Joe looked up to judge the angle of the sun. “You have one hour to pack. One change of clothes, water and food for a week, every weapon you have. You meet me at the bridge and have the rest of those coordinates.”
Benny dug a hand into his pocket and removed the other half of the paper and held it out for Joe. The ranger smiled and took it.
Benny smiled back. “Like I said — you should have more faith in people.”
CHAPTER 54
Blowflies swarmed around Saint John as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes and mouth composed and thoughtful, his dark clothes glistening with blood. The cooks and their assistants were busy butchering the slaughtered horses. The quartermasters of the reaper army were searching through the trade goods in the four wagons for anything of value. Much of what the traders had brought with them was sinful — paperback books, holy books from a dozen false religions, jewelry, antibiotics, toys, luxuries. Things that made people want to enjoy being alive, and how grave an insult that was to Thanatos — praise to his darkness — who had decreed that human life should end, that anyone who stayed alive did so as an affront to god. Except for the reapers, and they all knew that when the great cleansing was done, they would open red mouths in one another and go into the darkness, where a vast and eternal nothingness awaited them.
The saint’s orders to his reapers had been precise: Kill no one.
The flight of arrows that had stopped this convoy had been precisely aimed. To kill the horses, to wound every other guard. The effect was a predictable one. As the uninjured guards saw their fellows to the left and right of them fall, saw the arrows and the blood, heard the shrill screams of pain and fear, their hearts fled them. They threw down their weapons and begged for quarter. For mercy.
Only two guards possessed courage greater than their own sense of self-preservation. Or perhaps they believed themselves to be powerful enough to fight through this attack. One man, a Latino with a barrel chest, leaped from his dying Tennessee walking horse. He wore a necklace of wedding bands and carried a pump shotgun, which he emptied into the first wave of Red Brothers. When the gun was empty, he dropped it and drew a Glock nine-millimeter pistol and killed eight more reapers before the next wave crashed into him. The man went down hard. He killed and maimed with a knife he took away from one of the Red Brothers, and when that became lodged in the chest of a reaper, the Latino used his bare hands.
Saint John shouted to his reapers to take this man alive.
They did, but the figure they dragged before the saint had a dozen red mouths in his flesh and one foot already in the darkness. It saddened Saint John. This was the kind of fighter who, had he been encouraged to kneel and kiss the blade, would have made a superb Red Brother.
Saint John stood over him now, hands clasped, lips pursed. The other survivors were being tied up. Some were being taught the manners necessary to survive an interview with the saint. Their screams filled the air.
“What is your name, brother?”
The Latino glared up at him. “Hector Mexico,” he snarled. Then he punctuated that with a string of obscenities in English and Spanish that made the reapers around Saint John blanch.
The saint ignored the words and their suggestions of improbable physical acts.
“You are dying,” he said. “The darkness hungers for you.”
Hector Mexico spat blood onto Saint John’s shoes. “Maybe so, pendejo, but I put twenty of your boys in the dirt, so kiss my—”
Even the reapers who watched did not see Saint John draw his knife. All they saw was a blur of movement, and then the Latino man screamed as the tip of the knife drew a line across his forehead.
“No,” said Saint John, showing him the knife. “Bravado and insults will not ease your journey. You have insulted my god. There will be no heroic end to your tale.”
Hector had to grit his teeth to keep another scream locked in his throat.
“Unless,” said Saint John mildly, “you do a simple service for the Night Church.”
Hector said nothing.
“Tell me the best and quickest route to the town of Mountainside.”
Hector shook his head.
“Or any of the Nine Towns.”
Silence.
Saint John sighed, then signaled to his reapers. “Bring another one.”
They dragged a wounded and terrified young man over. He had blond hair and freckles and could not have been older than eighteen. They forced him to his knees in front of Hector.
The saint stood over the boy, his blade in his hand.
“I need to know the way to the Nine Towns,” he said. “I only need one of you to tell me. That person will not need to spend his last hours screaming for death as the things that define him as a human being are removed one piece at a time. That person will be welcomed into the Night Church and will become one of us.”
He held the knife out and let blood drip onto the dirt between Hector and the young man.
“Who will it be?”
Hector said, “Don’t do it, Lonnie. Be a man… it won’t hurt for long….”
But Saint John said, “Oh yes, my brothers, it will. It will hurt for such a long and delicious time.”
One voice spoke out, begging to tell.
The other screamed out, cursing and damning the reapers.
Through it all, Saint John smiled and smiled.
CHAPTER 55
Joe arranged for the sirens to call off the zoms so Benny could cross the trench and go pack. When Benny and the girls returned to the bridge with their gear, there were four new soldiers guarding it. The soldiers were pale-faced strangers Benny had never seen before.
As Benny approached, one of them, a hatchet-faced man with startlingly blue eyes, put his hand on the butt of his holstered .45. He had the faintest echoes of facial bruising that was almost gone, and a purple scar through his eyebrow that looked like it had required at least eight stitches. His name tag read PERUZZI. He ignored Benny and locked a lethal stare on Lilah.
“I remember you,” Peruzzi said with a malicious grin.
“You should,” said Lilah, unperturbed by the implied menace in that smile. Benny realized that Peruzzi had to be one of the soldiers Lilah had roughed up after Chong nearly died. Several of the soldiers had been hospitalized. When he glanced at the others, he could see similar traces of recent trauma.
Oops, he thought.
“What’s your problem?” demanded Nix, standing firm beside Lilah. “Who are you?”
“Nobody’s talking to you, pint-size,” said Peruzzi.
“Well, I’m talking to you,” said Nix.
Peruzzi laughed and gave her a slow, invasive up-and-down stare. “Big boobs don’t make you a grown-up, little girl,” he said in an ugly voice. “Mind your manners and shut your mouth.”
Benny’s hand flashed toward his sword, but the solder had his pistol out so fast the blade was only a quarter drawn. The barrel dug hard into Benny’s cheek, right beside his nose.
“Give me a reason,” said Peruzzi.
The other soldiers chuckled, and they swung their rifles up toward the girls.
Peruzzi sneered. “You suckered those idiots who were working this detail earlier. You ever touch any of my men again and I’ll hurt you in ways you ain’t ever heard of.”
The gun barrel was cold, but it felt hot against Benny’s skin. He was absolutely terrified, but at the same time a vicious rage was boiling in his gut.
“Y’all better put that gun down,” advised Riot.