“I know why,” said Benny.
She gave him a long, cold look. “Oh really? Why?”
“Because we’re people. Your mom was a good person who never hurt anyone. Tom died trying to help people. That guy George who spent all those years taking care of Lilah and her sister. The Greenman. Guys like Solomon Jones and Sally Two-Knives and everyone who helped destroy Gameland… they’re people. Eve is a person. So is Riot, and she was raised to be a monster. She left all that behind, and for the last few years she’s done nothing but risk her life to help people. They’re good people, and that’s what I believe in, Nix. That goodness exists and that it’s powerful. And I think that’s what you believe in too.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his chest. “But there are so many of them. Look at what they’ve done. They destroyed the whole world….”
“No,” Benny said softly. He hooked a finger under her chin and gently raised her face. “Not the whole world. And not the best of it.”
Nix’s mouth trembled and she hung there at the edge of tears, pinned to the moment by the enormity of Joe’s words.
“I can’t live in a world like this,” she said. “I can’t live if everything’s broken and there’s only pain.”
“No,” agreed Benny, “neither can I. So let’s live in a better world than that.”
She suddenly wrapped her arms around him, and they clung to each other.
“Promise me,” she begged.
“I promise,” he said.
As he held her, Benny looked into that promise. It was a simple enough thing to say in the heat of heartbreak and tears. But he knew as he said it that this was going to mean more to him than anything else. Something shifted inside his head and his heart, like a switch being thrown on some machinery that had been carefully built but never turned on. He wasn’t sure, then or ever, what powered that machinery. Maybe love, maybe hate, maybe a moral outrage so hot that it caused gears to turn and motors to combust.
There are such moments in a life. Solitary seconds on which the reality of what life means pivots and turns from a dead end toward a road of untrodden grass that stretches on forever. It was a moment in which the words he said aloud and the whispers of his inner voice spoke in perfect harmony. And Benny knew thereafter that he would never hear that inner voice as a thing separate from himself. It was as if he had caught up to the idealized version of himself that had always walked a pace or two ahead.
I promise, was what he said.
I will, was what he meant.
CHAPTER 59
They entered the hangar, which was vast but mostly empty. Two big, black helicopters squatted on the concrete pad. Unlike the ones in the first hangar, these hadn’t been stripped of parts. They looked fierce and sinister and ready to growl their way into the air. Benny had read about helicopters and thought they might be Black Hawks, though this one had stubby wings as well as rotors, and he was pretty sure that some of the stuff mounted on those wings were chain guns and missiles. Part of him thought that they were pretty cool; but the other aspect of him — the facet of his personality that had just shifted into the forefront of his mind — viewed them merely as a tool. Potentially useful, but in no way designed for anything but destruction. Even if that destruction was necessary.
He thought about the phrase “necessary evil” and believed he understood it better at that moment than ever before. It was like the sword he carried. And that sparked a memory of something Tom once told him, an old samurai maxim that describes the apparent contradiction of those who prepare for war but do not crave it.
“We train ten thousand hours to prepare for a single moment we pray never happens.”
Benny nodded to himself.
Most of the hangar was in shadows. One corner was well lit, though, and it was occupied by a big metal folding table. A woman in a military uniform sat at the table, and she rose as Joe led them over.
“Kids, meet Colonel Reid,” said Joe. “She’s the base commander here at Sanctuary.”
Colonel Reid was a stern, unattractive woman roughly the size and density of a packing crate. She had iron-gray hair cut short, a lipless slash of a mouth that was compressed into a line of stern disapproval, and eyes that had all the warmth of frozen blueberries.
Despite his immediate reaction to her, Benny wanted to get this started on the right foot. He smiled and extended his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. My name’s—”
“I know who you are, Mr. Imura,” she said, cutting him off sharply. She eyed the four of them with the disapproval of a disgruntled diner looking at side dishes she hadn’t ordered. “I know who all of you are.”
Joe sighed.
Benny’s hand hung for a moment in the air.
“Okay, taking it back,” he said, lowering his arm.
Reid eyed Joe. “What’s your new mission status? Child-care professional?”
Joe sliced off a wafer of a smile. “They earned their spot.”
Reid shook her head. “It’s on you, then. I don’t have troops to waste minding them.”
“We didn’t ask to be minded,” said Benny.
“Right,” said Nix, “I heard that four of your guys were in the infirmary.”
Reid’s icy expression dropped to absolute zero. “You have a smart mouth, girl.”
“And you have a—”
“Okay, enough!” roared Benny. “Everyone cut the crap.”
They all looked at him, momentarily shocked to silence.
“What the hell is it with everyone?” Benny continued, his volume lower but his voice still hard as fists. “If you’re mad at us for roughing up some of your soldiers, then too bad. Get over it. They could have acted like human beings instead of robots.”
“They were following my orders.”
“Then maybe you should start giving better orders,” Benny said coldly. “I mean, who do you think you are? Who do you think we are? We’re not on opposite sides in this thing. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s us against them, and the ‘them’ are the reapers and the zoms. We are supposed to be working together to save the world.”
“We are,” Reid fired back. “The American Nation is using its full resources to combat the Reaper Plague.”
Benny leaned on the edge of the table. “And me and my friends? We’re what to you? A nuisance?”
“I believe you already tried to play the card of importance due to finding the plane.”
Benny smiled. “Yeah, I thought I recognized your voice. That was you I talked to yesterday. You said that our finding the plane was only self-interest. Are you actually that dense? Are all you people that close-minded? We shared that information because that’s what people do. That’s how everyone survives. Maybe you haven’t been outside lately, colonel, but zombies ate the world. People have been scratching and clawing to survive for fifteen years. My own town is in California. Your jet passed right over us. Are you going to tell me that you didn’t see it? Are you going to tell me that you don’t know about the Nine Towns we have up in those mountains? Captain Ledger knows about them, so I’ll bet a brand-new ration dollar that you know about them.”
“We are aware of those towns,” conceded Colonel Reid. “What of it?”
“What of it?” Benny slapped the flat of his palm on the table so hard it sounded like a gunshot. Echoes banged off the hangar walls. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us? We thought we were alone all those years. We thought that the rest of the world was dead. Don’t you think it would have helped us to know that there were other people out there? That there was a new government? That scientists were working on a cure? That people were trying to put the world back together into some shape that made sense? Are you so removed from human emotions that you can’t realize how much that would have helped people? Helped us? It would have given us hope.”