Fire & Ash

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Why not?”

  “It’s an ultra-secure soundproof hardened facility. It’s designed to withstand anything except a direct hit from a nuclear weapon. You could march up and down all day long with a brass band and they won’t hear a peep. Nothing. Nada. Am I getting through to you in any way?”

  Benny ignored him.

  “It’s also designed to keep out a gazillion zombies like the ones who are—oh yeah, coming this way.”

  “They won’t be here for at least ten minutes.”

  Joe grunted. “Fair enough. Door’s still going to be locked when they get here . . . and the geeks inside won’t even know that the zoms are chowing down on a pigheaded teenager.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “They have to know we’re out here.”

  “They do. Once in a while one of them even looks at us on a video monitor.”

  “On a what?”

  “A kind of electronic window.”

  “Then if they’re looking at us, why don’t they open the door?”

  “Why would they?”

  Benny pointed backward, jabbing a finger at the building. “Because I’m knocking.”

  “No offense, kid, but who the hell are you?”

  Benny punched him.

  He didn’t even know he was going to do it. His hand was already moving when it clenched into a knot and slammed into the side of Joe’s jaw.

  The blow had all of Benny’s anger and frustration in it.

  It rocked Joe. It knocked him back half a step.

  And that was all it did.

  Benny threw a second punch, but Joe caught that one in his open palm like a shortstop catching a grounder. Joe’s fingers closed around Benny’s fist like iron bars. Then his hand darted out and clutched a fistful of Benny’s shirtfront, and suddenly Benny was up on his toes, nose to nose with the ranger. Joe’s blue eyes bored into him like drills, and the man’s mouth twitched as if he fought to bite down on the words he wanted to say.

  Finally he smiled and pushed Benny back.

  He rubbed his jaw. “Nice punch. I honestly can’t tell you the last time anyone caught me with a sucker punch.”

  “I hope it hurts.”

  “It does,” Joe admitted. “Though . . . probably not as much as your hand.”

  Benny was trying to ignore his hand. It was a white-hot ball of pain at the end of his wrist.

  “Let me tell you something, kid,” said Joe. “Because you’re Tom Imura’s brother, and because you’re probably not recovered from that head wound you got, I’m going to let this slide. I can understand you being upset—your best friend is in there and maybe he’s dying or maybe he’s already zommed out—but you need to learn how to pick your fights. I’m not your enemy, and I’m not much in favor of being a punching bag for someone who wants to vent.”

  “I can’t let Chong die without doing everything I can,” said Benny. “I can’t.”

  “Fine, I admire that. Bravo for you,” said Joe. “How is all this crap going to help him?”

  Benny dug his hand into his pocket and removed the two slips of paper.

  “We went out to the Ruin today,” he said. “To a ravine near where the plane went down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where Sergeant Ortega is. Or was. He’s dead. Really dead, I mean.”

  Joe narrowed his eyes and nodded to the pieces of paper. “You took those from him?”

  “Yes.” Benny handed one of the slips to Joe. “I think we found out where Dr. McReady is.”

  Joe studied the paper. It was the message that read: URGENT: REPT OF R3 ACTIVITY VCNTY OF DVNP—REL. WIT. *** FTF?

  Benny watched the big man’s reaction. Joe went dead pale. Then his eyes widened and widened until Benny thought they’d bug out of his head.

  “Where . . . ?”

  Benny explained about the visit to the ravine, how they pulled Sergeant Ortega out, what they found, and the subsequent confrontation with Brother Peter and the Red Brotherhood.

  “He said he wanted what I gave you.”

  “Fat chance,” said Joe.

  “He said that if I didn’t give it to him by sundown tomorrow, the reapers were going to attack Sanctuary.”

  Benny expected Joe to laugh that off, but he didn’t

  “Joe?” asked Benny. “The reapers can’t actually take Sanctuary . . . can they?”

  But Joe didn’t answer. “Where’s the satchel you took from Sergeant Ortega?”

  “I . . . um . . . gave it to Brother Peter.”

  Joe’s face went from bloodless to a livid and dangerous red.

  “Are you deranged?” thundered the ranger. For the second time he grabbed a fistful of Benny’s shirt. “You stupid, boneheaded little—”

  And Benny held up the second slip of paper.

  The one with the coordinates.

  “You soldiers have been at war too long,” said Benny. “Try having some faith in other people.”

  Joe stared at the paper. It had been neatly torn in half. “This is only half of it. . . .”

  “I know. We’ll give you the other half as soon as you give me your word on two things.”

  “You’re on thin ice, boy,” said Joe in a low and dangerous voice.

  Benny leaned toward him. “I’ve been on thin ice since zombies ate the world. I want your word on two things. Two conditions.”

  Joe studied him with steely eyes. “What conditions?”

  “First, you tell me what’s going on inside the lab and the hangar.”

  “Believe me, kid, you don’t want to know.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want to know. And don’t assume that I can’t handle it.”

  “What’s the other condition?”

  “You take me with you,” said Benny. “Me, Nix, Riot, and Lilah.”

  Benny waited, his whole body tensing for the argument, the outrage, the refusal that he knew was coming. The ranger looked past him at the three fierce girls on the other side of the trench. Then he turned and looked at the zoms, who were less than a quarter mile away. Finally he looked down at the torn piece of paper in his hand.

  “You’re doing all of this because of your friend? Because of that Chong kid?”

  “I’m doing this because this is our world too. You don’t have a right to shut us out of the process of saving it.”

  Joe drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose.

  “Let me tell you something, kid,” he said. “Because I liked your brother, I’m going to forget that you’re trying to extort me here.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not extortion,” snapped Benny. “And even if it was, I can’t let Chong die without doing everything I can.”

  Joe looked up to judge the angle of the sun. “You have one hour to pack. One change of clothes, water and food for a week, every weapon you have. You meet me at the bridge and have the rest of those coordinates.”

  Benny dug a hand into his pocket and removed the other half of the paper and held it out for Joe. The ranger smiled and took it.

  Benny smiled back. “Like I said—you should have more faith in people.”

  54

  MILES AND MILES AWAY . . .

  Blowflies swarmed around Saint John as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes and mouth composed and thoughtful, his dark clothes glistening with blood. The cooks and their assistants were busy butchering the slaughtered horses. The quartermasters of the reaper army were searching through the trade goods in the four wagons for anything of value. Much of what the traders had brought with them was sinful—paperback books, holy books from a dozen false religions, jewelry, antibiotics, toys, luxuries. Things that made people want to enjoy being alive, and how grave an insult that was to Thanatos—praise to his darkness—who had decreed that human life should end, that anyone who stayed alive did so as an affront to god. Except for the reapers, and they all knew that when the great cleansing was done, they would open red mouths in one another and go into the darkness, where a vast a
nd eternal nothingness awaited them.

  The saint’s orders to his reapers had been precise: Kill no one.

  The flight of arrows that had stopped this convoy had been precisely aimed. To kill the horses, to wound every other guard. The effect was a predictable one. As the uninjured guards saw their fellows to the left and right of them fall, saw the arrows and the blood, heard the shrill screams of pain and fear, their hearts fled them. They threw down their weapons and begged for quarter. For mercy.

  Only two guards possessed courage greater than their own sense of self-preservation. Or perhaps they believed themselves to be powerful enough to fight through this attack. One man, a Latino with a barrel chest, leaped from his dying Tennessee walking horse. He wore a necklace of wedding bands and carried a pump shotgun, which he emptied into the first wave of Red Brothers. When the gun was empty, he dropped it and drew a Glock nine-millimeter pistol and killed eight more reapers before the next wave crashed into him. The man went down hard. He killed and maimed with a knife he took away from one of the Red Brothers, and when that became lodged in the chest of a reaper, the Latino used his bare hands.

  Saint John shouted to his reapers to take this man alive.

  They did, but the figure they dragged before the saint had a dozen red mouths in his flesh and one foot already in the darkness. It saddened Saint John. This was the kind of fighter who, had he been encouraged to kneel and kiss the blade, would have made a superb Red Brother.

  Saint John stood over him now, hands clasped, lips pursed. The other survivors were being tied up. Some were being taught the manners necessary to survive an interview with the saint. Their screams filled the air.

  “What is your name, brother?”

  The Latino glared up at him. “Hector Mexico,” he snarled. Then he punctuated that with a string of obscenities in English and Spanish that made the reapers around Saint John blanch.

  The saint ignored the words and their suggestions of improbable physical acts.

  “You are dying,” he said. “The darkness hungers for you.”

  Hector Mexico spat blood onto Saint John’s shoes. “Maybe so, pendejo, but I put twenty of your boys in the dirt, so kiss my—”

  Even the reapers who watched did not see Saint John draw his knife. All they saw was a blur of movement, and then the Latino man screamed as the tip of the knife drew a line across his forehead.

  “No,” said Saint John, showing him the knife. “Bravado and insults will not ease your journey. You have insulted my god. There will be no heroic end to your tale.”

  Hector had to grit his teeth to keep another scream locked in his throat.

  “Unless,” said Saint John mildly, “you do a simple service for the Night Church.”

  Hector said nothing.

  “Tell me the best and quickest route to the town of Mountainside.”

  Hector shook his head.

  “Or any of the Nine Towns.”

  Silence.

  Saint John sighed, then signaled to his reapers. “Bring another one.”

  They dragged a wounded and terrified young man over. He had blond hair and freckles and could not have been older than eighteen. They forced him to his knees in front of Hector.

  The saint stood over the boy, his blade in his hand.

  “I need to know the way to the Nine Towns,” he said. “I only need one of you to tell me. That person will not need to spend his last hours screaming for death as the things that define him as a human being are removed one piece at a time. That person will be welcomed into the Night Church and will become one of us.”

  He held the knife out and let blood drip onto the dirt between Hector and the young man.

  “Who will it be?”

  Hector said, “Don’t do it, Lonnie. Be a man . . . it won’t hurt for long. . . .”

  But Saint John said, “Oh yes, my brothers, it will. It will hurt for such a long and delicious time.”

  One voice spoke out, begging to tell.

  The other screamed out, cursing and damning the reapers.

  Through it all, Saint John smiled and smiled.

  55

  JOE ARRANGED FOR THE SIRENS to call off the zoms so Benny could cross the trench and go pack. When Benny and the girls returned to the bridge with their gear, there were four new soldiers guarding it. The soldiers were pale-faced strangers Benny had never seen before.

  As Benny approached, one of them, a hatchet-faced man with startlingly blue eyes, put his hand on the butt of his holstered .45. He had the faintest echoes of facial bruising that was almost gone, and a purple scar through his eyebrow that looked like it had required at least eight stitches. His name tag read PERUZZI. He ignored Benny and locked a lethal stare on Lilah.

  “I remember you,” Peruzzi said with a malicious grin.

  “You should,” said Lilah, unperturbed by the implied menace in that smile. Benny realized that Peruzzi had to be one of the soldiers Lilah had roughed up after Chong nearly died. Several of the soldiers had been hospitalized. When he glanced at the others, he could see similar traces of recent trauma.

  Oops, he thought.

  “What’s your problem?” demanded Nix, standing firm beside Lilah. “Who are you?”

  “Nobody’s talking to you, pint-size,” said Peruzzi.

  “Well, I’m talking to you,” said Nix.

  Peruzzi laughed and gave her a slow, invasive up-and-down stare. “Big boobs don’t make you a grown-up, little girl,” he said in an ugly voice. “Mind your manners and shut your mouth.”

  Benny’s hand flashed toward his sword, but the solder had his pistol out so fast the blade was only a quarter drawn. The barrel dug hard into Benny’s cheek, right beside his nose.

  “Give me a reason,” said Peruzzi.

  The other soldiers chuckled, and they swung their rifles up toward the girls.

  Peruzzi sneered. “You suckered those idiots who were working this detail earlier. You ever touch any of my men again and I’ll hurt you in ways you ain’t ever heard of.”

  The gun barrel was cold, but it felt hot against Benny’s skin. He was absolutely terrified, but at the same time a vicious rage was boiling in his gut.

  “Y’all better put that gun down,” advised Riot.

  “And y’all better shut your ugly mouth,” said Peruzzi, mocking her Appalachian accent.

  “Just trying to give you fair warning is all,” she said, seemingly unflustered by the guns.

  “Yeah, well how about you kiss my—”

  And there was a low growl.

  A deep-chested growl that sounded like it came from a bear.

  Riot smiled. Everyone else turned to see Grimm standing inches behind the rearmost soldier, dressed in his full battle armor except for the spiked helmet. The dog was more massive than even the largest of the men, and anger made muscles bunch and flex under his hide. The motion clanked the chain mail he wore, and yet everyone had been so absorbed in the confrontation that they hadn’t noticed the mastiff’s approach.

  The big ranger, Joe, walked slowly toward the group. He was dressed in camouflage, with boots, gun belt, sidearm, sword, and rifle. He carried a heavy duffel bag easily in one hand.

  Nobody said a word as the ranger drew near. However, Peruzzi lowered his pistol.

  “Grimm,” said Joe, “down.”

  The dog immediately stopped growling and sat. But his eyes burned with a clear desire to bite something that would scream.

  Joe walked up to Peruzzi and then kept walking so that the soldier had to give ground and back away. He backed the man all the way to the upraised bridge. Peruzzi’s shoulders, heels, and the back of his head thumped against the steel. Without taking his eyes off Peruzzi, Joe reached down and took his pistol away from him. He dropped the magazine into the sand, ejected the round, and tossed the pistol into the trench.

  Peruzzi opened his mouth with the beginning of a sharp protest, but Joe leaned in so close that their foreheads touched.

  “Go ahead, sergeant,” mur
mured Joe quietly, “say it. Say something. Tell me exactly what’s on your mind, because as you know I’ve always been fascinated by the particular species of thoughts that evolve in your brain. It’s like science fiction sometimes. Hard to believe a human brain is at work here.”

  Peruzzi was able to hold eye contact with Joe for three seconds, and then he looked down. But Joe wasn’t interested. He leaned back far enough to bring his hand up between them and tap Peruzzi sharply on the forehead.

  “I didn’t catch that,” he said. “I missed the part where you apologized to these young women and to my friend Benjamin here.”

  “S-sorry,” mumbled Peruzzi.

  Joe patted his cheek. “Yeah, I know you are.” His back was still turned to the other three soldiers. “It would suck for all parties involved if I turned around and saw that you three stooges were still pointing your weapons rather than standing at attention with rifles slung.”

  Grimm growled again, softly but meaningfully.

  The soldiers snapped to attention.

  Joe gave Peruzzi a last penetrating stare. “We’re not going to have this discussion again, are we, Sergeant Peruzzi?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And I can sleep soundly at night—every night—in the sure knowledge that nothing untoward will happen to these four young people here . . . or their friend in the blockhouse. I mean, we can agree on that, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Joe smiled. It was a big, toothy, happy smile. What Mayor Kirsch would have called an “aw shucks” smile. Benny knew that the humor in that smile went less than a millimeter deep.

  “Good,” said the ranger. “Now how about signaling the siren house and then getting this bridge down?”

  The soldiers turned quickly away and set to work.

  Joe glanced briefly at Nix, Lilah, Riot, and Benny. “Can’t stand around trading Zombie Cards all day, kids. We’re burning daylight.”

  56

  SAINT JOHN RAISED HIS FACE to let the bloodred heat of the dying sun bathe his face.

  He could hear the rustle of the reapers behind him. The Red Brotherhood formed the first ranks—five hundred strong. Beyond them was the main body of the reaper army.