Fire & Ash bi-4 Read online

  The field, however, was not empty. There were zoms. There were always zoms. Sometimes only a few dozen scattered along this part of the fence, sometimes as many as two hundred. Some of them had been there since the town was created. Those were the ones whose relatives lived behind the fence; relatives who could not bring themselves to authorize a bounty hunter to quiet their beloved dead. The others were wandering zoms who had come this way following prey. Often they came in a slow, ragged line behind a trade wagon or a bounty hunter returning from the great Rot and Ruin.

  Today was one of the in-between days. Morgie counted about seventy zoms out there.

  The road from the forest to the gate was straight as an arrow, but the wagon wandered on and off it. At least a dozen zoms followed, and more were staggering toward the wagon, arms outstretched. It kept ahead of them only because a zombie could not lead its target or plan a path of interception. The zom always went directly for where something was at the moment, adjusting only as it moved away.

  “What’s that driver doing?” breathed Hooper as the wagon rolled out of the well-worn ruts and into the thick weeds.

  They all stared at the wagon as it came closer. The horses were heavily protected with light carpet coats covered by a net of steel washers linked with metal wire. Their legs were wrapped in padded canvas, and their tails were bobbed. Unless the horse stopped and stood in place, a zom would never manage a bite. They kept moving forward, trail wise enough to know the route home and frightened enough of the dead to keep moving despite the erratic control from the driver.

  Tully cupped his hands around his mouth. “At the gate!” he bellowed, and the team there turned toward him. “Wagon’s coming in. Driver’s hurt. Get the quarantine pen ready and call the field medics. C’mon, hop to it!”

  The gate crew fetched their rifles, and a half-dozen apprentices snatched metal pots and spoons from where they hung on the fence. They ran fifty yards up the fence line and began banging and clanging. Most of the zoms turned toward this new and louder sound.

  “Let’s go bring him in,” said Tully.

  Hooper dropped his binoculars to let them hang and unslung the pump shotgun he carried. He jacked a round into the breach.

  The wagon was a quarter mile out now and the horses were picking up speed, determined to get inside the safety of the fence line.

  Tully tapped Hooper on the arm. “Let’s go.”

  The three of them jogged over to the gate, and as soon as the crowd of zoms outside had thinned, Tully nodded for the big gates to be swung open. They started to head outside when Tully suddenly slapped a stiff forearm across Morgie’s chest.

  “Whoa! Not you, son.”

  “But I’m a—”

  “You’re a trainee, Morgan Mitchell,” said Tully. “And all you have is a wooden sword. You stay here and let the professionals handle it.”

  “But—”

  “Pay attention and learn something,” said Hooper with a grin.

  They headed out, first at a light trot. Then, as their path cleared, they ran at full speed toward the wagon.

  Morgie adjusted the focus on his glasses. As the wagon drew closer, he could see the blood splashes on the man’s arms and chest. He could see the pale face and dark eyes. The reins were wrapped around his hands, but those hands jerked and swung with no apparent sense.

  Hooper reached the wagon first. He held his shotgun in one hand and waved toward the driver, calling to him to slow down so he could climb aboard.

  The driver turned to him, and the reins slipped from his hands.

  Morgie watched all this through his binoculars, and he saw the expression on the driver’s face. One moment it was slack with fatigue from his serious injuries, and then as Hooper reached up toward him, the lips suddenly peeled back from bloody teeth.

  “Wait!” cried Morgie. “No!”

  But it was too late.

  The driver flung himself from the wagon and slammed into Hooper, driving the man down to the ground in an ugly way. The impact caused Hooper to jerk the trigger, and the buckshot blasted the front of the wagon. Some of the pellets struck the flank of one of the horses. It screamed and reared and then bolted forward, spooking the other horse into instant flight. Tully tried to get out of the way, but he never had a chance as steel-shod hooves ground him into the dirt. His screams were as shrill as a heron’s until the wheels crushed him to silence.

  The horses raced toward the gate in full panicked flight with the wagon bouncing and jouncing behind them. The three gate guards gawped in surprise and horror, and they were two seconds too late in trying to close the gates. The horses smashed into them, flinging all three men into the air like rag dolls.

  Morgie threw himself to one side. He rolled, as Tom had taught him, and rose to the balls of his feet, knees bent, sword in his hands. As Tom had taught him.

  The back of the wagon was splashed with blood, and the door hung open on a single twisted hinge. Shapes moved inside the wagon. As Morgie watched, they moved with dreadful slowness into the dying light. Pale white and bright red and the utter black of empty eyes. Traders, four of them. Big men who spent their lives working the Ruin to bring goods and supplies from the Rat Pack scavengers to the Nine Towns. They were covered with bites and the marks of violence.

  Maybe one of them had been bitten out in the Ruin and the others had taken him into the wagon to try and treat him. Or maybe they’d all been walking beside the wagon to lighten the burden for the horses when zoms had attacked. Perhaps one had been bitten but hadn’t told his fellows because a bite was a death sentence and he wanted to keep every last bit of life he had left.

  There was no way to know.

  There was no time left to care.

  They boiled out of the back of the wagon and threw themselves at Morgie.

  PART TWO

  THE STORM LANDS

  A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

  — WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD

  FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

  One of the infected wild boars got inside the gates today. Two of the soldiers from the bridge chased it on quads and shot it. I saw them dragging the carcass into one of the hangars on the other side of the trench.

  What do they want with a dead zombie boar?

  I asked a couple of the monks, but they always say the same thing: “We do not speak of that, sister.”

  CHAPTER 33

  ONE MONTH AGO…

  Sister Sun followed the Red Brother out of the hot Nevada sun and into the cloying darkness of an old convenience store. The wire racks had long since been picked clean, and the floor was littered with animal droppings, bones, and trash. There were splashes of blood on the floor and walls, and Sister Sun imagined she could almost hear the screams of heretics who had been brought in here to be interrogated by the saint. The desert outside was filled with blind and skinless dead who wandered without purpose.

  Behind the counter, Saint John sat on a stool, carefully cleaning his many knives. His fingers were long and deft, and if she watched them too closely, Sister Sun knew she could be hypnotized by them.

  The saint did not look up. “How pleasant of you to join me, my sister.”

  She bowed. “Honored One.”

  “Mother Rose is back, did you know?”

  “Yes, Honored One.”

  “I am told that she visited the Shrine of the Fallen yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced up finally, and there was amusement in his eyes. An almost prankish merriment.

  “I am told that she was satisfied that the seals of the Shrine were intact,” he said, “exactly as she left them.”

  Sister Sun nodded.

  The saint glanced past her to the killers of the Red Brotherhood who stood silent and vigilant by the door. “Leave us,” he said. “No one enters until I say otherwise.”

  They nodded and, quiet as ghosts, left the store.

  Saint John let silence settle over things for a moment. His clever hands work
ed steadily with cloth and oil and a small pick to dig out even the slightest flake of drying blood from the skinning knife he held.

  “You have had one month with the materials from the heretic Dr. McReady,” he said.

  “Yes, Honored One.”

  “Tell me.”

  Sister Sun took a breath to steady her nerves. It was not fear that made her tremble. It was a terrible excitement.

  “As I have said many times, Honored One,” she began, “science is like a knife. Used by a heretic, it is a thing of great evil. Used in the cause of righteousness, it is a holy weapon of great power.”

  “And do you believe that you have discovered a way to turn these evil things to holy purpose?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have.”

  He set down his knife. “Explain it to me.”

  She did. It did not take very long. Saint John had a first-class intellect. And it was a cold mind, capable of separating rational assessment from emotions and religious passion. Sister Sun told him what she’d discovered in those notes, and how it coincided with theories she had been working on prior to kneeling to kiss the knife and join the Night Church. She explained what she’d learned from those notes, and she outlined what she did not yet know.

  “You say that the notes include a formula to cure the Reaper Plague?” asked Saint John.

  “A treatment,” she corrected. “But it amounts to the same thing. McReady was poised to eradicate the plague and all the gray people. But she apparently went elsewhere to complete her research.”

  “Could you create a countermeasure to this ‘treatment’?” asked the saint.

  Sister Sun chewed her lip, then gave a slow shake of her head. “No. Not as such,” she said. “But I could take her research and turn it to serve us.”

  “How?”

  Sister Sun told him.

  “What would be required for you to do this?”

  She said, “I need a lab. Or at least basic equipment.”

  “We’re in a desert.”

  She shook her head. “There’s a biological testing facility less than two hundred miles from here. I can use that. It would have a portable generator, which could be repaired and refueled. With ten reapers as assistants, I can have the lab running inside two weeks.”

  He considered this, his lips pursed.

  “And if you had fifty reapers as assistants — how quickly could you get it running?”

  She stared at him. At his dark and glittering eyes. At his smile.

  Then she smiled too.

  CHAPTER 34

  Benny looked for Nix the rest of the day but didn’t find her.

  While he was walking back to try the mess hall again, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a blue balloon floating on the hot air. It was on the far side of the trench, though, and the zoms all raised their dead eyes to stare at it. The balloon had barely any lift and bounced from one to another of the zoms, touching the tops of heads, rebounding from clumsy fingers.

  It must have escaped from Eve, he thought.

  Then it occurred to him — how was it able to float at all?

  Benny knew about helium from Peppertoes, the clown at the harvest fair in Mountainside. He had a big tank of helium — an item that must have cost him a fair percentage of the ration dollars he was paid by the town to perform for the kids. Every year Peppertoes would give a helium-filled balloon to the kid who grew the biggest sweet pepper. Morgie’s cousin Bethy won twice.

  But who around here had a tank of helium?

  He watched the balloon bounce and bounce, and then he saw a zom make a successful grab at it. The blue orb vanished into the crowd of the dead, and a second later there was a loud pop!

  Benny frowned at the zoms, then scanned the sky for more balloons. There were none. And when he looked over at the playground, the children were gone. Siesta time?

  Benny shrugged and forgot the balloon as he resumed his search for Nix.

  Finally he asked Sister Hannahlily if she knew anything, and the nun confirmed that Nix and Lilah had been attacked by the living dead. From the disapproving look on the nun’s face, Benny knew that the attacking zoms had been quieted. The way-station monks and nuns opposed violence in all forms, especially against the “Children of Lazarus.” They considered it sinful to harm the mindless dead. She did not say as much, but her feelings were written on her pinched features.

  “Is she okay?” asked Benny urgently. “Nix. And Lilah, too. Are they okay?”

  The nun hesitated. “They were not physically injured.”

  “But—?”

  “But they were both very upset. Perhaps the weight of their actions was too much for them.”

  And maybe bright blue monkeys will fly out of my butt, thought Benny, but he left it unsaid. “Where are they?”

  “In the women’s dormitory,” said Sister Hannahlily.

  “Can you—”

  “They’ve had a hard day, young brother,” said the nun. “If you care for them, allow each of the girls adequate time to reflect on her actions, and to look inward for forgiveness from God.”

  Benny tried fifteen different ways to convince Sister Hannahlily that he needed to get a message to the girls. He might as well have been trying to convince a zom to juggle and tell jokes.

  “Perhaps an evening of quiet reflection and prayer would do you some good as well,” said the nun. With that she turned and headed toward the chapel tent for evening prayers.

  Benny went to the women’s dormitory doorway, but the nun on guard there was a gargoyle-faced bruiser named, of all things, Sister Daisy. She listened to Benny without a flicker of expression, then told him to go away. She did not actually threaten physical harm — she was after all, a nun — but there was such palpable menace in her voice that Benny felt himself dwindle. He crept away.

  He ate alone and went outside for a walk along the trench. There were so many things to consider and process. As the sun fell behind the mountains, the desert transformed from hot tan and burning red to a soft, cool purple. Benny came upon a huddled shape seated alone on the edge of the trench. He was ten feet away when he heard the sound of muffled sobs.

  “Riot—?”

  The figure straightened, and Riot turned a puffed and tear-streaked face toward him. She sniffed. “Hey, Benny.”

  Benny came and sat down next to her. “You okay?”

  She sniffed again. “ ’Bout as good as I look, I suppose.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Not unless y’all got a time machine or a magic wand.”

  “I wish.”

  They watched the sky darken from purple to bottomless black. Stars ignited one after the other, and soon the ceiling of the universe burned with a million points of light.

  “Your mom…?” Benny ventured.

  But Riot shook her head. “That’s part of it.”

  “Eve?”

  “That poor little girl,” Riot said in a tiny voice that was too fragile to hold back the tide of sobs.

  “Shhh,” soothed Benny, “she’s safe now. She’ll be okay.”

  “No, she won’t,” said Riot. “No… oh, Benny, I can’t stand it. She’s so lost. She’s all alone in the dark and I can’t reach her. No one can. They killed her. Damn them to hell, but they killed that sweet little girl.”

  The sobs overwhelmed Riot, and the sound of her weeping came close to breaking Benny’s heart. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against his chest. He wanted to say something — anything — that might pull Riot back from her pain, but really… what was there to say? Her mother had been a monster and was now a zombie. Eve’s mother and father had been murdered, and Eve was so badly broken that there might not be a way to mend her.

  She’s all alone in the dark and I can’t reach her.

  Those words were all the uglier for being true.

  Sometimes there aren’t words, Benny knew. Sometimes there are hurts so deep that they exist in a country that has no spoken language,
a place where all landscapes are blighted and no sun ever shines. Benny had left his footprints in the dust of that place. It was on the day Tom brought him to Sunset Hollow, to the house Benny had lived in as a baby, to the place where his parents waited, year after interminable year, tied to kitchen chairs. Tom could have quieted their parents years ago, but he’d waited because he knew that one day his little brother would need to have a hand in the closure of their shared pain. That day — that terrible, terrible day — Tom had taken his knife and quieted Benny’s dad, Tom’s stepfather. Then he’d given the knife to Benny. It was an act of kindness and of respect that felt like the worst betrayal, the worst punishment.

  Holding Riot, he closed his eyes and was right back at that moment with everything as clear and precise as a razor cut.

  * * *

  Benny stood behind the zombie, and it took six or seven tries before he could bring himself to touch her. Eventually he managed it. Tom guided him, touching the spot where the knife had to go. Benny put the tip of the knife in place.

  “When you do it,” said Tom, “do it quick.”

  “Can they feel pain?”

  “I don’t know. But you can. I can. Do it quick.”

  Benny closed his eyes. He took a ragged breath and said, “I love you, Mom.”

  He did it quick.

  And it was over.

  He dropped the knife and Tom gathered him up and they sank down to their knees together on the kitchen floor, crying so loud that the sound threatened to break the world.

  * * *

  The way Riot wept now was her passport to that country. Nix had been there too. And Lilah. Each of them had wandered alone through that land, refugees among the war-torn devastation of their innocence.

  Benny did not tell Riot that it was okay, because it wasn’t.

  He didn’t tell her that this would pass. The moment would, but the scars would always be there. It was the thing that would always identify them as travelers through the storm lands of the soul.