Lilah tensed.
Joe’s comment still hung in the air.
You’re the Lost Girl.
“How do you…?” Her words trailed off, and she looked wildly around, then bared her teeth. Her fingers tensed around the cup of soup as she prepared to hurl it in his face. “This is all about collecting a bounty, isn’t it? Try it and I’ll paint these rocks with your blood—”
Grimm suddenly sat up and in the process transformed from a friendly dog being petted to the war hound that he truly was.
“Whoa,” said Joe, “slow down.”
Lilah growled low in her throat. So did Grimm.
But Joe chuckled and shook his head. “I’m a lot of things, kid, but I’m not a bounty hunter. Never felt the calling. That’s more Tom Imura’s gig than mine.”
He clicked his tongue. “Grimm, down and easy.”
The dog’s attitude instantly changed, this time reverting back to lazy dog. He sat and pretended to look as innocent as a puppy.
“I guessed who you are because I’ve lived out in the Ruin since everything went to hell, kid, and I spent a fair amount of time in central California. Everyone round those parts knows the story of the Lost Girl. Tom Imura spent some time looking for you. Guess he found you.”
“How did you know Tom?” Lilah asked suspiciously.
“We’ve known each other off and on for eight, ten years. We had some friends in common, once upon a time. And back before First Night I even knew his uncle, Sam. We worked together for a bit. Tom takes after him. Same kind of cool smarts, same kind of integrity. After the zoms rose, I was back and forth between the Nine Towns for a while. This was early on, when they were just getting settled, but I got bored and moved on. Haven’t been back there in years now.”
“Was Tom a friend of yours?”
Then Joe narrowed his eyes. “You keep putting Tom in the past tense. Why? Has something happened to him?”
Lilah said nothing, but she could feel her eyes filling with tears.
“What happened to Tom?” asked Joe. Then understanding and pain flickered in his eyes. “Ah… jeez. How’d it happen? Walkers finally get him?”
“No,” she said. “He was murdered.”
Lilah told him about Tom’s fight with the Matthias clan. About the destruction of Gameland, and about the murder of Tom Imura by the madman Preacher Jack. When she was done, Joe got up and walked over to a small table and leaned on it, his shoulders slumping. Grimm caught the sudden shift in mood and whined a little.
“You know,” said Joe thickly, “after all the death I’ve seen — before and after First Night — after all the times I’ve pulled a trigger, after all the comrades I’ve buried, and all the people I’ve seen go down in blood and pain, you’d think that another death wouldn’t mean a thing to me. You’d think that I’d have too many calluses.” He shook his head. “But… Tom Imura. Damn.”
When he turned back to her, Joe looked ten years older. His face was drawn, his eyes dark with loss.
“Long time ago,” he said, “Tom talked about uniting the Nine Towns. He wanted to create a group like my rangers. He wanted to bring in some people he trusted, people who didn’t run with Charlie’s bunch. Guys like Solomon Jones, Hector Mexico, and Sally Two-Knives. That ever happen?”
“No,” said Lilah. “Those people were there at Gameland, they helped Tom, but the people in the towns never wanted an army like that. It made Tom angry, because it left the Nine Towns so vulnerable.”
“Tom had the right idea. He usually did. People should have listened to him.”
“There are a lot of stupid people,” said Lilah harshly.
Joe snapped his fingers. “Hey — Tom had a little brother. Benny. What happened to him?”
Lilah told him the rest of the story. When she got to the part about the ravine and the rescue of the little girl, Joe stiffened.
“Wait! You mean that Tom’s kid brother is out there right now? In these woods?”
“Yes,” she said. “Benny, Nix, Chong… but they’re safe. We have a camp near—”
“Well, isn’t that just swell?” growled Joe. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
She looked at him. “Why would you think I’d trust you so fast?”
“Because I saved your life and sewed up your wounds?”
Lilah gave him a stony look. “You could have been pretending to help me for some reasons of your own. If you know who I am, and if you knew Tom, then you probably know that people have taken advantage of me before. Why should I trust you or anyone?”
Joe nodded. “Good point.”
He looked over his shoulder, as if he could see the whole forest. Then he doused the fire with the remains of his soup and stood up. Grimm instantly got to his feet as well.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You have a choice — you can stay here or come with me, but I’ve got to go find Tom’s kid brother and your other friends, and I mean right now.”
“Why?”
Joe pointed with his empty soup cup. “Out there? Did you happen to see a bunch of Froot Loops running around? Bald heads, tattoos, angel wings on their chests?”
“The reapers. But who are—?”
“They are the bad guys, sweetie. They call themselves a religious movement, but that’s crap. They don’t want to save anyone. They want to kill everyone. The Night Church, the Church of Thanatos, is run by a total wack job called Saint John and a conniving, malicious witch named Mother Rose. They came out of nowhere about ten years ago, and since then they’ve converted thousands of people to their cause.”
“What cause?”
Joe handed Lilah the magazine to her pistol, then knelt to buckle the horned helmet onto Grimm’s massive head.
“They have a pretty simple agenda,” he said. “The total extinction of the human race.”
55
Her name was Sister Amy. Fifteen years ago, before the gray plague, she had been a bodyguard in the entertainment industry. Before that she had been a soldier. During the plague Amy had lost everyone she loved. Two sisters, a brother, parents, and grandparents. Friends. Everyone who made her life worth living. The gray plague had taken everything from her except her awareness of her own loss, her own pain.
For years afterward she was a ghost. She drifted from town to town, looking for something to believe in, looking for proof that the whole world wasn’t going to die. She found famine and disease. She found whole settlements that had starved to death, and settlements that had survived for years before finally falling to the gray wanderers.
She found nothing to believe in. Nothing she could save, and to someone like her, protecting and saving people was all that mattered. But she hadn’t been able to save her family, and in the wastelands of what had once been America she found nothing else worth saving. Nothing that would last if saved.
And then she met Saint John, and all that changed.
Now she was one of the most trusted reapers of the Night Church. A true believer who worshipped Saint John as much as she worshipped Thanatos and the darkness. The saint had promised her — actually sworn to her — that when her time came, he would take his own sacred knives and open a red mouth in her flesh. With his own sanctified hands he would guide her into the darkness.
That was something she could believe in. A guaranteed end to pain, and a pathway to the sea of darkness in which the spirits of her family swam.
It was beautiful.
She would do anything for Saint John.
Sister Amy lay on the ground, her body totally hidden by a thick line of shrubs, her scent masked by the chemicals into which her red ribbons had been dipped. Those chemicals fooled more than the gray people. Even dogs avoided the smell. It did not trigger their aggression. It just made her scent… uninteresting, and that was the genius of it.
She lay in the hot darkness, her body utterly still, her breathing controlled, her mind quiet and receptive.
Listening.
To the ranger and the Lost Girl.
To strange tales of how, in the terrible days after First Night, the lost and lonely survivors found one another and built fences against the dead. How they built nine towns in central California. And how, behind the fences, they survived.
Nine towns, filled with heretics whose every heartbeat was an affront to God.
Nine towns that did not even know that the army of the Night Church existed.
Yet.
56
“The American Nation,” Nix said again. “I hope it’s real. I hope it’s not just a bunch of little towns like ours.”
“It has to be more than that,” said Benny. “They have planes. This one and the jet. Maybe more. They even made a flag. It sounds… I don’t know… big. Bigger than anything we’ve ever seen.”
Nix turned away from him and stared out through the broken windows into the hot desert outside. Her back was as stiff as a board, and she gripped the back of the pilot’s chair so ferociously that her fingers dug into the cracked leather.
“Hey,” said Benny, “what’s wrong? We did it, we found proof that there’s something out there. I know things are crazy right at the moment, with those freaks out there and all, but I thought you’d be—”
She cut a sharp look at him. “Be what? Be happy? Is that what you want, Benny? For me to be happy? God, you really don’t know who I am, do you? You have no idea why I want to find that jet, or why finding all this is so… so… ” She gave the pilot’s chair a vicious kick and didn’t finish her sentence. Instead she glared out the window, muttering “God” under her breath.
“Maybe I do understand,” Benny said, and as he said it he was aware that he was stepping way out on a limb. But he was tired of being careful all the time.
Nix didn’t look at him. “What do you understand?”
“You even said it once,” Benny said. “You said that Mountainside wasn’t your home anymore. With your mom gone, and now Tom… you don’t feel like you belong there anymore.”
She still didn’t look at him.
Benny said, “Hey, I know that you think I’m just some dumb boy who doesn’t get you. Chong thinks I’m halfway to being a moron, and Lilah… well, I doubt Lilah thinks about me at all. But I’m not stupid and I’m not blind. Since Tom died I’ve had a lot of time to think things over. I’ve seen you drift away more and more ever since we left and—”
“This isn’t about us, Benny.”
“I’m not talking about us. I’m not talking about our relationship falling apart. When I say that I see you drifting away, I mean from everything. You don’t try to relate to anyone. Well… I guess Eve was the only one, and that was only for a few minutes. You’ve gone inside your own head, Nix, and I’m pretty sure you don’t like what’s in there.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped.
“Yeah, I do. Just like I know that every time I want to talk about something, you snap at me. It’s a defense mechanism. You keep me and everyone else at arm’s length that way. And that way no one can get in.” He took a step toward her. “You really think I don’t understand? You lost your whole family when your mom died. You and I started when you were emotionally screwed up, I know that. I know that Tom and your mom were in love. They were probably going to get married, but that was taken away from you too. You think you’re all alone, so you need — really need — to find another place. A place that isn’t Mountainside and isn’t the Rot and Ruin. I get that, I really do. That’s why you’ve been so obsessed about the jet. It’s like a… like a lifeline, I guess.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said bitterly.
“I know that, too,” Benny said.
Nix turned away again and continued to stare out at the desert forest.
Benny summoned all the courage he could find. He braced himself to say what he knew he had to say next.
“Nix,” he began softly, “it’s okay if you don’t love me anymore. It’s okay if you don’t want to be my girlfriend anymore. It’s okay if you just want to be you.”
She stiffened.
“I love you,” he said. “I really do, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that whatever you need to do to figure out who you are and what you want… I’ve got your back, but I’ll never get in your way.”
His mouth hurt to say those words, and inside his chest it felt as if a huge, icy fist was squeezing his heart into pulp. But Benny stood his ground and forced his eyes to stay dry. Tears now would be of no help to anyone.
Nix did not turn, she did not say a word. She stared out at the day, and Benny watched her and tried to remember how to breathe.
Then Nix gasped and said, “Oh my God!” She stumbled backward in horror, pointing out into the desert.
“What—?” asked Benny.
But as he rushed to her side, he saw what it was. Outside, near where the three zombies hung on their T-bars, were three people. Reapers.
Two men and a tall woman with masses of dark brown hair.
“Nix!” cried Benny in a strangled whisper, “that’s her. That’s the woman I saw today in the field right before the zoms chased me.”
57
“You’re sure?” asked Nix. “She’s the one from the field?”
“Positive.”
They studied her. She was tall and beautiful, and she stood with a grace that spoke of great confidence. Benny recalled the word he had thought of when he first saw her: regal. Queenly. But queen of what?
There were other reapers around her. Men and women, all of them dressed in black with angel wings and red tassels. They all carried weapons. Swords, axes, knives.
“I don’t see any guns,” whispered Benny.
“Not much of a comfort,” replied Nix sourly.
Then they gaped at a man who came out of the woods to take up a very protective post just behind the queenly woman. He was a giant, and he carried a massive long-handled sledgehammer.
“What is he?” asked Nix. “A troll?”
“Close enough.”
The air was split by the roar of quads as more reapers appeared from the forest until there were at least two dozen of them gathered around the woman. Except for her, all of them had shaved and tattooed heads like Saint John. And Riot, thought Benny.
None of them stood very close to her, though every eye was fixed on her. None of them paid much attention to the plane, and it was clear that they had all seen it before, or did not care about it. The woman ignored it completely.
She beckoned over a grim-faced young man, and for several moments they stood apart, their heads bowed together in an intense discussion while the giant guarded them.
“I can’t hear anything,” complained Benny. “Can you?”
Nix’s face was screwed up with concentration. “No.”
That changed a moment later. The young man bowed deeply to the woman, turned, and melted into the forest. The woman stepped onto a small, flat rock, and the other reapers clustered around her. She raised her arms out to the sides and stood for a moment in silence, the wind making the red streamers snap and pop.
Then, in a loud, clear voice she addressed the reapers. “You are the blessed of Thanatos!”
“All praise to the darkness,” they cried.
“In you he is well pleased. As I am pleased.”
“All praise to Mother Rose!”
Nix turned to Benny and mouthed the name. “Mother Rose.”
It was the name Saint John had mentioned.
“My children,” said Mother Rose, “you have all done exceedingly well. Your faith and devotion lifts my heart.”
They smiled, and a few even dabbed at wet eyes.
“Look at where we stand, my beloved ones.” She gestured to the plane, and for a moment Benny’s heart froze, thinking that she was pointing at them. But he and Nix were in shadows, invisible from outside. Even so his heart hammered. “The Shrine of the Fallen. A symbol of the corrupt world that was lies here, broken and empty. This once-mighty war machine and every heretic a
board have been given the gift of darkness. All the war machines of the old, corrupt world are silenced now. The world itself is falling silent. A silence decreed by our god. A silence that is proof of the eternal darkness that waits for us all.”
“Praise be to the darkness!”
“Saint John and his prophet, Brother Peter, have told you many times that we are coming to the end of our long road, that the darkness is a heartbeat away for us all.”
The crowd grew silent, attentive.
“But I tell you that there is much still to do.”
Even in the plane Benny could hear the crowd sigh. It was a sad sound. But Mother Rose held up a hand.
“Do not be afraid, my children. Our god has not abandoned you, and he has not foresworn his holy promise to lift you up and grant you peace. No, I say now, in your hearing, that Lord Thanatos will deliver one hundredfold on his promises. You will have peace and so much more.”
She waited as the crowd milled, the reapers murmuring to one another in confusion, but now Benny could hear a note of hope in their sounds.
“Where once the family of the reapers was weak, now we are strong,” said Mother Rose. “Where once we were scattered like sheep, now we are part of a great family. A community of saints for whom the heavens themselves are ours to sow.”
There were definite frowns on many of the faces, but Mother Rose’s beatific smile never wavered.
“What’s she doing?” asked Nix.
Benny shook his head.
“You all know that the last of Carter’s heretics are in these woods,” said Mother Rose. “What most of you do not know is that she who was my daughter intends to lead them to Sanctuary.”
The collected reapers gasped in horror.
“Saint John and Brother Peter are hunting them now,” continued Mother Rose. “It is their desire that every one of the heretics be sent into the darkness.”
A few of the reapers gave rousing shouts of approval, but Mother Rose looked at them with unblinking eyes until they fell silent. The reapers shuffled like naughty schoolboys.
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