Benny smiled first and punched Chong lightly in the chest. “You stupid monkey-banger!”
Chong grinned, and despite the dirt and blood on his face, it made him glow. He arched his eyebrows in best “wise sage” style and observed, “As usual, you opt for an erudite and insightful comment that is entirely appropriate to the moment.”
“Bite me.”
“Not even if I was a zom.”
They burst out laughing, and Benny grabbed his best friend and gave him a hug so fierce that it made them both yelp with pain, which made them laugh harder. Then Benny stopped and cut a look at Lilah. The moment stalled. His inner voice was trying to feed him clever lines, but he mentally told it to shut up. Aloud he said, “I’m an idiot, and I’m sorry.”
Lilah glared at him. Nix shifted to stand next to her, and took her hand.
“Yeah,” Benny said, “that’s cool. If you guys want to team up and beat the crap out of me, go for it. I deserve it after what I said.”
“Why? What did you say?” asked Chong, but no one answered him.
“It’s okay, Benny,” Lilah said in her icy whisper. “I’ll kill you later.”
Benny’s throat went dry. “Hey, wait… I-I-”
Then Nix and Lilah burst out laughing. Chong, who had no idea what was going on, laughed anyway.
“God!” cried Nix. “Did you see the look on his face?”
“Wait,” Benny said again, “did you… just make a joke?” That made the others laugh harder.
“I can make jokes,” said Lilah, and then playfully punched him in the chest the same way Benny had to Chong. Except her playful punch was about fifty times harder.
“Ow!” he yelped. The others kept laughing, at him, at everything, at the realization that they had all survived. Rubbing the fiery bruise in his chest, Benny laughed too.
They turned to Tom, beckoning him over, wanting him to laugh, needing to see the grim sadness washed off his face. Benny hugged his brother. “We did it, man! Now can we finally get the heck out of this place. Ready for a road trip?”
Tom didn’t laugh. His eyes were fixed on the burning hotel. “Yes,” he said again, his voice even quieter. “I guess it’s time to leave…”
“God, yes,” agreed Nix. “I think we just saw the last of our bad luck go up in smoke.”
Tom sighed, and then he suddenly dropped to his knees. The others stared at him in surprise.
“Tom?” asked Lilah.
Tom gingerly opened the flaps of his vest. “Damn,” he murmured.
Nix screamed.
Benny saw it then. Blood. So much blood. He screamed too.
Tom coughed and slumped forward. Nix and Benny caught him and lowered him carefully to the ground. Benny ripped open Tom’s shirt. What they saw tore a sharper cry from Benny and another scream from Nix. When Tom had stumbled during the flight from the hotel, Benny thought he had been hit by a piece of flaming debris. But that wasn’t it… it was a thousand times worse than that.
Tom had been shot.
“We have to stop the bleeding!” Nix cried. She no longer had her first aid kit, so she dug through Tom’s vest pockets and grabbed rolls of bandages to uses as compresses.
“What happened?” demanded Chong.
“Benny,” Nix said urgently as she worked, “this is bad. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“Let me help,” said Lilah as she pulled the first aid kit from Tom’s vest and removed several cotton squares.
“IMURA!”
The voice that roared out of the darkness seemed to belong to a monster, a demon from out of hell itself. They all turned to see a tall figure emerge from the smoke, with fires burning the world behind him.
Preacher Jack.
He held an old-fashioned six-shot pistol in one hand and the curved cavalry saber in the other. His black coat was streaked with soot and blood and his face was pale madness in the starlight. “Imura!” he shouted. “Did I kill you? Did I kill the son of a bitch who murdered my sons?”
“Benny, Nix…,” wheezed Tom, grabbing Benny’s sleeve. “Run!”
Benny peeled Tom’s hand away. “No,” he said fiercely. “We have to stop him.”
“You can’t stop him,” gasped Tom. “He’s too fast… too strong. He’ll kill us all.”
As he spoke, Tom tried to get to his feet, but a furious wave of pain crashed him back down onto his knees. Nix tried to help him up, but her hands slipped on the blood.
“Keep the compresses in place,” warned Lilah.
Benny got to his feet and watched Preacher Jack stalk toward him. He knew that Tom was right. None of them were a match for this madman, old as he was. Preacher Jack had been a soldier and killer his whole life, and the hard years since First Night had only made him tougher. There was no way Benny could beat him, but maybe he could stall the old mercenary long enough for Lilah or Chong to wound him. Or kill him. Even if it meant sacrificing himself to make that possible. Benny looked at Tom, injured and helpless. And at Nix. And Lilah and Chong. He would die for any one of them. He might have to die for all of them.
Benny turned back to the preacher and raised the jagged stump of Nix’s bokken. It was the only weapon he had left. It was broken, but the end was sharp. Maybe that would be enough.
Or would it? Preacher Jack stopped ten paces away and raised the pistol.
Damn, Benny thought. So much for heroic last stands.
Then he felt something move behind him and there was Chong, coming up to stand at his side, his bokken in his hands. He smiled at Benny and took another step forward, putting himself between Benny and the pistol.
“What are you doing?” Benny whispered, but Chong ignored him.
Preacher Jack sneered. “Out of the way, rat meat.”
“Bite me,” said Chong, and his voice quavered only a little. “You want Tom, you’ll have to shoot me first.”
Preacher Jack grinned, and his teeth were bloody. “Hell, boy… I’m going to shoot all of you.”
“You won’t have time. One of us will get you,” Benny said, not sure if it was true. Preacher Jack also had the sword.
Lilah snatched up her spear and stood on Chong’s other side. She pointed the broken blade at the preacher. “You’re mine, old man.”
“No!” cried Tom weakly. “No… all of you-run!”
“Not going to happen,” said Chong firmly. “I’ll die before I let him win.”
“This ain’t about winning, boy,” Preacher Jack said with a laugh. “This is about justice. You killed my sons! You killed my whole family. Don’t you understand the full weight of your sin? You did what First Night and three hundred million dead could not do! You killed the House of Matthias!”
“Your sons were trash,” said Benny, his voice heavy with contempt. “Your whole family is nothing but trash. You’re everything that was wrong with the old world, and you want to rebuild that world and make it in your image. You want the world to be about pain and suffering and hurt. How can you pretend to be a preacher, a man of God, and do the things you do?”
Preacher Jack eyed him with burning hatred. “You don’t speak to me like that, boy. You don’t dare.”
And he pulled the trigger.
Click!
The hammer fell on a spent cartridge. Preacher Jack pulled the trigger again and again and then, with a snarl, he threw the empty pistol at Benny.
Benny ducked.
Suddenly Lilah was running at Preacher Jack, driving her spear toward his chest and screaming like a banshee. The blade was an inch away when he suddenly pivoted and let it slice through his lapels; he kept turning in a circle and drove his elbow into the back of her head as she passed. Lilah pitched forward onto the ground. Preacher Jack pivoted toward her, raising his foot for a kick that would have shattered her face-but Chong was up and moving faster than Benny had ever seen his friend move. He dove at Preacher Jack and tried to tackle him.