of people; everyone in Mountainside who owned a firearm prepared to shoot. And the narrow country lane was a killing floor. The reapers knew it, and their righteous rage turned to icy sludge in their veins.

“Dudes,” said Dr. Skillz, “if you’re gonna ride the big one, you better have big ones.”

J-Dog nodded. “So… can I have the bike?”

Saint John tried to see what was happening, but there were simply too many people in the way. He heard the screams, though, and they were too close to be coming from the town.

He grabbed a fistful of an aide’s shirt. “Find out what’s happening.”

The saint thrust the man toward the crowd.

The Freedom Riders fired and fired, and the leading edge of zoms and reapers crumpled a hundred yards out. The next line fell at ninety yards. At eighty.

At least a hundred of the attackers collapsed with each volley, but the tide was coming in like a tsunami. The mass of attackers rose up and down like sea rollers as they climbed over the dead. Fights broke out as zoms turned on the wounded and dying, their senses confused by the numbing bleach. Some of the reapers had to defend against their own undead shock troops. But even these skirmishes were carried forward like debris on the tide. There was too much forward momentum for anything to stop them.

“Fire!” screamed Sally. She had a bolt-action sniper rifle, and she killed everything she aimed at.

All along the line, fighters yelled out that they were reloading. Then slapped in new magazines or thumbed shells into their shotguns.

They fired and fired.

The tide was fifty yards away now, and Benny knew that nothing could stop it.

It was what he counted on.

It was what he’d planned for.

Down below, he saw Nix, Lilah, Morgie, and Riot dipping torches into buckets of pitch. All along the inside of the fence were unlit bonfires. Hundreds of them, and more of them throughout the town.

The tide was forty yards away. Almost to the first of the mounds of dirt.

How scary are you willing to be in order to take the heart out of the enemy?

“NOW!” Benny yelled.

The four of them slapped their torches against the ground, each at precise points, where slender trenches had been dug. Each trench was a few inches deep and a handbreadth wide and lined with rags and straw that had been soaked in kerosene. All the tons of it that had been stored at the fuel company Benny and his friends had driven through. It had taken every spare second and every able-bodied man and boy to siphon it out of the tanks and transport it here. Now that kerosene was soaked into the earth, waiting for a single caress of one of the torches.

And now every one of those torches bowed to the ground to kiss the kerosene.

Nix touched her torch to the first of the trenches, and fire leaped up and raced away from her, under the metal rim of the fence and then flashing out along an arrow-straight line to the mound that was farthest from town. The fire reached the mound and then vanished into the mouth of a piece of metal drainpipe.

There was a moment of nothingness.

Then the thirty-pound propane tank buried inside the mound exploded. The dirt flew away from the blast, carrying with it all the broken glass, screws, nails, and other jagged debris that had been packed around it.

The incoming tide turned red.

Saint John heard the first of the explosions.

Then the next, and the next. He saw the fireballs rising above the field and heard the screams of his attacking army turn to screams of pain.

And he heard the moans of the countless dead turn to growls of red delight as they began to feed.

The tower shook with every blast, and Benny had to cling to the ladder to keep from being hurled off by the shock waves. He watched as the explosions opened empty spaces in the storm of attackers, like the eyes of hurricanes, but the storms swept around them.

There was more fighting on the field, though. The zombies were in open revolt now. There was too much blood, too much torn meat, and that sent them into a killing frenzy. The screams and gunfire and explosions washed away any effect of the dog whistles. Now the dead did what they had done for fifteen years. They attacked anything that moved with implacable ferocity and bottomless hunger.

The reapers forgot about the town and turned their weapons on the dead.

Saint John’s aides brought up a supply cart, and he climbed onto it to get a better view. The sight nearly took the heart from him. The field in front of the town was a madhouse of battle. Reapers fighting the gray people. Forty thousand of the living against eighty thousand of the dead.

And the town…

The town still stood.

He turned to his aides, teeth bared, his face an inhuman mask of fury. “Slaughter the gray people. Pass the word. Do that first, do it now. And then we will pull down that fence and show those heretics the true meaning of holy wrath.”

The Red Brothers raced out into the crowds, shouting orders, using curses and kicks and fists to force the reapers into some semblance of order. To get them to fight back. Some of the reapers threw down their weapons and tried to flee, but after the Red Brothers butchered them, the others fell into line, and with the elite warriors leading them, they counterattacked.

The dead, even the running dead, were frightening and incredibly dangerous.

But they were brainless monsters. They had no tactics, no strategy, no skill at arms. The reapers knew how to fight them. Of course they did. Killing was their pathway to paradise, even the killing of the dead.

The Red Brotherhood waded into the fight, swinging two-hand swords and fire axes and farming scythes. They cut swathes through the dead, slaughtering and dismembering with machinelike precision.

Saint John watched this and slowly, slowly, his smile returned.

Any single reaper should be able to defend himself against two or three of the dead. Reapers working together, fighting in military wedges led by the fiercest of their own kind — they were a force like nothing else on earth.

Benny Imura saw the precise moment when this part of his plan failed. The reapers had turned on the monsters that had turned on them. Thousands of blades flashed in the sunlight, and the massive army of the Night Church crushed the legions of the dead.

He leaned his head against the ladder and sighed.

The last of the propane tanks had blown up. The Freedom Riders at the fence line were still firing, but there were only so many bullets.

Benny knew this would happen.

He had planned for this failure.

But he dreaded the next stages, knowing that with each step he was venturing into darker and darker territory. Even in the slim chance that he lived through this… could he ever find his way out of the abyss?

He doubted it. Joe’s advice about becoming the monster they were afraid of did not come with a suggestion for how to reclaim his humanity.

He already felt lost.

CHAPTER 103

Benny climbed down from the tower. The pain in his back was like a constant scream, but he didn’t care. Everything was screaming. The very air seemed to cry out in pain.

Nix and the others ran to meet him. They still held their torches. Chong climbed down and joined them, picking up a torch from the bonfire.

They stood for one moment in a circle.

“Go,” said Benny, and everyone turned to run.

All except Nix.

“Benny…,” she began, but he gave a fierce shake of his head.

“Not now,” he begged.

“I have to tell you in case—”

“No! Don’t, for God’s sake,” he said. “If you say it, I think it’ll kill me.”

Nix saw something in his eyes, and she took a step backward. Then with a flash of wild red hair, she turned and ran.

Benny hurried over to Solomon.

“They’re killing all the zoms,” said Benny.

The bounty hunter laughed. “Yeah, shows you what a little cooperation can accomplish.”

“We could have used a little more of that cooperation.”

Solomon drew the two machetes and gave them a quick twirl. “What’s that thing you kids keep saying?”

“Warrior smart.”

Solomon nodded. “Warrior smart.”

Benny drew his sword and began running along the fence line.

The Red Brothers and the army of reapers tore the gray people apart, but they took heavy losses to do it. Fewer than half of the forty thousand who had followed Saint John from the sack of Haven could still fight. However, half of those were injured. Some had bites from runners, and when their own fellow reapers saw those injuries, knives flashed and bodies fell.

Saint John allowed no infection among his people.

When the field was clear of the dead, Saint John walked out, Brother Peter’s knife still clutched in his hand. His cadre of Red Brothers fanned out behind him. The sergeants shoved and growled their men into tight divisions. Sixteen thousand of them stood in ordered lines before the gates of Mountainside. Every eye on both sides of the fence watched Saint John walk across the red-stained field. Now the stench of blood was nearly as strong as the stink of bleach.

Saint John walked to within a thousand yards of the fence. Well within rifle range, but no gun fired. He stopped and pointed his knife at the town.

Behind the gates, the men and women in red sashes suddenly turned and bolted, running in disordered panic from the fence line.

The reapers goggled for a moment, and then laughter rippled through their ranks. It swelled and swelled until they were all laughing hysterically. It was the sight of the defenders fleeing after all their tactics had failed, and it was the release of fear and tension from each of the reapers.

“They flee!” cried Saint John. “They flee!”

The laughter was like thunder.

Saint John bellowed out two words that floated above the laughter.

“Take them!”

The reapers began marching forward. First in orderly ranks, then faster and faster until they broke into a flat-out run. They hit the fence line, and the sheer weight of their surge tore the fence apart and ripped the poles from the ground — even at the cost of many in the front ranks being crushed at the moment of impact. The reapers flooded into the town, crossing the red zone that separated the fence line from the first rows of shops and homes, smashing through doorways of every building and house they reached. It was like a tidal surge bursting over a levee. The mass of the surge hit the town hard enough to knock walls down and uproot small trees. The thunder of all those feet shattered windows and knocked the frames of doorways out of true. The reaper army flooded into the town, knives ready, spears ready, bloodlust ready.

And they found… nothing.

The front ranks split apart to follow smaller streets. Knots of reapers burst through doors and ran down the halls of the school and the town hall and the hospital. Every closet door was yanked open, every cellar and attic was invaded.

But there was no one in the town.

As the last of the reapers ran across the fallen fence, the interior mass of them slowed near the center of town. They looked around, confused, frightened by the strangeness. There had been an army here minutes ago. Two or three hundred people in red sashes had fired volley after volley at them.

Where were they? The back of the town was a steep mountain wall. If any of the defenders had climbed the winding goat paths, they’d be as visible as black bugs. There was a massive reservoir near the end of town, but no one was hiding in the silent pump house.

Runners came to report this to Saint John as he walked without haste toward the shattered gates. He frowned at the news.

“There’s no one there, Honored One.”

“Then they’re hiding. Find them.”

Saint John stopped at the entrance of town and looked around. The guard towers appeared empty too. Except for…

“There,” he said, and his aides looked up at the closest tower. A single figure stood by the rail.

The boy with the Japanese eyes.

“Bring him to me,” said the saint. “Alive and able to scream. I will tear the answers from him.”

Four of the Red Brothers hurried toward the tower, but before they could reach it, the figure far above raised the bullhorn and spoke. His eyes streamed and burned from all the chemicals in the air. The bleach burned his throat and made breathing difficult. But Benny’s rage shaved all thoughts of pain and discomfort away.

“Listen to me,” he roared. “This is Benjamin Imura, samurai of the Nine Towns.”

The reapers laughed and jeered. Some threw rocks at the tower, though no one could reach the observation deck.

“Listen to me,” bellowed Benny. “While you still can.”

That chilled some of the laughter, though a few rocks still banged off the structure.

“I made you an offer before,” said Benny. “It still stands. Lay down your weapons. Do it right now. Lay down your weapons and tear those stupid angel wings off your shirts. The Night Church is a lie, and most of you probably know it.”

The rest of the laughter died away.

“Look at what happened already. More than half of you are dead. Whose fault is that? Saint John forced you to fight us. He forced you to die for him. I’m giving you a chance to live. To have lives again.”

One of the Red Brothers stepped away from the rest of the army and pointed at Benny.

“I think you’re about played out, son,” he said. He had a leather-throated voice that carried his words to everyone. “Right now you’re all alone up there. Your friends at least had the smarts to run off… though we’ll catch ’em. But you, sonny boy, you’re just a little kid playing in a tree house.”

“Not exactly,” said Benny. “What I am is a kid playing with matches.”

He pointed with the bullhorn, and everyone turned to see figures emerging from the ground as if by magic. They rose up from camouflaged spider holes outside the fence that had been hidden by plywood trapdoors covered with mud. A massive and improbable figure in a bright pink carpet coat rose up just outside the fallen gates. He held a smoking torch in his big fist. Fifty yards away another figure — a dark-haired young man with a pair of baseball bats slung over his shoulder — stood up. He, too, held a torch. All around the outside of the town, just beyond the fence line, figures rose up, each of them holding torches.

The man in the pink carpet coat smiled a charming smile. He had thick eyeliner and dangling diamond earrings. He blew a kiss to Saint John, pulled a thick cloth over his face, and tossed the torch over his shoulder. Everyone else flung their torches too.

Not toward the reapers.

But backward into the field.

There was a gassy sound that rose from a hiss to a roar, and the world suddenly caught fire.

CHAPTER 104

The fire roared across the ground with incredible speed. A speed possible only if the ground itself was…

Suddenly Saint John understood. He now realized that the bleach served a double purpose. Not only had it destroyed the gray people’s sense of smell, but it hid other smells. Kerosene or gasoline or whatever flammable liquids these insane people had used to saturate the mud.

The reapers recoiled from the flames, even though the walls of fire were well beyond the town’s destroyed fence line. The heat, however, was tremendous. It buffeted them back, smashing them with superheated chlorine. The gas clouds of superheated chlorine bleach rolled against the reapers, making them cough and gag, driving many of them to their knees. Men and women reeled and vomited. The reapers began to scatter, to run into houses, where they grabbed curtains and towels to cover their faces.

But immediately they screamed and dropped the cloths. There was something on them. Some chemical they couldn’t smell with their bleach-burned noses.

They staggered back to the streets. Hundreds of them jumped into the reservoir to escape the fumes.

“Here!” cried one of the Red Brothers as he kicked aside one of the small bonfires to reveal a trapdoor. He whipped it up and saw a crudely dug tunnel. Smoke curled upward from the tunnel, and Saint John suddenly understood how the defenders had escaped. They’d gone through the tunnels to the spider holes outside, taking their torches with them.

The Red Brother standing over the trapdoor gagged and staggered backward, blood spraying from a slashed throat. A figure rose up out of the hole, carrying a long spear whose bayonet tip was painted red. She had a wet towel around her nose and mouth, but her white hair danced in the hot wind. She carried a torch in her left hand, and she bent and drove the end into the ground close to where she stood.

Another man screamed a few yards away, and Saint John turned to see the heretic Sister Margaret crawl into the light, a knife in one hand and a torch in the other.

The reapers faded back, clustering into a tight crowd as the bonfires tipped over and defenders emerged. One bonfire spilled right behind Saint John, causing him to dance out of the way, and the false Nyx with the red hair rose up.

The tableau held. Sixteen thousand reapers clustered together in one mass. Three hundred defenders with torches standing in the gap between them and the raging inferno. And the boy on the tower looking down at them.

“Kill them,” snarled Saint John. “They are nothing.”

The reapers, led by some of the Red Brothers, inched forward.

“Stop!” shouted Benny, his voice amplified by the bullhorn so that it rose even above the roar of the fire.

Everyone froze. Even Saint John and his reapers.

“You can’t get out of here without burning,” said Benny. He coughed, then pressed a wet rag to his nose and mouth for a moment. When he trusted his voice, he said, “I’m giving you one last chance. Put down your weapons and remove those angel wings.”

“Or what?” demanded Saint John from below. “You’re running out of tricks, boy. My reapers will tear you down from that tower.”

“No, they won’t,” said Benny.

“My reapers would die to serve our god.”

“Maybe,” said Benny. “But would they burn for it?”

The reapers milled, confused by this. The fires in the field were still burning, but they weren’t getting any closer. They could all see that.

Saint John shook his head and waved an arm toward the tower. “Hollow words from a blasphemous fool. My brothers… tear that tower down.”

Before they could take five steps, Benny said, “You all know the ranger, Captain Ledger?”

The name sent a buzz of fearful conversation through the crowd; some even looked around to see if the man was somehow here.

“We were talking about this fight. About what might happen if I had to try and stop your whole army. He asked me if I was willing to become a monster in order to stop you. He said that if I could look inside my own head and see a line that I won’t cross, then you’d win. Saint John would win. We all know how far he’d go to have his way. You’re proof of that. Is there anyone down there who hasn’t seen friends or family die because of Saint John? Well… today I took that look inside and, no, there isn’t a line I won’t cross. I’ll do anything — any horrible, insane thing — to stop him from killing the whole world. I’ll even kill myself, the girl I love, my best friends, and my town.”

Benny bent and picked up a torch and held it out over the edge of the tower.

“Everything in this town has been soaked with oil, with kerosene, with cooking oils, with lighter fluid. We used every drop of everything flammable we could find and all that we could transport here. It’s in the dirt, it’s in every house, it’s on the plants and shrubs. If I drop this torch, you’ll all burn. We’ll all burn. Every single one of us.” Benny felt his mouth curl into an ugly smile of raw hate.

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Saint John, but for a man of great faith there was a terrible doubt in his voice.

Benny looked down at him, and his hate gave way to a strange kind of pity.

“What choice do I have?” he asked. “You forced me into this. What else can I do?”

The moment held and held as the world around the town burned. All of Mountainside could have been an island in hell.

There was a sound behind the saint.

A dull thud.

He turned and saw a sword lying on the ground.

It lay at the feet of one of the Red Brothers. The man said, “I’m sorry.” Then he hooked his fingers into the collar of his shirt and tore away the front, ripping through the embroidered angel wings. “I don’t want to burn.”

Another weapon fell. An ax.

A woman looked down at the bloody knife clutched in her hand. “Oh God,” she said, and as the sob broke in her chest, she let the blade tumble to the dirt.

The sound of weapons falling was drowned out by the rending of cloths. And then the sound of brokenhearted tears.

It went on and on until only Saint John stood alone, Brother Peter’s knife clutched in his fist. He, too, wept — but his tears were from grief for all the children of his faith who had now lost the grace of god.

Benny doused his torch in a bucket and climbed down from the tower. The others — Nix, Lilah, Chong, Morgie, Riot, Solomon, and everyone else, held their ground, their torches burning. But they stood well back from the dampened mud that marked where the flammable liquids had been poured. It was a narrow safe zone, well within easy toss of a torch.

Benny walked over to where Saint John stood. The saint looked at the knife in his hand and then at the boy who had crushed his world. The boy who had killed Brother Peter and now killed his dream of serving god.

“Let it go,” said Benny. “Drop the knife. Let it all go.”

Saint John shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yeah,” said Benny. “I know exactly what I’m asking for. I’m asking for an end to hatred. I’m asking for an end to war. In the whole history of mankind, we’ve never had the chance before to really end all that.”

“But… that’s what I wanted too,” said Saint John. Tears carved lines through the soot on his face. “An end to all suffering and misery. It’s what god wants. It’s all I’ve ever wanted… for the pain to end.”

Benny sighed. “I know.”

Saint John sank slowly to his knees. But as he did so he looked up at Benny, and for just a moment there was a smile on his face. In that instant something passed between them. Benny felt it, though he could never really define it. It was some message, some shared awareness. And as that message was shared, Benny felt the great boiling hatred in his chest burn down to a cinder and then wink out. And he realized that he no longer even hated this man. All there was left inside him was pity.

“I hope you find peace in the darkness,” said Benny.

Saint John nodded.

He closed his eyes.

And drove the knife to the hilt into his own heart.