Flesh & Bone

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

66

“Nix?” asked Benny gently. “Are you all right?”

She kept crying and didn’t answer.

“Look… Tom was right,” said Benny, “the plague is changing, and maybe that’s good news. Those papers said that it was mutating. Maybe it’s mutating into something that won’t be as bad.”

“Oh sure, and when’s the last time something changed for the better?” she sobbed. “Everything is wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how any of this is supposed to be. It’s all wrong, Benny. God, I’m so stupid.”

“Wait — what? Nix, what are you talking about? How’s any of this your fault?”

“You don’t understand.” She was crying so hard those were the only words he could understand. “You just don’t understand.”

“Nix… I want to understand… just tell me what’s wrong.”

Benny felt his own tears running in lines down his face and falling onto her hair.

What storms raged inside Nix? Benny could make a list, but he was achingly positive that any list he could make would not be complete.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he had nothing better to say. “It’ll be okay.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not going to be okay.”

He pushed her gently back and studied her face. “What do you mean?”

There was a strange light in her beautiful green eyes, and an even stranger half smile on her lips. The smile was crooked and filled with self-loathing and self-mockery.

“Oh, Benny,” she said in a terrible whisper, “I think I’m in trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“I think I’m going crazy.”

He smiled. “You’re not going crazy.”

“How would you know?”

“Nix, don’t you think I’d know?”

She shook her head. “No one knows. No one understands.”

“Try me, Nix. If something’s wrong, then tell me. Let me in.”

“God, if you knew what was going on in my head, you’d run so fast…. ”

“No.”

“Yes, you would.”

“No,” he said firmly, leaning all his weight into the word, “I wouldn’t. You can tell me anything.”

She continued to shake her head.

So Benny said, “I hear voices.”

He dropped it on her, and for a moment she stopped crying, stopped shaking her head, and stared at him. A twisted half smile kept trying to form on her lips.

“Yup,” said Benny, tapping his temple. “Sometimes I have a real party in here.”

“This isn’t a joke…. ”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” He did smile, though, and he knew that smile was probably every bit as crooked as hers.

“Why haven’t you said anything?”

“Why haven’t you?” Benny sighed. “It’s not like we’ve been communicating that well lately, Nix.”

She sighed. “A lot’s happened.”

“I know, but we haven’t talked about it. I think that’s the whole problem.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Okay, so if it’s not the whole problem, then it’s the doorway to the problem. C’mon, Nix, it’s been a month since Gameland. Since then, what have we talked about? Hunting for food. Cooking. Routes on the map. Which leaves are safe to use as toilet paper. Jeez, Nix, we talk about stuff that just gets us through the day, but we don’t talk about what happened.”

Nix said nothing.

“We killed people, Nix.”

“I know. We killed people seven months ago at Charlie’s camp, too.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t really talk about it. Not in any way that made sense of it, or cleared it. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”

She shrugged. “Everything’s weird.”

“After everything that’s happened, Nix, I really don’t think either of us has a chance of being totally sane. I guess ‘normal’ was last year.”

She thought about that and gave a grudging nod.

“Okay,” Benny continued, “but it can’t be good that we don’t talk about this stuff. We never really talked about your mom and what happened.”

Nix turned away.

“And… that’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “I even start to mention it and you lock up. That can’t be the best way of dealing with—”

“What kind of voices?” Nix interrupted.

“It… used to be what I guess you could call my ‘inner voice,’” he began slowly. “It was like me, but not me. It was smarter, you know? It knew about stuff. It’s hard to explain.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“All kinds of stuff. Even how to talk to you.”

The ghost of a smile flitted across her lips.

“But that’s not what really has me scared,” Benny continued. He took a breath and then blurted it. “I think Tom’s talking to me too.”

“Oh.”

“At first I thought I was just remembering things he said. But lately… I don’t know. I think he’s actually talking to me. Like, maybe it’s his ghost.”

“Ghost?”

Benny nodded. “God, this is why I don’t talk about this stuff, because you’re definitely going to think I’m totally monkey-bat crazy.”

“You always have been,” she said with another small smile.

“Since Tom died… I knew that I had to keep him alive somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but it makes sense to me. I have to remember everything Tom ever said. Every lesson he gave us. Everything. God, Nix, he was the very last samurai, do you realize that? The last one. Think about everything that… died… with him. Everything he knew. Everything he could have taught us is gone. Do you get how bad that is? All that knowledge. How to fight, how to do things. Gone. Just — gone.”

“I know, Benny. My mom knew a lot of things too.”

“Look, Nix, I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant. It’s okay.”

Benny licked his lips, which had gone completely dry. “I can’t stand it, Nix. I can’t stand that it’s all gone. I can’t stand that he’s gone.” His nose was starting to run, and he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped it.

“I know,” she said.

“But,” Benny said, “maybe he’s not. That’s what I’m trying to say. Today, when I was down in the ravine… he actually spoke to me. It wasn’t a memory. It was like he was right there.”

“You were surrounded by zoms, Benny. You were probably in shock.”

“No kidding. Doesn’t change anything. Tom started speaking to me, and I could hear him as clear as I’m hearing you now.”

“Why are you scared of that? He’s your brother.”

“Um… hello? He’s a ghost?”

“You only think you’re hearing Tom’s ghost.”

“Yes.”

“Is he here now?” Nix asked. “Can you ask him a question? Ask him what my mom’s middle name was.”

“He’s a ghost, not a carnival magician.”

“Tom knew her middle name,” said Nix. “Ask him. If it’s really him, then he’ll know.”

“That’s stupid—”

“Ask him!” she yelled.

“I can’t!” he yelled back.

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t work like that.”

“How do you know how it works? Come on, Benny, we’ve been on the run since we got up this morning. Exactly when did you have time to process everything and come to the unshakable conclusion that you’re the expert on all things spiritual?”

“Why are you getting mad at me? I’m trying to get some help here ’cause I think I’m really screwed up, and you’re giving me crap.”

“Benny, how do you know this is Tom?”

“I just know.”

“No,” she snapped, “that’s not good enough. How do you know?”

“I just do. He was my brother. I think I’d know my brother’s voice. This is him.”

“Then ask him my mother’s middle name. What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of that.”

When Nix didn’t say anything, Benny sighed.

“Look,” he said, “why are you badgering me about this? You think I want to hear my dead brother’s voice?”

“Why not? I’d give anything to hear my mother speak to me,” said Nix in a voice that was filled with fragile cracks.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because,” shouted Nix, “I can’t even remember what she sounded like.”

After a long moment, Benny said, “What?”

“God… I’d give anything for her to start talking to me.” A sob hitched in her chest. “Benny… I can’t even remember what my mother looked like.”

67

Sitting with Eve steadied Chong. He understood why. It was harder to let yourself sink if someone else needed you to be their rock. He saw Benny and Nix do that for each other, even though he was positive they weren’t aware of it.

It did not mean that Chong was less terrified, but the girl’s terror and trauma were worse than his own. Even if he died, what she was going through was worse. She’d seen her parents murdered right in front of her. When Chong died, his fear would end; Eve would have to live with those memories.

Everything’s relative.

Eve sat close to him, sucking her thumb, occasionally humming disjointed pieces of lullabies.

Riot went outside to make sure they were still safe, then came back and sat down. Chong studied Riot’s face. She was a puzzle to him. She reminded him of Tom’s bounty hunter friend, Sally Two-Knives. Tough, fiercely individual, violent, and clearly with a heart.

“Talk to me,” said Chong.

“About what?” she asked. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with some smart way out of this bear trap, but every which way I look there’s just more traps.”

“Yeah, let’s not talk about that,” said Chong. “Why don’t you tell me your story? I mean… are you a reaper?”

She looked away for a moment. “Not as such,” she said.

“Okay, that was evasive.”

She shrugged. “I was a reaper once upon a time. Ain’t now. End of story.”

“No,” said Chong. “I’m dying, I get to be nosy. You’re a walking contradiction. You have the same skin art as the reapers, but you went after Brother Andrew like you owed him for a lot of hurt.”

Riot ran a hand thoughtfully over her scalp, then sighed. “I was no more’n two years old when the plague hit,” she said slowly. “My dad was raising me. He was a country doctor down in North Carolina. He’d divorced my ma ’cause she was a drunk and a bum and no damn good.”

“I’m sorry,” Chong began, but she waved it away.

“That’s the nice part of the story. Y’all want to hear it or not?”

He nodded. His skin was cold and clammy, and he had an incredibly bad headache. He sat cross-legged with his back to the wall.

“I could use the distraction,” he admitted.

“Well, when the whole world turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet, Pa packed me in his car and drove northwest. Got as far as Jefferson City, Missouri, before the EMPs killed the car. After that we joined up with a buncha folks who was running from the dead. I don’t remember nothin’ about that. All kind of a blur. We was always running, always hiding, and always hungry. People came and went. Then we met up with a bigger bunch of folks, and when they found out Pa was a doc, they made sure that he was always safe. Me too.

“My pa was always trying to steer over toward Topeka, which was the last place he knew my mom to be living. And sure enough, she was there and she was alive. My pa said it was like a miracle. Only thing was, Ma was hooked up with a group that was calling itself the Night Church, and she was keeping company with its leader, a man named Saint John.”

Eve wormed closer to Chong, her thumb still socketed in her mouth. It frightened Chong that the child was barely talking. She’d said a few words after she woke up, but then she seemed to shut down. It was so sad.

“Saint John said that it really was a miracle that my ma found me,” continued Riot, “and he said that it made me special. Like I was some kind of holy person.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Me. Holy. Right.”

“This Night Church,” asked Chong, “they’re the reapers?”

She nodded. “They didn’t start calling themselves that until much later. By then I was being trained to be a fighter. Saint John knows every kind of evil move there is. Karate and all that. Dirty fighting. Hands, feet, knives, strangle wires. He taught me all that stuff, and I was the head of my class. Hooray for me.” She touched her scalp. “This stuff was actually a health thing first. We all came down with the worst case of lice in the history of bugs. Couldn’t shake ’em, couldn’t wash ’em out, so Pa suggested everybody shave all their hair off. Worked, too. But while we was all bald, somebody took it in their head to go and get tattooed. Not sure who started it, but everyone in the Night Church did it. Saint John, too, and he called it the mark in flesh of our devotion. Some crap like that.”

“Why don’t you grow your hair back?”

She ran her fingers lightly over her scalp. “I tried, but it don’t grow in right. Comes in all patchy and nasty. Better to keep it like this. Besides, the reapers can’t stand that I have the mark and I ain’t one of ’em. Drives Ma nuts too.”

“Your mother is still with them?”

“My dear old ma,” said Riot acidly, “is the high holy muck-a-muck of the Night Church. Calls herself Mother Rose. An’ she’s the only one who didn’t get her head tattooed. Grew her hair back, and Saint John somehow spun that as it was a special mark that only she could have. No, don’t look too close at it, ’cause you’ll hurt yourself. It don’t make a lick of sense.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I wised up,” she said. “I guess I kind of had what you might call a ‘moment.’ I was fourteen by then and leadin’ my own team of reapers. All girls, daughters of the inner circle of the church. We were getting ready to hit this little walled-in town in Idaho — and the thing is, I never even found out its name — and the night before the raid, I was on recon with a couple of the other girls when I heard something from over the walls.”

“What?” asked Chong.

“Weren’t much, just a lady singing a lullaby to her baby.” She paused as if looking into that memory with perfect clarity. “I was up in a tree where I could see over the wall. The guards don’t watch trees because the gray people can’t climb.”

Chong nodded.

“I could see into a lighted window, and there’s this gal, maybe twenty years old, holding a little baby in her arms as she rocked in a chair. Just a single candle lit on a table. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. The woman was so… happy. She had her baby, and she was in a safe town, and there was music and laughter in the streets. The world outside might be full of monsters and the whole world might have gone to hell, but here she was, rocking her baby and singing a song.”

“What happened?”

Riot sniffed and shook her head. “When I came back to give my report… I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. So I lied. I spun a yarn about the whole town being filled with armed men and lots of guns and suchlike. I said that we’d get ourselves killed sure as God made little green apples.”

“Did they believe you?”

She looked at Eve and smiled sadly. “No. Saint John had other people scoutin’ too, and they saw the truth, that the town was wide open, that the defenses were only good against gray people.”

“What happened?”

“They came in and killed ’em all. Every last man, woman… and child… in that town. Saint John sent his pet goon, Brother Peter, to drag me in for a talk, but I read the writing on the wall and cut bait. I was gone before sunup. Just up and went.”

“They let you just leave?”

“‘Let’? No. I had to muss a few of them ’up some, but I got away.” She sniffed again. “After that I fell in with a gang of scavengers. That’s where I got the nickname. Riot. Did a bunch of bad stuff and raised a lot of Cain. Then… I got real sick, and a way-station monk took me to a place called Sanctuary. They fixed me up right and proper. They wanted me to stay there, but I snuck out of that place like I did from my mom’s camp. Didn’t hurt nobody, though. After that I knocked around a bit, got into some more trouble. But… a year ago I found a bunch of refugees on the run from some reapers. I helped ’em slip away, but there were a lot of sick and injured, including a bunch of kids, so I took ’em to Sanctuary. Kind of dropped ’em at the door and ran. Done that a few times now. The folks at Sanctuary don’t mind people coming in for help, but they really don’t like people leaving. I think they’d as soon put a leash on me if they had the chance. I don’t give them no chance. I drop and run, drop and run. That’s what I was trying to do with Carter and his crew. Guess I kind of made it my calling.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s penance.”

“But… the stuff you did while you were with the reapers, that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know any better, and when you did, you left.”

“Maybe. That don’t make me sleep any better at night.”

She reached over and stroked Eve’s hair.

“I got wind of the reapers planning on making a move on her town. Treetops it was called. I’d been there a few times with the scavengers. Nice folks, so I tried to get there in time to warn people, but I was about four hours too late. All I could do was offer to lead the survivors to Sanctuary.”

“You left out one part,” said Chong. “What happened to your dad?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Saint John and Mama said he up and left one night. Just took off… but I don’t believe that. I think they killed him.”

“Why?”

Riot gave him a hard look. “If you’re running a church based on killing everyone who’s still sucking air, do you really want a doctor around? Pa was all about some oath when he was in medical school. He was all about saving lives… so I guess he had to go.”

“I’m sorry,” said Chong, and he meant it. “It… it must be lonely for you.”

“Well, it’s the end of the world, you know? Kinda sucks for everyone.”

Chong smiled a bitter little smile. “Yeah, I really get that.”

Riot studied his face for several thoughtful seconds. “I don’t know much about medicine,” she admitted, “’cept how to patch a busted leg or stitch a knife cut, take out the occasional arrow. Point is, I know where we might be able to get some help.”

“Help? Come on, Riot, we both know how this ends. I get sicker and sicker and then I die. And then you… well, then you take care of me. There’s no variation on that story. Everyone who gets infected dies.”

At that last word, Eve gave a soft whimper of protest and buried her head against his chest. Chong stroked her hair. He wanted to do the same thing she was doing — curl up in a fetal position and hope the world would just go away.

“Chong, listen to me,” insisted Riot. “I think I should take you to Sanctuary.”

“And what exactly is Sanctuary? Is it just a bunch of way-station monks or…?”

Riot looked away for a moment, debating with herself about something. When she turned back, her face was even more tense. “Sanctuary is a lot of different things to different people,” she said. “For some — people like… ” Instead of naming Carter, she nodded to Eve, and Chong understood. “For folks runnin’ from the reapers, Sanctuary’s just that. A safe place. It’s squirreled away pretty good, and it’s got some natural defenses. Mountains and suchlike. Hard as all get-out to find.”

“It’s a settlement?”

“To some,” she said. “Mostly it’s a kind of hospital, and I want to take little Evie there. I’m not going to be any good taking care of her, and she’s going to be hurtin’ for a long spell. There’s a bunch of monks who look after people.”

“Way-station monks? I’ve met some. The call themselves the Children of God, and they refer to the gray people as the Children of Lazarus.”

“Right, right. Well, they made Sanctuary their own place, and they take in the sick and injured and tend to them.”

“Are they actual doctors?”

“They’re not,” she said, but Chong caught the slight emphasis on “they’re.”

“Are… there other doctors there?”

“Kind of.”

“And you think they could help me?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if anyone can, they’s the ones.”

“Okay, then let’s go.”

“Well, there’s a bit of a hitch,” she said slowly, looking almost pained.

“What hitch?”

“If they let you into that other place… not the part with the monks, but the part where they can maybe help you… ”

“Yes?”

“You won’t be allowed to leave.”

“Until—?”

“Ever,” she said. “They don’t like strangers wandering around who know where Sanctuary is. They won’t kill you or nothing, but you won’t ever leave.”

Chong closed his eyes and looked into his own future. All he could see was a blank wall.

“What choice do I have?”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

68

“I… I’m sorry, Nix,” said Benny.

She glared at him through her tears. “Yeah, well, sorry doesn’t do much. I lost my mom. I lost everything, and it’s all that damn town’s fault.”

“What?”

“God, I couldn’t stand to be there another minute. It was like living in a graveyard. No one ever talked about what happened to the world. No one ever talked about the future. You know why? Because no one believed there was a future. Everyone in Mountainside was just sitting around, waiting to die. They act like they’re dead already.”

“I—”

She angrily fisted tears out of her eyes. “My mom was murdered by Charlie Pink-eye, and I was kidnapped. You’d think people would at least react to that, but they didn’t. Not really. After we destroyed Charlie’s camp and came back to town, people acted like I’d never been away. Except for Captain Strunk, Mayor Kirsch, and Leroy Williams, no one even asked where I’d been or what it was like out in the Ruin. People didn’t want to know. And at Mom’s funeral, you know what people said to me? They said stuff like ‘she’s in a better place’ and ‘at least she’s not suffering anymore.’ Suffering? She wasn’t sick, she was beaten to death!”

“Nix, I—”

“No one ever — ever — said anything about the fact that I was kidnapped and taken to Gameland. No one. I don’t think people even believed it. There were people in town who said they were sorry my mom had some problems with Charlie. Some problems. Problems? Like she died because they had a fricking argument. They wrote her off, because to pay any real attention to what happened would mean that they would have to accept that Gameland was real, and if they did that, they’d have to accept what goes on there, which means they’d have to talk about zoms. And people don’t. God! Remember what Preacher Jack called town? He said it was limbo… that the people there were just waiting to die. And I wonder why I’m going crazy? That town made me crazy, and if we’d stayed there any longer, it would have killed me. That’s no joke, Benny. I would have died.”

There was a very dangerous light in her eyes when she said that.

“Whoa, now,” said Benny. “Let’s not—”

Nix grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt. “I’m not exaggerating, Benny, and I’m not joking. That town is limbo. It’s nothing, it isn’t real. The people there, they’re no different from the zoms. They think they’re alive because they can talk, but they don’t talk about anything. They chatter. They make small talk and pretend that’s the same as engaging with one another. Going through the motions of life is not the same thing as living.”

“Nix, I know this stuff. It’s why I left too.”

“No,” she said fiercely, shaking him. “God, please don’t lie to me, Benny. Not now. Not out here. You left because of me. I know it. Tom knew it too. Tom left because of me too.”

“No way.”

“Yes. He was going to marry my mom, but my mom died. He would have stayed in town and raised you and maybe helped raise me, but I wanted to leave. He knew — knew — that no matter what happened, even if he tried to stop me, I would leave town. So he created our big Road Trip so he could watch over me. For my mom, maybe. And because you were in love with me. Benny — you left town because of me, and Tom left town because of you and me… and now Tom’s dead. If we don’t find that jet and find something real, a place that shows that we’re all still alive, then Tom will have died for nothing. And it will be all my fault.”

Benny stared into her eyes, and now he understood.

The size of it, the jagged edges of it, the skewed and destructive logic of it.

That knowledge gouged out a massive hole in his chest.

“Nix,” Benny said gently, “you can’t do this to yourself.”

“It’s true!”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Listen to me. Tom didn’t leave Mountainside because of you. Or me. He left because your mom wasn’t there anymore, and he couldn’t stand that. He left because he wanted to find the same kind of place you want to find. A place where people are alive. He wanted that for me and for you and for himself. There was no chance in hell that Tom wouldn’t leave town. Remember what he said after Danny Houser’s funeral? He said, ‘I can’t stand this damn town anymore.’ He said that, and he moved up the time we were scheduled to leave. Tom needed to escape that town.”

“But he died!”

Benny bent forward and pressed his forehead against Nix’s. “He died, Nix, but you didn’t kill him and neither did I. Even though I think I did almost every night. I think about all the things I’ve done wrong and how if I’d done this or done that, you and I would never have wound up at Gameland. And yeah, I can make myself crazy too. But we didn’t kill Tom. An evil man did that. Preacher Jack shot Tom in the back and that is the truth.”

Nix sniffed but said nothing.

“Nix… what would Tom tell us if he could hear this conversation?”

She shook her head.

“No… tell me,” Benny insisted.

She sat back and wiped at her eyes. “He — he’d say what you just said. That Preacher Jack… ”

“Right. Preacher Jack. An evil man who did an evil thing.”

Nix looked at the broken windows. “And now we have Saint John and Mother Rose. Is that all there is, Benny? Just corruption and evil?”

Fifty conciliatory lies rose to Benny’s lips. But this was not the time to placate Nix.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Panic flared in her eyes, but he smiled.

“I don’t know what’s out here,” Benny said, “but I can’t believe that there’s nothing left worth finding. I won’t believe it. I don’t. We met Eve, Nix. She has a family.”

“Who tried to kill us.”

“No. I don’t see it that way, not anymore. Think about it. They were out of their minds worrying about Eve, and then they find her with us. They don’t know us from a can of paint, and I think it’s pretty clear that they’re on the run. They see us and they’re terrified that we’re reapers. In their places we might have made the same mistake. But look at it another way — they’re running from evil. They aren’t the reapers. They were willing to fight and kill to protect their little girl. What does that tell you? And there’s all that talk about Sanctuary. Despite what Mother Rose and those other freak jobs said, it doesn’t exactly sound like an abode of evil, does it?”

“No,” she admitted hesitantly.

“No,” he agreed.

“And the people who flew this plane. They were scientists working to understand the plague and maybe cure it. Again, not the definition of evil.”

“No.”

“The American Nation,” Benny said, testing the name and nodding approval. “I say we gather up some of these papers, check out the rest of the plane, then get out of here and find Lilah and Chong.”

“And then what?”

“I’m working on that,” he admitted.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“I do love you, Benny,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

“Even though I’m a nut?”

“Like I’m well-balanced? Hearing voices, remember?” He grinned at her.

She shook her head in exasperation, but she was smiling, too.

69

Riot helped Chong to his feet and steadied him as he took a couple of shaky steps. Eve trailed along behind, silent as a ghost. She stayed close, though, as if unwilling to be more than a few feet from Chong’s side.

Chong insisted on taking the bow and arrows with him.

“Why?”

“Well,” he said weakly, “I can shoot. I’m pretty good. And… if there are really doctors at Sanctuary, they might want to look at the stuff on the arrowheads.”

“Okay,” she said, and helped him sling the bow and quiver over his shoulder. “How are ya feelin’?”

“I’ve been better,” he admitted. “My legs feel funny, like they fell asleep, but there’s no pins and needles. Funny thing is that the arrow wound doesn’t seem to hurt much.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” he said dryly, “I’m pretty sure that’s not a good sign.”

They walked toward the door of the shack. With each step Chong felt his balance improve, but he was not all that encouraged. It was more of a matter of getting used to his condition rather than there being any actual improvement.

“I don’t know if y’all want to hear this,” said Riot, “but I heard once about a feller who got the gray sickness and didn’t die.”

Chong swiveled his head around and stared at her. “I’m pretty sure I do want to hear about that.”

She looked pained. “Well… it ain’t like things worked out too great for him.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Together they walked out of the shack toward her quad.

Riot sucked her teeth for a moment. “Well,” she began reluctantly, “this was a feller name of Hiram, a corn farmer up from Arkansas who hired out as a hunter for small settlements. He’d go out with a wagon covered in sheet metal and some horses dressed in coats made from license plates bolted onto leather covers. He’d kill him some deer and whatever else he could draw a bead on, then he’d bring it all back to the settlement and sell it out of the back of his wagon. Well, one time he comes back and he’s looking mighty poorly.”

“Like I am?”

She glanced at him and offered a fragile smile. “Near enough as makes no never mind.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it turns out that he ate himself a leg of wild mutton he’d shot and got sick. He asked my pa to take a look at him, and Pa asked to see the rest of the sheep he’d cut the leg off of.” She paused while she helped Chong step over the back of the quad. There was no seat belt, but she lashed him in place with some rope she took from a gear bag.

When he was settled in, he said, “I think I can guess what your father found when he examined the sheep.”

Riot nodded, but said it anyway. “There was a small bite on its shoulder. Not bad, and not fatal, but a bite. One of them had tried to chow down on it and the critter scampered.”

“So what happened to Hiram?”

“That’s the funny part. And I mean—”

“Funny weird, not funny ha-ha, I get it.”

She nodded. “Hiram got sick as a hound dog. Lay in bed for ten, twelve days, and they posted a guard on him in case he needed seeing to.”

“But…?”

Riot picked up Eve, kissed her, hugged her, and then placed her in the seat. “Hold on to her.”

“Don’t worry,” said Chong, “I won’t let her go. But what happened to Hiram? Did he get better?”

A few strange expressions wandered across Riot’s features. “Not ‘better’ as you’d like to hear. He didn’t die, though. Not exactly. Old Hiram got better enough to get out of bed. He could talk to people and all, and he even went back to hunting after a time.”

“But…?” Chong urged. He wanted to kick her.

“He never did get all the way right again. And every once in a while he’d come down all bitey.”

“‘Bitey’?”

“Yeah. He’d get riled and go all weird and try to take a chomp outta someone. Did it more than once.”

“He bit people?”

Riot looked away. “Might even have eaten some people, but that was just a rumor. He run off after a while, ’bout a half step before people did something permanent about him.”

“What — I mean — what was he?”

“Don’t know what science would call that feller. We kids gave him a nickname, though.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” said Chong.

“We called him a half-zee,” she said. “Hiram Half-Zee.”

“Swell,” he said, and thought, Lilah will just love that. Right up until she quiets me.

“Hold on, boy,” said Riot. She perched on the very front of the crowded seat, then fired up the quad, and a moment later they were zooming through the forest, the four fat tires kicking up plumes of sandy soil behind them.

70

“Nix, i think we need to find this ‘Sanctuary’ place. you read that report, you saw the notes. Whoever this Dr. McReady was, she thought she was really onto something important. Faster zoms? Smarter zoms? If there are scientists and some kind of military at Sanctuary, then they have to be told about this. We can’t just let this stuff rot here.”

Nix chewed her lip thoughtfully.

“And we have to warn the people at Sanctuary about the reapers. I didn’t understand everything that went on out there, but that woman, Mother Rose, and those reaper freaks are going to attack that place.”

“I don’t want to get in the middle of another big fight,” Nix said. “After Charlie and White Bear and Preacher Jack, I don’t know if I can… ”

Her voice trailed off, and she closed her eyes.

“Nix,” he said softly, “I’m not going to make any stupid speeches about destiny, but… ”

“But you are anyway,” she said, looking at him now. “You’re going to say that something — destiny, fate, or Tom’s ghost — steered us here, and now we have to make some huge decision about what to do with this information. Right?”

He said nothing.

“You’re going to say that this is one of those ‘it’s up to us or no one’ things, like all those heroic stories you and Morgie used to read. The hero on the journey who faces a challenge only he can handle, blah, blah, blah.”

Benny held his tongue.

“And you’re going to say that the tough thing to do is the right thing to do. That it’s the samurai thing to do. That it’s the warrior smart thing to do. That if we have information that could save lives, then it’s our responsibility to do exactly that. Right? Isn’t that what you were going to say?”

He cleared his throat. “Something like that.”

Nix leaned on the back of the pilot’s chair and stared out of the window. She let out a long sigh and in a voice that was odd and distant said, “Tom taught us a lot more than how to fight. More than the Warrior Smart stuff. Being able to fight is never going to be enough. Not in this world. Charlie learned that. So did White Bear and Preacher Jack.”

“No.”

“Sometimes it’s easy to forget what the word ‘samurai’ means.”

“‘To serve,’” said Benny.

“To serve,’” she agreed. “To do the honorable thing. The right thing, even when it’s hard. Even when it hurts.”

She bent and picked up her bokken, which had fallen to the floor. Nix looked at it for a long moment, then turned slowly toward Benny. She looked tired, frightened, and stressed, but beneath all that an old, familiar green fire burned in her eyes. She took a breath and gave Benny a single, decisive nod.

“Then let’s do it,” she said. “Let’s go be samurai.”

71

“How far is it back to the plateau?” asked Lilah. She had to lean close to Joe’s ear and yell.

“Two miles,” he said. “We’ll be there in… oh crap.”

He jammed on the brakes, and the quad skidded to a dusty halt. Grimm, who had been loping along beside the quad, stopped dead and uttered a low growl.

Lilah looked past Joe’s muscular shoulder.

“Oh,” she said.

The path through the forest was blocked with reapers. An even dozen of the killers. They had all turned at the sound of the quad, and their expressions quickly changed from curiosity, to confusion, to an ugly delight. The rasp of steel as they all drew their weapons was louder than the idling motor.

“Can we go around?” asked Lilah.

“We can,” said Joe, “but we’d lose a lot of time, and from what you said, this is the route your friends would most likely have taken. If we go around, we could miss them entirely, and that crowd of bozos might find them.”

Lilah grunted.

“Then we fight,” she said.

He turned and grinned at her. “I admire your spunk, darlin’, but you’re in no shape for a brawl.”

“I can shoot.”

“There’s that.” Joe dismounted. “Tell you what,” he said, “you can play target practice with anyone who gets past me and the fuzz-monster.”

“There are too many for you,” she said. “Even with Grimm.”

The dog looked from her to the advancing knot of reapers and back again and almost seemed to smile. He gave a discreet whuff and held his ground.

“Just watch our backs,” said Joe, and began walking toward the reapers. Lilah watched him. The man sauntered down the path as if he was taking a leisurely stroll on a spring evening. Grimm walked beside him. Joe’s sword was still slotted into its rack on the quad and his gun was in its holster. The man was insane.

The reapers thought so too. They grinned at one another and puffed out their chests as they strode forward to share the darkness with this sinner.

Joe stopped when he was twenty feet away and held up a hand, palm out. Grimm sat down next to him.

“Okay, kids,” he said loud enough for the reapers and Lilah to hear, “before you go all wrath-of-God on me, let’s chat for a bit.”

The reapers slowed and stopped, looking wary. Their eyes darted from Joe to the dog and back again. One of them, a tall man with a head tattoo of hummingbirds and flowers, stepped out in front of the others.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Doesn’t matter who I am,” said Joe.

“Have you come to accept the darkness?”

“Not as such, no.”

“Then what do we have to talk about?”

Joe shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. How about we see how devoted you guys are to the whole joy-of-dying thing.”

The leader of the reapers snorted. “We are reapers of the Night Church, servants of God and purifiers of this infected world.”

“Okay,” said Joe. “And…?”

“And we do not fear dying. To die is to become one with the darkness, and that is the greatest joy of all.”

“Really?” asked Joe, seemingly incredulous. “You guys actually believe that?”

“Yes!” declared the man with the hummingbird tattoos, and the other reapers roared in agreement.

“No fear of death at all, is that what I’m hearing? I mean, is that the gist?”

“Death is a pathway to glory and oneness with the infinite.”

“So… if I shot one of you, everyone here would be good with that?”

“You think like someone from the old world,” sneered the leader. “You still think that we fear death and—”

Joe drew his pistol and shot the man through the heart. The draw was lightning fast — faster than anything Lilah had ever seen, faster even than Tom — and the leader pitched backward without even a cry.

The echo bounced around the woods and then vanished, leaving a stunned silence behind.

“Now the funny thing is,” said Joe into the silence, “there’s more than a couple of you who look pretty damn scared right now.”

They gaped at him and cut uncertain looks at one another.

Joe holstered his pistol, reached into his pocket, and removed a round metal object. It was squat and green, with a single metal arm and a round ring. He held it up.

“This is an M67 fragmentation grenade. Yeah, I know it’s from the old world, but let’s pretend that it still has relevance to the moment. It has a casualty radius of fifteen meters, with a fatality radius of five meters. That covers all of you cats. Now, I’m willing to bet a brand-new ration dollar that not one of you is going to bravely stand there while I throw this. In fact, I’m willing to bet you’re all going to run away as if you really are afraid for your own lives. What do you think about that?”

The reapers stared at him.

Joe grinned at them.

He pulled the pin. He kept his fingers tight around the metal arm, holding it in place.

And the reapers scattered. They flew away from the path as fast as they could run.

Joe held his ground. Beside him Grimm yawned.

The sound of the reapers crashing through the forest eventually faded into silence. Joe sighed, replaced the pin in the grenade, and dropped it into his pocket. Then he turned and strolled back to Lilah.

“Call me cynical,” he said, “but I’ve come to believe that most people who follow a total wack job aren’t always true believers. They just like to follow. They like the perks. Makes them feel strong. Kind of weakens your faith in fruitcake fanatics.”

Lilah goggled at him. “Would you have really thrown the grenade?”

Joe grinned. “What do you think?”

Lilah nodded, then asked, “If we meet more reapers, will they all do that?”

He shook his head. “Sadly… no. Some of them are true believers, and those you have to deal with.” He paused. “And there are a few of them who are way past simply believing. There are some who really won’t care if you shoot them or maim them, and they will crawl on broken knees through hell itself to take you with them. Saint John’s like that. And Brother Peter. You don’t talk with them, you don’t screw around. If you are ever unfortunate enough to be face-to-face with either of them — you take your shot before you take your next breath. ’Cause otherwise it will be your last breath.”

She frowned. “You’re afraid of Saint John?”

Joe put his hands on her shoulders. “Lilah, there’s not a living soul on this planet who shouldn’t be afraid of Saint John.”

He got back on the quad, and they roared off toward the plateau.

72

Mother Rose stood in the shade of a massive cottonwood tree. Brother Alexi stood behind her, his massive hammer standing on its head, the handle leaning against the tree trunk. Other reapers — all trusted members of her inner circle, her chosen ones — stood in a loose ring around them. In the middle of this ring was a ragged prisoner, a stocky man with a Hawaiian face and curly black hair. He knelt directly in front of Mother Rose, and she towered over him, dominating him with her personal power as well as the evident control she held over his life.

The Hawaiian bowed his head.

“—and this girl who was leading you,” said Mother Rose, “her name was Riot?”

“Yes, ma’am,” mumbled the prisoner.

“She was leading all of Carter’s people through the woods?”

There was a pause before the man said, “Carter wasn’t our leader. We’re all from Treetops. No one elected him ‘king.’ We all fought our way out.”

Mother Rose flicked a glance at Alexi, who mouthed the word “Bingo.”

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Mako,” said the Hawaiian. “Like the shark.”

“It is my belief, Brother Mako,” said Mother Rose, “that Carter presumed leadership of your group only because he had a relationship with Riot.”

“I guess. Carter’s always been an arrogant… ” Mako let the rest go. “The two of them were thick as thieves, ever since we met her.”

“They are both sinners,” said Mother Rose.

Mako hesitated, then nodded. “I guess so.”

“I know so. Sinners and heretics who care only for themselves. Tell me what happened.”

Mako glanced at the reapers, then risked a look up at Mother Rose, who gave him an encouraging smile.

“I don’t want to die,” said Mako. Fear and defiance warred on his face. “I don’t owe a damn thing to Carter. I… don’t want to die.”

“Death waits for all sinners,” said Mother Rose. “But for those who serve the will of God… there is always a chance for a new life.”

Mako blinked in confusion. “But… I thought… the reapers… ”

Mother Rose bent and caressed the man’s bruised cheek. “The world is full of mysteries, and the Lord Thanatos moves in such unexpected ways.”

“Wait… I… ”

She bent closer still and whispered in Mako’s ear. “A new world is waiting to be born. If there is something you know — a word, a name — something you ache to tell me… then that name will buy your way into a new paradise. And no, my friend, I am not talking about the darkness. This is no trick. This new world will be right here. This world. Our world.”

“You promise?”

“On my life,” she assured him. “Now… tell me.”

Mako leaned back and studied her face, looking for the lie. Finding none.

“I know where Riot was taking Carter and… the rest of us. A place called Sanctuary.”

“I already know that she was taking them to Sanctuary,” said Mother Rose with a sigh. “Is that all you know?”

The big Hawaiian man shook his head. “There were four of us. Carter, his wife, Riot, and me. Two nights ago, Riot drew a map in the dirt to show us the best routes in case we ran into trouble. In case we got separated from her.”

Mother Rose waited, holding her breath.

“I know how to find Sanctuary,” said Mako. “I can take you there.”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

73

They gathered up as many of the papers and maps as they could and shoved them into the largest pockets of their canvas vests. Maybe Chong could make sense of the science stuff, and perhaps they’d eventually find someone who needed to have this information.

Someone from the American Nation, perhaps.

The door to the cargo bay was heavier than the cockpit door, but there was the same kind of unbroken wax seal over the lever-style metal handle.

Above it, the word DEATH seemed to glare at Benny.

“So encouraging,” he said.

He placed his fingers lightly on the handle and arched an inquiring eyebrow at Nix.

“We have to,” she said.

“I guess we do.”

He gripped the handle, took a breath, and turned it. The wax snapped and fell away. The big lock went clunk, and then the door shifted in his hand. Nix rested her hand on her pistol, and Benny drew his sword. It was too big a weapon for practical indoor use, but he’d rather have a clumsy weapon than none at all when going through any doorway marked DEATH.

I’m crazy, he told himself, but not that crazy.

Benny nudged the door open with his foot. “I’ll go first,” he said.

In truth he’d rather go first out of the hatchway and down to the desert floor. Then all the way back to Mountainside. Hopefully no one would be living in his old house yet. Maybe his bed would even still be there.

“Okay,” said Nix. No argument, no tussle over who was pack leader.

Nix’s quick agreement did absolutely nothing to bolster Benny’s confidence as he stared into the ominous darkness of the big plane’s cargo bay.

Faint light from the hatchway reached tentatively into the bay but failed to reveal anything. He took a cautious step inside. The air smelled heavily of industrial grease — the old stuff, made from oil, not the stuff they mostly used in town that was made from animal fat; and there were other smells. Dust, animal dung, and some sharp chemical smells that reminded him of the kind of booze that Charlie Pink-eye and his crew drank. Stuff Mr. Lafferty at the general store sold as whiskey but that Morgie Mitchell’s dad used to call “rotgut.” And the ever-present stink of death. It wasn’t as strong as the other smells, but it was there.

All they could see were dozens of crates lashed together with nylon bands and secured to metal rings set in the floor. Most of the crates were made from some tough-looking plastic; but a few were metal and the biggest were wooden.

“What can you see?” whispered Nix.

“Nothing much. Bunch of big crates and boxes.”

“Boxes of what?”

“Don’t know. Probably not puppies, apple pie, and new baseball gloves. Pretty much bet on that.”

He took a few steps inside, listening for sounds and hearing only his own nervous breathing. The cargo bay stretched past the stacks of crates and vanished into the gloom. He had all-weather matches in his vest, but he didn’t really want to put down his sword long enough to fish one out and light it. Not yet.

The floor creaked under his weight, and Benny remembered all the cracks he’d seen in the plane’s crippled body.

A soft scuff behind him told him that Nix had entered the bay.

“You have your gun out?” he asked very quietly.

“Yes.”

“Put it away. I don’t want to get a bullet in the back because another mouse jumps out at us.”

She muttered something, but he heard the scrape of metal on leather as she holstered it.

Benny’s night vision was kicking in, and he was able to make out some details. There were words stenciled in black on some of the cases, and Benny mouthed them as he read the closest ones. The wooden boxes had labels like:

The metal cases were labeled:

“What is this stuff?” Benny asked.

“I have no idea. It must all be lab equipment and science stuff.”

Benny nodded and moved a few steps deeper into the darkness.

“Do you hear anything?” whispered Nix.

“No. You?”

“No.”

“That’s good,” said Benny, and mentally added, I think.

He moved a few steps forward, trying to sort out and identify the shapes of things he saw. The pale light was too weak, and the shadows of the bay seemed impenetrable.

Benny leaned toward Nix and spoke softly into her ear. “Listen, I’m going to walk down the center aisle. Wait for me here. If there’s something hinky, I don’t want to have to run you down to get out of here. This place gives me the super-creeps.”

There was a faint rattle and then the scrape of a sulfur match. Light blinded him, and the sulfur stung his nostrils. He winced and peered through the glare to see Nix holding out a match.

In the intense darkness of the cargo bay, even the pale light of the match revealed so much that was hidden.

Vehicles chained to the floor.

Banks of computer equipment standing inert against the walls.

Gleaming loading hooks on chains attached to the ceiling.

And beyond the rows of crates were row after row of metal chairs.

Benny and Nix both froze in shock.

People sat in the chairs. They were dressed identically in one-piece jumpsuits. At least two dozen of them wore yellow jumpsuits, four were in blue jumpsuits, and two wore green.

They were all dead.

But all of them stared with hungry eyes at Benny and Nix.

Nix screamed.

74

“Honored one,” began Brother Peter, “if we are to doubt Mother Rose and any reapers she has led astray, then I think there is a matter that must be attended to.”

Saint John’s face was bland. “Which matter?”

“The Shrine of the Fallen.”

“What about it?”

“The way Mother Rose protects it, denying everyone — even your own holy self — to enter it, there must be something of great value hidden there.”

“Value is relative,” said the saint. “A man with his house on fire and a man dying of thirst each place a different value on a glass of water.”

Brother Peter nodded, accepting the point, but doubt still chewed at him. “She can’t possibly hope to take Sanctuary with only a few reapers. What does she have — a hundred or two who will follow her? No, she must have some resource we don’t know about. It has to be inside the shrine. It was a military plane. Surely there are some weapons aboard…. ”

“I have no doubt.”

“Then, Honored One, shouldn’t we take it instead?”

Saint John shook his head sadly. “Even you, Peter? Even you?”

“I don’t—”

“You think there are weapons aboard that crashed airplane. So do I. Mother Rose knows it for sure. She has done everything short of building a wall around the shrine to make sure no one ever looks inside. For a time I even agreed with her. The plane represents the world that was. Whether it is filled to its rafters with scientific research on how to cure the gray plague, or medical supplies to treat all the many diseases that have been with us since the Fall, or a battle tank, it doesn’t matter what is in that plane. All of it is evil. All of it is polluted.”

“I understand that, Honored One,” insisted Brother Peter, “but surely if we used such weapons, their nature would change. As Mother Rose is so fond of saying, it is the intention that matters when picking up a sword and not the sword itself. After all, you allowed us to use the quads, and they are from the old world.”

“They are not weapons of war.”

“Even so—”

Saint John held up a hand. “I know what you would advise me, Peter, and it would sound like wisdom to both of us. It would even sound like a victory — to take something forged with ill intent and turn it to a holy purpose.”

“Yes, I—”

“But that is a pathway that would lead us from the purity of who we are back to the pollution of what we were.”

75

Mother Rose walked through the forest with Brother Alexi by her side. A hundred reapers followed forty paces behind them. Their newest “chosen one,” Brother Mako, walked in the midst of the crowd. He looked slightly dazed but very happy to still be alive. The other chosen talked and laughed with him, clapping him on the back, sharing stories with him. They treated him like a hero, like a brother or cousin who had just done something amazing that benefited the family. And it all drew Mako further into his new role as a chosen of Mother Rose.

This was how it worked, and Mother Rose was pleased. This kind of con was always her gift. Alexi, who had been a highly successful drug dealer for the Russian Mafia before the Fall, was also pleased. The best cons were always those in which the mark felt like he had made all the important choices, and that those choices were the only good ones to make. The world as it was might have ended, but a sucker was a sucker was a sucker.

The process was simple. Invite and include so a person feels like they are a part of something. Like they belong. It was the cement of loyalty; and on some level everyone in the Night Church understood this. It was never spoken about, but because each of them had been brought in this way, every one of them reinforced it with new recruits. Mother Rose knew that it allowed each person to justify their own decision to join. It was an infection of self-justification, and that was how it all worked.

“What do you want to do about the rest of Carter’s crew?” asked Alexi. “They’re hiding like rabbits around here somewhere.”

She waved a hand. “Who cares about them? If we have time later, we’ll see about recruiting some of them. Forget the rest. We’re past that now.”

“Hey, a runner’s coming in,” said Alexi, nodding at the woods to their left. They slowed their pace but did not stop, and Sister Caitlyn came out of the forest and fell into step beside them.

“Holiness,” she said, a little breathlessly, “we got a problem.”

“Tell me.”

“Saint John and Brother Peter just had a long chat with Brother Eric.”

“What kind of ‘chat’?”

“The bad kind. They hung parts of Eric from the trees,” said Caitlyn, her color bad. “The way they do when they’re serious about finding out stuff.”

They walked a few paces in silence.

Brother Alexi ground his teeth. “Eric knew damn near everything.”

“He knew a lot,” agreed Mother Rose. “But not everything.”

“How’d they tumble to us so fast?” asked the giant.

Sister Caitlyn shook her head. “I don’t think any of us went to him.”

“They could have had someone watching from the woods when we met at the shrine,” said Alexi. “Plenty of places to hide and—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mother Rose. “What does matter is that Saint John knows.”

“This sucks,” grumped Alexi. “I had a nice little timetable for working the new agenda into the army. Real subtle, too. I have a list of all the right people to talk to. The ones who could influence whole groups within the army. Damn.”

Mother Rose said nothing as they continued to walk toward the edge of the forest. Alexi and Caitlyn fell silent, but both of them looked disappointed and nervous.

Rebellion was fine, even imperative, unless they wanted to die young, which neither of them did, but going up against Saint John, Brother Peter, and the main body of the reaper army too soon… that promised a short and ugly future. Mother Rose’s insurrection was barely two hours old.

“We really screwed the pooch here,” said Alexi.

“No,” said Mother Rose. “We don’t need the army to take Sanctuary.”

“I’m not just worried about taking Sanctuary, Rose,” said Alexi. “But I have to admit that I’m more than a little concerned about Saint John hunting us with the main force of the reaper army. We have less than three hundred. Even without pulling in all of the legions from Wyoming and Utah, Saint John can chase us down with forty thousand knives.”

“Let him try.”

Caitlyn and Alexi stared at her. Mother Rose smiled as she let seconds fall all around them.

“But…,” began Alexi, but Mother Rose cut him off.

“He has numbers,” she said, “but we have something else. Don’t you think it’s time that the Shrine of the Fallen yields up its mysteries?”

A big, ugly grin bloomed on Alexi’s dark face. “Oh… yes. Long past time.”

Mother Rose placed her fingertips on his chest over his heart. “You know what to do, my love. Caitlyn and I will gather the rest of our chosen ones and march on Sanctuary. Take a dozen fighters and go to the shrine. Follow as quick as you can.”

Alexi took her hand and kissed it. Then he turned and began growling orders to twelve of the toughest chosen. Together they vanished into the woods.

Confused, Caitlyn asked, “Mother… what’s at the shrine?”

Mother Rose’s smile was small and cold. “A power that not even Saint John, with all of his power, can hope to withstand.”

With that she turned and signaled to her chosen, who followed her on the way to Sanctuary.

76

“Nix!” yelled Benny. “Get back!”

He shoved her out of the way and brought his sword up in a two-handed grip.

As Nix fell, the match winked out, plunging the room into total darkness.

“Match — match — MATCH!” shrieked Benny.

Suddenly another match flared, and Benny crouched in the corridor between the stacks of crates, sword raised, feet braced, ready to fight to the death to buy Nix enough time to get out and climb down to safety.

The zoms stared at Nix and Benny.

Benny backed up a pace, edging toward the hatch.

Gray eyes, milky and dead, were focused on the two teenagers. They moaned with aching hunger. A strange moan, muted and low.

And they did not attack.

Nix screamed once more and then stopped.

Benny stopped trying to back away.

The zoms stared at them with unyielding need, but they did not move.

And the moment held.

“Benny—?”

All Benny could do was stare.

“Benny,” demanded Nix. “What is — what is—?”

She fell silent too.

The zoms were still seated in their chairs.

Benny licked his dry lips and took a tentative step forward. Toward the zoms. Their eyes shifted to follow him.

The zoms themselves, however, did not.

They could not.

And now Benny could see why. They were all secured to the chairs by rope looped around their ankles, wrists, waists, and throats.

And every mouth had been sewn shut with silver wire.

“Are you seeing this?” Benny whispered.

Nix nodded mutely.

Benny sagged back, sick and disgusted down to a level he could not frame into words. This was so… weird, so wrong. So horrible.

On one level he understood the logic of it. Zoms that can’t move or bite are safer. They can be handled without as much fear of the contagion.

But this was… awful.

Benny heard Nix retch. Then she spun away and threw up behind the packing cases. When she was done, she leaned heavily against the crates, eyes closed, chest heaving. Beads of sweat like tiny diamond chips glistened on her face. She pushed roughly away from him and then turned warily back toward the ghastly scene before them.

“What,” she gasped, “is this? This is crazy. This is wrong.”

“I know,” Benny said weakly. He stared at the zoms. Each of them had a network of thin wires wrapped around their heads, with sockets drilled into their sinuses, ears, and foreheads. God only knew what that was for.

Nix found a blank writing tablet on one of the crates, rolled it up, and lit it. It was a small torch, but better than holding a match. She held it up as they moved carefully down the corridor, looking at every zom, making sure each one was securely lashed in place.

“If any of them as much as twitches, I’m going to punch a Benny-shaped hole right through the wall,” he said.

“Just don’t get in my way,” said Nix.

The muted moan of the zoms followed them.

“God,” she said, “I can’t stand to look at them.”

“I know.”

Benny saw a row of blue boxes against one wall and sidled past the front row of seated zoms. Each box was labeled:

There were over eighty boxes.

“Lot of research,” he murmured.

“What?” asked Nix from across the bay.

Benny turned away. “Nothing,” he said. “Just junk. Let’s get the heck out of here.”

They crept past the zoms again, hurried down the corridor, and stepped into the hatch. Nix dropped the torch and stamped it out as Benny pulled the door shut.

They peered over the edge of the hatch, saw only empty desert and the sparse forest, and climbed down the plastic sheeting.

“Let’s go,” said Nix as she swung her leg over the edge.

“I’ll be down in a sec,” said Benny as he fished his matches out of his vest pocket. “There’s plenty of wax here. I’m going to reseal the doors. Maybe they won’t know we’ve been in here.”

Nix nodded and began climbing down. “Don’t take too long.”

It wasn’t difficult work. Benny used some dried twigs from among the debris to hold the flame, and he picked up all the wax he could find and dribbled it over the handles, then pressed the red ribbons back in place. The original job had been thorough but not neat, and his finished product looked about the same. He nodded, satisfied, then ground the burning twig underfoot and moved to the open hatch.

He was just about to call Nix’s name when he heard her scream.

Benny saw why.

She stood in the clearing near where they had exited the forest earlier, but she was not alone.

She was surrounded by a dozen reapers.

77

Saint John stood on a rocky outcrop that offered an excellent view of the forest, the plateau, and the surrounding desert. Brother Peter and other trusted reapers had come and gone a dozen times over the last hour, bringing him information on everything that happened inside the forest.

“Observe only,” Saint John had instructed them. “Do not be seen, and do not interfere until you have talked to me.”

These reapers were his, heart and soul, and they obeyed without question. They were also very smart and highly trained. They moved like ghosts and they watched like owls. For some of them it was hard not to take action. It was as if the knives at their belts ached to open red mouths in every person who moved under the desert sun.

As his reapers brought him pieces of the strange puzzle, Saint John assembled them into a picture whose image did not entirely surprise him, though it saddened him, threatening to break his heart.

So many things happening at once.

Riot had been spotted. Carter’s daughter, Eve, and an unknown heretic — a Chinese boy whose body was wrapped in bandages — were with Riot, sharing a quad with her. They were heading by a circuitous route toward the Shrine of the Fallen.

The ranger, Joe, had also been seen. A dozen reapers had fled from him rather than lay down their own lives to send that sinner into the darkness. Saint John would have Brother Peter re-educate them in some matters of faith.

The ranger, it seemed, was also heading toward the shrine.

And two children had been seen climbing into the shrine itself. A red-haired girl with a scarred face and a boy with Japanese eyes.

Nyx and her knight.

That was a piece of the puzzle Saint John did not yet understand. Several intriguing possibilities occurred to him, each of them dependent on whether this Nyx was a true manifestation of Thanatos’s mother on earth. If she was something false, perhaps a demon of one of the old religions, then things could turn against God’s will. Saint John would send Brother Peter to learn the truth.

Brother Peter came to join him.

“Honored One, I sent a hundred runners out,” he said. “It will take at least a week to gather everyone from Utah and the other states.”

“That is good. We will leave coded signs so they may follow us.”

The young man nodded toward the line of red mountains that separated the forest from the vast desert.

“Sanctuary is so close,” he said, amazed. “All this time, so close.”

“We were not meant to find it sooner than now.”

Brother Peter glanced at him. “We’ve looked for it so long…. ”

“And in doing so we’ve put our own desires before the will of our god. The fact that its location was withheld from us is proof that God had other work for us.”

“But… we can take it. We have the numbers.”

“All things in their time,” said the saint with mild reproof in his voice.

Brother Peter placed his hand on his wings and bowed. “Forgive a sinner, Honored One.”

Saint John patted his shoulder.

They both looked off toward the northeast.

“Nine towns,” murmured Saint John.

“Nine towns,” agreed Peter.

“When we come back this way,” said the saint, “our army will have grown. Remember, we are not seeking a battle — the lord of the darkness simply wants a victory. A knife will accomplish this, but a tsunami will do it more surely.”

“Ah,” said Brother Peter, getting it now. “And what of Mother Rose?”

“She craves Sanctuary. The thought of it has corrupted her.” He sighed. “The darkness does not know her anymore.”

78

Benny froze. He was up in the hatchway of the airplane, and Nix was down on the ground. She had a pistol with two bullets, he had a sword.

There were at least a dozen reapers, not to mention Brother Alexi. Nix had her pistol out in a flash, the hammer thumbed back, barrel pointed down at her side.

“You lose your way, missy?” asked the giant. “Can’t find your friend Carter in all these big, bad woods?”

“Look, mister,” replied Nix, “I don’t know who you are or what you want. Just leave me alone.”

“I think we’re already past that. You’re where you shouldn’t be, maybe seeing things you shouldn’t see, and that’s a real problem for me.”

“I didn’t touch anything of yours,” Nix said. She kept the pistol pointing down, but Benny could tell that everyone in the clearing was aware of it. None of them made a move toward her.

The giant grinned. “And I suppose all those papers stickin’ out of your pockets are just homework? Or maybe notes to your boyfriend?”

“Just leave me alone.”

Alexi shook his head. He hoisted his hammer and laid it across one massive shoulder. “Two ways we can play this. You be nice and hand me those papers, or I take them off of you. You won’t like it the second way.”

Even up in the plane Benny could hear the other reapers laugh. Benny couldn’t tell whether that was because these reapers were different or because the woman, Mother Rose, wasn’t here. At the moment, the people with Brother Alexi just seemed like a group of thugs.

Nix suddenly raised the pistol and pointed it at the giant’s chest.

“If anyone tries to touch me, I’ll kill you,” she said.

“Won’t stop us from getting the papers, missy,” Alexi said. “Go ahead and pull the trigger, sweet cheeks. My chosen ones will leave pieces of you along thirty miles of road.”

“You won’t be there to see it,” growled Nix, and the giant gave an appreciative laugh.

Benny knew that this situation was going to fall apart any second. Even if Nix shot the giant, she had only two bullets left, and then it would be her with a bokken against a dozen killers with knives and swords. He almost swung his leg out to start climbing down.

Almost.

But an idea stopped him.

Knives and swords.

He reached up and touched the sword he carried, thought about it, shook his head, and instead drew his knife.

This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, he told himself.

Then Benny turned his back on Nix and the reapers and lunged for the handle to the cargo bay.

79

That’s it, thought Nix Riley. I’m going to die. Right here, right now.

Brother Alexi was like something out of a nightmare. Seven feet tall, his body packed with muscle, his skin reeking from whatever chemical the reapers used to fend off the living dead. He leered down at her, the big sledgehammer resting with false idleness. Nix could see the tension in the man’s arm — he was ready to smash her flat.

She wished Benny were there with her.

She wished Benny would stay hidden and stay alive.

She wished Tom weren’t dead.

The reapers began to close in around her. The afternoon sun was beginning to fall behind the trees, and the slanting light struck yellow fire from the edges of all those knives and axes.

Mom, she thought, I hope you’re waiting for me.

Please.

Be there to bring me home.

“Now,” said Alexi, and he suddenly grabbed the closest reaper and flung him at Nix.

Nix screamed.

And fired.

80

Joe skidded the quad to a stop.

“Did you hear that?” he barked.

“A shot,” said Lilah, nodding. “Up ahead, by the crashed plane. Reapers?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Reapers don’t use guns.”

There was a second shot. With the engine idling low, they could hear it better.

“Handgun,” said Joe. “Wheel gun, not an automatic.”

Lilah grabbed Joe’s sleeve. “Nix!”

Joe stared at her for one shaved fragment of a second.

“Grimm! Reapers! Hit-hit-HIT!”

The powerful mastiff gave a single howl of dark intent, and then he went racing away at a speed Lilah would never have thought possible for so massive a beast. The armor rattled along Grimm’s sides as he crashed into the brush, cutting off the path to take the straightest line of attack.

“Lock and load, little darlin’,” bellowed Joe as he gunned the engine.

81

The first reaper fell with a red poppy blossoming in the center of his chest. That stalled the others for a short second, and Nix stole her chance. She whirled and ran for the mound of dirt near the front of the wrecked plane. She knew from her training that if she could gain the high ground, she might have a slim chance.

It was bravado, she knew. A delusion, because there was nowhere to go once she made the high ground. The reapers could catch her.

Or she could lead them away from the plane and give Benny a chance.

If only Benny would do the smart thing and take it. If only he would stop thinking that he had to be Tom now that Tom was dead.

She ran.

Months of hard training in Tom’s Warrior Smart program had made Nix lean, toned her muscles, made her cat quick. She outpaced the reapers and was halfway up the slope before they were organized. Then the whole mass of them was racing along the length of the plane in murderous pursuit.

Nix climbed and climbed.

One of the reapers, faster than the others, came flying up the slope after her and dove to grab her ankles. Nix fell hard, but as she landed she twisted around and fired.

The reaper pitched backward down the slope and crashed into two others.

Nix scrambled on all fours to the top of the slope and flopped over the rim of hard-packed dirt. She rolled to her knees and clawed her bokken from its sling. She rose, turning to meet the charge.

She froze and stared.

In absolute horror.

The reapers gaped in horror too.

They screamed.

They tried to run.

But it was already too late.

From the open hatch of the airplane came a horde of zombies. Dozens of them in colored jumpsuits, boiling out of the broken plane like cockroaches, leaping down onto the reapers, heedless of whatever bones they broke in the fall. The reapers tried to turn, tried to flee, but they were in one another’s way. The zoms dove at them.

Most of them were lumbering monsters.

But not all.

Some were fast.

Some were very fast.

Brother Alexi roared in annoyance. “They can’t hurt you, you silly buggers. You’re all wearing the tassels. Get a damn grip.”

He strode toward the reapers, who were wrestling on the ground with the living dead. His look of annoyance lasted three steps. Then he saw blood geyser up.

The screams stopped him in his tracks.

The high-pitched, awful screams.

Nix saw the way doubt carved itself onto the giant’s face, and then those lines instantly eroded into outright fear.

These dead were not stopped by the chemical on the red streamers. They did not react to it at all.

Alexi snatched up the silver dog whistle he wore around his neck and blew fiercely. The dead — a few of them — looked up briefly. Then they returned to the meat that was fresh and close at hand.

The slaughter was appalling.

Nix, alone at the top of the slope, realized with sudden clarity what had happened. She whispered a single, shocked word. “Benny.”

And as if by magic, she heard him call her name.

“NIX!”

82

Benny leaned out through the broken windows of the cockpit.

“Nix!” he yelled.

Twenty feet away Nix Riley whirled and stared in all the wrong places first. Then she spotted Benny, and the smile that bloomed on her face was the brightest and most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Come on!” he cried.

She ran along the top of the mound toward him, cutting through the shadows cast by the three dead pilots writhing on their T-bars.

“Try to climb up,” he said.

Nix turned to watch the carnage at the bottom of the slope. She winced and turned away in disgust.

“No… we’ll be trapped in there. See if you can climb down here.”

Benny climbed onto the control panel, kicked out the last jagged shards of the shattered windows, and wriggled out into the fresh air. He slid awkwardly down the crumpled nose and dropped nine feet to the top of the slope, landing with a grunt. Nix caught him, but they lost their balance and fell backward. Benny caught something out of the corner of his eye, and before he could twist out of the way, he struck his head on one of the T-bars. The zoms moaned down at him, and snakes of fire writhed through the air all around him.

“Benny! Are you all right?” asked Nix.

He cursed and groaned as Nix pulled him to his feet.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

Benny dragged his forearm across his face, and it came away with a bright red smear.

“Swell.”

They looked down the slope at the mayhem. There was so much blood and movement that it was almost impossible to tell the living dead from the dying. They backed away and peered out from behind the nose of the plane.

“Did you let the zoms out?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How?”

Benny said nothing. He closed his eyes and was back in that darkened cabin, a new makeshift torch in one hand, his quieting knife in the other. The idea had been insane then, and it felt much crazier now.

He had to free the zom farthest from the door first, and for a terrible moment he had crouched there, staring into those dead eyes, trapped between the need to help Nix and his own horror. The zom’s eyes were milky, and even though Benny knew that there was no mind behind them — no personality, no humanity left — he felt like he was committing some awful sin.

“Nix,” he whispered as he slipped the point of the knife into the silver wire that held the zom’s mouth shut. The wire was thin and the blade was strong. The wire parted easily. All Benny had to do was cut a couple of loops, and the zom did the rest as it fought to open its mouth. And bite.

He debated pulling out the network of wires that covered its head, but decided not to. He had no idea what its purpose was, and this didn’t seem like the time to find out.

Benny quickly slashed the bindings on hands and feet, but even in his panic he was no fool. His training was right there, burning like a beacon as he worked. He cut the ropes almost all the way through, leaving only threads.

He did this over and over again, working with a pace that crossed the line into frenzy. Terror was the whip that drove him. His knife slashed and cut, and sometimes it gouged chunks of dry flesh from the zoms.

As he went along row after row, the cabin filled with the dry rustle of zoms fighting to break the last threads.

The first ones tore free before Benny was done. They began shuffling toward him.

Benny bit back a scream and slashed at the nylon straps holding a stack of metal cases in place, and suddenly hundreds of pounds of dead weight crashed down on the zoms. One of them collapsed with a broken neck, but for the others the cases were nothing more than an obstacle to climb over to get to their meal.

In the flickering torchlight, Benny saw that there was a second row of cases behind the stack he’d toppled. They were made of heavy-duty blue plastic and marked with a design that everyone who had survived First Night knew all too well: a biohazard symbol. The cases were stenciled in white letters:

The zoms kept coming, and Benny heard himself whimpering, making small cries and yelps, as he cut the last zoms free.

He scuttled backward, knocking over more crates.

The big stack of metal boxes fell next. A zom closed in on Benny, and he shoved one labeled LAW RKTS in its face. The zom flew backward into others. The container case slid off the stack and crashed down on its corner. The impact popped the hinges so the case flopped open. Benny glanced at it and saw something that vaguely resembled a gun, but it wasn’t anything he understood how to use. He ignored it and kept scrambling backward.

That was when Benny almost died.

He heard a sudden growl. Not a moan — a growl — and he looked up to see a zom climbing over the other zoms. Climbing fast. It was one of two zoms dressed in green jumpsuits — and Benny remembered too late the notations he and Nix had read on the clipboard, about the zoms in green.

This is an entirely new classification… able to negotiate obstacles… avoid many of the objects thrown at it… use simple tools. This reanimate appeared to be able to grasp certain concepts, particularly stealth and subterfuge.

The zom snarled at him. Its eyes were not dead eyes. They were more like those of the lions who had surrounded the camp. There was intelligence in them. If not human, then some new order of primitive intelligence.

A hateful intelligence.

The zom came clawing and scrambling its way over the others, howling out its hunger, racing straight at Benny.

Behind it, the second green-jumpsuited zom tore free of its bindings and hissed like a snake.

Benny backed away, his torch falling from his hand.

He spun and ran as fast as he could.

The zoms crawled over the others, dropped onto the metal deck, and ran after him.

Benny dove through the cargo bay hatch, across the narrow corridor, slammed into the cockpit door, jerked the handle hard, shoved his weight against it, jumped inside, slammed the door shut, and shot the handle back into place.

Then Tom spoke in his head for the first time in hours.

Some zoms can turn door handles.

Benny thought it was a slice of memory served up in a moment of need, but it still sounded like Tom was right there behind him.

He looked down at the handle.

It began to turn.

With a cry, Benny grabbed it and shoved it to the locked position. There was a shallow well around the handle so the whole door was flush.

The handle jerked and rattled with incredible force. This was not the fumbling of a zom, not according to everything Benny had seen. This was coordinated. This was powerful.

Benny thought he had already reached the limit of how high his terror could soar.

He was wrong.

He held on with one hand while he desperately scrabbled in his pockets for something he could use to wedge the handle in place. The only thing he had that was strong enough was his quieting knife.

Outside he heard the first screams as the freed zoms attacked the reapers.

With no choice left to him, Benny jammed the knife into the narrow slot between the handle and the steel door. He jammed it in hard until there was no give at all.

Instantly the zom gave up on the handle and began pounding on the door with insane fury.

Then nothing.

These memories replayed in Benny’s head in a second, and he heard the echo of Nix’s question.

“How?”

How had he let them out?

“Don’t ask,” he said, drawing his sword. “Come on… we have to get out of here and get these papers to Sanctuary.”

Together they edged away from the fight. They turned to make a dash for the safety of the woods.

Safety, however, was not theirs to have.

There was a zombie in the way.

He wore a bloody and torn green jumpsuit.

83

Riot drove the quad like she had a death wish.

The machine bounced and jounced and bucked as she pushed it to the limits of speed and maneuverability. Even belted in, Chong and Eve had to hold on for dear life.

Chong kept praying that they would pass through some kind of veil and cross from a day that could only be part of some mad nightmare and into yesterday, when the worst problem was knowing which berries wouldn’t give him diarrhea.

Then he heard the strangest sound.

A small burble of happy laughter.

He looked down at the child who clung to him. Her face was alight with sheer joy as the quad banged over fallen branches and leaped channels cut by rainwater.

Eve grinned up at him, and for the first time since he had first met her, Chong saw the uncomplicated purity of happiness. It was so odd, so totally out of keeping with everything that was happening, that even though he smiled back at her, Chong was deeply afraid for this child.

He did not for a moment believe that a kid who was borderline catatonic could simply “snap out of it.” No way. Chong kept his smile in place, but he felt that he was looking at the beautiful face of a horror deeper than his own infection.

God, don’t let her be all the way over the edge, he silently prayed. If I have any grace coming to me, then let’s agree that I don’t really need it anymore. Give it to the kid. Give Eve a chance.

Even his prayers were orderly, and Chong was good with it. He meant every word.

He closed his eyes for a moment as a fresh wave of motion-induced nausea wormed through his guts.

Lilah, he thought. Lilah...

Riot’s quad burst out of the forest and into the desert. “We’ll be in Sanctuary in less than—”

She screamed and slammed on the brakes.

Chong opened his eyes.

The desert was filled with reapers. More than a hundred of them.

One of them, a tall woman who — unlike the other reapers — had long flowing hair, drew a slender knife and pointed it at Riot.

Riot groaned and spoke a word that Chong knew would burn like acid on her tongue.

“Ma!”

She immediately spun the quad and plunged back into the forest.

Even over the roar of the engine, Chong could hear a hundred voices howl as the reapers gave chase.

84

“I got this,” said Nix, raising her bokken.

“No!” warned Benny as he moved away from it, using his body to push Nix back. “It’s one of those smart fast ones from that scientist’s report.”

The zombie began stalking them, and immediately Nix and Benny knew they were in dangerously unknown territory. This wasn’t the slow, relentless shuffle of the zoms they knew. The creature in the green jumpsuit seemed to be assessing them as it stalked slowly forward. Its milky eyes flicked from Nix’s bokken to Benny’s katana.

The creature — and Benny could no longer think of this thing as a zombie — bent forward and bared its teeth, its face wrinkling with feral animal hate.

“Oh God,” whispered Nix.

The creature snarled in pure fury and rushed at them.

Benny was caught in a dreadful moment of indecision.

Run or fight?

He could feel Nix’s whole body trembling beside him.

The fight and the slope were behind them.

The choice was made for him, because the creature raced at them far too fast for any chance of escape.

85

Brother Alexi swung his hammer and the heavy weapon, powered by the giant’s massive muscles and all his mounting terror, slammed into the first zombie to reach him.

The zom’s head exploded, and the lifeless body flopped to the ground.

Alexi used the force of the blow to turn his body in a pirouette, and as the hammer came around again he smashed it into the second zom. The blow caught the dead thing on the shoulder, but the force shattered its spine.

Alexi checked the swing and brought the hammer over and down onto a third zombie, and a fourth.

He laughed out loud, and his fear melted away to become diluted in battle joy.

“Come on, you rotting buggers!” he bellowed.

The zoms rose from the twitching bodies of the chosen ones, their empty eyes seeking out the author of that challenge, their mouths dripping red.

“Come on!”

They came.

Eighteen of them came.

His laughter died in his chest.

Some of them were in jumpsuits, some were in bloodstained black — with angel wings on their chests.

Something small and round sailed past Alexi’s face, and he flinched reflexively away from it. It looked like a metal baseball, and it hit the ground in front of the leading wave of zoms, bounced once, and exploded.

The blast was huge.

Pieces of zoms were flung in every direction. Blood splashed against the white plane.

Alexi spun around, shielding his eyes.

Then the air was fractured by gunfire and the combat howl of a huge dog.

86

Benny had no choice.

He and Nix were too close to each other to swing their swords — they were breaking one of Tom’s cardinal rules about battlefield combat.

But she seemed frozen in place.

“I’m sorry!” Benny said, and shoved her backward as he jumped forward to meet the creature.

He heard Nix’s scream as she hit the edge of the slope — and fell.

Benny had no time to process that.

The creature was on him, and Benny lunged in low and to the left, swinging the sword in as powerful a lateral cut as he could manage. The shock of impact jolted him, but the katana was sharper than a razor. It sliced through dead flesh and brittle bone.

The creature fell past him and Benny turned, controlling the erratic postimpact swing of his blade. As he pivoted, he saw the zom scramble to a stop at the top of the slope and wheel around. The sword had cut completely through the right side of its chest, from front to back. Muscle and bone were destroyed, and the monster’s right arm sagged down. It did not even pause. There was no reaction to damage; there was no pain.

It growled and came charging again, and Benny tried the same trick, aiming lower this time, trying to catch the leg.

The creature dodged out of the way.

Dodged.

It…

Benny’s brain almost froze. Even with the warning on Dr. McReady’s document, it was — it seemed — impossible.

The zom grabbed Benny’s vest with its good left hand and jerked him forward, toward its mouth full of rotting gray teeth.

Benny had no angle for a cut, so he punched the zom across the mouth with the hand that held the sword. The blow was awkward but powerful, and teeth flew from the open mouth.

The zom ignored the damage and lunged forward to take a bite.

Benny threw himself backward, and the zom’s shattered teeth closed around a pocket of the vest instead. Benny heard a bottle of cadaverine crunch to stinking fragments inside the pocket.

The creature did not notice or care, and Benny was positive now that the network of wires bolted to its face somehow cut off its sense of smell. Maybe the scientists had done it as part of some experiment, or maybe smell was really a zombie’s primary hunting sense. Not that it mattered right now… the zom could see and it could still bite.

Benny fell backward with the creature, and as he fell he brought his knee up between its legs, hitting it square on the bottom of the pelvis. The fall and the kick gave Benny the power he needed to hurl the monster completely over him. It landed with a bone-rattling thud and immediately scrambled to its feet.

Benny brought his sword around into a two-hand grip but only got as far as his knees before he realized that he was in worse trouble than he thought.

As the zom raced toward him again, it snatched up a broken branch from the ground and swung it full force at Benny’s head.

There was a moment of red-black blankness. Benny never actually felt the blow. One second it was about to hit him, and then he was falling.

Then he saw something inexplicable.

The zom was falling too.

It crashed down a yard away face-to-face with Benny. The milky eyes stared at him, but now there was nothing there. No animal rage. Nothing.

But the strangest part of all was that there seemed to be an arrow sticking out of its temple.

Then a shadow fell over him, and Benny tried to bring up his sword in a last desperate defense against some new terror. Maybe the other green-jumpsuited zom?

“Hey, monkey-banger,” said a familiar voice. “You pick the strangest times to lie down for a nap.”

Benny blinked and stared. “Chong?”

It was Chong, but as Benny struggled to get to his feet, he saw his friend’s face. And froze.

Chong’s skin was gray, and a pale film of white covered his eyes.

Chong was a zom.

87

Alexi turned to see two strangers — a man and a teenage girl — climb off a quad, guns in their hands, barrels raised. He saw a monster of a dog dressed in spiked armor race past him and heard it crunch into the oncoming zoms. Bullets burned past him on either side.

He heard the teenage girl yell, “NIX!”

And he heard the voice of the red-haired girl yell, “LILAH!”

Then zoms piled onto him and he staggered backward.

Alexi roared and shook his body like an angry bear, flinging the dead off him. He swung his hammer to crush heads and chests.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the little redhead swinging her toy sword like she actually knew something. Shattering legs, crushing skulls, dodging and twisting.

She’d make a great reaper, he thought as he fought. If she lives through this, I’m going to recruit that little witch.

Zombies were falling dead around him, from those he smashed, from the wooden blade of the redhead, from the gunshots, and from the dog.

Alexi really liked the dog.

He’d never seen anything fight like that, and he wondered why it had never occurred to him to train dogs to work with the reapers. This one was a cunning fighter, clearly trained to fight the dead. It did not bite at all, but instead used its horned helmet and spiked armor to rend and smash and dismember. The dead had no chance against it. Those who tried to bite it shattered their teeth on its chain mail. It was like a pack of lions trying to tear down an armored personnel carrier.

Suddenly Alexi realized that everyone in the clearing was engaged in fighting the dead except him. The gray people who had attacked him were all dead. He glanced at the man and girl with the guns. They were totally absorbed in their own personal wars.

He hefted his hammer.

“Screw this,” he said, and ran away as fast as his long legs could carry him.

He vanished into the woods to find Mother Rose.

88

“Chong—?” Benny gasped.

The dead-pale face split in a rueful grin. “What’s left of him.”

“But — but — your face. What happened?”

Chong stood bare-chested, wrapped in bandages. He held a sophisticated bow in his hands, and there was a quiver of arrows slung low across his hips. He did not meet Benny’s eyes, though; he gaped at something above them. When Benny reached up to touch his forehead, he felt swollen flesh. Blood dripped like red rain across his eyes.

The pain caught up to him then.

Immense, crashing, like a giant bell ringing an inch from his ears.

Chong said something, but the words didn’t seem to make sense.

Benny asked him to repeat it, but he heard his own words.

They were meaningless gibberish.

The fading sunlight flared too white and too bright, and then the hinges fell off the world and Benny was falling.

Falling.

Falling.

89

Benny could not move. He could barely breathe. His head felt like it was actually on fire.

He heard several sounds happen all at once, colliding into one another so hard and fast that it was hard to separate them out and assign meaning.

He heard a girl scream in fear. Nix?

Did she say his name? Was she the one shouting it over and over?

He heard a dog barking.

So weird. He didn’t have a dog.

He heard the moans of the living dead.

He heard gunshots.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the light had changed. And now there was a ring of faces around him. Benny raised a hand and touched one of them; he traced the line of a pink scar down through a field of freckles.

“I love you,” he said.

The face, grave with concern, flushed, and that made Benny smile.

“Benny,” said Nix, “you’re hurt. You hit your head.”

“A zom hit my head,” he said. “I was hit in the head by a zom.” He thought that was funny and laughed, but laughing hurt, so he stopped.

The other faces swam in and out of focus. Lilah. Chong.

“Are you dead?” he asked Chong.

Chong tried to smile, but it didn’t suit his face. “That’s open to debate,” he said.

Nix said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Chong said something, but Benny didn’t understand it. Thinking was so hard. His head felt like it was in a hollow metal box and someone kept banging on it.

He thought he heard Nix scream. Or cry. Or maybe she was laughing.

“Are you sleeping?” asked a tiny voice, and Benny realized that his eyes had closed. He open them to see a lovely little face.

“Eve?”

“You found me in a hole in the ground,” she said. At first Benny thought it didn’t make sense, but then he realized it did.

“Yeah, just like a bunny rabbit.” He touched the tip of her nose. “You’re a little bunny.”

She giggled.

That sound seemed to screw one of the world’s hinges back into place.

A strange voice said, “Kid’s a mess. Skull fracture, concussion… ”

Benny looked toward the sound of the voice. A big man smiled down at him. One of those tight smiles people give when they don’t want you to know how bad things look through their eyes. It was almost a wince.

“I’m Joe,” he said.

“I know you,” said Benny as he raised a bloody finger and touched Joe’s face. “You’re on a Zombie Card. Captain Ledger, Hero of First Night. You’re number two-eighty-four. I have two of you. I was going to trade one of you to Morgie for his Sheriff Rick card.”

Riot’s face swam into view. “What the heck are Zombie Cards?”

“Kid’s delirious.”

Chong said, “The reapers are coming. We saw them.”

“Where and how many?” demanded Joe.

“Reaper, reaper…,” Benny began, and tried to work it into a rhyme, but he couldn’t.

“There are a couple of hundred of them out on the desert, heading toward the hills,” said Riot. “But a bunch came running after us.”

“On foot or on quad?”

“Both. I lost them, but they’ll find us.”

Benny wondered what they were talking about. It began to occur to him that his head was not working properly, that his thoughts were silly. The word “delirious” triggered a response that went deeper than his understanding. A voice spoke inside his head.

Think, Benny, it said. You saw something.

But he did not understand what the voice meant.

Joe said, “Then we have to go now. Get to Sanctuary… ”

“We can’t move Benny,” insisted Nix. “His head… ”

“What’s an MRE?” Benny asked. They ignored him. He frowned, because he was sure that was important. He’d read it somewhere.

“We can’t fight off an army of reapers. Not here.”

“We can’t let ’em get to Sanctuary,” growled Riot. “They’ll slaughter the monks and refugees and all them scientists and—”

Joe looked stricken. “I know. They have a few soldiers there, but they can’t stop an army. And my rangers are scattered all over the place. We have to warn them. That means either we go without this kid, in which case the reapers’ll carve him into lunch meat; or we put him on a quad and let the ride out there do the job for them.”

In the distance they heard the faint buzz of quads. They all looked that way and then at one another.

“Oh God,” breathed Nix.

Benny, whispered Tom, you know what you saw. Tell them. Tell them….

“What I wouldn’t give for a minigun or an—”

Benny asked dazedly, “What’s a LAW rickett?”

Joe froze and stared down at him.

“What did you say?”

“That’s what it said. L-A-W-R-K-T. LAW rickett. I read it. M-R-E. R-P-G and—”

Joe suddenly bent close to Benny, his face inches away.

“A LAW rocket? God almighty, kid… where did you see that?” he asked in a fierce whisper.

Benny smiled and winked. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s a secret.”

And then he passed out.

90

Benny felt a lot of hands on him. He felt himself moving. When he opened his eyes, though, the movement had already stopped and he was back inside the airplane.

“Zoms!” he cried.

But no one reacted.

Nothing tried to bite him.

Maybe I’m wrong about that, he decided, and went back to sleep.

The sound of quads woke him up. Quads and shouts and a dog barking.

Benny still hadn’t seen any dog. He just heard one. A big one too.

“They’re coming,” said Riot. “God — Brother Alexi’s back with a slew of reapers. Gotta be fifty, sixty of them.”

“Oh God,” Nix said, “there’s too many!”

Someone laughed. Joe? Was Benny’s Zombie Card laughing? Silly.

He opened his eyes and saw Joe carrying something that looked like a big toy gun. Like one of those big plastic toys from before First Night. A Super Soaker. Mayor Kirsch bought one for his kids. Cost three hundred ration dollars. That was more than Mrs. Riley made in a whole season doing sewing.

“Nix?” he asked.

A small, warm hand took his, and Benny tried to turn toward her, but his head wouldn’t move. His whole body felt weird, like it was tied to a board. How crazy was that?

Nix leaned over, and he saw her face. She was so pretty.

“Nix, is your mom here?”

Pain flickered in her green eyes.

“Mama’s dead, Benny. You know that.”

“Oh. I thought I heard her laughing. She was baking muffins.”

Something hot and wet fell on his cheek.

A tear.

Where did that come from?

The roar of quads filled the whole cabin. Benny thought it sounded like a zillion of them. People were yelling. Roaring. Cursing, too.

“They’re coming!” shrieked Nix. “They’re climbing up!”

Joe’s voice roared: “Fire in the hole!”

There was big hissing sound, and then the whole plane shook with a gigantic rolling booooom!

The sound was too big for Benny, and he went back down in the darkness. He was sure Nix’s mom was baking muffins.

91

Nix and Chong stood at the edge of the hatch and stared down at horror.

The air was thick with smoke from the LAW rockets and rocket-propelled grenades that the ranger had fired. The air tasted of gunpowder and wrongness.

The clearing and the whole edge of the plateau was a slaughterhouse. Burned and blasted bodies lay everywhere. Even the trees at the edge of the forest had died in the barrage as the weapons of the old world wrought their carnage.

They were both crying.

“One man,” whispered Nix.

Chong nodded, unable to speak. Sick in body, sick in soul.

One man.

The ranger, Joe, had used those terrible weapons. The reapers, the chosen ones, the elite of Mother Rose’s army, had poured out of the forest, brought back by Alexi to claim the weapons hidden in the shrine. They thought themselves to be the most powerful force left on earth. They thought themselves to be unstoppable — those among them who believed in God and those who only believed in Mother Rose — they surged forward to slaughter the pitiful handful of people who stood against them.

And they all died.

Every last one of them. More than half of Mother Rose’s army. Gone.

Nix and Chong had not fired a shot.

Nor had Lilah.

Or Riot.

Even Grimm had only watched.

One man.

Now Joe walked among the bodies, looking for signs of reanimation. Every now and then a hollow crack broke the silence. As he reloaded, he looked around, and his eyes met those of Chong and Nix. The ranger’s face was totally without expression as he pocketed the empty magazine and slapped a new one into place. His eyes were not bright with battle lust or dark with emotion. His eyes were… nothing. They were as dead in their way as the zoms. Joe stood for a moment, watching them watching him, then turned without a word and went about his grotesque but necessary work.

Chong found his voice, but it was thin and fragile. “When we fought Preacher Jack and his people at Gameland,” he began slowly, “I thought I understood what war was really like. But… ”

“This is war,” said Nix. “This is what it really looks like. God… there has to be something better than this.”

Chong nodded and turned away.

But then a new sound intruded into the moment. A motor sound, but not the sound of quads. It was bigger. Much, much bigger.

They leaned out.

The sound was massive, rolling out over the tops of the trees.

They turned and looked upward.

“Oh my God!” cried Nix.

Even Chong, despite everything, smiled.

The thing was enormous and white, with massive wings stretching on either side. It flew directly over the clearing, and its shadow caressed their faces as they watched. It flew low and descended toward the red desert mountains in a graceful line.

Down among the dead, Joe stopped and shielded his eyes as he looked up. Stained with soot and blood, he smiled.

The jet.

92

In the last glow of the dying sun, Mother Rose stood at the edge of the forest. She watched the jet descend toward Sanctuary. Once, long ago, she had seen it flying high in the sky, and she’d thought it was a passenger liner. How foolish a thought that had been. She knew what it was now; her daughter had told her. A C-5 Galaxy. A cargo jet that brought staff and supplies to Sanctuary.

Even if Mako hadn’t revealed the location of the place, the landing jet would have been a beacon.

Not that it mattered anymore. Mother Rose had less than one hundred reapers left. A fraction of her force. All the rest…?

Alexi had come running from the shrine, bloody and furious, claiming that children and a ranger were trying to take the weapons from the fallen plane. Mother Rose had sent so many of her reapers back with him. Too many.

And all of them… gone. Dead. Torn to rags by the weapons she had hidden and protected from Saint John and the rest of the Night Church.

Her weapons. The tools that would have made her the queen of this world.

Gone. The weapons, her reapers, her dreams… gone.

Only Alexi returned. Bloodier still. Defeated. A general without an army.

Her remaining reapers milled in the darkness. Not enough to take Sanctuary away from the monks and scientists who worked there.

Not enough.

“We’re done,” said Alexi.

Mother Rose almost stabbed him. Her hand was on her knife, but her heart was breaking and she simply could not do it. It was over.

“We were so close,” she said.

Alexi leaned on his hammer and hung his head. “One day,” he said. “If we’d jumped on this yesterday. One damn day.” He let the handle of his hammer fall away to thump into the sand. “Now what? How the hell do we come back from this?”

Mother Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. I… I’ll think of something.”

“No,” said a voice, soft as a shadow.

Mother Rose whipped her head around.

“Saint John,” she said in a whisper.

“Get back!” barked Brother Alexi, lunging for his hammer. A shadow rose up from behind a bush as the giant stretched out for his weapon, and then Alexi simply sagged forward and collapsed onto the ground. Mother Rose stared in incomprehension as the sand beneath Alexi darkened and glistened wetly. Alexi tried to speak, but there was no possibility of that. Not with what was left of his throat. He blinked once, twice, and then stared at the darkening sky.

The shadow moved into the light.

Brother Peter wore no expression at all on his face. The fading sunlight gleamed on the bloody knife in his hand.

Saint John walked slowly toward Mother Rose. He had no weapon in his hand, but she wasn’t fooled. Saint John himself was a weapon, and every fold and pocket of his clothes hid blades. He was, after all, Saint John of the Knife. How many times had she seen this man reach out in the most casual fashion, his hand seemingly empty at the beginning of a gesture and filled with steel at the end, and between start and finish the air bloomed with red. He was the greatest killer the world had ever known; she believed that with her whole heart, even if she had never believed in the saint’s God or the Night Church.

To her, it was all a scam. A means to an end.

And this was an end.

Not the one she dreamed of. Not the one she wanted.

Saint John stopped inches away. His face, though not handsome, was beautiful, the way the carved faces of saints in churches are beautiful. Cold and remote and inhuman.

Tears dropped from Mother Rose’s eyes. She knew they would do nothing to change the shape of this day. Nor would anything she could say.

If her reapers were closer, if Alexi was alive, if they had the weapons from the shrine, then she would have tried to manage this moment. To shape it, to try and work a con on the saint.

But those possibilities had set with the burning sun.

She said, “I’m sorry.”

Strangely, surprisingly, she meant it.

Saint John bent close and kissed her on the lips. Without passion, but with love. With the kind of love only he understood.

“I know,” he said.

“Please don’t let it hurt,” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

And it did not.

Mother Rose fell into his arms, and Saint John lowered her to the ground. Then he stepped back, turned, and with Brother Peter at his side, walked away.

She lay there as the sun set. Time was dancing away from her.

There was movement somewhere to her right, and she managed to turn her head, just a little. Brother Alexi was stirring, crawling across the grass toward her.

Alive, she thought, her heart filling with joy. My love is alive.

Except that he wasn’t.

The giant was as pale as the distant stars, and as he bent toward her she could see the darkness. It was in his eyes and in his open mouth.

It’s real, she thought. Her last thought. The darkness is real.

93

When Benny opened his eyes once more, the world had changed.

It wasn’t the inside of the plane. It was daytime.

There was a motor roar, and even though he could not turn his head, he could cut his eyes left and right. There were quads. Riot and Chong on one. Nix and Eve on another. A big dog galloping along with them.

Is that a dog barking? wondered Benny. The dog was all in armor, and Benny thought that was cool.

He heard the motors slow.

“Sanctuary,” said a voice.

Nix?

He thought so.

“We have to hurry,” said another voice. Joe. “He’s slipping fast.”

Benny wondered if they were talking about him.

Or Chong?

The quads moved forward, and Benny looked up to see a big chain-link fence.

We’re home, he thought. We made it all the way back to Mountainside.

But there was a sign beside the gate he’d never seen on the fence back home. It read:

But below that the original words were still visible, though sand-blasted to pale ghosts of letters by the unrelenting desert winds. As Benny passed the sign he read it:

He closed his eyes again and the world went away, taking all its puzzles and mysteries with it.