“What do we do if the reapers trashed the sirens, too?” asked Chong.
“That’s plan B,” said Benny.
“What’s plan B?”
“We feed you to the zoms, and while they’re eating you — and getting sick to their stomachs — we run away.”
Lilah laid her hand on her knife. “No, you won’t.”
“Lilah,” said Chong, “he’s joking.”
She eyed Benny icily. “It’s not a funny joke.”
“Apparently not,” said Benny.
“Whoa, whoa, guys,” said Chong, pointing past him. “Look.”
Down below, the siren house was snugged up against the red rock wall of the mountains. The crushed gravel turnaround in front of the bunker was littered with bodies — a few zoms but three times as many reapers — and there was a clear trail of corpses that led in a crooked line back to the burning hangars. A quad sat a few feet from the bunker door, and a knot of eight zoms clustered in front of the door, relentlessly pounding on the metal.
“Someone’s in there,” said Nix.
“I hope they know how to work the sirens,” said Chong.
“Who do you think it is?” asked Lilah.
“I don’t know, but those zoms are trying real hard to get in,” said Benny. “Joe?”
“Yeah,” came the reply. “Got it.”
A moment later the chain guns opened up. Lines of impact points ran along the turnaround, kicking up pieces of gravel, until they caught up with the figures at the door. The rounds punched into the dead and flung them in all directions. When they were all down, Joe landed. Lilah had the sliding door open before the wheels were settled.
She and Nix jumped to the ground. Lilah had her spear and Nix drew Dojigiri.
“Stay here,” ordered Nix. “We got this.”
Benny glanced at Chong. “They got it,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
Chong helped Benny out of the helicopter, then reached in and removed the bow and arrows. Together they limped painfully after the girls. When Lilah realized they were following, she turned and gave Chong a look that would have peeled paint off of steel plate.
They approached the tangle of dead zoms. Two were still twitching, and Lilah quieted them with quick thrusts.
“Hello!” called Nix. “Is there anyone inside?”
Benny looked down at some of the reapers who lay dead. Not the ones Joe had just killed, but victims of whoever was in the siren house. There were no knife or bullet wounds. Most of them had crushed skulls — or rather skulls that had been dented by precise impacts from small round balls.
He bent very carefully, hissing at the pain, and picked one up. A steel ball bearing.
“Nix,” he called, and then held up the ball bearing for her to see. “Riot. Oh my God… Riot!”
Nix shouted the name.
Then they were all shouting her name.
They pounded on the door, laughing and cheering that Riot had — against all logic and odds — managed to escape to this tiny stronghold.
There was a sound from inside. The scrape of a chair being moved, then the metallic click of a lock. Then the door opened slowly, and Riot was there.
Her clothes were torn. She had gashes on her face, her scalp, and across her stomach. Her arms were bloody to the elbow. Tear tracks were cut through the soot and grime on her pretty face. She held a pistol in one hand and a blade in the other.
“Oh my God,” said Nix as she rushed forward to hug Riot. “We were so worried! But I knew you were okay. You and Eve. Where is Eve? We can get you out and…”
Her words rambled on and on, filled with joy and relief. Chong grinned and touched Riot’s shoulder. Lilah nodded, smiling.
Riot stood there and endured the embrace. She did not return it. Or react to it.
Her eyes looked past Nix’s red hair and out into the desert.
“Nix…,” said Benny quietly. He touched her shoulder and pulled her gently back.
“Benny, what are you—?”
Nix saw the look on his face. Her smile flickered. She looked at Riot, perhaps finally realizing that the girl had not reacted or responded in any way.
“Riot?”
Riot’s eyes shifted slowly toward her. The smiles faded slowly from Chong and Lilah’s faces, too.
“Riot…?” asked Nix, uncertainty shading her voice. “Are you okay?”
The former reaper said nothing.
“Riot,” said Benny gently. “Where’s Eve?”
Riot slowly raised her left hand so they could see what she held. It was a small push-dagger. Like a sliver. The kind of thing that was only ever used for one thing. For one terrible purpose.
The blade was painted with red.
She opened her hand and let the blade fall. It struck the ground at her feet and lay there. The cold and silent steel screamed unspeakable things at them.
Or was it Riot screaming? Benny wondered.
Or Nix?
Or all of them?
CHAPTER 90
Benny went inside.
He found the body. Riot had washed the little girl’s face and smoothed out her clothes as best she could. Eve lay on a cot, wrists and ankles tied. There was a bite mark on her arm. It was small, and Benny wondered if it had been another child who’d bitten her.
Riot had gotten her away from the slaughter. At what point had she become aware that Eve was already lost? Before the mad drive out here on a quad? After the door was barred? During the long hours of the night? Had it been quick, or had fate been crueler still and made Riot wait, hour after hour, as the disease consumed the child?
And, oh God, he thought, how can we ever tell her that the cure for the bite was inside the blockhouse all the time? Two pills — or maybe one for a little girl — and the night would not have ended with the worst nightmare any of them could imagine.
How could they ever tell Riot that?
How close to the edge did the former reaper already stand? Was she looking into the abyss, or was the abyss already in possession of her mind? Did her soul float in that vast darkness?
Rage trembled inside Benny’s body. He could feel the exact moment when it ignited, and as he stood there over Eve’s body, that rage spread all through him. His hands curled into fists that were clenched so hard his knuckles hurt. His jaws ground together to hold back — what? A scream? A roar? Whatever it was, if he let it out it would tear his throat raw and bloody. Black poppies seemed to bloom and burst apart in front of his eyes.
It was as if this small death was all the proof of evil that anyone would ever need. Proof that the “holy” mission of Saint John was corrupt to its core — even if that madman believed he had heard the voice of god. No god could ever want this. No god would encourage the kind of harm that had been visited upon this child. The destruction of her town. The slaughter of her parents before her eyes. The disintegration of her sanity. And now the defilement through disease of her body and the ultimate theft of her life. A theft that robbed her of more than the moment, but stole every hour and day and week and year of a life that should have been lived long and to its fullest.
This was the actual cost of war, right here, written with perfect clarity in the blood of the innocent.
He heard a sound in the doorway, and Joe was there. Sweating, worn thin by pain, somehow on his own feet. The ranger shambled over to stand beside Benny. They stood there for a long time looking down at the body, perhaps thinking the same thoughts.
Finally Benny said, “I want to kill them.”
Joe sighed.
“I want to kill them all,” said Benny. “I want to wipe them from the face of the earth.”
“I know,” said Joe Ledger. His voice was heavy with sadness.
Outside they could hear Riot, Nix, Lilah, and Chong.