Fire & Ash

by Jonathan Maberry

  Grimm leapt into the gap between them, spikes and blades bristling from head and shoulders and flanks. As the dead flung themselves forward, the monstrous mastiff cut them to pieces. Not with teeth, but with all that razor-sharp metal.

  While all this happened, Benny felt another change occurring deep within him. His mind felt like it was detaching from the moment and from the normal flow of time. It drifted back to watch from a distance that offered a different perspective, more of a spherical view of the situation. One that allowed him to see his position, that position’s relevance to where Nix fought, the distance to where Joe knelt in front of the locked door, the opening of the chute, the numbers of the dead, the presence of the living reapers among the crowd. The big ranger worked feverishly to pick the lock.

  All this was delicately separated from any emotional involvement, as if a surgeon’s deft cut with a scalpel had removed it so that it would not be impeded or influenced by any normal human involvement. It was how Benny imagined great chess players viewed a game. Clearly and from a distance.

  He saw his own body, its posture, the spacing of his hands on the handle, the angle of his cuts. He saw small imperfections in the movements, and as he observed them his body made the corrections that increased the speed and efficiency of each cut.

  The dead began to pile up in front of him, his enemies becoming his bulwark against the main body of the horde. Benny knew, with perfect clarity, that had he been in a fight with so many of the fast zoms even a month ago—even a week ago—he would have already died. Even a week ago. The change he’d felt earlier tonight had somehow snapped together all the disparate parts of him. All the aspects of himself that had been growing like weeds—fast, but wild and in different directions—suddenly came together within his soul. They were all there inside him. His experiences in the Ruin. The lessons from Tom and the lessons learned from both victories and defeats. The love he felt for Nix—and his new understanding of the forces at work in this red-haired warrior girl that he loved. The fierce anger at the injustices committed by the Night Church in the name of religion. The determination to have a future despite all the adult voices that kept crying out that there was no future to have. The faith in himself—in this person he had become. All of that coalesced inside a quiet space in Benny Imura’s mind.

  There were sharp cracks as Lilah, standing guard over Dr. McReady, fired carefully aimed shots through the open gap between Nix and Benny. Every shot hit a target, but not every bullet struck the head. Unlimited and perfect head shots every time were an impossibility with a handgun, and Benny understood that now. It was a logical thing, and therefore it was open to his new perception.

  This is how a samurai thinks, he mused. This is what it was like for Tom when he was in a battle. That’s why he always looked calm.

  Even that thought was cataloged without emotional involvement. It was a truth, and it became part of his experience.

  “Let’s go!”

  The shout drew him back to his body, and Benny turned to see Lilah and Dr. McReady vanish through the opened door. Joe brought his rifle up as he stepped into the space between Benny and Nix.

  “Grimm! Back!”

  The dog spun around, retreated, and raced to Joe’s side, leaving the gap unguarded.

  “I got this,” Joe yelled. “Get inside.”

  Benny and Nix wasted no time. They spun too, and ran for the door as Joe hosed the opening of the chute with automatic gunfire. Then he jacked a round into the grenade launcher mounted below the rifle barrel and fired. Jacked and fired, jacked and fired. He angled the blasts toward the wall, well away from the Black Hawk, but the blast radius destroyed anything that stepped into the chute.

  Then Joe spun and dashed for the door.

  As he leaped through, Nix slammed it shut and Benny shot the bolt on the inside. Grimm howled in rage and triumph, and the echoes banged off the walls.

  Outside, dead hands began pounding on the door.

  77

  “WILL THE DOOR HOLD?” ASKED Nix, her face flushed with fear and excitement.

  “It’ll stop the dead,” said Joe, “but those reapers will figure a way in. No time to waste.”

  They were in a stone hallway that led to a flight of stairs that plunged down into shadows. Joe tried the light switch and a few lights flickered on, but most of the bulbs had been smashed. Shell casings littered the floor, and the walls were smeared with blood along with some of the black mucus.

  “Don’t get any of it on you,” warned McReady.

  “Wasn’t planning to,” said Benny.

  From below, they could hear a confusion of sounds. Gunfire, moans, shouts, and screams.

  Lilah dropped the empty magazine from her pistol and slapped in a new one. “Chong’s down there.”

  Joe touched her arm. “Listen to me, Chong is in the basement below the blockhouse. That’s three hundred yards from here, and there are a lot of doors between here and there. There’s also ten ways to get to those cells, or at least to the central corridor that leads down to the cells. We have to get down these steps and find the maintenance access door. We can use that and maybe slip past the zoms, maybe get ahead of them. You understand?”

  She nodded.

  Joe touched her cheek. “We’ll get to him.”

  But there was a deadness in Lilah’s eyes, and Benny feared that the Lost Girl was already losing hope.

  Nix said, “Wait, what about the soldiers? Where are they? Why aren’t they fighting back? All I saw were the guards who usually take care of the bridge . . . where are the rest of them? Where are the soldiers we just saw run in here?”

  “That’s right,” said McReady. “There are two hundred men here. . . .”

  “There are forty-eight soldiers here,” Joe said. “And thirteen members of the medical staff.”

  “Did the others ship out?”

  Joe’s eyes were bleak. “I wish.”

  Distant gunfire and screams seemed to answer for him. He put his rifle stock to his shoulder and went quickly and quietly down the stairs. Benny looked at the others, saw the varying expressions in their eyes. Joe’s last two words had punched everyone in the gut.

  One by one they followed him down the bloodstained stairs. They found two dead soldiers who were just starting to reanimate. Joe put them down with precise single shots to their heads.

  Benny went last, and as he ghosted along behind the others, he thought about all the bad things Joe’s words could mean. And he wondered if, in all this madness, they would ever find Riot and Eve. Were they alive? Were they dead? Had the wild former reaper somehow managed to battle her way through the sea of killers to defend the little girl she treasured?

  If anyone could, Benny knew that she would.

  The steps went down, turned a corner, went down again, and then ended in a round chamber from which four corridors spiked off in different directions. Joe paused and they all stopped to listen. The most intense sounds of battle came from the left-hand corridor. There were indistinct sounds from the middle two, and only silence from the one on the right. But the lights were out in that tunnel, and the edge of the wall leading into it was smeared with black goo.

  “Let me guess,” said Benny sourly, “that one’s the one we have to take, right?”

  Joe gave him a tight grin. “What’s wrong, you want to live forever?”

  “Not forever. Maybe another seventy years, though.”

  “Let me know how that turns out for you.”

  “Flashlight?” asked Nix.

  Joe clicked on the small light that was mounted on his gun and dialed it up to its widest beam; but the light was small and the illumination didn’t reach very far into the gloom. No one else had a flashlight.

  “Don’t bunch up,” said Joe. “I don’t want a sword up my backside.”

  They entered the hallway, following the blue-white splash of Joe’s flashlight. Once more Benny took up the rear position. No need to cede that responsibility to Lilah anymore. He felt capable o
f defending them.

  But as they went deeper and deeper, the light from the staircase landing faded and then vanished, leaving everything behind Benny as black as the pit.

  Don’t be cocky, he told himself. And don’t be scared. Sight isn’t your only sense. Listen to what the darkness has to tell you.

  It was one of Tom’s lessons filtered through his own personal understanding.

  He let the others move ahead so the sounds of their footsteps and the rattle of their equipment faded. He listened to the darkness.

  Everything behind was silent.

  Silent.

  Until it wasn’t.

  He heard a sound.

  Soft. Quick.

  In darkness the sound of running is often defined by the panting breath of the runner as much as by the slap of feet on the ground.

  Unless . . .

  Unless the runner did not need to pant, did not need to breathe.

  Benny suddenly realized that the others were too far ahead, which meant that the meager spill of light from Joe’s flashlight was sending almost no reflected illumination this far back.

  And something was coming.

  Something was running toward him.

  Silent.

  Fast.

  And he couldn’t see it.

  78

  BENNY HAD TWO SECONDS TO decide.

  Stand and fight in almost total darkness or . . .

  He turned and ran.

  He ran as fast as he had ever run before. He ran so fast that all he could hear was the harsh grating of his own breath in his ears. That sound blocked out the noise of whatever pursued him, which meant that almost at once he lost any sense of how close it was.

  He ran and ran.

  Up ahead Joe Ledger turned a corner and took his light with him.

  The corridor became completely black.

  Benny thought he could hear a sound behind him.

  Not the rhythmic panting of another runner, but the low, continuous moan of something so hungry that it would run and run forever until it caught its prey and dragged it down.

  “Joe!” Benny yelled.

  He wanted to yell more, he wanted to yell for light, but he saved his breath for running.

  And then there it was.

  A splash of light so bright that it blinded him. He recoiled from it, throwing up an arm to block it.

  Suddenly something slammed into him from behind.

  The impact sent him crashing painfully into the wall. The sword fell from his hands and clattered to the ground. The air left Benny’s chest with a whoosh, and cold fingers clawed at his shirt and neck and tried to hook into the corners of his mouth.

  The image of the tiny white worms in the black muck filled his brain as immediately and intensely as a grenade exploding. It galvanized Benny into action.

  He spun along the wall until the zombie that clung to him was caught between him and the unyielding stone, then he planted a foot and kicked himself forward halfway to the opposite wall, then kicked out again, braced his foot on that wall, and thrust backward with all his strength. The ping-pong action sent Benny and his attacker crunching backward once more, but this time the impact was many times harder. The creature lost its grip and collapsed to the floor.

  Joe’s light was getting closer, and everyone was yelling and running toward him.

  The zom—a man dressed as an American Nation soldier—came off the ground at him, snarling and biting the air.

  Benny kicked him in the chest and knocked him once more into the wall.

  And then with a snarl of fury Grimm crashed into the zom. They fell sideways, and Benny ducked backward away from the wet pieces of things that flew and splatted against the wall.

  “Off!” cried Joe, and the hulking monster froze. Red blood dripped from its spikes. The zom still had blood in its veins and tissues, proof that it had turned only minutes ago.

  As Joe came running up and shone his light on the zom, Benny realized that he knew this man.

  Sergeant Peruzzi.

  Dead now, torn to pieces.

  Benny heard Nix make a small, sad sound.

  He’d been rude and threatening to Nix, but he didn’t deserve this.

  No one did.

  Benny glanced at Joe and expected to see the hard, dismissive face of a killer, but there was sadness in the big man’s eyes.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Lilah picked up Benny’s sword and handed it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I—”

  But the Lost Girl got up in his face. “Chong is waiting for me. Don’t slow us down again.”

  There wasn’t the slightest trace of compromise or mercy in her face.

  All Benny could do was nod.

  They turned and ran.

  They passed two side corridors, but both were empty. Joe quickly explained that one led to the maintenance hangar and the other went to the generator room.

  They went up a flight of stairs and along a corridor that was better lighted. There were two sets of heavy doors set fifty yards apart, and at each one they found blood and shell casings.

  “Someone’s making a fight of this,” observed Joe. “Using doors and corridor bends as opposition points.”

  There were no bodies, though. Nix pointed this out.

  “Does that mean that they’re already inside?” she asked.

  “With the mutagen, reanimation is very fast,” said McReady. “More of a transition from one state to another instead of death and a return to life. Anyone who died here could have been up in seconds.”

  “Is anyone left?” asked Nix.

  A new rattle of gunfire answered that question. It came from deeper inside the complex, along the path they were following. McReady and Joe listened, each of them judging distance. Their eyes snapped wide at the same time.

  “God,” said Joe.

  “The infirmary,” said McReady.

  Everyone broke into a dead run as the gunfire continued, interspersed with moans and screams. To Benny every hallway and staircase looked the same, and he had the irrational feeling that they were running in circles.

  Then one corridor ended with an air lock similar to the one they’d destroyed in the badlands. The door was ajar, held open by a slumped figure with a bullet hole in its forehead. A zom, Benny saw. There was red powder on its hair and face and black muck smeared on its mouth.

  Beyond the air lock was a small chamber and then a second air lock, also blocked by the legs of a dead woman, whose head hung on an absurdly crooked neck. The woman was not one of the zoms from outside, nor was she was a reaper. She wore a soiled white lab coat over a military uniform.

  “God—that’s Karen Lansky,” cried McReady. “She’s a nurse here.”

  The sounds of battle were much closer now, but the intensity was less.

  Fewer shots. Fewer screams.

  Benny did not think this was a good sign.

  As they gathered themselves to pass through the air lock, Benny bent and kissed Nix quickly on the lips.

  “For luck,” he said.

  “I know,” she replied, smiling. “But we won’t need it. We’re going to get Chong, find Riot and Eve, and get out of here.”

  It was a strangely positive thing for her to say, but Benny saw no doubt in her eyes. She believed it.

  It made him want to kiss her again.

  Joe looked over his shoulder at them. “Benny—you’ve been bugging me for a month to tell you why the soldiers and scientists here haven’t done much to help you. Why they haven’t let you in here.” He looked grim. “Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.”

  With that he stepped through the air lock, took a brief look, and immediately opened fire.

  Lilah was right behind him, her pistol bucking in her hands as she fired and fired.

  Benny and Nix adjusted their grips on their swords.

  “C’mon, Doc,” said Benny, “we won’t let anything happen to you.”

  The doctor’s eyes we
re skeptical. “Too late for that, kids. But . . . thanks.”

  They heard two more shots, and then a sudden silence fell over the whole complex.

  Joe Ledger called to them. “It’s clear,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s all over in here.”

  They passed through the air lock and saw four reapers and five zoms lying in a tangle beyond where Joe stood. Gun smoke from the ranger’s rifle hung in a blue pall around him.

  Benny and Nix stepped into another scene of horror and madness.

  There was a bed right inside the door. A man lay in it, his eyes wide with fury and pain, his pajamas soiled with blood and muck, his limbs thrashing as he fought to rise. Not to escape—but to attack. Ropes held him to the bed, lashing his arms and legs and torso to the metal frame. Black spit flew from the man’s screaming mouth.

  Benny stared past him at the occupant of the next bed. And the next.

  And all the others.

  Hundreds of beds. Each one filled. Each person thrashing and moaning and biting the air. Each one trapped there by ropes.

  Their uniforms hung over the backs of chairs, or were draped over the ends of the beds. The uniforms of soldiers of the American Nation. The lab coats of scientists. The special jackets of pilots.

  Nix’s sword drooped in her grasp until the tip of the blade made a hollow tink against the concrete.

  This was why there had been no real resistance to the reaper invasion.

  This was why the jet sat idle on the tarmac.

  This was why the soldiers and the scientists were so bitter.

  “They’re all infected,” Benny murmured. “All of them . . .”

  He heard a sob and turned to see Dr. McReady trembling.

  “No,” she said. “No . . .”

  Joe swapped out his magazines, his face wooden. “The infection started three months ago,” he said. “A few guards on patrol by the siren towers got swarmed by a pack of R3’s. One fatality, but a couple of the others got the black blood on them. I don’t know if it got in someone’s eyes or mouth, or if it was on one of the soldiers’ hands and he touched his face. We’ll never know. But he brought the mutagen into Sanctuary with him. We sent word to the American Nation to quarantine this place. To write it off.”