Fire & Ash (21 page)

“You’re a strange boy,” said Brother Peter. “Do you really think the ‘army’ will rise to your defense?”

“Me personally? Probably not,” admitted Benny. “I’m no one. But if you try to take it from Captain Ledger, then, sure, they’ll have his back. But it’s stupid. You have knives, they’ve got guns.”

Brother Peter shook his head. “There aren’t enough bullets in the world to stop the will of Thanatos—all praise to his darkness.”

The reapers echoed his words.

“I’ll give you until sunset tomorrow,” said Brother Peter as he climbed onto his quad. “That should be more than enough time to find a way to trick Joe Ledger into returning what you stole. Bring it here and leave it on the edge of the ravine weighted down with a rock. We won’t interfere with you delivering it.”

“Hey, man, I gave you the satchel,” said Benny. “Like I said, I get to keep whatever I found yesterday. Call it a draw.”

“No,” said Brother Peter, “let’s not.”

Lilah edged around to stand with Benny and the others. “Get out of here,” she said.

Brother Peter’s eyes were filled with dark mystery. “There is a storm coming,” he said. “It is the breath of my god, and it will be more powerful than any hurricane you’ve ever seen. The clouds will open and a rain of blood will pour down upon you. The coming storm will blow down the structures of your old world; it will seek out the blasphemers no matter where they hide. It will cleanse the earth, and when it has
passed there will be no proof that you—that any of you—ever even lived.”

Benny wanted to hit him with a snappy comeback, but there was something in Brother Peter’s voice, some look in his eye that made the words die on his tongue.

“You have until tomorrow evening,” said Brother Peter. He signaled the reapers to start their engines. They turned and drove away, crossed the clearing, and passed single file into the forest.

47

T
HE
L
OST
G
IRL LOWERED HER
gun and picked up her spear.

Nix let out a long, ragged breath, sheathed her sword, turned, and punched Benny in the chest as hard as she could.

“Wait—OWW! What was that for?” he bellowed.

“You just
gave
him the satchel?” seethed Nix. “You just up and handed over the only clues we have to where Dr. McReady might be?”

“No, I—”

“What in tarnation is going on in your head, boy?” asked Riot. “Or is there anything at all happening in there?”

“No,” said Lilah, “he’s not very bright.”

“Look, I—”

Nix shook her head in complete disgust. “And are you planning on asking Joe for that stuff?”

“Good luck with that,” said Riot, and added under her breath, “moron.”

“Hey, wait, I—”

“What were you
thinking
, Benny?” asked Nix.

“You guys are great,” he said sarcastically. “Thanks for the vote of confidence . . . but I’m not
actually
stupid.”

He reached into his vest pocket for something and held it out an inch from Nix’s face. The girls studied the papers. Nix took one; Riot took the other. Lilah came and peered over their shoulders.

Nix’s read:
URGENT: REPT OF R
3
ACTIVITY VCNTY OF DVNP
—
REL. WIT.
***
FTF?

Riot’s read: +36° 30' 19.64", -117° 4' 45.81"

Lilah said, “Wait . . . what?”

“I don’t know what Brother Peter was looking for,” said Benny, “but I’m guessing this is it.”

A slow smile formed on Nix’s face and even her freckles seemed to glow.

“I shoved those in my pocket when I saw the quads. Nothing else in the satchel looked to be important.”

Riot grinned and shook her head. “By golly, boy, you are as slick as a greased weasel.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Lilah gave him an appraising stare as if surprised that he wasn’t mentally deficient after all.

Nix’s smile faltered. “What happens when Brother Peter realizes he doesn’t have these?”

“How do we even know that
he
knows what he’s looking for?” asked Benny. “They must have been watching us and saw us take the satchel. Then they saw us put stuff back into the satchel, and now they have it. What we need is to get our butts back to Sanctuary.” He paused. “Yesterday Joe told me that when they couldn’t find the D-series records, we lost our last chance to beat this thing. I don’t think that’s true.”

Nix said, “What do you think Brother Peter meant about a storm coming?”

“He was bluffing,” said Benny. “Lilah had a gun on him and he was talking trash.”

Lilah gave a slow shake of her head. “No, he wasn’t.”

“You don’t think so?” asked Benny.

“Snow White’s right,” said Riot. “Brother Peter wasn’t bluffing at all, no sir. You could tell it from his voice. He thinks he’s going to win.”

“Against Sanctuary?” Nix laughed. “Against Captain Ledger and the soldiers?
How?
”

No one had an answer to that.

“Then it’s some kind of weapon,” said Lilah. “Something we haven’t seen yet.”

“Reapers only use knives,” said Nix.

Riot shrugged. “Before I left them, they would never have used a quad. It was old-world science, totally taboo. Now look. So who knows what else they might try?” Riot shook her head. “No . . . we have to be ready for them to do anything at all to win.”

Without another word they got their quads and raced back to Sanctuary.

48

B
ROTHER
P
ETER PULLED HIS QUAD
into the cleft of a tumble of huge rocks and killed the engine. Sister Sun sat on a stool under the shade of an awning erected for her by her reaper bodyguards. She sipped water from a plastic cup. She looked older than her years and as frail as an icicle on a warm morning.

“How did it go?” she asked as Brother Peter came over and sat down across from her.

He poured himself some water, sipped it, and set his cup aside.

“It went exactly as planned,” he said.

She reached out and patted his hand.

“Good.”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Benny isn’t the same boy I grew up with.

It’s been less than nine months since all our troubles started. Nine months ago Benny was really young. Cute and smart, but immature for his age. Everyone thought so, but nobody was mean enough to say it to his face.

After the first time Tom took him to the Ruin, Benny started to change. He smiles a lot less, and sometimes he still says dumb things and acts immature. But . . . sometimes I wonder if the way he acts during those times is a defense mechanism. I wonder if he’s still trying to be a kid when everything else in the world is trying to make him old.

Is he aware of it?

Since we came to Sanctuary, he’s changed even more. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like he’s leveled out. He’s even. Does that make sense?

This new Benny is a lot more like Tom. Independent and strong, but also not like Tom. Maybe Benny’s becoming someone else.

I hope Benny likes the person he’s becoming.

I do. Maybe more than I ever have.

49

M
ILES AND MILES AWAY
 . . .

The sign read
SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROAD
.

It made Saint John smile, as much for the visceral imagery that it conjured in his mind as for the poetry that he always found written into the mundane events of each day.

He stood in the shade of a billboard on which a smugly smiling figure once promised that everyone could, without question, hear him now. Saint John had never owned a cell phone. Even before the Fall he had believed that they whispered suggestions of temptation in the ear and sucked away both common sense and faith the way a tick sucks blood. Besides, before the dead rose, whenever Saint John felt the need to say something of importance to someone, he took them to some remote place and shared his secrets in the pauses between screams.

The weeds and grasses grew tall all around the billboard, and a haphazard forest of young trees had grown up along the road. The road surface was cracked by roots and weather, but it was relatively clear of vegetation. When Saint John’s scouts saw this, they alerted him, and a platoon of the Red Brotherhood had come this way, following what was clearly a
well-traveled route. Dried mud from recent rains showed the marks of horses’ hooves, wagon wheels, and booted footprints. A trade route or something else had been the guess, and now here was the proof.

Four trade wagons made their slow way along the road. All of them had been converted from farm carts. The frames were a mix of truck chassis and wooden cart wheels, with big boxes bolted to the frame. Each box was covered in sheet metal, and the teams of horses were protected by carpet coats covered in nets made of steel washers connected by heavy-gauge wire. The horses of the men riding alongside the carts were similarly armored, and all the men and women in the party wore ankle-length carpet coats, thick leather gloves, and helmets of all kinds, including fencing masks, football helmets, old Norman steel caps looted from museums, and even a plastic fishbowl with holes cut for ventilation. There were four mounted riders and ten guards on foot. Everyone was armed, and apart from knives and swords, many of them had guns.

It was a considerable defensive force, and old bleached bones lying along the road spoke to the effectiveness of their many preparations.

Saint John approved of the weapons, the clever design of the carpet coats and metal armor. All of it was more than sufficient to stop an attack by the living dead.

“Take them,” said Saint John.

The reapers of the Red Brotherhood, who had been poised like a fist, struck.

Arrows, carefully aimed, darkened the sky for a moment,
and then bodies were falling and horses were screaming. Suddenly all those careful preparations disintegrated as predators far more dangerous than the walking dead proved what all wise killers already knew: that nothing was more dangerous than living men.

50

O
NCE
B
ENNY AND THE GIRLS
were back at Sanctuary, they parked their quads and hurried over to the bridge.

“We need to see Captain Ledger,” said Nix urgently.

The guards said nothing. They didn’t even look at her.

“Hey,” said Benny loudly, “we’re speaking to you.”

Nothing.

Riot pointed. “Look, y’all, the Lost Girl is breaking her fifty-foot restriction. She’s right here at the edge of the trench. I think y’all ought to report that to Captain Ledger.”

One of the guards looked at Lilah, smiled, then shrugged. It was the most extensive response any of the bridge guards had ever given them.

“Screw this,” muttered Benny as he tried to push past the soldiers and reach for the cotter pin that held the bridge.

The closest soldier shoved him. Very fast and very hard.

There was a rasp of steel and Nix’s sword,
Dojigiri
, flashed in the sunlight.

A hundredth of a second later there were guns pointed at them. One each at Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Riot. M16s, fully automatic rifles.

“I’m going to tell you this once,” said the guard who’d
pushed Benny. “Walk away. Do it right now or we will fire. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a discussion. Walk away.”

“We need to see Captain Ledger,” insisted Benny.

“First bullet goes through your kneecap, boy,” said the guard. “You call it.”

They walked away, but within ten paces Benny broke into a run.

51

O
NE MILE AWAY
 . . .

“What did they find, my sister?” asked Brother Peter. He crouched like a pale ape on an outcropping of red rock.

The engine of Sister Sun’s quad was off, but she still sat in the saddle, resting her weight on the handlebars. She sighed and sat back, resting a hand on the satchel that lay on her thighs.

“This,” she said.

Brother Peter jumped down from the rock and took the satchel. He quickly and thoroughly searched the papers.

“The coordinates?”

“Gone,” said Sister Sun.

They looked at each other.

And smiled.

It was an unlooked-for piece of luck.

Not blind luck, though. It was, to them, proof of the power of their god.

52

B
ENNY HUNCHED OVER THE HANDLEBARS
of his quad and gunned the engine.

“What are you doing?” yelled Nix over the roar.

“Remember in the Scouts Mr. Feeney said that survival requires a proactive attitude?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m being proactive.”

Any comment Nix might have made was lost beneath the roar as he shot past her, engine bellowing, wheels kicking sand behind him. He thought he heard her screaming his name, but he didn’t look back.

Benny shot past the playground and the orchard. The monks and the children all stared at him, but no one said anything. Or maybe he heard one of the older monks yelling even louder than Nix had. Something about slowing down, probably. Benny chose not to hear that admonition. This wasn’t a convenient time for obeying rules.

This was a time for taking action.

The trench was forty yards ahead. Once he cleared the last of the orchards, he angled left, heading toward the point where the steel bridge was lowered twice a day. There was a
yard-long lip of metal that stuck out over the drop, and it was wider than the bridge. Good enough on either side for the wheel width of the quad.

Benny hoped.

On the other side of the trench there was only a metal plate. No bridge or other obstructions.

He had never done this before, of course. Not even in his head.

It was all a matter of speed and angle.

And luck.

“Come on, Tom,” he growled as he gave the quad more gas. “Little help from beyond would be cool.”

He gave the engine all the gas it would take, and the motor roared like a living thing. Feral and alive and powerful.

“Come on . . .
come on!
” Benny yelled.

The raised bridge was there, right there, the four soldiers flanking it. They gaped at him as if he was absolutely out of his mind. Benny could see their point.