Fire and Ash

by Jonathan Maberry

  FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

  The day we found Sanctuary we also saw the jet. It landed on the airfield, but by the time we reached the base, the plane had been shut down, the lights and engine turned off. We never saw the pilot or crew.

  Every time they bring me over to the blockhouse for an interview, I ask where the jet’s crew is, and they never tell me. All they’ll say is that they’re being debriefed—whatever that means.

  Joe won’t tell us either.

  What are they hiding?

  36

  “HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?” asked the voice.

  “I’ve developed an irresistible hunger for human flesh,” said Benny.

  There was a long, long silence. The interview cubicle was so dark that Benny could barely see the wall-mounted speaker. He bent close to listen. He could hear the interviewer breathing.

  “Hello?”

  The voice said, “When you say that you’ve developed a—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, it was a joke.”

  After a moment the voice said, “A ‘joke’?”

  “Yes. I’m sure even you lug nuts have heard that word before.”

  “Mr. Imura . . . why would you make a joke about something like that?”

  “Why not?”

  There was no answer.

  Benny knocked on the speaker. “Hey—you still there?”

  “How do you feel today?” asked the voice, as if the conversation was just starting.

  Benny sighed. “With my hands.”

  “Mr. Imura . . .”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing to help my friend Chong.”

  “We’re doing everything we can.”

  “Is he getting better?”

  “He’s stabilized.”

  “Is he getting better?” Benny asked again, more slowly, over-enunciating each word.

  “We . . . are not sure we can expect an improvement at this time.”

  “Then let me out of here.”

  “What?”

  “Let me out. We’re done.”

  “Mr. Imura,” said the voice, “you are being immature about this.”

  “Immature?” Benny laughed. “I went out to that plane yesterday to look for those stupid research notes. I didn’t see you out there.”

  “We have to stay inside the quarantine of the lab.”

  “I didn’t see your soldiers out there either. In fact, you know who I did see out there? A freaking reaper. And you know what I did? I freaking killed him. That’s what I did. You want to hide behind your stupid wall inside this freaking bunker and call me immature?” Benny kicked the speaker as hard as he could. The little grille buckled. “You’re not doing anything for me or Chong or anyone else, so tell me why I should help you? Tell me what we’re accomplishing with these little chats of ours. All you’re doing is wasting my time and pissing me off.”

  He gave the speaker another kick.

  Almost three full minutes passed before the door opened. In that time the voice did not return, did not ask another question.

  Benny got up and stepped out into the hot sunlight. A monk was there to guide him across the bridge.

  No way I’m going back in there, he told himself. I’d rather be stuck in a zombie pit at Gameland with my hands tied behind my back.

  Suddenly that fragment of broken memory from yesterday skittered across his mind again.

  He froze.

  “Brother—?” inquired the monk, but Benny held up his hand.

  “Gimme a sec . . .”

  He closed his eyes and repeated what he’d just thought. There was something there.

  Zombie pit.

  Yes.

  Sergeant Ortega. A big soldier.

  In a zombie pit?

  Yes.

  No. Not exactly. Not a zombie pit.

  Not at Gameland. Benny was sure of that much. Sergeant Ortega.

  He could see the face.

  Not a living face. Dead.

  Definitely zommed out.

  But also definitely Sergeant Ortega. No doubt about it.

  In a pit.

  Zombie.

  Pit.

  What other pits were there with zombies in them?

  And suddenly he had it.

  His eyes snapped open.

  He remembered exactly where he had seen Sergeant Luis Ortega. And if he was right, then the man—the zom that had been that man—would still be there.

  Benny bolted from beside the monk and ran as fast as he could across the bridge.

  37

  BENNY FOUND NIX IN THE mess hall. She was sitting with Riot, their heads bent together as they spoke.

  “Nix!” he called from halfway across the room.

  Her head jerked up and she looked around. Then she immediately got up and started to turn away, to leave. Benny ran to her and caught her wrist.

  “Nix—I heard about yesterday. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. We’re both okay.”

  “Thank God!” he said breathlessly. “Listen, I need to talk to you.”

  “Benny—no, I can’t . . . I . . .”

  He gently pulled her around to face him. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying a long time, and her whole face was pink and puffy. Her scar and her freckles always grew darker when she was upset, and now they were very dark.

  “Listen, Nix—”

  She looked up at him with such pain in her green eyes that it stalled him. “I saw him.”

  “You saw . . . Chong?”

  “Riot and I went over yesterday. They let us see him.”

  Benny half turned to see the look on Riot’s face. She hadn’t told him that last night. There were other storms raging through her life, and Benny held no grudge.

  Before he could say anything, Nix flung herself into his arms and clung to him with all her strength.

  “Oh, Benny . . . he looked so bad,” she wailed. “He looked so sick. So lost.”

  Her words disintegrated into sobs that were so deep, so shattered, that it silenced the entire mess hall. Those sobs were every bit as terrible as Riot’s had been.

  Benny enfolded her in his arms and held her close. Her body was furnace hot against his; her tears burned like acid. She trembled with the kind of deep grief and pain that went all the way down to the core. Benny understood that kind of anguish. He held her and kissed her hair.

  The monks at the tables turned away. A few of them gave him small smiles and encouraging nods, but they said nothing and did not interfere.

  Benny led Nix back to her table and they sat down together, awkwardly, still clinging to each other. Riot got up and came around behind them, wrapped her arms around them both, and laid her cheek down on the tops of their heads.

  Eventually the storm passed, as all storms pass.

  Nix gradually straightened and pulled away. Riot sat down on her side of the table. Everyone used the napkins to wipe their streaming noses and eyes.

  “Nix, I—,” Benny began, but she touched her fingers to his chest.

  “Please, Benny, let me say something first.”

  “Okay.”

  She dabbed at her eyes. “What I said yesterday about Chong . . .”

  Benny nodded but said nothing.

  “Please, don’t ever think—”

  “No,” he cut her off. “Listen to me, Nix, you don’t need to say this, and I don’t need to hear it. We . . . kind of just said it all anyway.”

  Riot said, “See, I was right about you, Benny. You are smarter than you look.”

  It was a lame joke, but it broke the bubble of tension that had been expanding to crowd the moment.

  “I’m sorry,” Nix said. “I needed to say that much. I really am.”

  Benny kissed her.

  Nix kissed him back.

  Riot made gagging sounds. “Y’all better get a room or name the baby after me.”

  Benny made a covert and very rude gesture.

  Then he leaned back to catch his breath. “Listen,” he
said, “I need to tell you a bunch of things, but first I want to hear everything about yesterday. All I really heard, Nix, was that you and Lilah got jumped by some zoms. . . .”

  Nix told him the full story. Benny’s heart sank.

  “Fast zoms? Four of them?”

  “Three fast ones and one that might not have been,” corrected Nix.

  “Even so,” said Riot, “that’s crooked math. Y’all were lucky to walk out of there with skin still on your bones.”

  “Tell me about it,” Nix said, rolling her eyes.

  “What was that bit with the red powder?” asked Benny.

  “I don’t know,” Nix admitted. “I showed Joe and he kind of freaked. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Wonder what it is,” said Riot.

  “Listen,” Benny said, changing the subject. “I had a crazy day too. I need to tell you guys, and then I need your help with something. I’d ask Joe, but nobody knows where he is and we’re running out of time. So . . . I need both of you to help me do something incredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid.”

  “Dangerous and stupid?” asked Nix, and her pretty face wore its first smile in over a day. “Sounds like one of your plans.”

  “I’m on the hook already,” said Riot. “I haven’t done anything dangerous or stupid in weeks. I’m about due.”

  He explained everything that had happened yesterday. The story of the fight with the reaper wiped the smiles away. The account of the Teambook raised their eyebrows. The tally of the reaper forces stole the color from their faces. But the thing that filled their eyes with fear was when Benny explained where he had seen Sergeant Ortega.

  “You want us to go where?” demanded Riot. “You’re touched in the head, boy.”

  “You’re absolutely out of your mind,” said Nix. “I mean seriously, Benny, you’re deranged.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “But are you in?”

  Nix and Riot stared at him and then at each other, and then at him again.

  “We’re in,” said Nix.

  38

  MILES AND MILES AWAY . . .

  Captain Strunk sat on an overturned bucket, resting heavily with his forearms on his knees. The trade wagon stood ten feet away. On the ground, covered with pieces of canvas, lay four bodies. Fifty feet away, just inside the fence line, lay three more. All of them had been quieted.

  Two figures stood in front of him. A short man and a tall boy.

  The man was Deputy Gorman, Strunk’s second in command.

  The boy was Morgie Mitchell.

  On the ground between Morgie and Captain Strunk was a length of wood. A bokken. Smeared with blood, broken in two.

  “I checked him, Cap,” said Gorman. “No bites, no scratches.”

  Strunk nodded.

  “I told you that I wasn’t hurt,” said Morgie. “You could have taken my word for it.”

  “You fought four zoms with a stick, kid,” said Strunk. “I wouldn’t take anyone’s word that they did that without a scratch.”

  Morgie said nothing.

  “Tom taught you all those moves?”

  Morgie nodded.

  “You ever fight a zom before?”

  “No.”

  “You ever fight anyone before?”

  Morgie shrugged. “Nothing serious.”

  In his mind, though, he remembered his last act of violence. No one had been physically hurt, but it had been a terrible moment. Shoving Benny and knocking him down, right there in Morgie’s yard. The day Benny left town. The day Morgie had killed his friendship with Benny. And Nix. Chong, too. The day he lost all his friends.

  Nothing serious. Except that it ended everything.

  Strunk said, “The tower guard tells me you kept your head when those zoms came rushing out of that wagon.”

  Morgie shrugged.

  “He says that after you took down the zoms from the wagon, you went out to help Tully and Hooper.”

  “I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I got out there they were already dead.”

  “ ‘Wasn’t fast enough,’ ” echoed Gorman. “Jeez.”

  “The tower guard says that you quieted Tully and got Hooper inside the gate while he was still alive.”

  “I didn’t quiet him, though,” said Morgie. “The other guards—”

  “I know,” interrupted Strunk. “I’m not criticizing you. Just laying out the facts.”

  Morgie said nothing.

  “Your supervisor tells me that you only took the fence job because you were too young for the town watch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How young?”

  “I’ll be sixteen in eight months.”

  Strunk glanced at Gorman, who smiled faintly and shook his head.

  A shadow fell across Morgie, and he turned to see someone standing just behind him, a person he had only ever seen on the painted fronts of Zombie Cards. The man wasn’t tall, but he was powerfully built, with a shaved head and a gray goatee. He had dark-brown skin and he wore a red Freedom Riders sash across his chest. He wore a pair of matched machetes in low-slung scabbards that hung from crossed leather belts.

  Morgie’s mouth went absolutely dry.

  The man nodded to Strunk. “This is the boy, Cap?”

  “This is him. Morgan Mitchell.”

  The newcomer studied Morgie. “You trained with Tom.”

  “Yes, sir,” Morgie said.

  “You friends with Tom’s brother? You one of Benny’s friends?”

  The question was worse than a knife in Morgie’s guts. It took him a long time before he trusted his voice enough to answer the man.

  “Benny was my best friend.” His voice almost—almost—broke. “I wish I’d gone with him and Tom.”

  The man nodded. “From what I heard just now, Morgie, Tom would be proud of you. Benny, too.”

  Morgie turned away to hide his eyes.

  The man put his hand on Morgie’s shoulder. “I don’t think you have a future in the town watch.”

  Morgie snapped his head around and stared in hurt and horror at the man. But he was smiling. So were Strunk and Gorman.

  “I think you need to come and train with me,” said the man.

  “W-what . . . ?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, sir. You’re Solomon Jones.”

  “I’m building something important. Something Tom would approve of,” said Solomon. “And I’m looking for some real warriors.”

  Morgie stared at him.

  Solomon held out a muscular hand.

  “Want to join me?”

  39

  THERE WAS ONE THING THEY had to do first, and it was Nix who said it. They stood in the shade behind the mess hall.

  “We have to tell Lilah,” Nix said, and Benny winced.

  “Good luck with that,” murmured Riot.

  Any conversation with Lilah was difficult. The Lost Girl had spent many years living alone and wild in the Ruin, killing zoms and preying on the bounty hunters working for Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer. During those long years she had had no personal contact at all. No conversations, no interactions. Not even a hug, a handshake, or a kind word; and in that social vacuum she’d grown strange. Even now, after months of living with the Chong family in Mountainside, training with Tom, and traveling with Nix, Benny, and Chong on their search for the jet, Lilah was still strange. It was impossible to predict exactly how she would react to anything, though any bet laid a little heavier on the possibility of a violent reaction had a better chance of a return. For a while she’d started coming out of her shell when, against all logic and probability, she and Chong had fallen in love—but with Chong’s injury and infection, Lilah had gotten stranger still. She rarely spoke, and when she did, it was brief and terse. Benny doubted that he’d exchanged as many as two hundred words with Lilah in the last three weeks.

  “She won’t want to leave here,” said Nix. “I think she believes that the only reason they haven’t quieted Chong is
because they’re afraid of how she’ll react.”

  “That ain’t altogether a stupid fear,” said Riot. “When grown men with guns are afraid of a girl with a spear, then there’s something to take a close look at.”

  Benny nodded, though he had a separate concern about Lilah. He was afraid of what she would do to herself if Chong died. Lilah was emotionally damaged and was caught in a prolonged anger phase of the grief process. Her little sister had been killed, her guardian had been murdered, Tom had been murdered, and now Chong lingered in a twilight between life and death. Benny didn’t know how much more life could push Lilah before she snapped. He’d said as much to Nix, and when he glanced at her, he could see it in her eyes. Neither of them said it aloud—Riot was a friend, but she wasn’t yet part of their family.

  “I’ll tell her,” said Nix.

  Benny shook his head. “If she gets even a whiff of—”

  “Of what? Of me saying that Chong should be quieted? That was before, Benny. I said that before I went down and looked at him.”

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  “I got your back, Red,” said Riot. “Question is . . . where is she? She’s usually walking the trench line, but I don’t—”

  There was a soft sound above them, and they suddenly turned and looked up to see Lilah perched like a hunting hawk on the raised corrugated metal shutter over the mess hall window. She peered down at them from between her bent knees, and only the tip of her spear rose above the shadows into the sunlight. Lilah’s eyes looked as black and bottomless as those of a skull.

  “Lilah . . . ,” gasped Nix.

  Benny instinctively shifted to stand between Nix and Lilah.

  “Listen, Lilah, I can explain.”

  The Lost Girl hopped forward and straightened her lithe body as she dropped to the ground. It was a ten-foot drop, but she landed easily, though there was a twitch of a grimace on her tight mouth—the only concession to the wound she’d suffered less than a month ago. She’d badly gashed her cheek and jaw while escaping from a white rhinoceros and a field of crippled zoms. Injury or not, the expression in her eyes was fierce. Deadly.

  “God,” breathed Nix. Riot pulled her slingshot. Benny’s hand darted toward the handle of his sword.

  Lilah walked forward a few paces, ignoring Riot. She got to within inches of Benny.