Half an hour later he was only a third of the way to the crest of this broken hill, but the ground looked like it was a thousand miles down. Hot sweat ran down his face, but cold sweat tickled in lines beneath his clothes. His breath came in ragged gasps, and he tried to drill his fingers into the rock wall.
Once, when he closed his eyes, he thought he heard his brother Tom speaking to him.
Yo! Boy genius, said Tom. Exactly what do you think you’re doing?
“Shut up,” breathed Benny. “I’m trying not to die here.”
How hard are you trying?
“Bite me.”
Not even if I was alive.
They both laughed, but the laughs were ghostly and unreal. What Benny really wanted to do was sob. The ache he felt for his lost brother was almost unbearable at times. He kept seeing a hole in the world in the shape of Tom Imura, and he couldn’t imagine anything filling it.
However, he believed that he was supposed to fill it. He was supposed to become the next Tom Imura.
Him.
Not some old guy who used to be a soldier back when something like that mattered. Before the dead rose and humanity fell. Now—and especially to Benny—meeting an actual soldier was like being handed proof that the old system was never good enough, that it wasn’t strong enough. That it wasn’t warrior smart enough. The world still ended.
Hot wind whistled past Benny, flapping the cuffs of his jeans and stinging his face.
“Tom . . . ?” murmured Benny.
Yeah, kiddo?
“I . . . I don’t know if I can do it.”
Tom laughed. A gentle laugh. It’s easy. Put one foot in front of the other and try not to fall.
“That’s not what I meant.”
For a moment Benny could really see Tom, standing there in the shade under the big oak that anchored one corner of their gated yard back home. Tom standing with a cup of iced tea. The smell of hot apple pie wafting out through the kitchen window. Really good pie too. With walnuts and raisins, the way Tom made it. Sour apples so it wasn’t too sweet.
“That’s not what I meant,” Benny said again.
I know what you meant, answered Tom.
“Tom, I—”
But Tom was gone.
The wind howled as it tore through the crags of the red rock wall.
Benny took as deep a breath as he could and sighed it out. Took another. And another. And then he continued climbing.
It took almost forty minutes to reach the top of the crest. By the time he did, his body was trembling with fatigue and jumpy from the residue of adrenaline in his blood. He staggered away from the edge onto a flat section that was covered with withered grass and strewn with huge boulders left over from the last glacier. Benny took two wobble-kneed steps and then sank down onto his knees.
His exhaustion was the only thing that kept him alive as something whipped over his head.
Benny flung himself sideways, thinking that it was the goat lashing out with hooves to defend its territory.
It wasn’t a goat.
It wasn’t an animal.
The thing that had nearly cut his head off was a broad-bladed field scythe.
And it was held in the fists of a reaper.
All around him, others reapers were emerging from hiding places among the glacial boulders.
10
Rattlesnake Valley
Southern California
Samantha and Tiffany plunged into the woods, and a veil of cool shadows dropped behind them. They ran hard and fast along a deer path for fifty yards and then cut sharply left toward a small stream that fed the larger creek. They stepped into the ankle-deep water and kept going, moving slower now, making sure they didn’t splash water onto the dry mud along the banks or dampen any of the low-hanging leaves. There was no way to know if their pursuers understood anything about tracking, but the girls were long practiced at stealth and concealment.
Samantha bent close to Tiffany. “Who were those people? Who or what are reapers?”
The younger girl was gasping for breath after her exertions, but she managed to get out what she’d learned. “I . . . was hunting in the eastern woods . . . and I heard a scream. I went running, thinking the dead were attacking someone, but it wasn’t that at all. Three men in black were chasing an old couple—they had to be seventy or eighty. The old lady saw me and begged for help.” She looked at Samantha for approval. “What else could I do?”
“No, Tiff, you did the right thing, I’m sure,” Samantha assured her. “Then what happened?”
Tiffany quickly told the tale. The old couple were the last of a small group of survivors who had been living in an old shopping mall. They barely had enough to eat, but they were safe from the dead. Then the people in black and red—the reapers—broke into the mall and just started killing everyone.
“Why?” asked Samantha sharply.
“That’s just it . . . they didn’t give any explanation. They kept yelling things about someone named Thanatos and about sending everyone into the darkness. Crazy stuff like that. The old couple and a few others escaped, but they were chased. They’d survived on the road, constantly heading west toward the mountains and forestlands, but the reapers picked them off one by one. Or they sent packs of the dead after them.”
“How?”
“The old man said that the reapers made up some kind of chemical stuff that keeps the dead from attacking them. They dip pieces of cloth into it and tie the cloth around their ankles and like that.”
Samantha nodded. “The red tassels,” she said. “But how do they make the zombies do what they want?”
“The old man thinks they use dog whistles.”
“But how does—?”
“The dead can hear it. Certain calls make the dead come to them, other calls make them go away. So, I guess they use the whistles to, I don’t know, steer them? Crazy, isn’t it?”
“It’s smart,” said Samantha. “Really smart.”
There was a sound in the woods and they both stiffened, ready to run or fight, but it was only a couple of zebras. More zoo escapees. The striped animals turned to where the girls hid, sniffed the air, and then whinnied in irritation and trotted away.
“Why were these reapers chasing you?”
Tiffany flushed. “Well, what I left out was how I had the chance to talk to the two old folks.”
“Tell me.”
It was a simple thing to say, but Samantha knew that there was a lot behind it. There’s always more to something than what it seems.
What Tiffany said was plain and honest and brutal. “They were trying to kill those two old people, so I killed them.”
Samantha studied Tiffany’s eyes. There were ghosts there, moving from one room of her mind to another. The reapers might have deserved the fate they got, but Tiffany would still carry the memory of what she’d done—what she’d been forced to do—for the rest of her life. Samantha saw similar ghosts when she looked in the mirror.
It made her wonder if the reapers were similarly haunted by the terrible things they were doing. Why, in fact, were they raiding camps and killing innocent folks? In a world where there was almost no one left, it was bad enough killing in defense of the innocent or oneself; but to kill for the joy of it, or for some other equally crazy reason, was a sin.
“What happened to the old people?” asked Samantha tentatively, afraid of the answer.
“I . . . was bringing them home. I thought we could help them. . . .”
“But . . . ?”
“But the reapers caught us. So many of them. They attacked us, and before I knew it the old couple was down. It was awful, Sam. What they did to those people was bad.”
Tiffany’s voice was fragile with pain and anger. And with shock, and Samantha knew how dangerous that was.
“I to
ok another of them down, but there were too many, and I ran. You know the rest.”
“Reapers,” echoed Samantha. “If they’re coming this way, we may have to leave the motor court. We can’t defend that place against an army, and if they can control the dead, then that’s what they have.”
Leaving the motor court would be a sad thing. They’d spent most of their lives there. Their friends were buried there. And there were too many supplies to carry if they had to simply pack and run. And they had no idea what was west of where they lived. Some travelers told rumors of a bunch of small towns somewhere in the mountains, but if they’d given any specific details, that knowledge had died with Dolan and Ida.
There were birds in all the trees, but suddenly there was a single sharp owl cry. Samantha and Tiffany stopped whispering and listened. Heard it again. Samantha responded with the sound a baby owl would use to call its mother. Immediately two figures stepped from the shadows beneath an old weeping willow, both of them with arrows nocked to the strings of yew-wood bows.
Heather and Laura lowered their bows and rushed forward to help.
“I have her,” said Samantha, waving them off. “We need to get to the barn to meet the others. Buy us some time.”
Tiffany, who was puffing and gasping, croaked, “I’m all right . . . I don’t need help. . . .”
They ignored her.
However, Laura said, “I’m almost out of arrows. I’ll take Tiff and find the others.”
Samantha nodded and, despite Tiffany’s breathless protests, let Laura take up the burden of supporting the exhausted Tiffany. Then Samantha took the short spear from the leather scabbard into which she’d thrust it. The weapon had a four-foot hickory shaft and a blade scavenged from a broken sword Dolan had recovered from an empty house. A Scottish claymore. Dolan said that the sword had been on the ground next to over a dozen corpses that had once been zoms. Someone had made a heroic last stand, but now that person was probably wandering the earth as one of the living dead. That was how it was in last-stand fights. The defender ultimately runs out of ammunition, or their weapons break, or they just fatigue out against an enemy that can never get tired.
However, twelve inches of that old sword now protruded from a sturdy knot of leather at the end of the spear. The metal was heavy enough to use as a cleaver, sturdy enough to block most blades, and sharp enough to cut through leather, flesh and bone. Samantha called it her dragon’s tooth, and with it she’d defended against a great number of enemies, living and dead.
She and Heather watched the other girls move off; then they addressed the ground. When Samantha and Tiffany came out of the water, they’d left a wet trail. That had to be erased. They set to work, using dry brush to remove all footprints, then scooping handfuls of dried leaves, sticks, and stones and laying them like a haphazard carpet over any wet piece of ground. Within seconds the trail looked old and disused.
Then they erased their own footprints as they crept into tall grass. They moved in silence, knowing that they were invisible to anyone except maybe a hunting tiger or wolf. Their route cut across the path most likely taken by the people in black.
The reapers.
Then they heard sounds.
Human voices.
“—this way, I’m sure of it—”
Samantha and Heather ducked down again and watched as three figures came hurrying along the deer path. Two men and a woman. All dressed identically, and at closer range Samantha could see that the white angel wings embroidered on their shirts were highly detailed. Good needlework, done with skill and care. They moved ineptly through the forest, either because they lacked woodcraft or because they simply did not care if they made noise.
She felt Heather trembling beside her. Her eyes were glassy with fear, but that was understandable. Samantha put a hand on the younger girl’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. Heather flinched, but after a few moments her trembling eased a bit.
The reapers were getting closer, and the girls caught bits and pieces of their conversation.
“—be good to get some hot food once we catch up to the main army. I haven’t had a cooked meal in—”
“—Saint John will open red mouths in the flesh of every—”
“—ought to skin that girl—”
Samantha touched Heather’s bow and then pointed to the reaper out in front. He was the smaller of the two men and the one most likely to run out of bowshot faster than his companions.
Heather nodded and very quietly drew the fletched end of the arrow back to her ear.
“Now!” said Samantha in a sharp whisper, and the arrow vanished from the bow. There was a meaty thuk, and it appeared as if by magic between the reaper’s shoulder blades.
Samantha was in full motion before the other two reapers could react. She struck the middle reaper—the woman—in the temple with the butt-end of her spear and with a grunt and a pivot drove the blade into the chest of the third killer. He opened his mouth to scream, but he died before the sound could escape. As he collapsed, Samantha wrenched her spear free and whirled toward the fallen woman, who was bleeding and dazed. The woman had lost her ax when she fell, but she scrabbled at her belt to draw a draw a long-bladed skinning knife. Samantha kicked it out of her hand and put the edge of her spear blade under the woman’s throat.
“One word and you’re dead,” she hissed.
11
South Fork Wildlife Area
Southern California
“My name is Brother Martin,” said the small man who stood next to Saint John. “But everyone calls me Brother Marty. I was never comfortable with Martin. I’m more of a Marty kind of guy.”
Iron Mike Sweeney said nothing. The big red-haired trade guard stood with his arms wide, wrists lashed to tree trunks, feet tied to roots, shirt stripped away, pale skin running with bright red blood. The woods around them were filled with silent reapers.
“What’s your name?” asked Brother Marty.
Iron Mike didn’t answer directly. Instead he made a suggestion that was rude, obscene, and physically impossible. Saint John’s mouth compressed into a tight line. The closest reapers cut looks at him and then glared at the prisoner, ready to kill him for the insult.
Brother Marty merely sighed. “While that would make for an interesting little film back in the day when making interesting little films was how I earned a buck, I don’t think your suggestion gets us very far. It doesn’t open a dialogue.”
Iron Mike said nothing.
One of the reapers, a big man marked with the tattoo of a red hand on his face, stepped close and whispered into Brother Marty’s ear. The smaller man nodded and waved him away.
“Ah,” said Brother Marty. “If I’m hearing this right, you’re known as Iron Mike Sweeney. Also known as Big Mike Sweeney and Bloody Mike Sweeney.”
Iron Mike said nothing.
“‘Iron’ Mike,” said Brother Marty, putting the name out there to taste it. “Talk about truth in advertising.” He glanced at Saint John. “He’s as tough as iron, that’s no joke.”
The saint pursed his lips but did not comment.
To Iron Mike, Marty said, “On behalf of the Night Church and our Honored One, Saint John of the Knife, I got to say that you are one bad mamba-jamba, and we admire that. You got the stuff, man, you got that X factor that sets you apart from other men. You know how rare that is? Especially in these times? You could’ve been a star back in the day. The Rock, Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Schwarzenegger—they had it, but I don’t know how many of them could spend the kind of afternoon you’re having without so much as a peep. I’m really impressed. You know how many reapers you killed? Between arrows, guns, and that horse? Thirty-four. Thirty-four. I couldn’t sell a body count like that even in a summer blockbuster.”
Iron Mike smiled at him. It was not a nice smile, and it erased the grin from Brother Marty’s face.
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Marty cleared his throat. “Okay, don’t do that again, because it creeps me the heck out. And what’s with the eyes? Red eyes? Really? And those aren’t contact lenses?”
“I have my father’s eyes,” said Mike.
There was something in the way he said it that made Brother Marty want to run and hide. It did not make him want to ask who Mike’s father had been. Or indeed what Mike’s father had been. The world was too big and too scary already without exploring any new territory.
“Enough,” said Saint John, and as he stepped forward Marty was more than happy to retreat. He faded to the edge of the clearing and watched the saint.
“You’re boring me,” said Iron Mike. There was no hint of pain or discomfort in his voice. That scared Marty too. “Say your piece. If you want to kill me, then go for it. If you have a deal, pitch it.”
“Let’s start with a deal, Mr. Sweeney,” said Saint John. “And it’s a simple deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“We want some information. The location of nine towns.”
The prisoner snorted. “This is California, friend. Used to be the most populous state. There are a lot of towns here. Take your pick.”
“We’re looking for the town of Mountainside. It won’t be on any map made before the Fall.”
Iron Mike said nothing.
Saint John leaned closer to him. “As dear Brother Marty said, we are impressed with your strength. Of body and of will. But I am a saint abroad in a world of sin, and I am charged by god to cleanse the earth of the infection of life. This town of Mountainside is one of a group of towns that represent the largest population west of the Rockies. Its existence is an affront to god.”
“Whose god?”
“The only god. Lord Thanatos.”
“All praise to his darkness,” chanted the reapers.
“Thanatos, huh? Minor Greek god of death,” mused Mike. “Known as Mors to the Romans. Son of Nyx, the Night, and Erebos, the Darkness.”
“You know your history,” said Saint John, “but you don’t understand the truth behind the historical propaganda.”