Fire & Ash

by Jonathan Maberry

  Teams of quartermasters ran along the ranks with buckets brimming with the chemical created by Sister Sun. Every reaper dipped his red tassels in the buckets and retied them to ankles and wrists, threaded them through belt loops, and pinned them to their shirts between the outspread angel wings. This was the most noxious and powerful version of the chemical, the formula revised by Sister Sun to accommodate the spike in aggression from the gray people. Sometimes a reaper would be dragged down and consumed regardless of the chemicals, but that was okay. If it happened, then god willed it to be so, and the surviving reapers celebrated as one of their own went on into the darkness.

  Besides, Saint John could afford to lose a few reapers. He could afford to lose hundreds. The army had grown as riders on quads contacted units scattered all over California, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. Some of those riders had been sent out on the night Saint John walked away from Mother Rose’s defeat at the gates of Sanctuary. He had over three hundred working quads and many thousands of reapers. Some of those reapers had kissed the knife as recently as this afternoon. Among the new acolytes were former trade guards and bounty hunters who lived in the Nine Towns. They had been so eager, so willing to share every secret of each of those towns.

  What amazed Saint John, even after everything he had seen and learned about the foolishness of people, was that most of the towns had only chain-link fences for protection against the gray people.

  As if the dead were the only threat.

  As if the dead were even a serious threat.

  As if the will of god were so easily ignored.

  It angered Saint John. He felt that it showed no respect at all for the importance of his mission. It felt like a challenge, a boast. Or an invitation to prove to each and every sinner behind those frail walls that the will of Thanatos—all praise to his darkness—could not be deterred.

  He opened his eyes and looked once more at the sign that had caused him to stop and savor the moment. It was not one of the machine-printed road signs from before the Fall. This was hand-painted on the side of an empty hardware store that squatted by the side of the four-lane highway.

  WELCOME TO HAVEN

  POP. 5,219

  COME IN PEACE, LEAVE IN PROSPERITY

  GOD AND ALL HIS ANGELS PROTECT YOU ON THE ROAD

  The road sloped downward for a thousand yards and stopped at the gates of a chain fence. He touched the silver dog whistle that hung around his neck.

  “ ‘Welcome to Haven,’ ” Saint John read aloud, enjoying each separate syllable.

  He lifted the whistle to his lips.

  It was not the reaper army that he called.

  The answer to his call was a moan of hunger so loud that the thunder of it rolled down the hill toward those metal gates.

  57

  WHEN THE ZOMS WERE ALL at the far end of the airfield, Joe motioned for Benny and the girls to follow him, and he led them past the blockhouse and the first two hangars. Grimm trotted beside him, his armor clanking with each step; and he kept throwing angry glances at the sirens and the zoms. A sturdy chain-link fence was in place to create a safe corridor between the zoms and the hangars. The frame of the fence was mounted on wheels so the whole thing could be swung wide for aircraft and other vehicles. The main doors of the hangars were closed, but Benny saw that smaller doors stood ajar, and he went over to peer inside.

  The first hangar was filled with parts of dead machines: helicopters, small planes, tanks, armored personnel carriers, Jeeps, Humvees, and motorcycles; all of them stripped and scavenged for parts. Nothing looked whole, and all of it looked old.

  “What is it?” asked Nix, leaning past him to look.

  “Junk,” he said.

  “Where’s all the other stuff?” she asked. “I thought they were rebuilding.”

  “More like dismantling.”

  They hurried to catch up to the others, but paused again at the second hangar. This one had a row of quads painted in military camouflage. There were big worktables, chain hoists from which unidentifiable engine parts hung, tool chests on rollers, and machine schematics taped to the walls. But again there was a flavor of disuse about it all. Like the work of repairing the machines had been abandoned. Weeks or even months ago.

  “Where are all the soldiers?” asked Nix. “And the technicians? The monks said that there are more than two hundred people over here. We’ve seen maybe ten different soldiers and Captain Ledger. And three or four different voices in the interview air lock.”

  “I don’t know, but it’s creeping me out,” Benny admitted. Nix nodded, but she looked more than creeped out. She looked deeply hurt by it.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and they hurried off.

  Joe and Grimm stopped at the entrance to the third hangar. The smaller door was open, but he stood in front of it.

  “I know you kids have about a million questions about what’s going on over here,” he began.

  “Maybe two million,” said Riot, “and that’s just me. Red over yonder’s been writing questions in that journal of hers, and she’s got every page filled, front and back.”

  Nix nodded.

  “I have a few hundred thousand just off the top of my head,” said Benny. “Any chance we’re actually going to get some answers?”

  “There’s a lot going on that you don’t know about,” said Joe, “and a lot of it is classified.”

  “Why?” asked Lilah sharply.

  “Because the military likes to keep its business to itself.”

  “Why?”

  Joe smiled. “Because secrecy can become an addiction. That’s been a problem as long as people have tried to covet power for themselves. Sure, governments need to keep some secrets, but too often the people inside the government create for themselves the illusion that because they know things nobody else does, it makes them more powerful. That kind of thinking creates a kind of contempt for anyone on the outside. It’s born from a belief that their own power will diminish in direct proportion to the transparency of their actions. So secrets become the currency that buys them membership into a club so exclusive that their agendas are never shared, and the value of what they hold is measured only from a first-person perspective.” He paused. “Are you following me on this?”

  “Yes,” said Benny.

  “There’s more, though,” said Joe. “Greed and a feeling of inadequacy aren’t the only reasons people keep secrets. Sometimes they hide things—information, the truth, themselves—behind layers of secrecy simply because they’re afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” asked Lilah.

  “You,” said Joe. “Everyone who held any kind of power, everyone who kept any secrets, everyone who was part of running the world before First Night is terrified of you kids.”

  “Why us?” asked Nix.

  “Not just you four—but your whole generation. You scare them to death.”

  “But . . . why?” asked Benny.

  “Three reasons,” said Joe, ticking them off on his fingers. “Because you want to know the truth. Because you’ll eventually learn the truth. And because you deserve to know the truth.”

  Benny looked past him at the open door. “What truth, Joe?”

  The ranger said nothing.

  “The Reaper Plague,” Benny said softly. “There are all kinds of theories about how it started. A new virus . . .”

  “Radiation from a returning space probe,” said Nix.

  “The wrath of God,” added Riot.

  “Something that was accidentally released from a lab,” said Lilah.

  Benny closed his eyes. “None of that’s true, is it?”

  When he opened his eyes, he saw a look of such deep sadness on Joe’s face that it made his heart hurt.

  “Before First Night,” said the ranger, “I spent my entire adult life working for a government organization that did only one thing: We hunted down the kinds of people who wanted to see the world burn. Terrorists, religious extremists, actual mad scientists, governments that had gone
off the rails. Time and time again I led good men and women into battle to stop the release of a doomsday weapon. I won every single time. I lost a lot of friends along the way. I even lost the first woman I truly loved. My body’s covered with scars from injuries taken in the line of duty. Me and my guys, we were sometimes all that stood between the world and the end of everything. Sounds grandiose, right? But that’s how it was.” He sighed.

  “You failed,” said Lilah. She made a statement of it, harsh and naked.

  He raised his hands as if indicating the whole world. “Some people kept their secrets a little too long and a little too well, and by the time my team knew about it, the devil was already off the leash.” He shook his head. “That’s not an apology, and it’s not an excuse. I want us to understand each other. I’m a ranger. I do not work for the American Nation. I work with them. There are some good people helping to build a new government. But there are some people who still hold on to the old ways. Their religion is the cult of secrecy, and they are every bit as dangerous as Saint John and the psychopaths running the Night Church.”

  “Why tell us all this now?” asked Benny. “What aren’t you telling us?”

  “Benny,” cautioned Nix, but Joe shook his head.

  “He’s dead right, honey. When we go into that hangar, you’re stepping outside of the world you knew and into a bad slice of the old world. They’re going to want to push you around. They’re going to try and close you out of their vault of secrets. You’re civilians and you’re kids and they believe that you don’t matter.”

  Joe removed the slips of paper they’d gotten from Sergeant Ortega. “This is a different kind of currency, and down on the level of reality and sense, it’s worth a lot more than the secrets the people on this base are holding.”

  He handed them to Benny.

  “I told them that you had information about where Dr. McReady might be. They want that information very badly. They think that it’s your obligation to simply hand it over. If you do, they’ll kick you right back onto the other side of the trench. Don’t let them. This is your world. It was always yours. We didn’t have the right to break it, and we shouldn’t be allowed to keep any more secrets.”

  The four of them stood there in front of Joe Ledger, weighing his words, reading the implications. Grimm licked his jowls and watched them.

  Finally Benny said, “The Reaper Plague was no accident, was it?”

  “No,” said Joe in a ghost of a voice. “We made the monster and we let it out of its cage.”

  “Deliberately?” asked Nix, aghast.

  His eyes were filled with great sorrow. “You ever heard of Friedrich Nietzsche?”

  Nix nodded and in a small voice said, “I was just thinking about that earlier. ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’ ”

  “Exactly,” said Joe. “We stared into the abyss so long we liked what we saw. God forgive us all.”

  58

  JOE TURNED AND WALKED INTO the hangar. Grimm was right at his heels. Riot and Lilah exchanged a glance, then followed. Benny paused, touching Nix’s arm. He didn’t like the wild look in her eyes.

  “You okay?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said tightly. “I’m just fine. I shouldn’t even be surprised. After everything that’s gone on with Charlie and the Hammer, Preacher Jack, Mother Rose, Saint John . . . I don’t know why I don’t just give up on believing in people.”

  “I know why,” said Benny.

  She gave him a long, cold look. “Oh really? Why?”

  “Because we’re people. Your mom was a good person who never hurt anyone. Tom died trying to help people. That guy George who spent all those years taking care of Lilah and her sister. The Greenman. Guys like Solomon Jones and Sally Two-Knives and everyone who helped destroy Gameland . . . they’re people. Eve is a person. So is Riot, and she was raised to be a monster. She left all that behind, and for the last few years she’s done nothing but risk her life to help people. They’re good people, and that’s what I believe in, Nix. That goodness exists and that it’s powerful. And I think that’s what you believe in too.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his chest. “But there are so many of them. Look at what they’ve done. They destroyed the whole world. . . .”

  “No,” Benny said softly. He hooked a finger under her chin and gently raised her face. “Not the whole world. And not the best of it.”

  Nix’s mouth trembled and she hung there at the edge of tears, pinned to the moment by the enormity of Joe’s words.

  “I can’t live in a world like this,” she said. “I can’t live if everything’s broken and there’s only pain.”

  “No,” agreed Benny, “neither can I. So let’s live in a better world than that.”

  She suddenly wrapped her arms around him, and they clung to each other.

  “Promise me,” she begged.

  “I promise,” he said.

  As he held her, Benny looked into that promise. It was a simple enough thing to say in the heat of heartbreak and tears. But he knew as he said it that this was going to mean more to him than anything else. Something shifted inside his head and his heart, like a switch being thrown on some machinery that had been carefully built but never turned on. He wasn’t sure, then or ever, what powered that machinery. Maybe love, maybe hate, maybe a moral outrage so hot that it caused gears to turn and motors to combust.

  There are such moments in a life. Solitary seconds on which the reality of what life means pivots and turns from a dead end toward a road of untrodden grass that stretches on forever. It was a moment in which the words he said aloud and the whispers of his inner voice spoke in perfect harmony. And Benny knew thereafter that he would never hear that inner voice as a thing separate from himself. It was as if he had caught up to the idealized version of himself that had always walked a pace or two ahead.

  I promise, was what he said.

  I will, was what he meant.

  59

  THEY ENTERED THE HANGAR, WHICH was vast but mostly empty. Two big, black helicopters squatted on the concrete pad. Unlike the ones in the first hangar, these hadn’t been stripped of parts. They looked fierce and sinister and ready to growl their way into the air. Benny had read about helicopters and thought they might be Black Hawks, though this one had stubby wings as well as rotors, and he was pretty sure that some of the stuff mounted on those wings were chain guns and missiles. Part of him thought that they were pretty cool; but the other aspect of him—the facet of his personality that had just shifted into the forefront of his mind—viewed them merely as a tool. Potentially useful, but in no way designed for anything but destruction. Even if that destruction was necessary.

  He thought about the phrase “necessary evil” and believed he understood it better at that moment than ever before. It was like the sword he carried. And that sparked a memory of something Tom once told him, an old samurai maxim that describes the apparent contradiction of those who prepare for war but do not crave it.

  “We train ten thousand hours to prepare for a single moment we pray never happens.”

  Benny nodded to himself.

  Most of the hangar was in shadows. One corner was well lit, though, and it was occupied by a big metal folding table. A woman in a military uniform sat at the table, and she rose as Joe led them over.

  “Kids, meet Colonel Reid,” said Joe. “She’s the base commander here at Sanctuary.”

  Colonel Reid was a stern, unattractive woman roughly the size and density of a packing crate. She had iron-gray hair cut short, a lipless slash of a mouth that was compressed into a line of stern disapproval, and eyes that had all the warmth of frozen blueberries.

  Despite his immediate reaction to her, Benny wanted to get this started on the right foot. He smiled and extended his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. My name’s—”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Imura,” she said, cutting
him off sharply. She eyed the four of them with the disapproval of a disgruntled diner looking at side dishes she hadn’t ordered. “I know who all of you are.”

  Joe sighed.

  Benny’s hand hung for a moment in the air.

  “Okay, taking it back,” he said, lowering his arm.

  Reid eyed Joe. “What’s your new mission status? Child-care professional?”

  Joe sliced off a wafer of a smile. “They earned their spot.”

  Reid shook her head. “It’s on you, then. I don’t have troops to waste minding them.”

  “We didn’t ask to be minded,” said Benny.

  “Right,” said Nix, “I heard that four of your guys were in the infirmary.”

  Reid’s icy expression dropped to absolute zero. “You have a smart mouth, girl.”

  “And you have a—”

  “Okay, enough!” roared Benny. “Everyone cut the crap.”

  They all looked at him, momentarily shocked to silence.

  “What the hell is it with everyone?” Benny continued, his volume lower but his voice still hard as fists. “If you’re mad at us for roughing up some of your soldiers, then too bad. Get over it. They could have acted like human beings instead of robots.”

  “They were following my orders.”

  “Then maybe you should start giving better orders,” Benny said coldly. “I mean, who do you think you are? Who do you think we are? We’re not on opposite sides in this thing. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s us against them, and the ‘them’ are the reapers and the zoms. We are supposed to be working together to save the world.”

  “We are,” Reid fired back. “The American Nation is using its full resources to combat the Reaper Plague.”

  Benny leaned on the edge of the table. “And me and my friends? We’re what to you? A nuisance?”

  “I believe you already tried to play the card of importance due to finding the plane.”

  Benny smiled. “Yeah, I thought I recognized your voice. That was you I talked to yesterday. You said that our finding the plane was only self-interest. Are you actually that dense? Are all you people that close-minded? We shared that information because that’s what people do. That’s how everyone survives. Maybe you haven’t been outside lately, colonel, but zombies ate the world. People have been scratching and clawing to survive for fifteen years. My own town is in California. Your jet passed right over us. Are you going to tell me that you didn’t see it? Are you going to tell me that you don’t know about the Nine Towns we have up in those mountains? Captain Ledger knows about them, so I’ll bet a brand-new ration dollar that you know about them.”