Flesh & Bone (34 page)

“Why did you leave?”

“I wised up,” she said. “I guess I kind of had what you might call a ‘moment.’ I was fourteen by then and leadin’ my own team of reapers. All girls, daughters of the inner circle of the church. We were getting ready to hit this little walled-in town in Idaho—and the thing is, I never even found out its name—and the night before the raid, I was on recon with a couple of the other girls when I heard something from over the walls.”

“What?” asked Chong.

“Weren’t much, just a lady singing a lullaby to her baby.” She paused as if looking into that memory with perfect clarity. “I was up in a tree where I could see over the wall. The guards don’t watch trees because the gray people can’t climb.”

Chong nodded.

“I could see into a lighted window, and there’s this gal, maybe twenty years old, holding a little baby in her arms as she rocked in a chair. Just a single candle lit on a table. It was
the strangest thing I’d ever seen. The woman was so . . . happy. She had her baby, and she was in a safe town, and there was music and laughter in the streets. The world outside might be full of monsters and the whole world might have gone to hell, but here she was, rocking her baby and singing a song.”

“What happened?”

Riot sniffed and shook her head. “When I came back to give my report . . . I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. So I lied. I spun a yarn about the whole town being filled with armed men and lots of guns and suchlike. I said that we’d get ourselves killed sure as God made little green apples.”

“Did they believe you?”

She looked at Eve and smiled sadly. “No. Saint John had other people scoutin’ too, and they saw the truth, that the town was wide open, that the defenses were only good against gray people.”

“What happened?”

“They came in and killed ’em all. Every last man, woman . . . and child . . . in that town. Saint John sent his pet goon, Brother Peter, to drag me in for a talk, but I read the writing on the wall and cut bait. I was gone before sunup. Just up and went.”

“They let you just leave?”

“‘Let’? No. I had to muss a few of them ’up some, but I got away.” She sniffed again. “After that I fell in with a gang of scavengers. That’s where I got the nickname. Riot. Did a bunch of bad stuff and raised a lot of Cain. Then . . . I got real sick, and a way-station monk took me to a place called Sanctuary. They fixed me up right and proper. They wanted me to stay there, but I snuck out of that place like I did from my mom’s camp. Didn’t hurt nobody, though. After that I
knocked around a bit, got into some more trouble. But . . . a year ago I found a bunch of refugees on the run from some reapers. I helped ’em slip away, but there were a lot of sick and injured, including a bunch of kids, so I took ’em to Sanctuary. Kind of dropped ’em at the door and ran. Done that a few times now. The folks at Sanctuary don’t mind people coming in for help, but they really don’t like people leaving. I think they’d as soon put a leash on me if they had the chance. I don’t give them no chance. I drop and run, drop and run. That’s what I was trying to do with Carter and his crew. Guess I kind of made it my calling.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s penance.”

“But . . . the stuff you did while you were with the reapers, that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know any better, and when you did, you left.”

“Maybe. That don’t make me sleep any better at night.”

She reached over and stroked Eve’s hair.

“I got wind of the reapers planning on making a move on her town. Treetops it was called. I’d been there a few times with the scavengers. Nice folks, so I tried to get there in time to warn people, but I was about four hours too late. All I could do was offer to lead the survivors to Sanctuary.”

“You left out one part,” said Chong. “What happened to your dad?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Saint John and Mama said he up and left one night. Just took off . . . but I don’t believe that. I think they killed him.”

“Why?”

Riot gave him a hard look. “If you’re running a church
based on killing everyone who’s still sucking air, do you really want a doctor around? Pa was all about some oath when he was in medical school. He was all about saving lives . . . so I guess he had to go.”

“I’m sorry,” said Chong, and he meant it. “It . . . it must be lonely for you.”

“Well, it’s the end of the world, you know? Kinda sucks for everyone.”

Chong smiled a bitter little smile. “Yeah, I really get that.”

Riot studied his face for several thoughtful seconds. “I don’t know much about medicine,” she admitted, “’cept how to patch a busted leg or stitch a knife cut, take out the occasional arrow. Point is, I know where we might be able to get some help.”

“Help? Come on, Riot, we both know how this ends. I get sicker and sicker and then I die. And then you . . . well, then you take care of me. There’s no variation on that story. Everyone who gets infected dies.”

At that last word, Eve gave a soft whimper of protest and buried her head against his chest. Chong stroked her hair. He wanted to do the same thing she was doing—curl up in a fetal position and hope the world would just go away.

“Chong, listen to me,” insisted Riot. “I think I should take you to Sanctuary.”

“And what exactly
is
Sanctuary? Is it just a bunch of way-station monks or . . . ?”

Riot looked away for a moment, debating with herself about something. When she turned back, her face was even more tense. “Sanctuary is a lot of different things to different
people,” she said. “For some—people like . . . ” Instead of naming Carter, she nodded to Eve, and Chong understood. “For folks runnin’ from the reapers, Sanctuary’s just that. A safe place. It’s squirreled away pretty good, and it’s got some natural defenses. Mountains and suchlike. Hard as all get-out to find.”

“It’s a settlement?”

“To some,” she said. “Mostly it’s a kind of hospital, and I want to take little Evie there. I’m not going to be any good taking care of her, and she’s going to be hurtin’ for a long spell. There’s a bunch of monks who look after people.”

“Way-station monks? I’ve met some. The call themselves the Children of God, and they refer to the gray people as the Children of Lazarus.”

“Right, right. Well, they made Sanctuary their own place, and they take in the sick and injured and tend to them.”

“Are they actual doctors?”

“They’re not,” she said, but Chong caught the slight emphasis on “they’re.”

“Are . . . there other doctors there?”

“Kind of.”

“And you think they could help me?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if anyone can, they’s the ones.”

“Okay, then let’s go.”

“Well, there’s a bit of a hitch,” she said slowly, looking almost pained.

“What hitch?”

“If they let you into that other place . . . not the part with the monks, but the part where they can maybe help you . . . ”

“Yes?”

“You won’t be allowed to leave.”

“Until—?”

“Ever,” she said. “They don’t like strangers wandering around who know where Sanctuary is. They won’t kill you or nothing, but you won’t ever leave.”

Chong closed his eyes and looked into his own future. All he could see was a blank wall.

“What choice do I have?”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Last night I dreamed that the zombie plague never started. But the dream was weird; there were no details. I suppose it’s because I never knew the world before First Night.

All I know is town and the Ruin.

68

“I . . . I’
M SORRY
, N
IX,” SAID
B
ENNY
.

She glared at him through her tears. “Yeah, well, sorry doesn’t do much. I lost my mom. I lost everything, and it’s all that damn town’s fault.”

“What?”

“God, I couldn’t stand to be there another minute. It was like living in a graveyard. No one ever talked about what happened to the world. No one ever talked about the future. You know why? Because no one believed there was a future. Everyone in Mountainside was just sitting around, waiting to die. They act like they’re dead already.”

“I—”

She angrily fisted tears out of her eyes. “My mom was murdered by Charlie Pink-eye, and I was kidnapped. You’d think people would at least react to that, but they didn’t. Not really. After we destroyed Charlie’s camp and came back to town, people acted like I’d never been away. Except for Captain Strunk, Mayor Kirsch, and Leroy Williams, no one even asked where I’d been or what it was like out in the Ruin. People didn’t want to know. And at Mom’s funeral, you know what people said to me? They said stuff like ‘she’s in a better
place’ and ‘at least she’s not suffering anymore.’ Suffering? She wasn’t sick, she was beaten to death!”

“Nix, I—”

“No one ever—ever—said anything about the fact that I was kidnapped and taken to Gameland. No one. I don’t think people even believed it. There were people in town who said they were sorry my mom had some problems with Charlie. Some problems. Problems? Like she died because they had a fricking argument. They wrote her off, because to pay any real attention to what happened would mean that they would have to accept that Gameland was real, and if they did that, they’d have to accept what goes on there, which means they’d have to talk about zoms. And people don’t. God! Remember what Preacher Jack called town? He said it was limbo . . . that the people there were just waiting to die. And I wonder why I’m going crazy? That town made me crazy, and if we’d stayed there any longer, it would have killed me. That’s no joke, Benny. I would have died.”

There was a very dangerous light in her eyes when she said that.

“Whoa, now,” said Benny. “Let’s not—”

Nix grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt. “I’m not exaggerating, Benny, and I’m not joking. That town is limbo. It’s nothing, it isn’t real. The people there, they’re no different from the zoms. They think they’re alive because they can talk, but they don’t talk about anything. They chatter. They make small talk and pretend that’s the same as engaging with one another. Going through the motions of life is not the same thing as living.”

“Nix, I know this stuff. It’s why I left too.”

“No,” she said fiercely, shaking him. “God, please don’t lie to me, Benny. Not now. Not out here. You left because of me. I know it. Tom knew it too. Tom left because of me too.”

“No way.”

“Yes. He was going to marry my mom, but my mom died. He would have stayed in town and raised you and maybe helped raise me, but I wanted to leave. He knew—knew—that no matter what happened, even if he tried to stop me, I would leave town. So he created our big Road Trip so he could watch over me. For my mom, maybe. And because you were in love with me. Benny—you left town because of me, and Tom left town because of you and me . . . and now Tom’s dead. If we don’t find that jet and find something real, a place that shows that we’re all still alive, then Tom will have died for nothing. And it will be all my fault.”

Benny stared into her eyes, and now he understood.

The size of it, the jagged edges of it, the skewed and destructive logic of it.

That knowledge gouged out a massive hole in his chest.

“Nix,” Benny said gently, “you can’t do this to yourself.”

“It’s true!”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Listen to me. Tom didn’t leave Mountainside because of you. Or me. He left because your mom wasn’t there anymore, and he couldn’t stand that. He left because he wanted to find the same kind of place you want to find. A place where people are alive. He wanted that for me and for you and for himself. There was no chance in hell that Tom wouldn’t leave town. Remember what he said after Danny Houser’s funeral? He said, ‘I can’t stand this damn town anymore.’ He said that, and he moved up the time we
were scheduled to leave. Tom needed to escape that town.”

“But he died!”

Benny bent forward and pressed his forehead against Nix’s. “He died, Nix, but you didn’t kill him and neither did I. Even though I think I did almost every night. I think about all the things I’ve done wrong and how if I’d done this or done that, you and I would never have wound up at Gameland. And yeah, I can make myself crazy too. But we didn’t kill Tom. An evil man did that. Preacher Jack shot Tom in the back and that is the truth.”

Nix sniffed but said nothing.

“Nix . . . what would Tom tell us if he could hear this conversation?”

She shook her head.

“No . . . tell me,” Benny insisted.

She sat back and wiped at her eyes. “He—he’d say what you just said. That Preacher Jack . . . ”

“Right. Preacher Jack. An evil man who did an evil thing.”

Nix looked at the broken windows. “And now we have Saint John and Mother Rose. Is that all there is, Benny? Just corruption and evil?”

Fifty conciliatory lies rose to Benny’s lips. But this was not the time to placate Nix.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Panic flared in her eyes, but he smiled.

“I don’t know what’s out here,” Benny said, “but I can’t believe that there’s nothing left worth finding. I won’t believe it. I don’t. We met Eve, Nix. She has a family.”

“Who tried to kill us.”

“No. I don’t see it that way, not anymore. Think about it.
They were out of their minds worrying about Eve, and then they find her with us. They don’t know us from a can of paint, and I think it’s pretty clear that they’re on the run. They see us and they’re terrified that we’re reapers. In their places we might have made the same mistake. But look at it another way—they’re running from evil. They aren’t the reapers. They were willing to fight and kill to protect their little girl. What does that tell you? And there’s all that talk about Sanctuary. Despite what Mother Rose and those other freak jobs said, it doesn’t exactly sound like an abode of evil, does it?”

“No,” she admitted hesitantly.

“No,” he agreed.

“And the people who flew this plane. They were scientists working to understand the plague and maybe cure it. Again, not the definition of evil.”

“No.”