Fire & Ash Read online

“Hey,” she said quietly.

  “Hey,” said Benny.

  “I saw that fuss in the dining room. You fighting with Red?”

  Benny shrugged.

  “This about Chong?”

  “Yeah,” said Benny. “I suppose.”

  “He’s pretty messed up, huh?”

  “He’s sick . . . and if you want to lecture me, too, about—”

  “Whoa—slow your roll, boy,” she said. “Just asked a question.”

  “Yes,” Benny said slowly. “He’s in bad shape.”

  “Red wants to put him down, is that the size of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She know that Lilah’d skin her quick as look at her, right?”

  “She knows.”

  “So, where’s that leave everyone?”

  Benny sighed. “In trouble.”

  “Life don’t never get easy, does it? It just keeps getting harder in stranger ways.”

  They watched Lilah, who had stopped pacing and now stood as silent as the dead, staring across the trench toward the blockhouse.

  “That Lilah’s a puzzle,” said Riot quietly. “I must’a tried fifty times to talk to her. Not deep conversation, just jawing about the time of day. All she did was tell me to go away. That’s it, two words. Go away.”

  “Lilah’s had a really hard life,” said Benny.

  Riot’s face took on a mocking cast. “Did she now? Well, she sure don’t hold the deed on grief and loss, son. We all been mussed and mauled by bad times. But that girl’s done gone and shut down. I met gray people with more personality.” She tapped her temple with a finger. “I’m beginning to suspect there ain’t nobody home.”

  “She’ll snap out of it once they do something for Chong.”

  Riot cocked her head to one side. “Y’all really think so?”

  “Yes,” said Benny with far more certainty than he felt. In truth he was frightened for Lilah. Any gains she had made since he and Nix had found her—wild and almost unable to communicate with people—seemed to have crumbled away. And secretly, he agreed with Riot’s assessment that Lilah’s personality seemed to be . . . well, gone. She would participate in combat training, but otherwise there was nothing.

  His inner voice asked, How deep inside your own heartbreak do you have to fall before there’s no outward sign of life?

  It was a sad question, and that made him wonder what Nix would have been like if she’d dealt with her mother’s murder without friendship and support.

  Or what he would be like after Tom’s death if it hadn’t been for Nix, Lilah, and Chong.

  He ached to do something. If this was an enemy he could fight, he’d have his sword in his hands, but the truth was that there were some enemies you could not defeat.

  Benny nodded toward the blockhouse. “You were in there, right? A few years ago? In the lab area. What was it like?”

  “Those boys didn’t let me see much. They stuck me in a little room with a cot, a commode, and nothing else. Not even a good book to read. All I got to do was stare at the walls all day, every day, and that ain’t even as entertaining as it sounds.” She thought about it, then chuckled. “I was right happy when I heard that Lilah done busted up the place. They’re good people over there, but they sure ain’t nice.”

  Benny grunted and changed the subject. “Have you seen Joe today? I want to ask him about Chong.”

  She shook her head. “No. He was out at the wreck until late last night. Not sure when he got back. Saw that big ol’ dog of his this morning—one of the monks was walking him.”

  Benny said, “What do you think of him?”

  “Joe? You should ask Red,” said Riot. “She thinks the sun rises and sets around that feller. Better watch out, boy—I think she’s sweet on him.”

  “It’s not like that. Nix has been pumping him for information.”

  “Information for what? For that silly diary of hers?”

  “It’s not silly and it’s not exactly a diary,” said Benny. “She’s been collecting information on zoms.”

  “Like what?”

  “All sorts of stuff—traps, barriers, and like that. How to fight them. She’s been working out how we—people, I mean—can take back the world. It’s smart, too. Joe gave her pages and pages of notes. She’s been asking him how to fight the reapers, too. Like, if we settle in a town or maybe start a settlement somewhere, Nix wants to be ready to defend it against anyone, living or dead.”

  Riot nodded approval. “If that happens, let’s put her in charge of the defenses.”

  He nodded.

  Riot smiled. “Wow. And all this time I thought she was writing love poetry or stories about princesses and unicorns.”

  “You really don’t know Nix, do you?”

  “Apparently not. She’s a . . .”

  Riot’s voice trailed off, and she stared openmouthed at something across the trench. When Benny followed the line of her gaze, he saw a figure that made him feel sick and sad.

  It was a zombie. A woman. In life she had been beautiful, with masses of wavy black hair and a face as coldly regal as any of history’s great queens. Now her flesh was gray and wrinkled, the moisture leeched away by the heat, and her hair hung in matted strings.

  Mother Rose.

  Once the spiritual leader of the Night Church. Once consort to Saint John.

  Once Riot’s mother.

  Now . . . what was she?

  Mother Rose stood at the edge of the trench, and in some weird and inexplicable way she must have recognized Riot. The two of them, mother and daughter, stared at each other. Benny tried to calculate all the things that separated them. Beliefs, remorse, life itself, so many things, all of them greater than actual measurable yards, feet, and inches.

  Two small tears broke and fell down Riot’s cheeks. “Oh God.”

  “Riot, don’t look,” sad Benny quickly. “Go back to the hangars, don’t let—”

  “Go away,” said Riot.

  “Hey, no, I just meant—”

  “Just go.”

  Riot crossed her legs and lowered herself slowly to the ground. She sat there, staring across the trench at the thing that had been her mother.

  Benny turned and slowly walked away.

  13

  BENNY WENT BACK TO THE mess hall to find Nix. He didn’t want to be mad at her. Maybe if they talked it out she’d understand the thing with Chong.

  But she wasn’t there.

  The breakfast crowd was mostly gone, but Benny saw the ranger, Joe, come in. The big man wore camouflaged pants, a sweat-stained gray T-shirt, and handmade sandals. His blue eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. His skin was burned to a red-gold except for white lines from scars old and new. There were a lot of scars. Although he had to be in his late fifties or even early sixties, Joe was very fit, with ropy muscles that flexed under his tough hide as he walked. Ordinarily Joe was vibrant with good humor and rapid-fire snarky comments, but today he shambled to the steam table, and it looked like he needed to use serious concentration to spoon eggs onto his plate. Joe’s dog, a monster of a mastiff named Grimm, trailed along behind him. Joe thumped down into a chair at a table by the far wall; Grimm collapsed on the floor next to him. Everyone at the adjoining table got up and moved.

  Benny drifted over.

  Grimm lifted his head and studied Benny the way Morgie Mitchell used to study a grilled flank steak. Joe was hunched over his food, shoveling eggs into his mouth. He didn’t look up to see who was approaching.

  “Buzz off.”

  Benny stopped. “What?”

  Joe raised his head only enough to glare at Benny over the top of the sunglasses, which had slid halfway down his nose. His eyes were bloodshot and bleary. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it about today? Is it Tell Benny Imura to Go Away Day?”

  “Sounds good to me. And in the spirit of that . . . go away.”

  “No, I don’t think I will.
” He took another step closer. Grimm gave a warning growl so deep and low that it seemed to vibrate up through the floor. “Is he going to bite me?”

  “Pretty good chance of it,” admitted Joe.

  “I’ll risk it.”

  Joe leaned his forearms wearily on the table. “What’s your deal, kid? Does ‘buzz off’ have a different meaning with your generation?”

  “No. I get it. You want me to leave. It’s just that I’m not going to.”

  Benny lowered himself onto a chair. The ranger watched him with a kind of bleak fascination.

  “You’re a weird kid,” said Joe. “Most people go on the assumption that Grimm would gladly have them for lunch. You don’t seem to think so. I’m not sure if you’re a good judge of character or a total moron.”

  “Jury’s out on that at the moment,” said Benny.

  “Okay . . . what’s on your mind?” Joe sighed. “And keep your voice down. My head hurts.”

  Benny peered at him. “Are you drunk?”

  “No, I’m hungover. There’s a distinct difference. One is fun; the other is a whole lot less fun. Right now I am not having any fun, and you’re not helping.”

  “Here’s a thought—why not not get drunk?”

  Benny was not a fan of drunks. Alcoholism and heavy drinking had been serious problems in all the Nine Towns ever since First Night. There were a lot of excuses, of course. Every adult had lost someone during those dreadful days. The apparent apocalypse had burned the faith out of a lot of people—faith in their religions, their ideologies, their expectations, their government, and their own dreams. The persistence of the zombie plague created tremendous paranoia. The world seemed to be ending, so why bother? Why not get drunk? Why not blur all the sharp edges? It saddened Benny as much as it disgusted him, because it was an acceptance of defeat. There was no fight left in it. There was no attempt to get back up and shake a fist at the universe and try again. One of Tom’s favorite martial arts sayings was: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” Yet it seemed that some people just kept wanting to fall back down.

  Joe sipped his coffee. “Exactly when did it become your business what I do?”

  “You’re a soldier, right? A ranger? Aren’t you supposed to be a role model?”

  “Wow, you’re an obnoxious SOB today. You have a double helping of cranky flakes for breakfast?”

  “No. I spent the morning down in the dungeon under the blockhouse looking at my best friend, who seems to be turning into a zombie.”

  “Ah,” said Joe. “Yeah, that’ll do it. I saw him yesterday. Shame.”

  “It’s a ‘shame’? That’s the best you got? A shame? I thought those scientists were supposed to cure him.”

  “First,” said Joe, pointing at Benny with his coffee cup, “stop shouting. You’re hurting my head. Second, what do you think they are over there? Wizards? You think they can wave a magic wand and make everything all better?”

  “Yes. After we found those records on the wrecked plane, you were all excited. You said that we saved the world.”

  Joe rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Well . . . what? We gave them Dr. McReady’s research notes, so why can’t they help Chong?”

  “It’s complicated. They’re running into some speed bumps with those notes.”

  “Like what?”

  “Look, kid . . . you know that Doc McReady was ready to crack this thing, right? Her lab up at Hope One was where the real cutting-edge research was being done. Out there in the field. Out where the Reaper Plague was mutating. She was sending reports back here to Sanctuary, so they were following her lead, but they were a couple of steps back. It’s not like the old days when data could be shared via the Internet. When Hope One was evacuated, the transport plane was supposed to bring back everything McReady had. All of it, right up to the minute so the bigger lab at Sanctuary could finish her research and actually beat this thing.” He paused and shook his head. “Think about that, Ben. We were that close. We were ready to beat the plague that destroyed the whole world.”

  “So . . . okay, it’s a shame that Dr. McReady died when the plane crashed—or maybe the reapers got her, whatever—my point is that if her research was on the plane, then how come the scientists in the blockhouse can’t just, I don’t know, finish it?”

  “Because,” Joe said quietly, “not all the research was on the plane.”

  If Joe had reached across the table and punched him in the face, Benny could not have been more stunned.

  “I went over the cargo manifests,” continued the ranger, “and there’s a reference to the D series of boxes. We found series A through C. Nothing marked with a D. And based on the time Hope One was evacuated, there was nothing dated later than a month before she left.”

  “Did they somehow leave the stuff up at Hope One?”

  “No way. The manifest says that it was packed. It should have been on that plane.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “Well, gee, kid, if I knew that, I wouldn’t have gotten paralytic drunk last night, now would I?”

  Benny felt his face grow hot. “You’re telling me there’s no clue at all?”

  Joe sighed. “I don’t know. There was a single reference to Umatilla, but no notations. Nothing to say that they stopped there.”

  “What’s Umatilla?”

  “The Umatilla Chemical Depot is an army base in Oregon. They stored chemical weapons there. Stuff like GB and VX nerve agents. Bad stuff that was scheduled for destruction. The base was closed in 2015. Not sure what happened to it after that, but there’d be no reason for the transport plane to stop there, and certainly no reason to offload the D-series notes there. Whole area was overrun during First Night. I only mention it because it’s the one thing in the records we can’t account for.”

  “Are you going there?”

  “Me? No. I sent word to a couple of my rangers to head up that way. It’s a long shot and probably not worth the effort.”

  “Look,” Benny said angrily, “even if you don’t have that last month’s worth of stuff, what we found had to put you pretty far ahead. That should be worth something.”

  “It is,” Joe conceded tiredly. “Some of the clinical data in those boxes is responsible for your friend Chong still sucking air. The metabolic stabilizer and a few other treatments. That’s what’s keeping him on the happy side of being dead.”

  “Chong spoke to me today.”

  Joe cocked an eyebrow. “What did he say?”

  Benny told him.

  “Ouch,” said Joe. “Look, this thing’s gone off the rails. I was out there all day yesterday, but I couldn’t find the missing notes. I got to tell you, Benny, this isn’t the ending for all this I’d been writing in my head. For the last couple of years that plane’s been the Holy Grail for us. It was our silver bullet. We find it and find Doc McReady’s notes and bam, the mad scientists in the blockhouse cook up a cure and we all tell our grandkids how we saved the world. But . . . the doctors over there can’t seem to figure out where Doc McReady was going with her research during those last weeks before Hope One was shut down. There were samples of a mutagen, but there was also a reference to a workable treatment code-named Archangel. But the name’s all we have. There’s not one scrap of data on what Archangel is or does. Those boxes are the key, and they’re missing. We lost our last chance to beat this thing.”

  “Don’t say that! There has to be something else we can do. There has to be a way to find that stuff.”

  Joe simply sipped his coffee.

  “Joe, are you going to sit there and tell me that you just give up? You? You’re Captain Ledger, for God’s sake. You’re a hero of First Night.”

  “Sure, kid, it says so on a Zombie Card. It must be true.”

  “My friend is dying,” growled Benny. “We can’t give up.”

  “You think you’re the only person who can feel pain?” asked Joe, his eyes old and bleak. “Before this thing started, I had a wife and a six-mon
th-old kid. I was overseas on a mission when the Reaper Plague got loose. I called my wife, told her to get the hell out, to go to my uncle’s farm near Robinwood, Maryland. It took me a week to get a flight back to the States. By the time I got to San Diego, the whole country was going nuts. No more commercial flights. The military bases were trashed too. When the people started panicking, everybody flocked to the closest base, but because so many of the refugees were already bitten and infected, those bases turned into killing fields. I stole a helicopter from a National Guard base that had become an all-you-can-eat buffet and made it halfway across the country before the army started dropping nukes on the zoms. The EMPs killed the engine, killed my cell phone and our satellite phone. Helicopter died, and we went down hard. There were ten of us on the bird. Four of us survived the landing. We split up and each tried to find our way home. It took me three weeks to make it all the way to my uncle Jack’s place. But . . . there was no one there. The place had burned to the ground, so there was no way for me to tell if my wife and kid ever made it there.”

  Benny stared at him.

  “So why am I telling you all this?” asked Joe. “I’m telling you this because everything in our world points to my family being dead. My wife, my son, my uncle. My brother, Sean, and his family in Baltimore. I never found any of them. Not a hint, not a sign in all these years. They probably are dead. They’re probably walking around as the living dead, just like everyone else. But you know what?”

  Benny said nothing. He doubted he could even speak.

  Joe laid his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol. “If I believed that, if I actually got to the point where I believed that everyone I ever loved was dead, then I’d blow out all my own lights. But I don’t know that, kid. I don’t. I can’t. Not even now, not even after the setback with Doc McReady’s notes.” He sighed. “All I got left is one slim chance that the world isn’t totally broken. That’s what keeps me going, and that’s why I won’t lay down my arms.”

  Finally Benny said, “Then why get drunk?”

  The ranger shook his head. “Sometimes despair gets in a few good punches. Last night was a bad night. This morning sucks too. This afternoon I’ll map out a search grid, and first thing in the morning I’m going to start looking under every stone, inside every cave, and up the butt-hole of every lizard in the desert. If those records are there, I will find them.”