Flesh & Bone (35 page)

“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

R
IOT HELPED
C
HONG 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

“N
IX
, I
THINK WE NEED TO FIND THIS
‘S
ANCTUARY
’
PLACE
. Y
OU 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

“H
OW FAR IS IT BACK TO THE PLATEAU
?”
ASKED
L
ILAH
. S
HE 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.”