“I’m going to look,” she said in a voice that was less confident than she probably wanted it to sound.
Benny began to follow and then stopped. He felt a frown pull down the corners of his mouth, but he did not consciously understand why. His eyes roved over the scene again. The trench, the plane, the foliage, the broken wings, the open door. His frown deepened.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Nix, wait,” he said. “Don’t.”
She paused and looked sharply at him. “Why not?”
Benny licked his lips. “I… don’t think that’s our jet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nix, that’s not the jet we saw.”
She looked from the plane to Benny and back again, and there was such fury in her eyes that he made sure he wasn’t in easy swinging range of her bokken. “You’re crazy,” she barked. “Of course it’s the one we saw.”
“No, it isn’t, and keep your voice down.” Benny came and stood beside her. “Look at it, Nix. This thing’s been here for at least a year. Probably more.”
“How would you know?”
Nix’s harshness was beginning to grate on him, and he snapped back.
“Open your eyes,” he said, his own tone growing sharp. He pointed to the small trees that had poked through the bottom of the trench. “Look at those saplings. Come on — they’re at least a year old. At least that, and maybe older. Some of them look two years old.”
“They’re saplings, Benny. Saplings bend. They could have bent over and sprung back up.”
“No way. They’d have been snapped off. Look, there are bigger trees that were torn right out of the ground.”
It was true; the dead trunks of a hundred small pine trees lay in the trench, their limbs snapped, roots torn out of the sandy soil. Many of them were ripped completely apart, and there were dried sticks that could easily have been saplings that were killed during the crash. Benny pulled a few up and brought them over to Nix.
“See?” he said. “These were the saplings the plane hit. Those others could never have survived this big freaking thing crashing down on them.”
“So what?” she demanded. Somehow, with her voice lowered to a whisper, she sounded even angrier and more annoyed with him. “Since when are you an expert on plant growth?”
“I’m not an expert, Nix, but I’m not stupid, either.”
Nix started to say something, then thought better of it and instead said, “It could have crashed after we saw it. That’s eight months. You don’t know how fast juniper saplings grow, Benny. These could be only eight months old.”
“Maybe,” Benny conceded, “but I doubt it.”
They moved forward together, cautiously, eyes searching the dead flying machine.
They were so riveted by the plane that they did not look into the surrounding woods and so did not see the dead zoms sprawled twenty yards down a crooked game trail; or the two bloody spots where a pair of reapers had died from Lilah’s savage attack. Their bodies were gone, and bloody footprints trailed away into the shrubs.
Nix went over and stood by the draped plastic that hung from the open door. Benny continued walking until he was at the base of the upright section of wing, then he stared down the length of the trench at the other wing. He looked at the twisted blades of the propellers. Two six-bladed props had been attached to each wing, and one had fallen off. Benny went over to it and touched the tip of one of the propeller blades.
“I’ll admit that I don’t know everything about planes,” he said, “but after we got back last year, I looked through every book we had in the library and in tons of magazines over at Chong’s. This is definitely not the one we saw. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
“Why?” she demanded, and there was mingled anger, fear, and hope in her eyes.
He was smiling as he turned.
“Nix, the thing we saw flying over the mountain was a jet… and this thing has propellers,” he said. “Jets don’t have propellers.”
Nix’s eyes flared and her mouth opened, but for the moment she was totally incapable of speech. Her eyes cut instantly from Benny’s face to the blades of the massive propeller that lay in the dirt behind him.
“And that opens up a whole new can of worms,” he added. He patted the wing lightly. “Because no matter which one of us is right about when this crashed, it definitely crashed more than a dozen years after all the lights went out.”
“God…,” breathed Nix.
“That means there were at least two planes in the air. And if there were two… how many more might be out there?”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Just after Christmas I had a big fight with Benny. He found one of my notebooks. He swore that he didn’t mean to read it. He said it was on the porch lying open, faceup. He saw what I’d written, and he flipped through the pages.
He had no right to do that. He had no right to make a big deal about it. So what if I wrote “We have to find the jet” a hundred times on every page? I told him it was a way to focus my mind and help me get ready for leaving town.
He didn’t believe me, and we had a really bad fight.
I am NOT obsessed. Benny’s a jerk sometimes.
42
Saint John cleaned his knives with a piece of cloth he kept in his pocket. That cloth had cleaned those knives a hundred times.
He stepped around the red things that lay on the ground. Saint John did not disrespect them by stepping over their corpses. These heretics were in the darkness now, and their bodies were now holy relics, proof of the red doorway that opened between the world of flesh and the infinite realm of spirit.
“Thank you,” he said to them. “Thank you.”
He wept softly as he moved around the spot where the killing had been done. It was a shrine now, and anyone with eyes would be able to understand the beauty of what had happened here. That beauty coaxed tears from Saint John’s eyes; but that was not the only reason he cried.
There were jealous tears on his face, and he lowered his head in shame, unable to look at these transformed ones. His envy of their freedom was nearly unbearable. Though they had been blasphemers mere moments ago, each of them — even the least of them — was more fully and truly connected to the darkness than he was. While he was clothed in flesh, while he lingered here on earth, he was an outsider to the purity of the darkness. An enabler, yes, a conduit, even a guide, but not a part of it.
For that, he wept.
He staggered over to a patch of unmarked grass and dropped heavily to his knees. He slid his knives into their sheaths and then bowed down, placing his forehead on the ground in abject humility.
“Please,” he prayed, “let me come home. Please.”
The darkness whispered inside his brain.
Not yet, my son. There is still so much work to do.
“How much longer, Lord? I have opened so many red doors, I have cleansed more heretics than I can count. How much longer?”
Until the world is silent. There are so few left, and you must save them all. You must guide each of them to the red door.
“Mother Rose and I are always in the service of—”
You, my child, are my trusted servant. You.
Tears fell like rain from Saint John’s eyes, falling to the ground. His body shook with sobs, and he beat his fists upon the ground.
Last of all shall I bring you home, my believed son. Last and most treasured of all.
Saint John wept until his chest ached from it and his throat was raw.
Then, slowly, as if he lifted the entire world with him, he rose from the ground and climbed wearily to his feet.
He turned and looked at the crimson horrors behind him.
“Until the world is silent,” he said thickly. He sniffed back the last of his tears. “Such is the will of Thanatos — praise be to the darkness.”
Then he turned once more and followed the footprints of the two teenagers into the forest.
43
He felt as if he was flying.
Not happy flying, like in his dreams where he would rise up out of bed, swoop down the stairs, and zoom out into the streets of town and then soar up to dive and play with eagles and falcons. No, this was a bumpy, smelly, strangely loud kind of flying.
And it hurt.
He tried to move his hands and feet, but they seemed…
He fished for the proper way to describe it to himself.
They seemed… tied. Restrained.
Chong opened his eyes for just a moment and saw impossible things. He was moving across the ground at an incredible rate of speed. Faster than a horse could run. The ground was bumpy, and there was smoke in his nostrils.
He turned his head and saw the tanned back of a slim girl seated in front of him.
Her name was just beyond his reach.
The explanation to all this was just beyond his reach.
As he grabbed for it, the darkness came and took him again.
44
Benny and Nix stood in silence, lost for the moment in the enormity of what they now knew to be the truth.
Two planes.
Maybe more. Probably more.
Somebody was out there.
For Benny it was one of those moments in which he knew for sure that the world as he knew it had changed. No matter what he did, even if he turned around and went back to Mountainside, the world was never going to be the same again. It could not be.
We can’t un-know this, he thought.
Nix stepped back and studied the plane. So far all they had seen was one side and the tail section. They would have to climb the mountain of impacted dirt to see the front and the other side. Above them, the dark mouth of the open hatch seemed to scream an invitation.
Or a warning, thought Benny.
Nix pointed to something on the side of the plane forward of the hatch.
“What’s that?” she asked. “Is that writing?”
Benny squinted at it, mouthing the letters as he tried to read them through a patina of dried mud. “‘C-130J Super Hercules.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“I… think it’s the kind of plane this is. I half remember reading something about a plane called a C-130. I just can’t remember what I read. Something about troop transports, maybe?”
“Troop transports?” Nix’s eyes went wide. “Benny! Do you think that means there’s an army someplace?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what it means. I can barely remember what it meant before First Night. Now… who knows?”
Nix’s eyes roved over the dead machine, then she pointed again. “Look, on the tail. More writing.”
They hurried closer to the big tail section, which also resembled a ship’s sail. It was badly smudged with soot and grime. The sun glare reflecting off the white metal was so bright that they had to cup their hands around their eyes.
“I think that’s a flag,” Benny said.
“Not the American flag,” corrected Nix. “Look, it only has a couple of stars. And there’s something written below it. I can’t make it out, though. American… something.”
It took Benny a few seconds to piece it together. “‘The… American… Nation.’”
Nix frowned. “Is that what they used to put on air force planes?”
“I’m not sure. I… don’t ever remember seeing it put that way. Besides, I was mostly looking for commercial jetliners. That’s what we saw.”
They stood there for a moment. Benny could feel indecision gnawing at him. He turned and looked back at the woods. “I haven’t heard anything for a while now.”
“No,” she agreed.
“I hope that’s good news.”
She nodded but said nothing; clearly she was more interested in the plane than in the welfare of Lilah and Chong. Benny found that profoundly disturbing.
“We need to look inside,” said Nix.
“Yeah,” Benny said, and headed to the front of the plane. The mound of dirt was so steep that he had to climb it on all fours. But as he reached the top, he saw that there was an easier path that emptied out from the woods. That wasn’t what made him freeze in place, however. “Oh my God!”
“What?” demanded Nix, who was just behind him.
“Don’t come up here,” Benny warned, but it was already too late. Nix reached the top and cried out exactly as he had.
“Who…?” she began, but shook her head and didn’t finish.
The clearing in front of the plane was not at all clear.
There were several things placed just in front of the crumpled nose of the plane. They had been out of sight behind a row of twisted trees.
The first object was a small altar made from red stones scavenged from the arid ground. The altar was covered with bundles of dead flowers and small fire-blackened incense bowls. Set atop the altar was a row of human heads.
Not skulls. Heads.
Five of them. The oldest was withered and nearly picked clean by insects; the freshest could not have been more than a day old.
Nix gagged.
But the spectacle was worse than this pagan display.
Beyond the altar, standing in the shadow of the big plane, were three posts, more like T-bars than crosses, and lashed to each one was a body.
The bodies wore the faded and wind-torn rags of military uniforms.
The three bodies were withered, but they were not lifeless.
They were zoms.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
I remember one day when Tom got pretty cheesed at Benny. Benny was trying to impress Morgie, and he said something about having killed so many zoms that he could do it in his sleep.
Tom blew his stack.
He gave us all a big lecture about how we can never let down our guard, never rest on our laurels, never forget that every single zom is as much a danger now as they were the first time we faced them. He went on and on like that.
Benny apologized and all and said it was just a joke. But I don’t think Tom really believes him.
45
Lilah was not afraid to die.
Death was something she knew too well, too intimately, to fear. Annie and George were on the other side of death. So was Tom.
Only Chong was here, and in her heart Lilah believed that if she died today, then Chong would not survive very long. Not even with Benny and Nix. The Ruin was too hard for them. Too dangerous. They were all town kids.
Below her the boars grunted and milled around, agitated by the nearness of living flesh.
Lilah examined the thing she held in her tanned hands. It was not as powerful as the spear she’d lost; or as quick as the gun that lay somewhere in the gloom below, but she liked the heft of it.
Using her knife, she’d cut three of the straightest branches she could reach, then shaved off the twigs and smaller branches and trimmed the branches into four-foot-long poles. Then she removed her canvas vest, stowed the last useful items in her pants pockets, and cut the vest into many long strips. Once all the cutting and trimming was done, Lilah placed the crossbar of the knife between the poles and lashed it all together with turn after turn of canvas. Lilah knew a great deal about knots and binding. She preferred soft leather — deer hide was best — but a smart warrior used the resources at hand rather than wasting time longing for what she did not have.
It was a painstaking process, but Lilah did not hurry. A mistake in preparation would guarantee failure. The result of her work was a kind of long-handled ax. The blade of the knife protruded at a right angle from the tip of the ax, and a piece of hard, knotty wood was lashed to the back end to create a club. As long as the poles and bindings held, she could chop and smash.
The hogs crashed into the tree again.
Lilah climbed carefully down, limb by limb, until she stood on a stout branch seven feet above the circle of dead boars. They stopped ramming the tree and glared up at her, and Lilah’s smile flickered. There was
intelligence in those eyes. Not human intelligence, but the cold and calculating intelligence of a predator. Animal cunning. Animal hate.
Why? And… how? The zombie plague, whatever it was, erased all intelligence when it reanimated the dead body. Right?
It was a problem she would have to think about later. Now she needed her entire mind to be focused on what would happen in the next few seconds.
Lilah tested the bindings, looking for loose knots and weak points. There were none.
A vagary of wind brought sounds to her, and she lifted her head to listen. Were there voices? Yells? She listened and listened, but all she really heard was the white noise of the endlessly moving trees and the chatter of birds and monkeys.
“Warrior smart,” she told herself.
And then she took her ax in both hands and jumped.
46
“Are you dead?”
Chong heard the voice coming from somewhere beyond the darkness in which he floated. A girl’s voice.
Nix? No, it was a harder voice.
Lilah? Definitely not. Lilah’s voice was always a smoky whisper.
“Yo!” said the voice. “You in there, boy?” This time the voice was accompanied by a sharp poke in his shoulder.
He said, “Ow.”
“Okay, then y’all’s not dead.”
She had a thick accent and pronounced it dayud.
Chong licked his lips. “Delighted to hear it,” he said. There was a cool cloth across his eyes, and he had no desire to remove it. If he did, then he would have to face the reality of where he was, and he was not quite ready for that. He felt absolutely terrible. Weakness was the worst part, and it seemed to go all the way down to his bones. He wanted to sleep. Not here; at home. The best thing in the world would be to be curled up in his bed on the second floor of his family’s A-frame house. Maybe Mom would come and tuck the blankets in around him and kiss him on the head in that way she always did, even when he was too big to be tucked in. Moms are moms, they did that sort of thing. It would be nice, too. Being tucked in by his mom would chase all the monsters away. A little kiss to make the pain go away too; to help him drift off to sleep.
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