“We’re done,” said Alexi.
Mother Rose almost stabbed him. Her hand was on her knife, but her heart was breaking and she simply could not do it. It was over.
“We were so close,” she said.
Alexi leaned on his hammer and hung his head. “One day,” he said. “If we’d jumped on this yesterday. One damn day.” He let the handle of his hammer fall away to thump into the sand. “Now what? How the hell do we come back from this?”
Mother Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. I . . . I’ll think of something.”
“No,” said a voice, soft as a shadow.
Mother Rose whipped her head around.
“Saint John,” she said in a whisper.
“Get back!” barked Brother Alexi, lunging for his hammer. A shadow rose up from behind a bush as the giant stretched out for his weapon, and then Alexi simply sagged forward and collapsed onto the ground. Mother Rose stared in incomprehension as the sand beneath Alexi darkened and glistened wetly. Alexi tried to speak, but there was no possibility of that. Not with what was left of his throat. He blinked once, twice, and then stared at the darkening sky.
The shadow moved into the light.
Brother Peter wore no expression at all on his face. The fading sunlight gleamed on the bloody knife in his hand.
Saint John walked slowly toward Mother Rose. He had no weapon in his hand, but she wasn’t fooled. Saint John himself was a weapon, and every fold and pocket of his clothes hid blades. He was, after all, Saint John of the Knife. How many times had she seen this man reach out in the most casual fashion, his hand seemingly empty at the beginning of a gesture and filled with steel at the end, and between start and finish the air bloomed with red. He was the greatest killer the world had ever known; she believed that with her whole heart, even if she had never believed in the saint’s God or the Night Church.
To her, it was all a scam. A means to an end.
And this was an end.
Not the one she dreamed of. Not the one she wanted.
Saint John stopped inches away. His face, though not handsome, was beautiful, the way the carved faces of saints in churches are beautiful. Cold and remote and inhuman.
Tears dropped from Mother Rose’s eyes. She knew they would do nothing to change the shape of this day. Nor would anything she could say.
If her reapers were closer, if Alexi was alive, if they had the weapons from the shrine, then she would have tried to manage this moment. To shape it, to try and work a con on the saint.
But those possibilities had set with the burning sun.
She said, “I’m sorry.”
Strangely, surprisingly, she meant it.
Saint John bent close and kissed her on the lips. Without passion, but with love. With the kind of love only he understood.
“I know,” he said.
“Please don’t let it hurt,” she whispered.
“No,” he said.
And it did not.
Mother Rose fell into his arms, and Saint John lowered her to the ground. Then he stepped back, turned, and with Brother Peter at his side, walked away.
She lay there as the sun set. Time was dancing away from her.
There was movement somewhere to her right, and she managed to turn her head, just a little. Brother Alexi was stirring, crawling across the grass toward her.
Alive, she thought, her heart filling with joy. My love is alive.
Except that he wasn’t.
The giant was as pale as the distant stars, and as he bent toward her she could see the darkness. It was in his eyes and in his open mouth.
It’s real, she thought. Her last thought. The darkness is real.
93
WHEN BENNY OPENED HIS EYES ONCE MORE, THE WORLD HAD CHANGED.
It wasn’t the inside of the plane. It was daytime.
There was a motor roar, and even though he could not turn his head, he could cut his eyes left and right. There were quads. Riot and Chong on one. Nix and Eve on another. A big dog galloping along with them.
Is that a dog barking? wondered Benny. The dog was all in armor, and Benny thought that was cool.
He heard the motors slow.
“Sanctuary,” said a voice.
Nix?
He thought so.
“We have to hurry,” said another voice. Joe. “He’s slipping fast.”
Benny wondered if they were talking about him.
Or Chong?
The quads moved forward, and Benny looked up to see a big chain-link fence.
We’re home, he thought. We made it all the way back to Mountainside.
But there was a sign beside the gate he’d never seen on the fence back home. It read:
SANCTUARY
GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR
YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE
But below that the original words were still visible, though sand-blasted to pale ghosts of letters by the unrelenting desert winds. As Benny passed the sign he read it:
AREA 51
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
He closed his eyes again and the world went away, taking all its puzzles and mysteries with it.
EPILOGUE
-1-
BENNY SAW TOM THERE IN THE DARKNESS.
His brother stood halfway down a long hallway that vanished into soft gray light. Tom was dressed for the Ruin, with his leather jacket and the kami katana slung over his shoulder.
“Tom?”
His brother turned slowly toward him.
He looked younger than Benny remembered. There were fewer shadows in Tom’s eyes.
“Hey, kiddo,” said Tom. “You have any idea what happened?”
“Yeah, a zombie hit me with a stick.”
“Crazy, huh? Bet you didn’t think that could happen.”
“Guess not.” Benny touched his head. It hurt, but it was all in one piece. That surprised him. In most of his dreams his head was in a thousand pieces and he was crawling around looking for the important ones.
“How come you never told me that zoms could do that?” Benny asked.
Tom shrugged. “World’s a big, strange place, Benny. What makes you think I know everything?”
“Oh.”
“Next time somebody swings something at your head, you might want to think about ducking.”
“Hilarious. Remind me to smother you in your sleep.”
“Little too late for that, kiddo.”
Even though Tom wasn’t moving, he seemed to be a little farther away. For the first time Benny realized that there were other people in the hallways. They were indistinct, more of a sense of movement in the gray light rather than specific shapes. He thought he recognized one of them, though.
“Chong?”
The figure stopped moving, but he stood with his back to Benny.
“Tom—is that Chong?”
His brother turned and looked at the figure. Then he bent and spoke quietly to him, but Benny couldn’t hear what was said.
“Is that Chong?” Benny asked again. “Is . . . is he going with you?”
Tom patted the other figure on the shoulder and then walked toward Benny. The other person remained back in the shadows.
Tom stopped a few feet away. He looked older now, more like he did that day they all left town.
“Can I come with you too?” asked Benny.
Sadness flickered in Tom’s eyes, but he still made a joke. “No, kiddo . . . you got other places to mess up, other people to annoy.”
“Tom . . . I really miss you, man.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Is it wrong that I want to go home?”
Tom touched Benny’s face. His palm was warm. “Where’s home now?” asked Tom.
Benny shook his head. “This isn’t what we expected.”
“What did you expect?” asked Tom.
“I don’t know. I thought we’d . . . I me
an, I thought that it would be . . . ”
“Easier? Benny, I wish I could tell you that the world was a better place than it is,” Tom said quietly. “Or that it’s all going to be easier. But you know it isn’t, and I think you knew that before you walked through the fence back home. Nix is looking for something perfect.”
“I know. And we keep not finding it.”
“Perfect doesn’t exist. Not like she thinks. There’s a lot of hurt out here. A lot of pain, and a lot of people doing bad things.”
“Is that all there is? Hard times and bad people?”
Tom smiled. “I didn’t say that everyone was bad. I said that there are people doing bad things. Some of them, but not all of them. You met some good ones too. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“This is the world, Benny. It’s seldom what we expect it to be.” He took his hand away. “But here’s the secret, here’s the thing I wanted to say.”
“What?”
Tom smiled. “You can fix the world. You, Nix . . . your generation. You can fix the world and make it right.”
“You mean put it back the way it was?”
“Was it right the way it was?”
“No.”
“Then there’s your answer.” He cocked his head. “You already know this, though. Don’t you?”
Benny thought about it.
“I guess so.” He looked up at Tom. “Does that mean you’re not really here and that this is some kind of coma thing? Like I’m having one of those vision thingies they talk about in books?”
Tom gave an elaborate shrug. “How would I know, little brother? You’re the hero with the magic sword. I’m just a ghost—who is considerably better-looking than you.”
“Hey!”
“I’m just saying.”
They stood there, grinning at each other.
“I love you, Tom.”
“Love you too, Benny.”
Tom turned and walked away, and Benny let him go.
-2-
“WELCOME BACK TO THE WORLD,” SAID PHOENIX RILEY.
Benny cranked open one eyelid and saw her perched on a chair a few feet away. “Nix,” he said, his voice as weak as a whisper. He lay on a cot surrounded by a screen of sheets hung from metal poles.
“Benny!” Nix flew to him, but her hands were so gentle and tentative. She covered his face with a hundred quick kisses.
He tried to raise his head, to kiss her, but that was impossible. His head hurt too much, and his muscles felt like limp spaghetti. Nix looked worn thin, her face pale, her red hair hanging limp.
“How . . . bad is it . . . ?” he asked, not really wanting to know.
“You . . . almost slipped away from us,” she said, and her smile was a little too bright, her laugh a bit too forced. “God . . . this was the longest week of my life!”
“Week?”
“Benny, we’ve been here for eight days.”
He gaped at her.
“I thought I lost you, Benny,” she said, and she held his hand with all her strength. She bent and kissed his knuckles.
“Where are we?” he asked “This place . . . is this Sanctuary?”
She nodded, sniffed, and dabbed at her eyes, but she kept her smile bolted in place.
“It’s on an old military base,” she said as she helped him sit up. She was very careful with him, as if he were made of glass. “It’s run by the way-station monks. There are a couple hundred of them here.”
All Benny could see was the curtain. “Where is everybody?”
“They’re here,” she said, but her eyes darted away for a moment. “We’re all here.”
“I want to see Lilah and Chong.”
Nix hesitated. “Okay,” she said eventually. “Let me get your robe and mask.”
“Mask?”
“Everyone has to wear them in the houses. It’s confusing . . . it’s easier if you see it.”
Nix helped him stand and put on a robe made of heavy wool. Then she took a blue cotton mask and tied it around his mouth and nose. She put one on too.
“Sanctuary isn’t exactly what we thought it was,” she said, and her voice sounded ready to crack.
Nix slowly pushed back the curtains, and Benny stared wide-eyed.
They were in a vast room, hundreds of feet long, with a massive arched ceiling and huge windows at either end.
“It used to be an airplane hangar,” she explained. “There are eight like this one. And more on the other side of the compound.”
Benny hardly heard her. He stared numbly at the rows of cots that stretched from one end of the hangar to the other. Every bed was filled. Some of the beds were screened off, as his had been. Most were not, and most of the figures lay as still as death. Farther down the row, separated by a line of sawhorse barricades, was a larger screened-off area. Benny heard continuous coughs coming from there. Everywhere there were soft cries, the sound of weeping, moans of pain. Way-station monks in their simple tunics moved from bed to bed, washing the patients, hand-feeding them, talking to them. A few sat reading to people who seemed to stare up at the nothingness above their beds.
“Oh my God.”
“There are a thousand people in each hangar. All the hangars are full.”
Benny was appalled. “What is this place? Nix, this isn’t right. I thought there was a lab where they were studying the plague, trying to cure it.”
“That’s the other Sanctuary,” said Nix. “The labs are on the other side of the compound. I’ll show you.”
They walked slowly between the rows. Benny’s balance was bad and his legs weak, but Nix supported him and they walked with great care. Some of the patients looked at them, their eyes glazed with pain or bleak with despair.
“Who are these people?”
“Refugees from all over. The way-station monks bring a lot of them here. Some find their own way. Riot brings some.”
“Did the reapers do all this?”
Nix shook her head. “Benny, after First Night, there were no real hospitals left. No factories to mass-produce drugs. No local doctors to prescribe them. Everything broke down. Diseases just went wild. Everything, even simple infections, went crazy. It’s like this everywhere. People are dying everywhere faster than the zoms can kill them. The monks can’t help everyone. They aren’t real doctors . . . they’re just monks. They have a few places like this.”
“Hospitals?”
She gave another sad shake of her head. They paused to look at an old man who lay curled into a fetal position, his skin mottled with dark blisters.
“It’s a hospice, Benny. This hangar is a healing place, but not the others. The monks call those transition houses. They bring people here to take care of them while they’re dying.”
“Where are the doctors and nurses?”
“There are no doctors on this side of the compound. The doctors and the scientists are all in a different hangar. In what they call a clean facility. Almost no one’s allowed in except for the research field teams. And a few special patients.” She paused. “The thing is . . . once a patient goes into the clean facility, they’re not allowed out again.”
“Why not?”
“Because most of them die, and the ones that don’t are being studied. They’re trying to cure the Reaper Plague . . . what we’ve always called the zombie plague. Not just that, though . . . they’re trying to cure all these diseases. They’ve even come up with some treatments, and when they do, they give them to the monks. Not everyone who comes here dies.”
“But most do?”
She nodded sadly. “By the time most people come here, they’re already so sick. All the monks can do is make them comfortable.”
“It’s—it’s—” Benny had no word bad enough to hang on it.
“They’re doing what they can.”
They walked toward the exit doors. One or two of the patients nodded to him and he nodded back, though he wasn’t sure what that silent communication signified. Maybe, We’re n
ot dead yet.
It was horrible.
“I’m remembering things in bits and pieces. I remember a big dog and some strange guy. Joe, maybe? I have this weird memory about a Zombie Card. . . . ”
“That’s him.” Nix told him about Lilah finding Joe, and about Joe being the head of a team of wilderness scouts called the rangers. “He used to be a bounty hunter up around our way, which is how he knew Tom and why he’s on a Zombie Card, but he left a long time ago and went south. Benny . . . there’s a kind of government. It’s small, but it’s there. They call it—”
“—the American Nation. We saw it on the plane.”
“It’s real,” she said. “They only have about a hundred thousand people so far, mostly in North Carolina, and they’ve been looking for more. People are trying to put it back together.”
Benny thought about his dream, about what Tom had said.
“I hope not,” he said. “They need to make something else, something new. Something better.”
Nix’s green eyes glittered as she studied him; then she nodded.
They walked on until they reached the end of the big hangar. The sadness of it all was a crushing weight on Benny. His heart hurt worse than his head, and he wanted to go back to his cot, pull the blankets over his head, and let all this go away. That was impossible, though, and he knew it.
Nix opened the door, and they stepped out into the sunlight.
Benny blinked and held a hand up to shade his eyes. As he adjusted to the glare, he saw that they stood outside the first in a row of massive hangars. Monks walked slowly in and out of the buildings. The grounds outside were planted with herbs, and there were rock gardens with benches for meditation. It looked peaceful out here, but the hangars held horrors inside.
Nix pointed at the other buildings, each of which had a large number painted above the door. “Building One is for patients they think will recover. Mostly injuries, animal bites, or people wounded by reaper attacks.”
“What about the other buildings?”
Nix pulled off her mask. “We’re not allowed to go in there. That’s where they keep the people with communicable diseases. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, cholera, bubonic plague. The monks who work in there never come outside.”
“What happens to them?”
Nix did not answer. She didn’t have to. Instead she said, “There are always new monks going in.”
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