Fire and Ash

“I was in the moment,” said Benny, and he smiled too.



Neither smile held any warmth. Neither smile held a flicker of humanity.



“I’ll see you bleed,” said Saint John.



“I’ll see you in hell,” said Benny Imura.



Benny and his friends turned and walked away.



100



AS BENNY AND HIS FRIENDS walked toward the gate, he studied the faces of the Freedom Riders who waited for them. Solomon Jones was there, and beside him was a tall dark-skinned woman with a Mohawk and a matched pair of army bayonets strapped to her thighs—Sally Two-Knives. And dozens of others, some of whom Benny knew from Zombie Cards and the battle of Gameland; some of whom were strangers.



Solomon clapped Benny on the shoulder. “That was some speech.”



“It was my first one,” said Benny, “and it’ll probably be my last. I wanted it to stick.”



Solomon grinned. “It was better than the one I gave to the mayors of the Nine Towns the other night. When I told them what was coming and told them about your plan, they wanted to put me in a straitjacket and give me tranquilizers.”



“Yeah, well.”



“But you should have seen their faces when I told them whose plan this was.” Solomon chuckled. “Little Benny Imura. Half of them didn’t even know Tom had a brother, let alone one who could come up with a plan like this. If there’s anyone left to talk about this, then believe me . . . people will think you’re absolutely out of your mind.”



“He was born crazy,” observed Morgie. “He’s been losing ground ever since.”



“Nice to know I’m among friends,” said Benny. “Shame none of ’em are mine.”



“That ‘walk away’ part of your speech was nice,” said Sally. “You cribbed that from what Tom said before we blew Gameland into orbit.”



“As I remember,” said Chong, “it didn’t work then, either.”



“You had to say it, though,” said Nix, coming to Benny’s defense. “You have to give people a chance.”



No one replied to that. It was a hopeful statement, but hope seemed to be lying dead somewhere out in the Ruin. For Benny, hope had died with a little girl back at Sanctuary. He looked for some inside his heart, but all he found there was a dark and murderous rage.



They passed through the gates. Benny turned to watch the guards pull it shut.



“God . . . ,” he murmured. He looked around. Mountainside looked like it always looked. And after today he knew for sure that he’d never see it again.



“Benny . . . ?”



He turned at the sound of her voice.



“You have to go, Nix,” he said. “There’s still time.”



She shook her head. “I can’t go.”



Benny felt his heart tearing in half. “Please, Nix . . . I can’t do this if you’re here. I can’t.”



“You have to,” she said. “We have to.”



Benny suddenly reached for her and pulled her close and clung to her. “Nix, please go,” he begged, his voice breaking into sobs. “Please don’t make me kill you, too.”



She started crying too. He could feel the heat of her, even through their body armor, even through the fear. She was so alive, and she deserved to go on living. Someone had to.



“Nix . . . please . . .”



She looked up at him with her green eyes. Her freckles were dark, the scars on her face livid.



“Benny,” she said softly, thickly, “I’m a samurai too.”



“Nix . . .”



“I won’t leave you,” she said, shaking her head stubbornly. “I won’t.”



He leaned his forehead against hers and they stood there, weeping, while all around them the town they grew up in prepared to die.



“Benny . . . Nix . . . ,” said a voice, and they turned to see Morgie there. “They’re coming.”



Benny drew a breath and stepped back from Nix. He fisted the tears from his eyes and nodded. Nix sniffed back her tears. She nodded too.



Lilah, Chong, and Riot stood a few feet away.



“This is it,” said Benny. “They let me make the big speech out there because this was my crazy plan. But I wanted to say something else to you guys. First . . . I told Nix and I’m telling you, there’s still time to leave. You can follow the goat path up the mountain. Or you can go out the north gate on the quads. There’s enough fuel to get you at least a couple of miles down—”



“Don’t,” said Chong. “You know we’re not leaving. My family got out, that’s all I care about.”



Neither of them admitted the reality of that comment. Wagonloads of people had left. Thousands went on foot toward the next town. Only fighters were left here. If everything went wrong, then the reapers would follow the trail north and destroy that town, and the next, and the next. Distance couldn’t guarantee safety anymore. Only an end to the reapers could do it, and that would happen here or it wouldn’t happen at all.



The odds were that it wouldn’t happen, though. The odds were in favor of the Chongs, and everyone else, being hunted down by killers—alive and dead.



Benny turned to Lilah and Riot. “This isn’t even your town. . . .”



“It ain’t about the town, son,” said Riot. “Excuse me for saying it, but I don’t give a rat’s hairy bee-hind about this town or any other town. I want to see that smug bastard and all his minions burn.”



“ ‘Minions,’ ” echoed Morgie. “Nice.”



There were shouts from the wall. “They’re coming! God . . . it’s the runners! They’re coming.”



Benny said, “Look, if we do this, then we’re not going to be the same people afterward. This is the line that Captain Ledger was talking about. We’re about to become monsters.”



“No,” said Chong, “that’s a myth; it’s a lie of bad logic. People who don’t understand, who haven’t seen what we’ve seen, say that if you use violence in defense, then you’re just the same as the people who attacked you, that you’re just as bad. But it’s not true. If they hadn’t started this, we’d never have thought this up. Benny—I grew up with you, I know how that weird little mind of yours works. If Saint John and Brother Peter and Mother Rose and all those maniacs hadn’t started a holy war, all you’d be thinking about would be Zombie Cards, fishing for trout, and what Nix looks like in tight jeans. Don’t even try to deny it.”



Despite everything, Nix blushed and Benny grinned.



“These people want to kill everything that we love.” Chong looked at Riot. “You want to talk about a line? They raided Sanctuary and slaughtered monks who never did anything but help everyone they met, and they killed sick people who couldn’t even lift a hand to defend themselves. And they murdered all those little children. Like Eve—they murdered Eve. There is no line, Benny. We’re not like them. If we’re risking our souls here, it’s to make sure that kind of wholesale slaughter doesn’t keep happening. I’m not saying we’re heroes . . . but we’re not like them.”



Morgie clapped him on the back and then held out his hand, palm down in the center of their circle. “Maybe I haven’t been with you guys through all that, but I’ve got your back right here, right now. Tom taught us to be samurai. He taught us to fight . . . so let’s fight. Warrior smart.”



Chong laid his hand atop Morgie’s. “Warrior smart.”



Lilah was next, placing her brown hand over Chong’s. “Warrior smart.”



“I ain’t a samurai,” said Riot, “but I’ve got my own dog in this fight. And I guess this was my war before it was yours. So, yeah . . . warrior smart.” She placed her hand over Lilah’s.



Tears still streamed down Nix’s face. “All that time I was writing down how to survive and how to fight in my journal, I thought it was to build and protect something. I didn’t think it was to destroy . . . but I guess we don’t always get to choose our wars. I love you all. Warrior smart.”



Benny was the last to reach out, and he placed his palm over Nix’s. Her fingers were icy from terror.



“I know Tom would think we’re all crazy,” he said. “But when he taught us to be warrior smart, this is what he meant.”



They held their hands there for a long moment, and then without another word they turned and headed off to take up their posts.



101



SAINT JOHN COULD NOT PUT down the knife. His fist felt welded shut around the handle.



“Honored One,” said one of his aides. “Our scouts picked up the trail of a large group of refugees heading north. Thousands of them. The scouts guess they have a two-day lead.”



“Send the quads after them.”



“How many, Honored One?”



“All of them, and a reserve of five thousand on foot. Hunt them down and send them all into the darkness.” He touched the aide’s sleeve. “We are no longer recruiting. Everyone goes into the darkness.”



The aide bowed and left, and a few moments later the saint heard the sound of hundreds of quad engines roaring to life.



“You cannot escape the will of god,” he said to the morning air.



Another aide appeared at his side. He wore a silver dog whistle around his neck. “We’ve called up the flocks.”



“How many answered the call?”



“Eighty thousand of them. At least a third are runners. However, we’ve already almost used up Sister Sun’s red powder.”



Over the last few days, several quads had caught up with Saint John’s army, each one laden with plastic trash bags of powder. The last gift of Sister Sun, sent with the fastest quads by Brother Peter.



“Save it for later. We have enough runners for this nonsense.”



The aide pointed. “I sent two small flocks ahead to test the defenses.”



Saint John watched the dead run in a ragged line toward the fence.



“Send the rest.”



“And the reapers, Honored One?”



“Send them all in. I want that town erased from the earth. Tear it down, paint it in blood, and grind it into the mud.”



The aide smiled, nodded, and went off to relay the orders. Sending the gray people in along with the reapers was the kind of shock and awe the Red Brothers loved. It made for a quick fight, but a memorable one. He began shouting orders.



Saint John glanced at the reapers behind him. Many of them were ordinary foot soldiers, some of them quite new to the faith. As he looked at them, quite a few dropped their eyes or looked away. They all wept, and he wondered how many of those tears were from the chlorine stench or from their own terror.



Cowards, he thought. Timid in faith and in heart.



“Listen to me,” he bellowed. “The false one has tried to trick you with lies and promises. He has tried to test your faith and make you question your commitment to god. I say to you now, our god is an unforgiving god. If any man or woman strays from his duty or withholds his blade from the cause of righteousness, then that sinner will be stripped of flesh and left to the gray people. To defy me is to defy god. All hail to Lord Thanatos!”



“All praise to his darkness,” thundered the closest reapers, and that cry spread so that soon forty thousand voices shouted it.



Saint John was satisfied. His words might not have removed doubt, but they would make even the doubters crave to dip their knives in the blood of the heretics.



The Red Brothers acted as sergeants and yelled orders.



Saint John pointed with Brother Peter’s knife.



“Now,” he commanded.



And the army of the reapers surged forth.



They started out walking onto the field, many of them coughing and gagging from the chemical vapors. But soon they were running, shouting, crying out the name of their god. Screaming for blood.



102



BENNY IMURA CLIMBED TO THE observation platform of the east tower. The field was vanishing, to be replaced by a carpet of bodies. Leading the charge were two packs of R3’s. Even from this distance they looked terrifying. They were fresh corpses too, probably victims of the raid on Haven.



Somehow that made it worse. It made it more of a sinful act on Saint John’s part. It was a level of disrespect for the dead that offended Benny in ways he couldn’t express.



It fed his rage.



He held a pair of binoculars and watched as the zoms ran across the bleach-soaked ground. Reapers with dog whistles ran with them.



No one inside the gate moved. Not a muscle, not a finger. The entire town was absolutely still. Chong stood by the tower rail, an arrow fitted in place, the string pulled back.



Benny said, “Now.”



Chong loosed the arrow. The powerful compound bow sent it whipping through the air, fast and silent and true. The arrow struck the stomach of one of the reapers running with the zombie flock. He screamed and pitched backward.



The zoms turned at the scream and the movement and at the spurt of fresh blood. Through the binoculars Benny saw the confusion on the faces of the zoms. He saw how the moment of distraction changed their focus. They had come running out onto the field, driven by whistles, herded forward over the mud. They were not pulled by any smell of meat from behind the chain-link fence. Now that they were on the field, they couldn’t smell the human flesh at all. Bleach kills all sense of smell. The reapers, protected by their chemically treated tassels, herded them with sound alone.



But now the moment froze. The reapers still had their whistles, but the zoms’ sense of smell was gone.



The chemical protection of the tassels was gone.



The reapers stared into the eyes of the R3 zoms.