“Yes, we have,” said Benny, and his voice was firmer than he thought it would be. He expected to speak in a dying whisper, but the lights in his head were not going out. Not yet. “We have a cure now. We win.”
The reaper sneered at him, blood dribbling from between his lips. “Take your… cure… see if it will save… anyone…”
His words were torn apart by a fit of coughing that sent him crashing to the stones. He fell over and stared at Benny with glazing eyes, but his lips still moved. Despite the agony in his own body, Benny crawled to him and bent to listen.
“Your sins… are already… paid for…,” wheezed Brother Peter. “Even now… Saint John and our… army… are closing in on your… home.”
“Home? What are you talking about?”
Brother Peter was fading quickly, the lights burning out in his eyes. “Mountainside will burn.”
With that smile still on his lips, the reaper sagged back and seemed to settle against the cold stone. Benny wanted to grab him, to shake life back into him, to force him to live another moment longer so he could make sense of what he’d just said.
Mountainside will burn.
It was insane, impossible. How could the reapers know about Mountainside? Then he thought of the slip of paper he’d found that showed how many reapers were already in California. Two armies… one of forty-five hundred and another with over nineteen thousand of the killers. Already in California.
And they knew the name of Benny’s hometown.
They knew about Mountainside.
God…
How could his town defend itself? And with what? A tiny town watch and some fence guards? A frail chain-link fence?
Against an army of twenty-four thousand killers?
Suddenly Benny felt himself falling over.
He felt hands catching him. Women hovered over him.
Dr. McReady.
Colonel Reid.
They were both speaking at once, shouting, calling his name, yelling at each other.
Then the sound of gunfire drowned it all out.
Benny saw reapers trying to fight their way to Brother Peter; saw them suddenly jerk to a stop and dance like marionettes on the strings of a madman, their twitches and jumps purposeless. As they fell, their bodies riddled with bullet holes, Benny saw Lilah and Chong facing each other, both of them crouching like animals.
He bared his teeth at her.
She bared hers at him.
Chong attacked, pouncing like a panther; but the Lost Girl moved into the attack, slapping his head to one side, wrapping a muscular brown arm around his throat, bearing him to the ground, wrestling him, pinning him, screaming and screaming a single word that Benny fought to understand.
“Pills! PILLS!”
Nix stood there, torn between rushing to her and rushing to Benny.
Benny managed to raise one arm and made a pushing gesture toward Lilah.
She needs you, he wanted to say. Chong needs you. Help them.
Grimm stood by Joe Ledger, who had collapsed into a limp sprawl.
Benny tried to say something that would make sense of this moment.
He needed to tell Joe and Nix and Lilah about what Brother Peter had whispered to him.
Mountainside will burn.
But when he opened his mouth, all he could do was scream.
Then a hand of darkness wrapped its cold fingers around him and closed them into a fist.
PART FOUR
INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
CHAPTER 86
A voice said, “Yo, monkey-banger… you going to sleep forever?”
Benny’s first reaction was surprise. In his dreams he was dead, killed by Brother Peter or eaten by zoms. Or gored by a white rhino. Or shot by Preacher Jack.
But dead in any case.
His second reaction was confusion. Not at being alive, but at who was talking to him.
That wasn’t the right voice. It wasn’t Joe, and it wasn’t any of the girls. It wasn’t even Brother Albert.
Whose voice was that? It sounded like…
He carefully, tentatively opened one eye.
He was in a hospital bed. Metal tubing for the frame, stiff white sheets, the pervasive smell of antiseptic with other, nastier smells buried beneath it. Electric lights in the ceiling.
There was a chair beside his bed and a figure sitting in it. Thin, angular, and impossible.
“Ch-Chong?” stammered Benny.
“What’s left of him,” said his friend. Louis Chong looked like a stick-figure version of himself. He was wrapped in a blanket, cradling a cup of steaming tea between his palms. His skin was a dreadful shade of gray-green. His hair was freshly washed and combed back from his face. “Welcome back from the land of the dead.”
“How?” pleaded Benny. “How are you — I mean—”
“You guys saved me,” said Chong.
Benny had to reach deep into the shadows that clung to his memories. He had only a vague idea where he was — the infirmary at Sanctuary — and an even vaguer idea of how he got there. The most recent memories that were sharp and clear involved the hidden bioweapons lab built into the baked rocks of Zabriskie Point. He remembered Dr. McReady, the mutagen… and Archangel.
“The… pills?” he asked tentatively.
“The pills,” Chong said, nodding. “Nix and Lilah told me how you found Dr. McReady and brought her back here.”
Benny lay on his side, and his body did not seem to want to move. He raised his head and looked around. Most of the staff were sleeping in their beds, but a few ragged-looking nurses were working to clean them up. One was helping a newly recovered soldier to his feet. No one screamed or thrashed.
“Archangel really works,” said Benny. “God…”
“It was weird,” said Chong slowly. “I could feel the stuff in the pills working right away, but it was like someone was throwing buckets of water on a brush fire in my head. Every second was another bucket. How long before I stopped wanting to do crazy things to people — like fricking eat them? Hours, man. And even longer before I could actually say that to Lilah so she’d untie me. But that was all last night.”
“Last night? What time is it—?”
“Past six in the morning now. Best I can tell, you’ve been out of it since around ten last night. So about eight hours.” He sighed. “Been a long night, man.”
“Do you… do you remember what happened after Riot brought you here?” Benny paused. “Do you remember being… um… sick?”
A shadow passed across Chong’s face. “I remember all of it. Every last minute. Getting shot with an arrow… the ride here on Riot’s quad. The changes. God… the hunger. I even remember you coming to visit me in my cell.” He touched his temple. “It’s all up here for me any time I want to look at it.”
He spoke in the ironic, amused tone he always used, but it was clear that demons had taken up residence in the house of his memories, and Benny wondered if they could ever be exorcised.
“Hey, man,” he said, “we found the cure, right? Let’s focus on that…. ” His voice trailed off as pain flickered behind Chong’s eyes. “What is it?”
“Benny… about that. Those pills… they’re not really a cure. They’re a treatment. I’m still sick. If I take the pills I’ll still be me, more or less. But if I stop, I go back to being that thing you saw in the cage. That’s how it’s going to be. Unless they come up with a real cure, something that gets this out of my system forever, I’ll always have to take medicine. And… I’ll always have to be really careful. This is contagious, y’know?”