Fire and Ash
Page 23

After the fence, the road led through this complicated network of trenches. There were rows of trip wires, and deadfall pits covered by camouflage screens. Directions for how to make it through the defenses safely were written on large wooden signs. That’s smart because humans can read but zoms can’t.
The Gameland defenses weren’t based on the way people used to protect towns and forts against attacks; these were specifically designed against an enemy that couldn’t think but also would not stop.
The trench at Sanctuary is smart too.
Tom said that to stay safe you have to understand the nature of the threat, not react to your assumption of it. I didn’t understand that at first.
I do now.
53
“OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!” BENNY yelled, and he yelled it so loudly that echoes banged off the distant red rock mountain and ricocheted back to him over the heads of the hundreds of zombies who now shambled slowly back toward him. His fist ached and his throat was getting raw, but he stood there and kept at it. Hammering, yelling.
“Kid . . . yo, kid!” a voice said. “They can’t hear you.”
Benny whirled to see the big ranger, Joe, standing behind him. He hadn’t heard him approach.
“Where’d you come from?”
“Originally? Baltimore. Just now—the hangar.”
“It took you long enough.” Benny massaged his hand. “Where have you been?”
“Busy. Want to tell me why you and your crew of girl-thugs just beat the crap out of four soldiers? And while you’re at it, how about explaining the stunt with the quad? I’ve seen stupid and I’ve seen stupid but that was—”
“Stupid, yeah, I saw where you were going with that.”
That put a half smile on Joe’s face. “So—what’s the deal? Is this about seeing your friend Chong? Roughing up soldiers and breaking rules isn’t going to—”
“I’m trying to get inside,” said Benny. He gave the door another hit.
“I figured that much, which is why I came out here. I’m trying to keep you from wasting your time.” Joe pointed at the tall steel doors set into the concrete facade of the building. “Read my lips here, kid, try to follow. They. Can’t. Hear. You.”
“Why not?”
“It’s an ultra-secure soundproof hardened facility. It’s designed to withstand anything except a direct hit from a nuclear weapon. You could march up and down all day long with a brass band and they won’t hear a peep. Nothing. Nada. Am I getting through to you in any way?”
Benny ignored him.
“It’s also designed to keep out a gazillion zombies like the ones who are—oh yeah, coming this way.”
“They won’t be here for at least ten minutes.”
Joe grunted. “Fair enough. Door’s still going to be locked when they get here . . . and the geeks inside won’t even know that the zoms are chowing down on a pigheaded teenager.”
“Why?” he demanded. “They have to know we’re out here.”
“They do. Once in a while one of them even looks at us on a video monitor.”
“On a what?”
“A kind of electronic window.”
“Then if they’re looking at us, why don’t they open the door?”
“Why would they?”
Benny pointed backward, jabbing a finger at the building. “Because I’m knocking.”
“No offense, kid, but who the hell are you?”
Benny punched him.
He didn’t even know he was going to do it. His hand was already moving when it clenched into a knot and slammed into the side of Joe’s jaw.
The blow had all of Benny’s anger and frustration in it.
It rocked Joe. It knocked him back half a step.
And that was all it did.
Benny threw a second punch, but Joe caught that one in his open palm like a shortstop catching a grounder. Joe’s fingers closed around Benny’s fist like iron bars. Then his hand darted out and clutched a fistful of Benny’s shirtfront, and suddenly Benny was up on his toes, nose to nose with the ranger. Joe’s blue eyes bored into him like drills, and the man’s mouth twitched as if he fought to bite down on the words he wanted to say.
Finally he smiled and pushed Benny back.
He rubbed his jaw. “Nice punch. I honestly can’t tell you the last time anyone caught me with a sucker punch.”
“I hope it hurts.”
“It does,” Joe admitted. “Though . . . probably not as much as your hand.”
Benny was trying to ignore his hand. It was a white-hot ball of pain at the end of his wrist.
“Let me tell you something, kid,” said Joe. “Because you’re Tom Imura’s brother, and because you’re probably not recovered from that head wound you got, I’m going to let this slide. I can understand you being upset—your best friend is in there and maybe he’s dying or maybe he’s already zommed out—but you need to learn how to pick your fights. I’m not your enemy, and I’m not much in favor of being a punching bag for someone who wants to vent.”
“I can’t let Chong die without doing everything I can,” said Benny. “I can’t.”
“Fine, I admire that. Bravo for you,” said Joe. “How is all this crap going to help him?”
Benny dug his hand into his pocket and removed the two slips of paper.
“We went out to the Ruin today,” he said. “To a ravine near where the plane went down.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where Sergeant Ortega is. Or was. He’s dead. Really dead, I mean.”
Joe narrowed his eyes and nodded to the pieces of paper. “You took those from him?”
“Yes.” Benny handed one of the slips to Joe. “I think we found out where Dr. McReady is.”
Joe studied the paper. It was the message that read: URGENT: REPT OF R3 ACTIVITY VCNTY OF DVNP—REL. WIT. *** FTF?
Benny watched the big man’s reaction. Joe went dead pale. Then his eyes widened and widened until Benny thought they’d bug out of his head.
“Where . . . ?”
Benny explained about the visit to the ravine, how they pulled Sergeant Ortega out, what they found, and the subsequent confrontation with Brother Peter and the Red Brotherhood.
“He said he wanted what I gave you.”
“Fat chance,” said Joe.
“He said that if I didn’t give it to him by sundown tomorrow, the reapers were going to attack Sanctuary.”
Benny expected Joe to laugh that off, but he didn’t
“Joe?” asked Benny. “The reapers can’t actually take Sanctuary . . . can they?”
But Joe didn’t answer. “Where’s the satchel you took from Sergeant Ortega?”
“I . . . um . . . gave it to Brother Peter.”
Joe’s face went from bloodless to a livid and dangerous red.
“Are you deranged?” thundered the ranger. For the second time he grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt. “You stupid, boneheaded little—”
And Benny held up the second slip of paper.
The one with the coordinates.
“You soldiers have been at war too long,” said Benny. “Try having some faith in other people.”
Joe stared at the paper. It had been neatly torn in half. “This is only half of it. . . .”
“I know. We’ll give you the other half as soon as you give me your word on two things.”
“You’re on thin ice, boy,” said Joe in a low and dangerous voice.
Benny leaned toward him. “I’ve been on thin ice since zombies ate the world. I want your word on two things. Two conditions.”
Joe studied him with steely eyes. “What conditions?”
“First, you tell me what’s going on inside the lab and the hangar.”
“Believe me, kid, you don’t want to know.”
“Don’t tell me what I want to know. And don’t assume that I can’t handle it.”
“What’s the other condition?”
“You take me with you,” said Benny. “Me, Nix, Riot, and Lilah.”
Benny waited, his whole body tensing for the argument, the outrage, the refusal that he knew was coming. The ranger looked past him at the three fierce girls on the other side of the trench. Then he turned and looked at the zoms, who were less than a quarter mile away. Finally he looked down at the torn piece of paper in his hand.
“You’re doing all of this because of your friend? Because of that Chong kid?”
“I’m doing this because this is our world too. You don’t have a right to shut us out of the process of saving it.”
Joe drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose.
“Let me tell you something, kid,” he said. “Because I liked your brother, I’m going to forget that you’re trying to extort me here.”
“Thanks, but it’s not extortion,” snapped Benny. “And even if it was, I can’t let Chong die without doing everything I can.”
Joe looked up to judge the angle of the sun. “You have one hour to pack. One change of clothes, water and food for a week, every weapon you have. You meet me at the bridge and have the rest of those coordinates.”
Benny dug a hand into his pocket and removed the other half of the paper and held it out for Joe. The ranger smiled and took it.
Benny smiled back. “Like I said—you should have more faith in people.”
54
MILES AND MILES AWAY . . .
Blowflies swarmed around Saint John as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes and mouth composed and thoughtful, his dark clothes glistening with blood. The cooks and their assistants were busy butchering the slaughtered horses. The quartermasters of the reaper army were searching through the trade goods in the four wagons for anything of value. Much of what the traders had brought with them was sinful—paperback books, holy books from a dozen false religions, jewelry, antibiotics, toys, luxuries. Things that made people want to enjoy being alive, and how grave an insult that was to Thanatos—praise to his darkness—who had decreed that human life should end, that anyone who stayed alive did so as an affront to god. Except for the reapers, and they all knew that when the great cleansing was done, they would open red mouths in one another and go into the darkness, where a vast and eternal nothingness awaited them.
The saint’s orders to his reapers had been precise: Kill no one.
The flight of arrows that had stopped this convoy had been precisely aimed. To kill the horses, to wound every other guard. The effect was a predictable one. As the uninjured guards saw their fellows to the left and right of them fall, saw the arrows and the blood, heard the shrill screams of pain and fear, their hearts fled them. They threw down their weapons and begged for quarter. For mercy.
Only two guards possessed courage greater than their own sense of self-preservation. Or perhaps they believed themselves to be powerful enough to fight through this attack. One man, a Latino with a barrel chest, leaped from his dying Tennessee walking horse. He wore a necklace of wedding bands and carried a pump shotgun, which he emptied into the first wave of Red Brothers. When the gun was empty, he dropped it and drew a Glock nine-millimeter pistol and killed eight more reapers before the next wave crashed into him. The man went down hard. He killed and maimed with a knife he took away from one of the Red Brothers, and when that became lodged in the chest of a reaper, the Latino used his bare hands.
Saint John shouted to his reapers to take this man alive.
They did, but the figure they dragged before the saint had a dozen red mouths in his flesh and one foot already in the darkness. It saddened Saint John. This was the kind of fighter who, had he been encouraged to kneel and kiss the blade, would have made a superb Red Brother.
Saint John stood over him now, hands clasped, lips pursed. The other survivors were being tied up. Some were being taught the manners necessary to survive an interview with the saint. Their screams filled the air.
“What is your name, brother?”
The Latino glared up at him. “Hector Mexico,” he snarled. Then he punctuated that with a string of obscenities in English and Spanish that made the reapers around Saint John blanch.
The saint ignored the words and their suggestions of improbable physical acts.
“You are dying,” he said. “The darkness hungers for you.”
Hector Mexico spat blood onto Saint John’s shoes. “Maybe so, pendejo, but I put twenty of your boys in the dirt, so kiss my—”
Even the reapers who watched did not see Saint John draw his knife. All they saw was a blur of movement, and then the Latino man screamed as the tip of the knife drew a line across his forehead.
“No,” said Saint John, showing him the knife. “Bravado and insults will not ease your journey. You have insulted my god. There will be no heroic end to your tale.”
Hector had to grit his teeth to keep another scream locked in his throat.
“Unless,” said Saint John mildly, “you do a simple service for the Night Church.”
Hector said nothing.
“Tell me the best and quickest route to the town of Mountainside.”
Hector shook his head.
“Or any of the Nine Towns.”
Silence.
Saint John sighed, then signaled to his reapers. “Bring another one.”
They dragged a wounded and terrified young man over. He had blond hair and freckles and could not have been older than eighteen. They forced him to his knees in front of Hector.
The saint stood over the boy, his blade in his hand.
“I need to know the way to the Nine Towns,” he said. “I only need one of you to tell me. That person will not need to spend his last hours screaming for death as the things that define him as a human being are removed one piece at a time. That person will be welcomed into the Night Church and will become one of us.”