“Listen to me,” said Benny, and he didn’t care that his voice was thick with emotion or that it broke with a sob. “You’re not going to do anything to me, and you’re not going to do anything to—”
“To what? It’s a monster. It’s an abomination.”
Benny pressed the tip of the sword into the man’s skin. A single tiny bead of hot blood popped onto the edge of the steel and ran along the mirror-bright surface in a crooked line.
“It’s not a monster,” said Benny. “And he has a name.”
The soldier said nothing.
Benny increased the pressure. “Say his name.”
The soldier’s face flushed red with fury.
“Say it,” snarled Benny in a voice he had never heard himself use before. Harsh, cruel, vicious. Uncompromising.
The soldier said the name.
He spat it out of his mouth like a bad taste.
“Chong.”
Benny removed the sword and the soldier started to turn, but the blade flashed through the shadows and came to rest again, with the razor-sharp edge right across the man’s throat.
“I’m going to come back tomorrow,” said Benny in that same ugly voice. “And the day after that, and the day after that. If I find even a single bruise on my friend, if you or any of your friends hurt him in any way… then you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than monsters in cages.”
The soldier glared at Benny, his intent lethal.
“You’re out of your mind, boy.”
Benny could feel his mouth twist into a smile, but from the look in the soldier’s eyes it could not have been a nice smile.
“Out of my mind? Yeah,” said Benny. “I probably am.”
Benny stepped back and lowered the sword. He turned his back on the soldier and went over to the cage. He stood well out of reach this time.
“I’m sorry, Chong,” he said.
Tears ran down Benny’s face. He looked into those dark eyes, searching for some trace of the person he’d known all his life. The quick wit, the deep intelligence, the gentle humor. If Chong was alive, then those things had to still be in there. Somewhere. Benny leaned closer still, needing to catch the slightest glimpse of his friend. He could bear this horror if there was the slightest chance that Chong was only detached from conscious control, if he was like a prisoner inside a boarded-up house. As horrible as that was, it suggested that a solution, some kind of rescue, was possible.
“C’mon, you monkey-banger,” Benny whispered. “Give me something here. You’re smarter than me… you find me. Say something. Anything…”
The thing’s gray lips curled back from wet teeth.
“… hungry…”
That was all the creature could say. Drool ran down its chin and dropped to the straw-covered floor of its cage.
“He’s not dead, you know,” Benny said to the soldier.
The soldier wiped at the trickle of blood on his throat. “He ain’t alive.”
“He’s. Not. Dead.” Benny spaced and emphasized each word.
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever you want, kid.”
Benny resheathed his sword, turned, and walked past the guard, out through the iron door, up the stone stairs, and out into the brutal heat of the Nevada morning.
Three weeks ago we were in a war.
I guess it was a religious war. Sort of. A holy war, though it seems weird to even write those words.
A crazy woman named Mother Rose and an even crazier man named Saint John started a religion called the Night Church. They worshipped one of the old Greek gods of death, Thanatos. Somehow they got it into their heads that the zombie plague was their god’s deliberate attempt to wipe out all of humanity. They considered anyone who didn’t die to be a blasphemer going against their god’s will.
So, the people in the Night Church decided that they needed to complete Thanatos’s plan by killing everyone who’s left. They trained all the people in the church to be really good fighters. They call themselves the reapers.
When that’s done, they plan to kill themselves.
Crazy, right?
According to our new friend, Riot, who is (no joke) Mother Rose’s daughter, the reapers have killed about ten thousand people.
Ten thousand.
A lot of reapers were killed in a big battle. Joe killed them with rocket launchers and other weapons we found on a crashed plane. Joe’s a good guy, but seeing him kill all those killers… that was nuts. It was wrong no matter what side I look at it from.
But then… what choice did he have?
I wish the world still made sense.
CHAPTER 3
The man named Saint John walked along a road shaded by live oaks and pines. The trees were unusually dry for this time of year, victims of a drought that was leeching away the vital juices of the world. The saint did not mind, though. It was another way that his god was making it impossible for life to continue in a world that no longer belonged to mankind. Saint John appreciated the subtlety of that, and the attention to detail.
His army stretched behind him, men and women dressed in black with white angel wings sewn onto the fronts of their shirts and red tassels tied to every joint. Each head was neatly shaved and thoroughly tattooed with flowers and vines and stinging insects and predator birds. As they marched, these reapers of the Night Church sang songs of darkness and an end to suffering. Hymns to an eternal silence where pain and indignity no longer held sway.
Saint John did not sing. He walked with his hands behind his back, head bent in thought. He still grieved for the betrayal of Sister Rose. But his spirits were buoyed by the knowledge that Sister Sun and Brother Peter — two of his Council of Sorrows who would never betray him — were working tirelessly to serve the will of their god. They would light the fire that would burn away the infection of humanity.
While they labored back in Nevada to start that blaze, Saint John led the bulk of the reaper army through deserts and forests, across badlands and into the mountains in search of nine towns — nine strongholds of blasphemy and evil. Until yesterday he did not know the way. But they had met a traveler who was willing to share all that he knew of those towns. He was reluctant at first to share, but with some encouragement he was willing to scream everything that he knew.
The first of the towns was named Haven. As unfortunate and naive a name as Sanctuary.
The second town was a place called Mountainside….
He listened to the songs of the reapers, a dirge lifted by forty thousand voices, and Saint John walked on, content.
Out in the dark, beyond the ranks of the reapers, came a second and much larger army. One that did not need to be fed, one that never tired, one that required only the call of dog whistles to drive it, and the presence of the chemical-soaked red tassels to control their appetites.
Yet, in their own way, they too sang. Not hymns, not anything with words. Theirs, lifted by tens of thousands of dead voices, was the unrelenting moan of hunger as the army of the living dead went to war under the banner of the god of death.
CHAPTER 4
The sun was a spiky crown of light resting on the mountaintops to the east. Benny closed his eyes and turned his face to the light, soaking in the heat. The holding area had been too cold. Benny had never dealt with air-conditioning before, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. The sunlight felt good on his face and chest and arms. By this afternoon he would be hunting for even a sliver of shade, but for now this was nice.
We’re going to save Chong, said his inner voice.