When Joe Ledger saw those bags, he stopped dead in his tracks.
“That powder,” said Nix in a hushed voice. “Is it the same stuff that was on the fast zoms?”
“I think so,” said the ranger. “Color’s a little different, though. The stuff I took off the zoms was paler.”
Benny reached out to pick up one of the bags, but Joe caught his wrist. “No. Not without gloves.”
“Why? What is this stuff?”
“I think it’s Archangel.”
“Is that a poison?” asked Lilah.
“No… not poison,” said Joe, but before he could finish, Grimm suddenly turned toward the open kitchen doorway at the far side of the room, uttering a low and very menacing growl.
All four of them spun around and brought their weapons up. Joe moved quickly to the front, his right index finger stretched along the outside curve of his pistol’s trigger guard, barrel aimed at the center of the doors.
“What is it?” asked Nix.
But Benny only shook his head. He shuffled sideways to give himself and Nix enough room to swing their swords.
“Look…,” said Lilah in an urgent whisper.
There was a suggestion of movement beyond the doors, inside the darkened kitchen. It was formless and indistinct, like a piece of shadow shifting, and Benny couldn’t even be sure it was anything at all.
There was a sound. A scuff. Soft and passive, like a foot being dragged.
“Get ready,” whispered Joe. “If this goes south on us, I want you to haul your asses back to the chopper.”
Something was emerging from the darkness. It did not look human. It was big and monstrous, with a misshapen head and limbs as thick as tree trunks.
Grimm’s whole body trembled, either with the urge to attack or flee, Benny could not tell. For his own part, Benny wanted to run.
The lumbering creature kept moving forward, and now Benny could see that it had some weird, wrinkled skin. Pale and unnatural.
“Shoot it,” urged Lilah. “Joe… shoot it!”
When Joe didn’t pull the trigger, Lilah raised her spear and tensed to spring, ready for the kill.
“No,” Nix said slowly, “don’t…”
Benny glanced at her. She wore a puzzled expression, and she slowly lowered her sword.
They froze in place, watching in mingled horror and anticipation as the thing shambled toward the open doorway. It paused, still within the bank of shadows inside the kitchen. Joe slipped his finger inside the trigger guard.
Benny felt sweat run down his cheeks.
Then the thing in the shadows stepped into the light.
“Oh my God,” said Nix.
It was not a monster.
It was not a zom.
It was a person, covered head to toe in a wrinkled, many-times-patched, white hazmat suit.
The figure took a trembling step forward and then dragged its leg. Benny could see now that the leg of the suit was stretched around something — a cast or brace.
But what truly caught his eye, what stopped his breath and jolted his mind, was the name stenciled on the front of the hazmat suit. His lips formed the three syllables, though it was Lilah who actually spoke the name aloud.
“McReady.”
She flinched at the sound of Lilah’s voice, or perhaps at her own name. Then she looked at Joe Ledger — at his gun and his murderous armored hound.
“Have you come to kill me?” asked Dr. Monica McReady, her voice muffled by the suit.
The ranger’s mouth hung open.
Dr. McReady nodded as if in answer to her own question. “It’s about time.”
CHAPTER 68
“What’s that?” asked Brother Albert.
His teacup was halfway to his lips when he froze, head raised to listen. Across the table from him, Sister Hannahlily was buttering a piece of bread.
“What’s what?” she said absently.
“There!” said Albert. “Did you hear it?”
“I didn’t hear… ” Hannahlily’s voice trailed off as she suddenly did hear something.
A faint pop. Then a few seconds later, another.
“What is that?”
“It’s coming from outside,” said the nun. She rose and crossed to the doorway. Other monks and nuns were rising too.
Pop!
Pop-pop!
Albert joined her as she stepped out into the lurid redness of the sunset.
Pop!
“I don’t see anything,” he said. But then he did, and in his total surprise he forgot his manners, his vows, and his decorum. “What the hell?”
He stared, goggle-eyed, at a sight that made absolutely no sense. It was weird, impossible. Surreal in a way that teetered on the thin edge between comedy and unpleasantness.
The sky was filled with balloons.
They bounced along the ground, skittering between the legs of the dead, riding puffs of air above them. The Children of Lazarus were drawn to the color and movement. Dead-white hands reached for them. Grabbed them. Jagged fingernails tore through the thin rubber. Broken teeth bit into the glistening toys.
Pop-pop-pop-pop…
CHAPTER 69
Joe shoved his gun into its holster and stepped toward Dr. McReady, but the scientist recoiled from him.
“Monica!” he cried. “Good God, Monica… it’s me — it’s Joe.”
“I know who you are,” she snapped in a voice that sounded rusty from disuse. “Of course it’s you. Who else would they send but their number one killer?”
That stopped Joe in his tracks.
Ouch, thought Benny.
All they could see of McReady was her eyes. They were filled with suspicion and more than a little wild.
Joe held his hands up in a no-threat gesture. “Monica… nobody sent me to hurt you. We’ve been looking for you for months.”
“Eighteen months, one week, six days,” corrected McReady. “And I’ve been here all that time, haven’t I? How hard have you been looking?” The bitterness in her voice was filled with jagged edges.
“We didn’t know where you were,” insisted Joe.
McReady’s laugh was short and harsh. “Oh, I’m quite sure. There was a planeload of people who knew where I was. I hand-wrote the coordinates and put them into Luis Ortega’s hand myself. Are you say he didn’t—”
“Dr. McReady,” said Benny, taking a half step forward, “you don’t understand.”
McReady’s head swiveled toward him. “And who are you? Is Jane Reid recruiting kids now?”
“Dr. McReady,” Benny said calmly, “my name is Benjamin Imura. These girls — Phoenix Riley and Lilah — are my friends. We found your plane.”
Her eyes narrowed with instant suspicion. “What do you mean, ‘found’?”
“It crashed. We found it.”
It took McReady a three-count to respond to that. “W-what?”
“He’s telling the truth, Monica,” said Joe. “It crashed in the desert ten miles short of Sanctuary. Luis Ortega’s dead and so’s the flight crew. These kids found the wreckage and told me. I got your research to Sanctuary, but there was nothing on the plane to indicate where you’d gone. Then Benny and his friends found Sergeant Ortega. He was infected, but they managed to search him and get the coordinates for this place. All that happened today, and we came out here right away.”
“The plane…. crashed?” McReady was clearly having a hard time processing this news. She slumped and sat down heavily on the edge of the destroyed air lock. “It never reached Sanctuary?”