Flesh & Bone (36 page)

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

M
OTHER
R
OSE 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

When we left town, no one came to see us off.

No one.

How screwed up is that?

73

T
HEY 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:

MRE

LAB EQUIP

MED RECS

HAZMAT SUITS

The metal cases were labeled:

RPG

CLAYMORE MINES

LAW RKTS

M-249 SAW

M24 SWS

“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

“H
ONORED
O
NE
,”
BEGAN
B
ROTHER
P
ETER
, “
IF WE ARE TO DOUBT
M
OTHER
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

M
OTHER
R
OSE WALKED THROUGH THE FOREST WITH
B
ROTHER
A
LEXI
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.