Bits & Pieces (47 page)

“Kneel, brother,” said the man with the scythe. “Humble yourself and pray for release, and in the name of our god we will send you into the sweet and perfect darkness.”

Benny stood and considered the man and his offer. Then he reached over his shoulder and slowly drew the
kami katana
.

“Or not,” he said.

The reapers looked at the sword and then at the teenage boy who held it.

They burst out laughing.

It was, Benny mused, not exactly the ideal reaction.

His mind was racing furiously, trying to remember every lesson Tom had ever taught him. The path he'd used to come up here was behind him and he could reach it, but it was impossible to negotiate it fast enough to stay alive. Even though none of these reapers carried bows and arrows—and none of them ever carried guns—they could simply stand at the edge of the cliff wall and throw stones at him. They'd batter him off the wall and send him plunging down into the jagged rocks below.

All other potential routes out of here were blocked by reapers. Benny could see some paths beyond them. One wending through dry grass looked well trodden. Benny realized with a jolt that the reapers must have been using this spot to observe Sanctuary. Why weren't there soldiers up here? There were soldiers across the trench below; Benny had seen a few. Why wouldn't they have people up here?

Or . . . had some of these reapers once been soldiers who'd been forced to kneel and kiss the knife, to accept membership into a church built on total human extinction?

Too many questions. Not enough time to discover answers.

All that was left for Benny to do was fight.

The reaper with the scythe had been watching him very closely and must have seen the acceptance of the inevitable in Benny's eyes. He raised his scythe.

“Kill him,” he said.

And the reapers, with their smiling faces and gleaming knives, attacked.

Southern California

“Heather,” snarled Samantha as she crouched over the female reaper. “Watch her.”

Heather had another arrow fitted and she drew it back, aiming at the woman's chest. Samantha quickly searched the woman and removed four other knives. Two were very good and she pocketed those; the rest she flung into the brush, where they vanished completely. She did the same with the ax and the weapons of the men. Then, while Heather kept watch, Samantha ran quickly down the path to survey the forest. There were no other reapers that she could see, which meant that they had split up to search the woods. That was good for the moment, but she and Heather would have to
get out of here soon and warn the others. As she started to turn away, she caught sight of several figures farther down the slope. Slow, clumsy figures, but they were coming this way.

Zombies.

She turned and ran back to the site of the ambush.

The reaper woman was still semi-dazed from the vicious blow of Samantha's spear, and her eyes were glassy.

Samantha knelt in front of her and once more put the knife edge against her throat.

“Who are you and why are you killing people?”

The woman sneered. “A killer asks a question like that?”

“Self-defense, sister. You started this when you tried to kill my friend. So what's with that? World's full of zombies and you want to start killing some of the people who are trying to survive?”

The woman actually managed to smile. “You're a heathen and a blasphemer and you wouldn't understand.”

Samantha had heard those words “heathen” and “blasphemer” only in old Bible stories. She couldn't imagine how they applied to something like this.

“Try me,” she said, and emphasized the request by pressing harder with her knife.

“We are reapers of the Night Church, faithful servants of the Lord Thanatos, all praise his darkness. We are the soldiers of our god. We are sent into the wasteland to find all those who defy our god's will by clinging to the lie that is life.”

“What? That doesn't make any sense.”

“Not to the unenlightened.” The woman continued to smile. “When the old world ended, many people believed that it was the judgment of their god. And in a way it was, but the
god of the old world, the god of the Christians and Jews and Muslims, and the heathen gods of the Hindus and all those other false idols were proven to be lies told by blasphemers. The truth is that Lord Thanatos—all praise to his darkness—is the one true god, and he has judged mankind and found it wanting. He raised the dead, his holy gray people, to open red mouths in the flesh of all who live in this world of sin. Through the sacred doorway of death the impure are made pure, and in the vast and formless darkness they know true peace and joy.”

Samantha almost smiled. “Wait, let me get this straight . . . you people believe that we have to die to be saved?”

“Of course.”

“And that's why you're killing everyone you meet?”

“We bring the blessings of Saint John of the Knife, the holy minister of our god. With the sacred blades we open the doorways to—”

“Paradise, right, I got it. But you guys have a weird double standard. You believe in death, but you're still breathing and running around causing problems.”

“No,” said the woman, “we remain clothed in flesh only until the full will of god is completed. And then, with joy and songs on our lips, we will open the red mouths in each other's—”

“Something's coming,” said Heather, swinging around to aim her arrow into the woods.

“Zombies,” said Samantha. “I saw them a minute ago.”

“We have to go.”

“I know.”

The reaper said, “Why not stay and let the gray people send you into the blessed darkness?”

Samantha shook her head. “Thanks, but I think we'll pass.”

She closed her hand around the silver dog whistle that hung around the woman's neck. “You use this to control the zombies?”

“Yes. It is a gift from Lord Thanatos, all praise his—”

“Darkness, right.” With a grunt she yanked the whistle hard enough to snap the chain, looked at it for a moment, then stuffed it into a pocket. “Heather, get the other whistles.”

The younger girl hesitated, casting a nervous eye at the woods, then nodded and ran to comply.

“Get those red streamers, too.”

“They stink!”

“They smell like death,” said Samantha. “Kind of useful, don't you think?”

Heather thought about it for a moment, then gave a small smile of understanding. She drew a knife and began sawing at the tassels on the two dead men. They could hear the zombies thrashing through the brush as they came.

Time was just about up.

Samantha looked at the woman.

“What you're doing is wrong.”

“It is the will of god.”

“Not a chance. No god would want his people to do this much harm. If someone told you that, they were either lying to you or they're crazy. Either way, what you're doing is wrong.”

She removed the edge of the spear blade and stepped back.

“It is the will of god,” growled the reaper, her smile gone now.

Samantha shook her head.

“Go ahead, then,” said the reaper. “Kill me. Use your weapon and open the red doors in my flesh. You'll see the joy on my face as I cross into the darkness.”

The zombies were less than a hundred feet way now, and they were closing in from all sides. Heather whimpered softly and restrung her arrow.

Samantha holstered her spear and drew one of the knives she'd taken from the reaper. The woman smiled again as if in welcome of what she thought was coming. But behind that smile, Samantha thought she detected a flicker of something else.

Doubt, maybe.

Or fear.

With a flash of silver, Samantha crouched and slashed away the red tassels the woman wore, then quickly gathered them up and stuffed them into her pocket. Then she backed away from the reaper. The zombies were entering the small clearing. A circle of them, their gray faces slack, their eyes empty, their mouths working as if biting the air.

Samantha began backing away, pushing Heather as she did so.

“You have those tassels?” she asked.

“Y-yes,” stammered Heather.

“Then let's go. No! Don't run . . . follow me and we walk out of here.”

The reaper woman looked at them in horror.

“Wait—you can't leave me here.”

“Why not?” asked Samantha.

“Give me my tassels back.”

“Not a chance.”

The zombies were a dozen feet away now, reaching with pale hands.

“My whistle . . .”

“No.”

“But . . . but . . .”

Samantha could feel the coldness of her own expression. “You said that the dead were here to complete your god's will. Who am I to interfere?”

“Please!” begged the woman.

Samantha pushed Heather backward, and then the girls turned as two zombies closed in on them. Heather still had her arrow ready, and Samantha once more held her spear.

The zombies sniffed the air and their fingers grasped in their direction, but then they moved around the girls, indifferent to them, and shambled toward the woman who knelt on the ground.

“Please . . . god, please . . .”

“Don't look,” said Samantha. “Just go and don't look.”

Together they fled the scene, first walking, and then running, pursued only by the echo of the woman's dreadful screams.

The last cry of “Please!” sounded like it had been torn from her throat.

Serves you right,
thought Samantha coldly.

The echo of that last cry seemed to hang in the air, refusing to faded into nothingness.

Samantha tried to feel good about what she'd just done. She wanted to feel smug about how she'd spun the situation on the reaper. She tried, but by the time they reached the barn and the other girls, she was sobbing so hard she could barely run.

“I'm sorry,” she kept saying. “I'm sorry.”

Heather told the other girls what happened, and they in turn tried to tell Samantha that she had done the right thing. That it was justice. That it was okay.

But they all knew they were lying.

Please . . .

Without another word, they headed off to the Rattlesnake Valley Motor Court to pack what few things they needed. The woods were full of reapers and zombies. The day was closing like a fist around them.

Southern California

As the reapers marched away into the hills, Brother Marty found himself unable to stop thinking about the big man Saint John had killed. The one who must have said something that had ignited fear in the saint's eyes—a thing Marty did not think was possible.

Who was Iron Mike Sweeney?

There was something about the man.

Something very wrong.

Something weirdly wrong.

Although Marty had accepted the path of the darkness and the way of the knife, part of him was still an ordinary man. A pre–First Night man. He'd been raised in a Jewish household, but not a strict one, and over the years agnosticism had drawn him away from his faith and his traditions.
He was, however, always a very superstitious man, though he ascribed that to working in Hollywood. The movie business seemed to swing between the poles of very good or very bad luck. The superstitions that became part of him were in no way tied to his previous faith—or any faith. Luck was luck, and the world was always a little weird to him. The angels he sometimes prayed to never appeared in anyone's holy books. Then or now.

As the reaper army marched on, he sat on his quad and rumbled down the center of the road behind Saint John, who was flanked by his personal guard, the Red Brotherhood.

Marty tried to shake his weird feeling and simply could not.

Finally he peeled off from the procession and signaled for four of the Red Brothers, and with them in tow he made a U-turn and headed back down the road to the place where the trade wagon had been ambushed. They reached the spot in less than thirty minutes. Marty pulled to a stop in the woods where he had a good view of the scene of slaughter. Most of the dead had risen and wandered off. A few—those with traumatic head wounds—lay where they'd fallen. The wagon stood there. Saint John had ordered the quartermasters of his army to take the uninjured horses and to slaughter the rest. The massive Percheron lay sprawled and dead beneath a crowd of vultures. Up the slope loomed the place where Iron Mike Sweeney had been executed by Saint John.

The two trees that had held him stood as silent as mourners. Ragged ends of rope hung from each, flapping weakly in the breeze.

But the man was gone.

Brother Marty sat immobile for a long moment. Then he signaled to one of the Red Brothers.

“Come on, guys. I want to know who cut him down and what happened to his body.”

The four Red Brothers dismounted and followed Marty up the slope. They stayed off the path to prevent any useful footprints from being obscured by their own shoes. When they reached the two trees, one of them—Brother Zeke—crept forward, knees bent, body bowed low to read the tale of the ground. Brother Marty followed close behind.

Zeke suddenly stopped, and from his posture it was clear there was something puzzling about the scene. He squatted down and poked at the ground, then picked up the pieces of rope that had been used to tie Mike Sweeney to the tree. Frowning, he turned to Marty.

“What is it?”

“Something's weird about this, boss,” said Zeke.

“Don't talk to me about weird,” said Marty. “We don't want weird. We don't like weird. This Iron Mike fellow is dead, and either he's
dead
dead and some maniac body-snatched him, or he's walking around dead-ish looking for a hot meal. That's ordinary, that's what I want to hear. So, tell me what I want to hear.”