Flesh & Bone (16 page)

Benny nodded, but he studied the figures on the machines and didn’t like what he was seeing. He remembered the word Riot had used.
Quads
. This had to be what she was referring to.

The quads zoomed across the field and circled the big bristlecone tree. One rider stopped and dismounted, studying the ground. Looking for footprints, Benny realized.

“Nix,” he said, indicating the man who had dismounted, “look at them, look at his chest.”

She looked where he was pointing, and her mouth turned down into a frown of doubt. On the center of the man’s black shirt were angel wings, neatly embroidered in white thread.

“Angels with wings on their chests,” Nix murmured as she dumped the spent shells from her pistol.

“Angels came and set fire to the trees,” Benny added.

“Uh-oh,” she said softly.

“Listen, much as I’d love to find out about those machines and where these people come from, somehow I don’t think now is the moment.”

“No,” she agreed. She checked all her pockets for bullets and found only two.

“That’s it?” Benny asked, a note of panic in his voice.

“The rest are in my backpack.”

She thumbed the two shells into the gun and closed the cylinder. They both looked at the pistol for a moment.

“Hope we don’t need more than two shots,” said Benny.

“No kidding.” As she holstered the pistol, she glanced back the way they’d come, indecision stamped on her face.

“Look,” Benny said, “Carter and those other people said they saw the jet. If we circle around to find Chong, we’ll probably find them. Even with everything that just happened on the field, I’d still rather talk to Eve’s folks than . . . these guys.”

“Yes.” Nix brushed a tangle of red hair away from her face. “Damn it.”

They rose silently and moved deeper into the forest, going as fast as caution would allow and sticking to paths that were heavy with fallen branches or uneven ground. Benny did not believe that “all-terrain” could possibly mean that.

With minds full of questions and hearts heavy with regrets, they fled from the angels and their impossible machines.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Tom taught us that you can’t prepare for every emergency or every threat.

“The trick isn’t to practice too many specific danger scenarios, but to learn the skills that are common to all. A smart warrior is always observant, always aware of his surroundings, always aware of his resources, and always ready to adapt to situations as they change.”

30

“N
IX,
”
PUFFED
B
ENNY AS HE SLOWED TO A WALK,
“
MAYBE WE
’
RE DOING
this wrong. Maybe we should go back and try to talk to those people.”

She made a face. “Really? That’s your plan?”

“I—”

“Or is that what you think Tom would do?”

That stung.

“Now wait a minute—” he began, but she shook her head.

“No,” she snapped, “don’t you have a clue as to how you’re behaving lately? You keep telling me and the others to back off so you can handle things. You were going to charge those lions and—”

“What does that have to do with Tom?” he demanded.

She peered up at him, her green eyes surrounded by a sea of freckles and wild red curls.

“Look,” she said, “I know you think that because you have Tom’s sword, you have to be the great warrior, but here’s a news flash, Benny: You’re not Tom. The sword doesn’t give you superpowers.”

Benny felt his face grow hot. “I never said—”

She pointed back toward the field. “You think Tom
would have just waltzed in there and sorted this out?”

“I know he would. This is the sort of thing he was good at.”

“No, he wasn’t,” snapped Nix. “He was never out this far. He doesn’t know these people. We stepped into the middle of something big and nasty that doesn’t concern us. It wouldn’t have concerned Tom, either. He’d have steered us around this and left these people to sort out their own troubles.”

Benny seethed for a moment before he tried to speak. “Tom would never have walked away from that little girl.”

Nix’s eyes were as hard and cold as green glass. “Tom brought us out here to find that jet, not to solve the problems of everyone in the world.”

“So . . . what? Are you saying we should just walk away from Eve?”

“She’s with her parents,” she said, “and here’s another news flash: Eve’s parents tried to kill us back there. I’m going out on a limb here, but I pretty much think that means they don’t want our help.”

“That’s because they were looking for her and were probably scared out of their minds, Nix.”

“Doesn’t change anything.”

“And they thought we were reapers.”

Nix cocked her head to one side. “It’s that bald girl, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You want to go back and talk to that bald girl with the slingshot.”

“Oh, for—”

Screams tore through the air behind them. A male voice, but high and filled with terrible pain. The sound was cut off in a way that suggested the worst.

The air was filled with screams and the roar of quad engines.

“Chong—?” Benny gasped. “We have to—”

“No, that’s not Chong,” Nix said with a firm shake of her head. “Chong made it to the woods before we did. I never saw him run that fast before. He’ll be okay.”

There were more screams and shouts, male and female voices; and every now and then the blast of a shotgun.

“Sounds like a full-out war,” said Benny.

“You still want to go back?” asked Nix.

Benny said nothing.

“Look,” Nix said, “Chong knows which direction Lilah took. He’ll head that way, and if those machines chase him, then Lilah will hear it. She’ll know what to do.”

When Benny still said nothing, Nix touched his arm.

“Benny, let’s find the others and see what they want to do, okay?”

He sighed and nodded, and kept to himself so many things that needed to be said.

Before Nix turned away, they shared a moment of silent eye contact. Benny ached to say so many things, and he was sure Nix did too. It was just that . . . he was afraid to hear what those things were. Her thoughts, and his.

He turned away first, and the ground seemed to be tilting under him, as if the world was no longer properly mounted on its axis and everything was tipping the wrong way.

I want to go home
, he thought.

Deep inside his mind, Tom whispered,
Be careful, little brother, or you’re going to lose Nix forever. Everything’s hanging by a thread
.

They began walking, angling through a dry wash that was thick with tumbleweeds.

“I like the slingshot,” observed Benny, half because it was true and half because he felt a peevish desire to score a point on Nix. “Quiet and nasty. We should get one. Chong used to be pretty good with one; maybe we could all learn.”

“Slingshots are stupid,” muttered Nix. “Something a kid would use.”

“That girl was pretty tough,” Benny said.

“You thought that cow looked pretty?”

“I said ‘pretty tough,’ Nix. Don’t start, okay? She was tough and dangerous with that slingshot and the firecrackers and all. Saved us from the lions.”

“Oh, please,” sneered Nix. “And what kind of name is ‘Riot’ anyway?”

Suddenly there was movement behind them, deeper inside the forest. They spun around and saw another man standing a mere dozen paces away.

The stranger was tall, with dark eyes set so deep that they made his pale face look skeletal. His head was shaved, and his entire scalp was tattooed with a pattern of thorny vines. He wore black trousers and a billowy black shirt, and his legs and arms were wrapped with bloodred ribbons. On his shirtfront was a beautifully rendered chalk drawing of angel wings.

A reaper.

In Benny’s mind, Tom’s voice whispered,
Benny . . . run
.

31

C
HONG DID NOT MOVE
.

The reaper cut the air with the scythe again and again. With each pass he called out in a gravelly voice. “Hiding only makes it worse. The darkness wants to take you. Give in to it and there is only beauty. A touch is all, and then you are free. Free!”

Chong held his breath.

The reaper listened to the silence and shook his head. “Struggle against it and you beg for pain.”

It was clear that the reaper did not know exactly where he was; he kept turning, shouting to different parts of the surrounding woods. It was a trick, and not a very good one, Chong mused. No one would be crazy enough to fall for it.

Then a second man stepped out of the woods on the far side of the clearing.

It was Carter. His clothes were torn and splashed with blood, and his hair and eyes were wild.

He looks like he’s just been through hell
, Chong thought. And he wondered where Sarah and Eve were. And that girl, Riot.

When the reaper saw Carter, he nodded approval. “Smart choice, brother. This reaper honors you and offers the gift of darkness to end your suffering and—”

“Skip the sales pitch, ‘Brother’ Andrew.” Carter pointed his shotgun at the reaper’s chest. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say. I’m going to give you one chance, because you used to be my friend. Drop the cutter and walk away. Leave me and mine in peace.”

“Peace?” The reaper, Brother Andrew, shook his head, and Chong thought there was real regret in his face. “There is no peace left on earth, Carter. You of all people should know that. How many have you lost to the gray wanderers? Your first wife? Your son? Your sister? How many more do you have to see consumed before you understand that earth no longer belongs to mankind?”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“We’ve been called home, brother,” insisted Andrew. “Saint John and Mother Rose have shown us the way.”

“They’re murderers, and they’ve brainwashed the whole bunch of you into believing in some crazy made-up god and a bunch of lunatic ranting. They’ve blinded you with this darkness nonsense.”

“No,” said Andrew, “they’ve
opened
our eyes and our hearts to the truth.”

“What truth? All you do is kill.”

“No!” said Andrew, looking hurt and surprised. “We don’t ‘kill.’ There is no ‘murder’ left in the world. Why can’t you get it through your head that the gray plague was not a virus or an accident? It was the will of our god. Like the Death of the Firstborn in your own Bible, Carter. He has reached out his hand to erase the mistake of ‘life.’”

“‘Mistake’? Life is the only thing that matters.”

Andrew shook his head. “No. God—the
true
god—meant
for mankind to leave the physical form and transition into the formlessness of the darkness. That was his will, his plan for the redemption of everyone.”

Carter shook his head. “Horse crap. It was a plague, and it didn’t kill everyone. There are a lot of people left and—”

“There are maggots crawling on the festering corpse of this world,” countered Andrew. “Everyone who draws breath does so in defiance of the will of God.”

“You still seem to be sucking air, Andrew.”

The reaper placed one hand over the wings on his chest. “The reapers are the holy priests of our god. We have been asked to remain here and usher the last of the lost—the last of those like you who refuse to believe—into the darkness.”

“Sure. By murder. Very compassionate of you.”

“But it is compassion, Carter.” He set the butt of his scythe down, and there was a slight shift in his body language and his phrasing. Less forced formality. “Listen to me, man; when the dead rose, I was right there in the thick of it with you. We brought all those people out of Omaha. We built Treetops and we started a life.”

“Right, which is why—”

“Let me say my piece,” interrupted Andrew. “Just hear me out.”

Carter sighed and gestured with the barrel of his shotgun. “Make it quick.”

Brother Andrew nodded. “You and I survived when a lot of other people fell because we were used to roughing it. All those weekends out hunting and fishing before things fell apart. The years we humped our battle-rattle over the Big Sand in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were survivors, Carter,
and we did survive . . . and we helped a lot of other people survive.”

Carter nodded.

“But for what?” demanded Andrew. “What have we really accomplished? What do we have to show for it? After that first season, after we holed up in that old shopping mall for all those weeks, we thought we’d slipped the punch. We thought that God smiled on us and we made it, right? But then what happened? That first winter we lost half the people we saved. Dysentery, three flu epidemics, tuberculosis . . . the list goes on and on. Disease killed more of us than the gray people ever did, and we’ve both traveled enough to know that this was happening all over. Remember Oshkosh? The whole city was dead from plague. Actual bubonic plague. Same with Bridgeport, and how many other cities? Same thing in Wyoming. Casper, Fort Washakie, Arapahoe—wiped out by the damn flu. That’s where the whole second wave of the gray people came from. Not from them biting each other or the army dropping nukes. Millions of people died from bad water, bad food, infection, bacteria, parasites. By the time we reached Idaho, how many people did we still have? One out of every six who started out with us?”

The story Andrew was telling confirmed the worst of Chong’s speculations about the world beyond Mountainside’s chain-link fence. The nine towns in the Sierra Nevadas lucked out by having a good doctor and a biochemist who knew how to make antibiotics. Chong’s father often said that those two men had saved more people than anyone who fired a gun or swung a sword. When Chong had told that to Tom, he agreed completely.

“What’s your point, Andrew?” growled Carter. “Are you saying that we worked all these years for nothing?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, brother,” insisted Andrew. “Since we settled down and built Treetops, when have we had a year without a major flu epidemic? When have we ever had a really successful harvest? We’re hunters, man, but we’re not farmers. Sure, we put a lot of venison and wild pig on the table, but it was never enough. Not by half.” He took a breath. “How long do you think people should keep pushing against things before they realize the truth?”