Fire and Ash

“Will this take long?” Benny asked. “Brother Peter said we had until tomorrow night to—”



“Let’s worry about Brother Peter tomorrow,” said the ranger. “We’ve enough to do today.”



But Nix said, “Will he really attack Sanctuary?”



“He can try,” said Joe. He tapped the minigun that was mounted on tracks inside the door. “Knives and axes don’t stack up well against a rate of fire of six thousand rounds per minute.”



“Rockets, too,” said Lilah enthusiastically.



“Rockets, too.” Joe shook his head. “If Brother Peter shows up tomorrow, we’ll explain the facts of life to him.”



The ranger knelt down and buckled on the rest of Grimm’s armor. The dog’s helmet was set with daggerlike blades, and spikes sprouted all up and down the mastiff’s powerful body.



“Note to self,” murmured Benny, “don’t hug the puppy.”



Grimm agreed with a big wet glupp.



Lilah dropped the magazine of her Sig Sauer, checked the rounds, and slapped it in place. Joe did the same. Nix, too.



“Benny,” called Joe, “you want a handgun?”



“No thanks. I’m not a very good shot.”



In truth Benny didn’t like guns. Tom had been shot to death. Benny had no moral objection to Nix and the others having them; no, his decision was entirely personal. He was afraid that if he carried one, then he would be tempted to use it too often, to use it to solve problems rather than finding other solutions. That view was entirely his own, and he never shared it with Nix or tried to convince anyone that it was the only viewpoint or even the best. It was his decision.



His sword? That was different. Perhaps it was the old belief that a samurai’s soul lives inside the steel of the sword that cast that weapon into a different aspect in his mind. This sword had once been Tom’s; now it was his. The sword was a close-range weapon; it required great skill. And despite the grim purpose for which it was created, there was an elegance and beauty about it.



They clustered by the door.



“This is how we’re going to do it,” said Joe. “I lead, you follow. Everybody keeps their eyes open. Keep chatter to a minimum. If anything happens or if we get separated, head back here to the chopper. There are enough supplies and weapons here for a couple of weeks. But let’s not need those supplies, okay? We stick together. We all go in, we all come out, no surprises, no drama. Got it?”



“Warrior smart,” said Lilah.



“Warrior smart,” they echoed. Even Joe.



He pulled the door open, and a blast of hot air blew into the cabin. Grimm leaped out first, his spiked armor clanking as he landed and immediately began sniffing the ground. Joe was next, and everyone else followed him out into blistering heat that made the desert around Sanctuary feel cool by comparison. Only Joe seemed unaffected by it.



“Not bad for May,” he said. “Probably no more than 110. I was here in July once and it was 134.”



Nix plucked at the fittings of her combat suit as she stepped down. “Couple of hours in this suit under that sun and we’ll be baked hams.”



“Baked hams are juicy,” observed Benny, dropping down next to her. “We’ll be more like beef jerky.”



The helipad was pocked with hundreds of bullet holes. Shell casings had rained down and gleamed amid the pieces of things that had once been zombies. There was no blood, but black muck was splashed everywhere. There was more of it than Benny had ever seen around a dead zom, and it seemed to ooze out of the torn tissue. When he bent to examine it, he saw tiny white specks, like pieces of thread, wriggling in the mess.



Grimm suddenly barked at Benny, and Joe wheeled around sharply. “Don’t touch that!”



“Not a chance,” said Benny, “but what is it? Looks like worms, but I’ve never seem worms in zoms before.”



They all clustered around. “They’ve always been there,” said the ranger. “At least the eggs have. In most zoms the larvae die off after laying eggs. They go dormant right around the time the zoms stop decaying. Some hatch, but they burrow deep into the nerve and brain tissue. They keep the zoms alive—or alive-ish—but don’t ask me how. Something about proteins they excrete.”



“Okay, eww,” said Benny.



“These aren’t eggs,” said Nix. “These are worms, just like in the zoms Lilah and I fought.”



“Exactly,” said Joe. “The R3’s, the fast zoms. The larvae are active in the fast zoms. In the wild boars, too. It’s part of the mutation the science team was studying.”



“Are they contagious?” asked Nix, shying back from them.



“Very,” said Joe. “Not too bad if you get some on your skin and wipe it off fast, but if you get it in a mucous membrane . . . eyes, nose, mouth, an open wound . . .”



He didn’t need to finish.



Benny had a horrible thought. If Chong was infected, then those eggs—or larvae—were in his body too. He wanted to scream. That was why the scientist had asked him if Chong had gotten any fluids on him. He kept his thoughts to himself. It would be abominably cruel to share this with Lilah, and he hoped she wasn’t already thinking those thoughts. He even avoided looking at her, for fear she’d read his mind.



They backed well clear of the black goo and followed Joe to the air lock. It was almost exactly like the one at Sanctuary, with a small glass-fronted box set into a recess beside the door. The hand-scan device—the geometry scanner—was dark, the glass cracked and filled with sand. Joe punched two buttons and placed his hand on the glass, but nothing happened. He used the butt of his pistol to knock out the glass in order to access the wires, but after fifteen minutes of connecting one wire to another he flipped them back into the recess with a disgusted grunt. Then he pounded on the door with the side of his fist.



Nothing happened.



“I thought you said that beating on the door doesn’t do any good,” observed Benny casually. “They can’t hear it inside.”



Joe shot him a venomous look. “Ever fall off the side of a helipad into a bunch of jagged rocks?”



“Point taken,” said Benny.



“Now what?” asked Nix. “Do we go looking for a back door?”



“No,” said Joe, turning to walk back to the Black Hawk, “now we try plan B.”



Once they were all inside the bird, Joe fired up the engine and lifted the helicopter into the air. It drifted backward from the air lock, past the edge of the drop-off.



“There’s an old military saying,” mused the ranger. “If at first you don’t succeed, call in an air strike.”



“What’s that mean?” asked Benny.



“It means, ‘Fire in the hole!’ ”



Joe flicked a switch on the cyclic grip and depressed a trigger. There was sound like steam escaping from a boiler, and then something shot away from under the stubby wing of the helicopter. Benny had only a hundredth of a second’s glimpse of something sleek and black, and then the entire front of the cliff seemed to bloom into a massive ball of orange fire. Chunks of stone and metal flew everywhere, but Joe was already rising into a fast climbing turn, and nothing hit the Black Hawk. The helicopter swung all the way around until it faced the cliff again. The fireball crawled up the side of the cliff, chased by smoke and hot wind. Then it thinned and fell apart into sparks. Joe angled the helicopter to use the rotor wash to whip away the smoke that clung to the helipad.



The six-ton air lock looked as if the fist of a giant had struck it. It lay on its back, driven nine feet inside the mountain. The spot where it had stood was a gaping maw almost big enough to drive a trade wagon through.



“Holy . . . ,” began Benny, but had nowhere to go with that, so he repeated it. “Holy . . .”



Lilah smiled with a lupine delight.



“What was that?” gasped Nix.



“Hellfire missile,” said Joe.



Grimm gave a deep-chested whoof as if he approved.



Benny shook his head. When Joe had used the rocket launchers to defeat Mother Rose’s reapers, Benny had been unconscious, the victim of a blow to the head. He’d never witnessed anything like this. But from the expression on Nix’s face, he could tell that this “Hellfire” missile was far more devastating than the shoulder-mounted rockets. They’d read about weapons of war in school, but Benny had never really put much thought into their true destructive power. It was deeply disturbing.



Chunks of rock littered the helipad, but there was more than enough room to land.



Joe cut the engine.



“Okay, let’s try this again.”



63



MILES AND MILES AWAY . . .



Morgie Mitchell sat on the top porch step of the empty Imura house. He’d already been inside. The floors were swept, fresh curtains were hung on the rods, and the creaking sixth step had been repaired. His sword lay near his left hip, a bottle of pop was slowly going warm next to his right.



Tomorrow was his first full day of training with Solomon Jones and the Freedom Riders. He had no idea what to expect. The people who rode with Jones were all famous; all of them were on the Zombie Cards. Morgie had gone through his stack and pulled the cards of the active Freedom Riders. He went through them over and over again, looking at their faces, trying to imagine what they’d be like in person.



Sally Two-Knives with her wild Mohawk hair and glittering bowie knives.



J-Dog and Dr. Skillz, who spoke in an old surfer slang that no one really understood.



Fluffy McTeague with his lipstick, diamond earrings, and pink carpet coat.



Sam “Basher” Bashman with his baseball bats.



Quick-Draw Carl, who still wore the broad-brimmed brown hat of his legendary dad, Sheriff Rick.



Bobby Tall Horse, an Apache who wore a Roman breastplate and horsehair helmet into battle.



The crazy woman, Dez Fox, who they said traveled with the mummified hand of her dead husband in her backpack.



And so many others.



Each of them was a hero; each of them was surrounded by mystery and tall tales.



He shook his head. Who was he to even think that he was worthy of training with them, let alone riding out with them?



Who did he think he was?



He turned and looked at the house.



Morgie collected all his cards and put them neatly into his pack. Then he picked up his sword and walked out into the yard to practice the drills Tom had taught him.



64



GRIMM RAN AHEAD AS THEY approached the shattered face of the cliff. The air lock was a twisted ruin. Beyond it was a wide chamber with metal walls and concrete floors. Soot streaked those walls now. Shattered light fixtures swung from the ceilings on webs of torn wiring.



They stepped carefully and silently inside. The entrance chamber split into two corridors.



“Should we split up?” asked Lilah. “I can—”



“Not a chance,” said Joe. “This isn’t a bad horror movie. We stay together and we watch each other’s backs. No one goes into the basement in a negligee to investigate a strange noise.”



Lilah looked at him as if he was deranged. “What?”



“Nothing. Old pop-culture reference whose expiration date has apparently passed. Sad.”



Benny thought he heard the Lost Girl mutter the word “idiot.”



They took the left-hand corridor first, for no other reason than because it was closer to where they stood. There were closed doors on one side of the corridor. Joe stopped in front of the first one and gently tried the knob. It turned easily. He glanced at Lilah, who took up a defensive position beside him, then turned the handle the rest of the way and kicked the door open.



It was a closet. Metal shelves filled with boxes of office supplies. No zoms, no people.



They moved to the second door and repeated the process.



And froze.



There was a person in the room.



Seated behind a big desk. A laptop computer was open on the desk. The office was decorated with big framed photographs of running brooks, snowy mountainsides, lush autumn forests. The man in the chair sat with his head—what there was of it—thrown back. A shotgun stood on its stock between his thighs. Even from the doorway Benny could read the scene. A person—either desperate or perhaps infected—sits down, props the shotgun on the edge of the chair, thumb on the trigger, barrel under the chin, and says good-bye to everything in the most final way possible.



The wall behind the desk, and part of the ceiling, was painted with chocolate brown that had once been bright red and moldy green that had once been gray brain matter.



All very disgusting, all very final. And a long time ago. Months, at the very least.



No reanimation.



What made it worse was what the man had written in black ink on his desk blotter:



MAY GOD FORGIVE US FOR WHAT WE HAVE DONE



WE ARE THE HORSEMEN



WE DESERVE TO BURN



There was no signature. There was no need for one.



They stood around the desk.



Nix looked from the writing to the body sprawled in the chair. “That poor man.”



Benny nodded. “What does it mean, though?”



“Watch the hall,” Joe said as he began quickly going through each drawer. He rummaged through the contents, tossing some things onto the floor, ignoring others. Then he found a sheaf of papers that made him stiffen and stare. He cursed softly.



“What is it?” asked Benny.



“I think I found out why Dr. McReady came to this facility.”



He showed the top page to Benny and the girls.



ZABRISKIE POINT BIOLOGICAL EVALUATION AND PRODUCTION STATION UNITED STATES ARMY



“What’s that mean?” asked Benny. “ ‘Biological Evaluation and Production’? Is this some kind of lab?”