And the town…
The town still stood.
He turned to his aides, teeth bared, his face an inhuman mask of fury. “Slaughter the gray people. Pass the word. Do that first, do it now. And then we will pull down that fence and show those heretics the true meaning of holy wrath.”
The Red Brothers raced out into the crowds, shouting orders, using curses and kicks and fists to force the reapers into some semblance of order. To get them to fight back. Some of the reapers threw down their weapons and tried to flee, but after the Red Brothers butchered them, the others fell into line, and with the elite warriors leading them, they counterattacked.
The dead, even the running dead, were frightening and incredibly dangerous.
But they were brainless monsters. They had no tactics, no strategy, no skill at arms. The reapers knew how to fight them. Of course they did. Killing was their pathway to paradise, even the killing of the dead.
The Red Brotherhood waded into the fight, swinging two-hand swords and fire axes and farming scythes. They cut swathes through the dead, slaughtering and dismembering with machinelike precision.
Saint John watched this and slowly, slowly, his smile returned.
Any single reaper should be able to defend himself against two or three of the dead. Reapers working together, fighting in military wedges led by the fiercest of their own kind — they were a force like nothing else on earth.
Benny Imura saw the precise moment when this part of his plan failed. The reapers had turned on the monsters that had turned on them. Thousands of blades flashed in the sunlight, and the massive army of the Night Church crushed the legions of the dead.
He leaned his head against the ladder and sighed.
The last of the propane tanks had blown up. The Freedom Riders at the fence line were still firing, but there were only so many bullets.
Benny knew this would happen.
He had planned for this failure.
But he dreaded the next stages, knowing that with each step he was venturing into darker and darker territory. Even in the slim chance that he lived through this… could he ever find his way out of the abyss?
He doubted it. Joe’s advice about becoming the monster they were afraid of did not come with a suggestion for how to reclaim his humanity.
He already felt lost.
CHAPTER 103
Benny climbed down from the tower. The pain in his back was like a constant scream, but he didn’t care. Everything was screaming. The very air seemed to cry out in pain.
Nix and the others ran to meet him. They still held their torches. Chong climbed down and joined them, picking up a torch from the bonfire.
They stood for one moment in a circle.
“Go,” said Benny, and everyone turned to run.
All except Nix.
“Benny…,” she began, but he gave a fierce shake of his head.
“Not now,” he begged.
“I have to tell you in case—”
“No! Don’t, for God’s sake,” he said. “If you say it, I think it’ll kill me.”
Nix saw something in his eyes, and she took a step backward. Then with a flash of wild red hair, she turned and ran.
Benny hurried over to Solomon.
“They’re killing all the zoms,” said Benny.
The bounty hunter laughed. “Yeah, shows you what a little cooperation can accomplish.”
“We could have used a little more of that cooperation.”
Solomon drew the two machetes and gave them a quick twirl. “What’s that thing you kids keep saying?”
“Warrior smart.”
Solomon nodded. “Warrior smart.”
Benny drew his sword and began running along the fence line.
The Red Brothers and the army of reapers tore the gray people apart, but they took heavy losses to do it. Fewer than half of the forty thousand who had followed Saint John from the sack of Haven could still fight. However, half of those were injured. Some had bites from runners, and when their own fellow reapers saw those injuries, knives flashed and bodies fell.
Saint John allowed no infection among his people.
When the field was clear of the dead, Saint John walked out, Brother Peter’s knife still clutched in his hand. His cadre of Red Brothers fanned out behind him. The sergeants shoved and growled their men into tight divisions. Sixteen thousand of them stood in ordered lines before the gates of Mountainside. Every eye on both sides of the fence watched Saint John walk across the red-stained field. Now the stench of blood was nearly as strong as the stink of bleach.
Saint John walked to within a thousand yards of the fence. Well within rifle range, but no gun fired. He stopped and pointed his knife at the town.
Behind the gates, the men and women in red sashes suddenly turned and bolted, running in disordered panic from the fence line.
The reapers goggled for a moment, and then laughter rippled through their ranks. It swelled and swelled until they were all laughing hysterically. It was the sight of the defenders fleeing after all their tactics had failed, and it was the release of fear and tension from each of the reapers.
“They flee!” cried Saint John. “They flee!”
The laughter was like thunder.
Saint John bellowed out two words that floated above the laughter.
“Take them!”
The reapers began marching forward. First in orderly ranks, then faster and faster until they broke into a flat-out run. They hit the fence line, and the sheer weight of their surge tore the fence apart and ripped the poles from the ground — even at the cost of many in the front ranks being crushed at the moment of impact. The reapers flooded into the town, crossing the red zone that separated the fence line from the first rows of shops and homes, smashing through doorways of every building and house they reached. It was like a tidal surge bursting over a levee. The mass of the surge hit the town hard enough to knock walls down and uproot small trees. The thunder of all those feet shattered windows and knocked the frames of doorways out of true. The reaper army flooded into the town, knives ready, spears ready, bloodlust ready.
And they found… nothing.
The front ranks split apart to follow smaller streets. Knots of reapers burst through doors and ran down the halls of the school and the town hall and the hospital. Every closet door was yanked open, every cellar and attic was invaded.
But there was no one in the town.
As the last of the reapers ran across the fallen fence, the interior mass of them slowed near the center of town. They looked around, confused, frightened by the strangeness. There had been an army here minutes ago. Two or three hundred people in red sashes had fired volley after volley at them.
Where were they? The back of the town was a steep mountain wall. If any of the defenders had climbed the winding goat paths, they’d be as visible as black bugs. There was a massive reservoir near the end of town, but no one was hiding in the silent pump house.
Runners came to report this to Saint John as he walked without haste toward the shattered gates. He frowned at the news.
“There’s no one there, Honored One.”
“Then they’re hiding. Find them.”
Saint John stopped at the entrance of town and looked around. The guard towers appeared empty too. Except for…
“There,” he said, and his aides looked up at the closest tower. A single figure stood by the rail.
The boy with the Japanese eyes.
“Bring him to me,” said the saint. “Alive and able to scream. I will tear the answers from him.”