Fire & Ash (Rot & Ruin)

by Maberry, Jonathan

  And another.

  Then the last one tumbled back down on the seething mass of the dead. The helicopter reached the open doorway.

  “You’re too high,” cried Benny. “Too high!”

  But the whirling blades cut only air. The massive doorway passed directly overhead, and suddenly they were out in the golden sunlight of the Mojave Desert.

  Benny coughed out the breath he was holding as the chopper rose into the light. Then he heard a soft gagging sound. Nix, Lilah, and Chong were all there with him, staring out of the window at what lay below.

  Seen from the air, with the sunshine highlighting every splash of red, every charred body, every gray face, the sight below threatened to take the heart out of Benny.

  Nix made a sick sound deep in her chest. “Look . . . look for Riot. She could be anywhere.”

  “Down there?” said Chong hollowly. “How could—”

  He didn’t finish, and Benny knew that his friend had tried to cut off his own words a few seconds too late.

  “She has to be down there,” said Nix urgently. “She’d have found a place for her and Eve to hide.”

  But Joe turned the helicopter away, pointing its blunt nose toward the row of siren towers. They were silent now. That part of the airfield was also relatively clear. Except for a few of the old slow, shuffling R1 zoms, the rest of the dead were massed around the hangars on both sides of the trench.

  “What do we do if the reapers trashed the sirens, too?” asked Chong.

  “That’s plan B,” said Benny.

  “What’s plan B?”

  “We feed you to the zoms, and while they’re eating you—and getting sick to their stomachs—we run away.”

  Lilah laid her hand on her knife. “No, you won’t.”

  “Lilah,” said Chong, “he’s joking.”

  She eyed Benny icily. “It’s not a funny joke.”

  “Apparently not,” said Benny.

  “Whoa, whoa, guys,” said Chong, pointing past him. “Look.”

  Down below, the siren house was snugged up against the red rock wall of the mountains. The crushed gravel turnaround in front of the bunker was littered with bodies—a few zoms but three times as many reapers—and there was a clear trail of corpses that led in a crooked line back to the burning hangars. A quad sat a few feet from the bunker door, and a knot of eight zoms clustered in front of the door, relentlessly pounding on the metal.

  “Someone’s in there,” said Nix.

  “I hope they know how to work the sirens,” said Chong.

  “Who do you think it is?” asked Lilah.

  “I don’t know, but those zoms are trying real hard to get in,” said Benny. “Joe?”

  “Yeah,” came the reply. “Got it.”

  A moment later the chain guns opened up. Lines of impact points ran along the turnaround, kicking up pieces of gravel, until they caught up with the figures at the door. The rounds punched into the dead and flung them in all directions. When they were all down, Joe landed. Lilah had the sliding door open before the wheels were settled.

  She and Nix jumped to the ground. Lilah had her spear and Nix drew Dojigiri.

  “Stay here,” ordered Nix. “We got this.”

  Benny glanced at Chong. “They got it,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Chong helped Benny out of the helicopter, then reached in and removed the bow and arrows. Together they limped painfully after the girls. When Lilah realized they were following, she turned and gave Chong a look that would have peeled paint off of steel plate.

  They approached the tangle of dead zoms. Two were still twitching, and Lilah quieted them with quick thrusts.

  “Hello!” called Nix. “Is there anyone inside?”

  Benny looked down at some of the reapers who lay dead. Not the ones Joe had just killed, but victims of whoever was in the siren house. There were no knife or bullet wounds. Most of them had crushed skulls—or rather skulls that had been dented by precise impacts from small round balls.

  He bent very carefully, hissing at the pain, and picked one up. A steel ball bearing.

  “Nix,” he called, and then held up the ball bearing for her to see. “Riot. Oh my God . . . Riot!”

  Nix shouted the name.

  Then they were all shouting her name.

  They pounded on the door, laughing and cheering that Riot had—against all logic and odds—managed to escape to this tiny stronghold.

  There was a sound from inside. The scrape of a chair being moved, then the metallic click of a lock. Then the door opened slowly, and Riot was there.

  Her clothes were torn. She had gashes on her face, her scalp, and across her stomach. Her arms were bloody to the elbow. Tear tracks were cut through the soot and grime on her pretty face. She held a pistol in one hand and a blade in the other.

  “Oh my God,” said Nix as she rushed forward to hug Riot. “We were so worried! But I knew you were okay. You and Eve. Where is Eve? We can get you out and . . .”

  Her words rambled on and on, filled with joy and relief. Chong grinned and touched Riot’s shoulder. Lilah nodded, smiling.

  Riot stood there and endured the embrace. She did not return it. Or react to it.

  Her eyes looked past Nix’s red hair and out into the desert.

  “Nix . . . ,” said Benny quietly. He touched her shoulder and pulled her gently back.

  “Benny, what are you—?”

  Nix saw the look on his face. Her smile flickered. She looked at Riot, perhaps finally realizing that the girl had not reacted or responded in any way.

  “Riot?”

  Riot’s eyes shifted slowly toward her. The smiles faded slowly from Chong and Lilah’s faces, too.

  “Riot . . . ?” asked Nix, uncertainty shading her voice. “Are you okay?”

  The former reaper said nothing.

  “Riot,” said Benny gently. “Where’s Eve?”

  Riot slowly raised her left hand so they could see what she held. It was a small push-dagger. Like a sliver. The kind of thing that was only ever used for one thing. For one terrible purpose.

  The blade was painted with red.

  She opened her hand and let the blade fall. It struck the ground at her feet and lay there. The cold and silent steel screamed unspeakable things at them.

  Or was it Riot screaming? Benny wondered.

  Or Nix?

  Or all of them?

  90

  BENNY WENT INSIDE.

  He found the body. Riot had washed the little girl’s face and smoothed out her clothes as best she could. Eve lay on a cot, wrists and ankles tied. There was a bite mark on her arm. It was small, and Benny wondered if it had been another child who’d bitten her.

  Riot had gotten her away from the slaughter. At what point had she become aware that Eve was already lost? Before the mad drive out here on a quad? After the door was barred? During the long hours of the night? Had it been quick, or had fate been crueler still and made Riot wait, hour after hour, as the disease consumed the child?

  And, oh God, he thought, how can we ever tell her that the cure for the bite was inside the blockhouse all the time? Two pills—or maybe one for a little girl—and the night would not have ended with the worst nightmare any of them could imagine.

  How could they ever tell Riot that?

  How close to the edge did the former reaper already stand? Was she looking into the abyss, or was the abyss already in possession of her mind? Did her soul float in that vast darkness?

  Rage trembled inside Benny’s body. He could feel the exact moment when it ignited, and as he stood there over Eve’s body, that rage spread all through him. His hands curled into fists that were clenched so hard his knuckles hurt. His jaws ground together to hold back—what? A scream? A roar? Whatever it was, if he let it out it would tear his throat raw and bloody. Black poppies seemed to bloom and burst apart in front of his eyes.

  It was as if this small death was all the proof of evil that anyone would ever need. Proof
that the “holy” mission of Saint John was corrupt to its core—even if that madman believed he had heard the voice of god. No god could ever want this. No god would encourage the kind of harm that had been visited upon this child. The destruction of her town. The slaughter of her parents before her eyes. The disintegration of her sanity. And now the defilement through disease of her body and the ultimate theft of her life. A theft that robbed her of more than the moment, but stole every hour and day and week and year of a life that should have been lived long and to its fullest.

  This was the actual cost of war, right here, written with perfect clarity in the blood of the innocent.

  He heard a sound in the doorway, and Joe was there. Sweating, worn thin by pain, somehow on his own feet. The ranger shambled over to stand beside Benny. They stood there for a long time looking down at the body, perhaps thinking the same thoughts.

  Finally Benny said, “I want to kill them.”

  Joe sighed.

  “I want to kill them all,” said Benny. “I want to wipe them from the face of the earth.”

  “I know,” said Joe Ledger. His voice was heavy with sadness.

  Outside they could hear Riot, Nix, Lilah, and Chong.

  They were weeping. And sometimes they were screaming.

  91

  THEY TURNED THE SIRENS ON.

  Chong came in before they flicked the switch. He did not look at the body on the bed. “Do you know the legend of the banshee?” he asked.

  Benny shook his head. “A ghost of some kind?”

  “It’s an old Gaelic legend,” said Chong. “The bean sídhe—woman of the fairy mounds. It’s a female spirit who begins to wail when someone is about to die. In Scottish mythology, the bean síth is sometimes seen as a woman washing the bloodstained armor of those who are about to die in battle.”

  Joe did not comment as he flicked the switch and the unnatural wail of the sirens rose like the screams of the damned.

  They closed the door as they left. Across the airfield the R3’s were already flooding across the bridge from the other side of the trench and running toward the bunker. A million running feet kicked up a dust cloud that blocked out the lingering fires in the hangars and rose to challenge the pillars of smoke for dominance of the morning sky.

  Benny wrapped his arm around Riot and kissed her head and walked with her to the helicopter. All this made his back hurt, but he would die rather than complain about that kind of pain. Not now. Not anymore.

  They closed the helicopter doors, and when the first of the running zoms reached the turnaround, Joe lifted off and rose high into the air. The Black Hawk hung in the screaming air until the dead were so tightly clustered below that Benny couldn’t see the ground.

  Joe spoke to them from the radio speakers.

  “Last chance to say no.”

  Nix said it for all of them. “We can’t.”

  The Black Hawk tilted toward the west, and the helicopter tore through dust and smoke back to the hangars.

  “Can you blow up the bridge?” asked Chong.

  “No. If there are any survivors hiding, that’s the only way they’ll ever make it to the blockhouse.”

  “Is there even a chance of that?”

  “No matter how bad things are, there’s usually some chance left,” said Joe. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Chong said, “I guess so.”

  But he saw Riot, who huddled inside a ring of Nix and Lilah’s overlapping arms. He knew that Joe was not always right about that.

  “Setting down,” said Joe. “Some R3’s are already coming back this way. You’ve got about three minutes. Don’t stop for coffee.”

  The Black Hawk touched down between the burning dormitory hangar and the row of parked quads.

  This was the second part of Benny’s plan. Since the helicopter didn’t have enough fuel to take them to Mountainside—and the pilot was pushing his own personal limits in flying at all—they had to find another way to get home. The quads were the only real option. Benny had a road map in one pocket, courtesy of Colonel Reid. Mountainside was 470 miles away. In a straight run, they could be there in twelve hours. Having driven the quads for weeks now, he knew that on flat ground they averaged about forty-five miles to the gallon, and that the tanks held 4.75 gallons of fuel. That meant that they could get a little less than halfway home on a full tank. However, there were equipment racks on the bikes capable of holding a couple of gas cans. Neither Joe nor Reid had been able to decide whether they could carry enough gas to get them all the way. It was a gamble.

  If the quads ran out of fuel, then they would have to go on foot or find a traveler with a horse to carry the message the rest of the way to the Nine Towns.

  Provided there were any towns left.

  Saint John and the reaper army had left a month ago.

  A month.

  On a forced march, they could already have been there.

  They had to march under hot Nevada suns and then climb the long mountain roads in California. If they stuck to the main roads, the path was serpentine, closer to five hundred miles. If they had to forage for food, that would slow the pace. But even so, they could conceivably be at the fence line. That was a stretch, though, and Benny doubted they were already there.

  However, Haven was many miles closer. Would Saint John want to take the towns in order?

  There was no way to know until they got there.

  After a month here at Sanctuary, they were now in a desperate race.

  As soon as the Black Hawk settled, Benny and Chong pulled back the door. Roasted air blew in at them, carrying with it the burned-meat stink of so many deaths. Benny gagged and covered his mouth with his palm.

  Nix and Lilah jumped down first, and they helped Benny and Chong down. Riot lingered for a moment in the doorway. She hadn’t yet spoken a word.

  “You can stay here,” said Nix.

  Riot leaned out and looked around, then turned and stared back the way they’d come. The bunker was invisible behind the mass of running zoms, but the siren towers marked the spot, the metal voices wailing with a grief no human voice could articulate.

  “No,” said Riot. “I can’t.”

  It was all she said.

  Nix helped her down.

  “Tick-tock,” yelled Joe.

  They worked fast. Benny checked the fuel tanks and found five that were topped off. They grabbed a bunch of plastic two-and-a-half-gallon cans and began filling them from a hundred-gallon tank set on trestles. With the fuel truck destroyed, it was the last source of the precious ethanol. The process seemed to take forever. When Benny looked at the zoms, he felt his heart sink. The leading edge was less than a half mile away. They were running at full speed, drawn by the noise of the helicopter and the sight of fresh meat.

  Lilah fired up one quad and was yelling at Chong as she explained how it worked. Benny thought it was probably the worst example of a “crash course” that he could imagine. Luckily, Chong was the smartest person Benny knew; his ability to acquire and process information was superb. His reflexes and mechanical skills were less impressive, and he drove the quad straight into a wall.

  As he trudged toward another one, Lilah trailed behind, explaining in a very loud voice how useless he was. But on his second try Chong proved her wrong by driving a wide circle around the Black Hawk.

  When he passed in front of the bridge, he slowed for a moment as he saw how close the dead were.

  “Joe!” Benny yelled.

  The Black Hawk shuddered and rose a few feet off the ground and drifted toward the bridge. Benny knew that Joe didn’t want to blow the bridge, but time was carving away the question of choice.

  Nix and Riot began strapping the filled gas cans onto the backs of the quads. Chong and Lilah pitched in to help.

  “Hurry!” yelled Joe, his voice booming from external speakers mounted high on the chopper’s hull.

  “That’s it,” shouted Chong. “Let’s go.”

  They hauled the last gas cans over a
nd strapped them on. Each quad could carry two cans, a total of five extra gallons. A bit more than a full refill for each bike. Would it be enough?

  “Get moving!” bellowed Joe.

  They secured their weapons and climbed onto the quads. Five engines growled to life.

  “Go, go, go!”

  They roared away as, behind them, Joe opened up with the chain guns.

  Benny had the route committed to memory. He zoomed ahead and took the lead. The others followed. When he looked back, he saw that the Black Hawk had settled back onto the ground. The dead were pouring over the bridge. They swarmed like cockroaches over the chopper, climbing over each other to get to it. The big propellers turned and as the pile rose and rose, the blades chopped at heads and arms. The guns kept up a continuous fire for almost a minute, and then they fell silent.

  Benny slowed and stopped. The vibration of the engine and the posture he needed to maintain in order to ride were setting fires in the knife wound in his back.

  Why had Joe landed? Why was he still there?

  There were so many zoms around the chopper now that all they could see were the dead.

  “No,” Benny said.

  The others stopped in a line and they all looked back.

  There was no more gunfire.

  But many of the zoms were running down the access road toward where the five quads idled.

  “Benny,” said Nix softly, “we have to go.”

  He hung his head for a moment, sick at heart. But when he caught Riot staring at him and saw the look in her eyes, the rage flared up in his chest again. He bared his teeth and ate his pain as he gunned the engine.

  Under the noonday sun, the five quads rocketed along the road toward the gates of Sanctuary.

  92

  THEY LEFT SANCTUARY BEHIND AND found the highway marked on Reid’s map. They headed north on Route 375, and hours later turned west on US 6—the old Grand Army of the Republic Highway.

  They met no reapers on the road.

  They wanted to. It would have been satisfying in the worst possible way.

  The road was open and empty.

  Miles melted away behind them, but the road was so long and straight and the scenery so repetitive that it felt like they were standing in place. Only the movement of the fuel gauge seemed to add perspective to their flight. The endless whine of the motors became a mind-numbing monotony, but beneath it was the rage and the fear. Nobody wanted to quit.