“Something’s coming,” said Heather, swinging around to aim her arrow into the woods.
“Zombies,” said Samantha. “I saw them a minute ago.”
“We have to go.”
“I know.”
The reaper said, “Why not stay and let the gray people send you into the blessed darkness?”
Samantha shook her head. “Thanks, but I think we’ll pass.”
She closed her hand around the silver dog whistle that hung around the woman’s neck. “You use this to control the zombies?”
“Yes. It is a gift from Lord Thanatos, all praise his—”
“Darkness, right.” With a grunt she yanked the whistle hard enough to snap the chain, looked at it for a moment, then stuffed it into a pocket. “Heather, get the other whistles.”
The younger girl hesitated, casting a nervous eye at the woods, then nodded and ran to comply.
“Get those red streamers, too.”
“They stink!”
“They smell like death,” said Samantha. “Kind of useful, don’t you think?”
Heather thought about it for a moment, then gave a small smile of understanding. She drew a knife and began sawing at the tassels on the two dead men. They could hear the zombies thrashing through the brush as they came.
Time was just about up.
Samantha looked at the woman.
“What you’re doing is wrong.”
“It is the will of god.”
“Not a chance. No god would want his people to do this much harm. If someone told you that, they were either lying to you or they’re crazy. Either way, what you’re doing is wrong.”
She removed the edge of the spear blade and stepped back.
“It is the will of god,” growled the reaper, her smile gone now.
Samantha shook her head.
“Go ahead, then,” said the reaper. “Kill me. Use your weapon and open the red doors in my flesh. You’ll see the joy on my face as I cross into the darkness.”
The zombies were less than a hundred feet way now, and they were closing in from all sides. Heather whimpered softly and restrung her arrow.
Samantha holstered her spear and drew one of the knives she’d taken from the reaper. The woman smiled again as if in welcome of what she thought was coming. But behind that smile, Samantha thought she detected a flicker of something else.
Doubt, maybe.
Or fear.
With a flash of silver, Samantha crouched and slashed away the red tassels the woman wore, then quickly gathered them up and stuffed them into her pocket. Then she backed away from the reaper. The zombies were entering the small clearing. A circle of them, their gray faces slack, their eyes empty, their mouths working as if biting the air.
Samantha began backing away, pushing Heather as she did so.
“You have those tassels?” she asked.
“Y-yes,” stammered Heather.
“Then let’s go. No! Don’t run… follow me and we walk out of here.”
The reaper woman looked at them in horror.
“Wait — you can’t leave me here.”
“Why not?” asked Samantha.
“Give me my tassels back.”
“Not a chance.”
The zombies were a dozen feet away now, reaching with pale hands.
“My whistle…”
“No.”
“But… but…”
Samantha could feel the coldness of her own expression. “You said that the dead were here to complete your god’s will. Who am I to interfere?”
“Please!” begged the woman.
Samantha pushed Heather backward, and then the girls turned as two zombies closed in on them. Heather still had her arrow ready, and Samantha once more held her spear.
The zombies sniffed the air and their fingers grasped in their direction, but then they moved around the girls, indifferent to them, and shambled toward the woman who knelt on the ground.
“Please… god, please…”
“Don’t look,” said Samantha. “Just go and don’t look.”
Together they fled the scene, first walking, and then running, pursued only by the echo of the woman’s dreadful screams.
The last cry of “Please!” sounded like it had been torn from her throat.
Serves you right, thought Samantha coldly.
The echo of that last cry seemed to hang in the air, refusing to faded into nothingness.
Samantha tried to feel good about what she’d just done. She wanted to feel smug about how she’d spun the situation on the reaper. She tried, but by the time they reached the barn and the other girls, she was sobbing so hard she could barely run.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m sorry.”
Heather told the other girls what happened, and they in turn tried to tell Samantha that she had done the right thing. That it was justice. That it was okay.
But they all knew they were lying.
Please…
Without another word, they headed off to the Rattlesnake Valley Motor Court to pack what few things they needed. The woods were full of reapers and zombies. The day was closing like a fist around them.
14
As the reapers marched away into the hills, Brother Marty found himself unable to stop thinking about the big man Saint John had killed. The one who must have said something that had ignited fear in the saint’s eyes — a thing Marty did not think was possible.
Who was Iron Mike Sweeney?
There was something about the man.
Something very wrong.
Something weirdly wrong.
Although Marty had accepted the path of the darkness and the way of the knife, part of him was still an ordinary man. A pre — First Night man. He’d been raised in a Jewish household, but not a strict one, and over the years agnosticism had drawn him away from his faith and his traditions. He was, however, always a very superstitious man, though he ascribed that to working in Hollywood. The movie business seemed to swing between the poles of very good or very bad luck. The superstitions that became part of him were in no way tied to his previous faith — or any faith. Luck was luck, and the world was always a little weird to him. The angels he sometimes prayed to never appeared in anyone’s holy books. Then or now.
As the reaper army marched on, he sat on his quad and rumbled down the center of the road behind Saint John, who was flanked by his personal guard, the Red Brotherhood.
Marty tried to shake his weird feeling and simply could not.
Finally he peeled off from the procession and signaled for four of the Red Brothers, and with them in tow he made a U-turn and headed back down the road to the place where the trade wagon had been ambushed. They reached the spot in less than thirty minutes. Marty pulled to a stop in the woods where he had a good view of the scene of slaughter. Most of the dead had risen and wandered off. A few — those with traumatic head wounds — lay where they’d fallen. The wagon stood there. Saint John had ordered the quartermasters of his army to take the uninjured horses and to slaughter the rest. The massive Percheron lay sprawled and dead beneath a crowd of vultures. Up the slope loomed the place where Iron Mike Sweeney had been executed by Saint John.
The two trees that had held him stood as silent as mourners. Ragged ends of rope hung from each, flapping weakly in the breeze.
But the man was gone.
Brother Marty sat immobile for a long moment. Then he signaled to one of the Red Brothers.
“Come on, guys. I want to know who cut him down and what happened to his body.”
The four Red Brothers dismounted and followed Marty up the slope. They stayed off the path to prevent any useful footprints from being obscured by their own shoes. When they reached the two trees, one of them — Brother Zeke — crept forward, knees bent, body bowed low to read the tale of the ground. Brother Marty followed close behind.