Mutations reported in California.
This needs to be checked out.
Field Team Five?
Mutations?
And… what was Field Team Five?
He searched the rest of the compartments and saddlebags on the quad, but there were no more notes or papers. He found some dried meat wrapped in palm leaves, but he distrusted what the reapers considered wholesome food, so he threw that away. He found an item that seemed totally out of place among the reaper’s possessions: an old, unopened package of brightly colored rubber balloons. Fifty of them. It seemed so bizarre and incongruous a thing for a killer to have. He wondered if they were used for some kind of silent signaling. Benny almost tossed them away, then decided to keep them. Eve might like them. Anything that might put another smile on the little girl’s face was worth treasuring. He stuffed the package into his vest pocket.
The only other thing of apparent importance he found was a small spiral-bound notebook. Every page was filled with small, crabbed handwriting. Most of what was written there were prayers and rituals of the reapers. Benny debated tossing it away, but decided to keep it. If the reapers were the enemy, then some of Tom’s advice applied: Know your enemy. The more you know about them, the less easily they can surprise you. And by studying them you might identify a weakness or vulnerability.
And there was the phrase Lilah had learned from George, the man who’d raised her: Knowledge is power.
The other reason he decided to keep the notebook was what the reaper had written on the last page. It was a kind of code:
CA/R 1: 4,522
Quad: 66
CA/R 2: 19,200
Quad: 452
NV/R: 14,795
Quad: 318
WY/R: 8,371
Quad: 19
UT/R: 2,375
Every instinct, every nerve he possessed screamed at him that this was important. This, the Teambook, and the urgent note Benny suspected had been written by Dr. McReady. Important… but in what way?
How?
No way to ask the reaper now, Benny thought, and he flinched at the memory of what he had been forced to do.
He put the notebook in his pocket and the Teambook into the Honda’s storage bin. Then he used the rubber hose to siphon ethanol from his own crippled quad into the Honda’s tank. Benny replaced the gas cap, climbed into the saddle, started the engine, and drove thoughtfully back to Sanctuary.
The people I grew up with, the folks in Mountainside, call the start of the plague First Night. It’s kind of misleading, because it took weeks for civilization to break down.
Riot and the people she was with call it the Fall.
I’ve also heard people call it the End, the Gray Rapture, the Rising, Z-Day, Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Punishment, the Retribution, Plague Day, War Day One, and other stuff.
CHAPTER 26
Riot was dozing in a straw basket-chair when one of the nuns came to find her. She opened her eyes to see the tight, unsmiling face of Sister Hannahlily, the head nun who oversaw the children during their afternoon nap.
“You have to come at once,” said the nun.
“What’s wrong?” Riot demanded. “Is something wrong with Eve?”
The nun seemed to be caught in a moment of terrible indecision, as if uncertain how to answer so simple a question.
“You need to come,” she said. “Right now.”
Riot got to her feet and followed the nun. Sister Hannahlily did not exactly run to the tent used for the children’s nap time, but she walked very fast, her body erect with tension, arms pumping.
“Oh God,” breathed Riot to herself, “don’t let that little girl be hurt. Don’t let her be hurt….”
They reached the tent, where Brother Michael, a monk who helped with psychological counseling, was waiting for them. Before First Night he’d been a radio call-in host.
“What in tarnation is going on?” asked Riot.
Sister Hannahlily looked frightened, and Riot couldn’t imagine why. There was a faint sound coming from inside the tent, a soft thudding sound that Riot could not make sense of, like someone fluffing a pillow.
“We moved the other children out of the tent,” said Sister Hannahlily. “We thought it best.”
“Moved them out? Why? Where’s Eve?”
“Inside,” said the monk.
Riot reached for the tent flap.
Eve was the only person in the tent. Riot could tell almost at once that the little girl was asleep, though she was standing and moving. Sleepwalking, in a way. In a horrible way.
The girl had gathered all the rag dolls the children had made during arts and crafts. They lay side by side on one of the cots. Eve held a pair of the pinking shears used to cut the fancy, frilly trim for the dollies’ dresses. She held the shears in both hands and with slow, determined, deliberate swings of her entire body, she stabbed the dolls over and over and over again.
And she smiled as she did it.
Riot gasped, and Eve paused for a moment, turning her face toward the open tent flap. The little girl’s mouth smiled, but there was no humor in her eyes. There was nothing in her eyes. No emotion, no recognition, no anger.
There was absolutely nothing.
It was as if those blue eyes looked in on a house that was empty of all light and life, a place where only dark and awful shadows moved.
Then Eve turned back to the dolls.
The shears rose and fell, rose and fell.
CHAPTER 27
Saint John came out of a long private meditation when he heard a quiet footfall nearby. “Good afternoon, Sister Sun,” he said quietly, eyes still closed.
“Honored One,” she said.
Saint John opened his eyes and touched her head, murmuring a small blessing. She straightened up and sat where he indicated. Sister Sun had once been a lovely woman, and she still had deeply intelligent eyes and a face that reminded him of paintings he’d seen of Ma Gu, the ancient Korean goddess of longevity. It was a bitter irony, of course, since she had so little time left in front of her. Months, not years. He never commented on the resemblance, of course, because he felt it might offend her in a spiritual sense to be reminded of a goddess from one of mankind’s many false religions.
Instead he said, “You look troubled, sister.”
“I am. There have been more reports about mutations. More of the gray people who can move faster than should be possible.”
“How many cases?”
“Seven, which brings the total number of reliable reports to twenty-two.”
“And this continues to disturb you?”
“Yes, Honored One. We will be moving the reapers back into Nevada soon, and I asked Mother Rose if it wasn’t time for us to consider opening the shrine.”
“What would you have us do, sister?” asked Saint John. “Use the weapons of the heretics?”
Sister Sun took a moment on that. “Honored One… I love my fellow reapers, but I’m not fool enough to think that all of them are with us out of an undying love of Thanatos — all praise his darkness. Some of them — maybe a lot of them — are opportunists who chose to kiss the knife rather than feel its caress on their flesh.”
Saint John did not comment on that.
“But I wasn’t making a case with Mother Rose for the weapons aboard that plane,” she said. “I only want access to Dr. McReady’s notes, samples, and clinical studies and—”