Fire & Ash bi-4 Page 9

  Then Eve turned back to the dolls.

  The shears rose and fell, rose and fell.

  CHAPTER 27

  THREE MONTHS AGO…

  Saint John came out of a long private meditation when he heard a quiet footfall nearby. “Good afternoon, Sister Sun,” he said quietly, eyes still closed.

  “Honored One,” she said.

  Saint John opened his eyes and touched her head, murmuring a small blessing. She straightened up and sat where he indicated. Sister Sun had once been a lovely woman, and she still had deeply intelligent eyes and a face that reminded him of paintings he’d seen of Ma Gu, the ancient Korean goddess of longevity. It was a bitter irony, of course, since she had so little time left in front of her. Months, not years. He never commented on the resemblance, of course, because he felt it might offend her in a spiritual sense to be reminded of a goddess from one of mankind’s many false religions.

  Instead he said, “You look troubled, sister.”

  “I am. There have been more reports about mutations. More of the gray people who can move faster than should be possible.”

  “How many cases?”

  “Seven, which brings the total number of reliable reports to twenty-two.”

  “And this continues to disturb you?”

  “Yes, Honored One. We will be moving the reapers back into Nevada soon, and I asked Mother Rose if it wasn’t time for us to consider opening the shrine.”

  “What would you have us do, sister?” asked Saint John. “Use the weapons of the heretics?”

  Sister Sun took a moment on that. “Honored One… I love my fellow reapers, but I’m not fool enough to think that all of them are with us out of an undying love of Thanatos — all praise his darkness. Some of them — maybe a lot of them — are opportunists who chose to kiss the knife rather than feel its caress on their flesh.”

  Saint John did not comment on that.

  “But I wasn’t making a case with Mother Rose for the weapons aboard that plane,” she said. “I only want access to Dr. McReady’s notes, samples, and clinical studies and—”

  Before she could say more, her body was racked by a coughing fit that was deep and wet. It made her frail body hitch and pulse with pain, and her bird-thin bones creaked. She pressed a red kerchief to her mouth. Saint John was aware that red cloth was chosen because it more effectively hid the droplets of blood torn from her with each barking cough.

  “The darkness calls out to you, my sister,” said Saint John.

  When she could speak, she said, “Praise to the darkness. But please, listen to me. I’m almost out of time. Look at me, Honored One. To read and process that research takes more than a healthy mind, and when my body fails my mind will go too. The Night Church will lose a valuable opportunity to understand why this plague is changing and what those changes will mean for our mission. I don’t know how much longer I can do reliable work.”

  “The plague is the plague,” he said. “It is no threat to our god’s plans.”

  “I believe it has become a very real threat,” Sister Sun said. “The pathogen that started the plague was really an amalgam of several super-viruses and some genetically engineered parasites. As you know, this was not something nature — or god — created. The Reaper Plague was a weapon of war, however—”

  Saint John interrupted. “No. It was the voice of god whispering in the ears of certain people. They were told to create the plague as a way of cleansing the earth of the infection of life. The Reaper Plague was the sword of god, and it is from that sword that I took the name for the servants of god whose knives open the red mouths in the last of the sinners.”

  They rose and walked in silence for a while. Finally Sister Sun spoke. “Honored One, that is a theological discussion, and I defer to your holy insights. However, the matter of Dr. McReady’s research is a more… um, mundane matter. It’s science.”

  “Yes, I do understand that. She wants to stop the Reaper Plague,” observed Saint John. “Dr. McReady is an enemy of god, and her works are blasphemy.”

  “No doubt,” said Sister Sun quickly. “My point, Honored One, is that the pathogen may have become unstable.”

  “Don’t all living things change?”

  “Not this,” she insisted. “The Reaper Plague — from everything I learned about it before kneeling to kiss the knife — was designed not to mutate. This is a bioweapon, a designer plague. It was designed to remain stable so that the outcome of any implementation could be precisely predicted. That means that if the plague is mutating, it isn’t happening naturally. Someone is causing that mutation. And I think we both know who.”

  They walked well beyond the perimeter of the reaper camp before Saint John spoke. “What danger do you foresee from a mutation?”

  “If the gray people mutate into something that would prey on the reapers, wouldn’t that send the wrong message to our people? We tell the reapers that the gray people are like sheep and we are shepherds, but that would change. We’d become hunted. The message would get mixed, and that could hurt us. It would weaken our control. It might shake the faith of the people.”

  “Or,” said Saint John, “it could test that faith.”

  “Dr. McReady’s research is far too dangerous to leave unaddressed. We must act. We must find her.”

  “Our best guess is that Dr. McReady is somewhere in California,” mused Saint John. “Or perhaps Oregon. If she’s still alive, then explain to me how her experiments hundreds of miles away could be causing mutations here.”

  “Honored One… I think we may have caused this.”

  “How so?”

  “When Mother Rose found the plane, there were many things aboard. The gray people she’d captured, the medical records, biological samples, and bags of some red powder. I was never allowed to examine any of this. However, I know that one of Mother Rose’s reapers opened one of the bags of powder. Probably out of idle curiosity. He found nothing of value and dumped that bag out of the hatch. If I’m right, then it may have contained a mutagenic agent of some kind. It would explain the mutations that we’ve been seeing, because they all began after that bag was opened.”

  Saint John frowned. “That’s disturbing.”

  “I think McReady had compounded a mutagen and was taking it to Sanctuary for development and possible mass production.”

  “Ah… Sanctuary,” murmured Saint John. “The time may come when it will be necessary to burn that pestilential place from the surface of the earth.”

  “They have a whole army division there.”

  “Do they?”

  “It’s what our spies say.”

  He gave a soft grunt.

  “If I had access to McReady’s research,” continued Sister Sun, “I might be able to do something about the mutations. Possibly stop them. Or maybe devise another kind of mutation. Something that would serve the Night Church rather than pose a threat to it.”

  Saint John pursed his lips but said nothing.

  “Please,” begged Sister Sun softly, “let me have access to McReady’s research.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Nix sat on a swing, arms looped around the chains, toes dug into the sand so that the swing moved only a few inches back and forth. The adrenaline in her bloodstream had begun to wash out, and it seemed to be taking all her energy with it, leaving her exhausted and sad.

  Seeing Eve did not make that sadness retreat one inch.

  The little girl was dozing in Riot’s arms, but Eve’s brow was furrowed. Nix could imagine what her dreams were like.

  When she closed her own eyes, Nix saw Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer crowd her mother into a corner and begin beating her. That memory was the very last Nix had of her mother. Right after that Charlie knocked her unconscious. By the time she regained consciousness, Nix was already in the Ruin on the way to Gameland. And her mother was dead. Found too late and quieted by Tom Imura.

  Would her dreams ever go away?

  Nix doubted it.

 
; She worried about it too. Grief and anger were changing her, warping her. For months she had been mean to Benny — the one person who loved her unconditionally. She felt shrewish at times, and vicious.

  Only recently had that begun to change, and Nix didn’t know why.

  She still had her nightmares. And in her troubled sleep she probably furrowed her brow as Eve was doing now. She knew she ground her teeth — her jaws always hurt in the morning.

  How does one come back from that edge? What was that saying from Nietzsche?

  Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

  Nix wished she didn’t understand what that meant.

  Riot caught her looking at Eve, and for a long moment the two of them stared at each other, saying so much without words. Riot slowly nodded, and Nix nodded back.

  She understands too.

  And Lilah.

  Benny, too, now that Tom was gone.

  And Chong?

  He hadn’t wanted to come along on this journey. The jet didn’t matter to him. He left home for love, and in the wilderness he stumbled along all the way to the edge of the abyss.

  Was Chong already lost? Was he a monster?

  If you fought monsters and then became one… could you ever go back again? Or did the abyss own Chong… and Eve?

  And all of them?

  CHAPTER 29

  TWO MONTHS AGO…

  Saint John leaned against a tree, peeling a fig with a small knife, enjoying the sensation of the blade sliding just beneath the skin of the fruit. He wondered, not for the first time, if fruit could feel pain. If it could scream. Even a simple fig would taste so much better if that were the case.

  Six tall, stern fighters of the Red Brotherhood stood nearby. Two watching him, four watching outward. The least experienced among them had sent a hundred heretics into the darkness. Saint John loved the Red Brothers as if they were his own children, and it was their choice, not his, that they wear the tattoo of his left hand on their faces. Brother Peter was his right hand, and they — collectively — were his left.

  Inside their circle, seated on a tree stump, was Sister Sun. On the ground between her and Saint John was an old blue plastic ice chest. The lid was sealed with tape. A stack of boxes stood beside the cooler. Each of the boxes was marked with a large letter D.

  “My sister,” said Saint John, “do you know what this is?”

  Sister Sun’s eyes were wide as she stared at the material. She nodded, almost unable to speak.

  “Do you maintain that it serves the will of god to open those boxes? To read the words of the heretic McReady?”

  She tried to speak, but her voice was thick. Sister Sun cleared her throat and tried again. “I do, Honored One.”

  “Even though our Mother Rose believes that this is tainted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though to do so would be to break faith with Mother Rose?”

  Now Sister Sun raised her eyes and looked directly at the saint. “My faith is in god,” she said. “I… I mean I love Mother Rose, but—”

  “Do not apologize,” said the saint. “It’s unseemly.”

  She blushed and nodded.

  Saint John cut a piece of fig, put it in his mouth, chewed it thoughtfully, then nodded to the folders.

  “Mother Rose will be in Utah until next month. When she returns, she will very likely inspect the seals on the Shrine of the Fallen.”

  Sister Sun nodded.

  “When that happens, she will find all these seals intact. Everything correct and in order.”

  He did not say “or else” or make any other threat. He cut another slice of fig and offered it to Sister Sun, who reached out a trembling hand to take it. She chewed it quietly while he stood there and smiled at her.

  CHAPTER 30

  Benny parked the Honda in the damaged Yamaha’s slot and went looking for Captain Ledger.

  As he passed the playground, though, he saw Riot and Eve sitting on a set of rusted swings. Benny drifted over that way. Riot’s face was animated as she told a funny story involving a crazy little dog name Rosie and her adventures in an abandoned toy store. Benny thought that Riot looked deeply strained despite her animation. There was an odd light in her eyes and a detectable tremolo in her voice.

  Sister Hannahlily stood a dozen yards away, pretending to water flowers, but she was clearly watching Eve. Deep lines of concern were etched into her face.

  Eve’s face was slack, her mouth open, her eyes dull and fixed, as if all her internal lights had been switched off. It was how she often was, drifting between moderate highs and very deep lows. Benny took the bag of balloons from his pocket, tore it open, selected a bright yellow one, and began blowing it up as he strolled over in front of the swings. Riot saw what he was doing and raised her eyebrows in surprise. Balloons were rare — like most things from the old world, they weren’t made to last, and most of them were so dried out that any attempt to blow them up was a failure. The ones in the bag were wonderfully preserved, and with each puff the balloon grew and grew.

  Eve’s face remained slack, but after the fifth or sixth puff her eyes reclaimed a little bit of their focus and shifted toward him. The more the balloon expanded, the more awareness seemed to grow in the little girl’s eyes. Riot gave Benny a grateful smile that glistened with tears.

  It really must be one of Eve’s bad days, Benny thought. Riot looks like she’s ready to scream.

  Finally Benny stopped and tied off the balloon.

  “For milady,” he said, presenting the balloon to Eve with an exaggerated flourish and bow. “I believe you ordered a big, squishy, yellow thing.”

  There was a moment when Eve did nothing except look at the balloon, her mouth and body still slack. Then, like the sun peering shyly through the darkest of storm clouds, a small smile formed on her lips. She glanced at Benny and blinked several times, as if she was seeing him for the first time. Which, he thought sadly, she probably was. He kept his own smile pasted onto his face while the girl struggled out of the shadows. When her tiny hand slowly rose and reached for the balloon, she took it as lightly as someone reaching for an illusion in a dream, as if she was afraid it would suddenly vanish.

  Benny straightened and took two more balloons from the pack, a blue one and a green one. He almost picked a red one, but Riot gave him a quick and desperate sharp shake of the head. He stuffed the red one quickly out of sight and handed the other balloons to Riot.

  “If you fly away to the land of Oz,” said Benny, “make sure to send me a message via delivery Munchkin.”

  Eve nodded seriously, as if that was a reasonable suggestion.

  Benny left, and when he looked over his shoulder, Riot was teaching Eve how to blow up the green balloon. The little girl was smiling, but the whole thing hurt Benny’s heart. He was aware that the older nun, Sister Hannahlily, was watching him. He smiled and nodded to her, and she responded. A nod, no smile.

  A few minutes later Benny found Joe Ledger working out in a small enclosure behind the last of the hangars on this side of the trench. Grimm, Joe’s dog, opened one baleful eye, decided Benny wasn’t a lunch being delivered, and went back to sleep. Even so, Benny stayed well away from the mastiff as he entered the enclosure.

  Joe Ledger was stripped to the waist, wearing only camo pants and boots, and he shifted around on the balls of his feet as he worked a heavy bag. Joe barraged the leather with jabs, hooks, overhands, uppercuts, backhands, hammer blows, two-knuckle hits, corkscrew punches, elbows, and the occasional cutting palm. Then he shifted to kicks — snaps and roundhouse kicks, hooks and slashing knees. The bag juddered and danced as if it was being hit by continuous gunfire, and with each blow dust puffed through the canvas’s thick weave.

  It bothered Benny that despite Joe being at least thirty years older than Tom, the man was at least as fast. Maybe faster. And a whole lot stronger. That was annoying. It felt wrong, somehow, as if this man’s sup
erior skill was in some way an insult to Tom’s memory. Even so… it was mesmerizing to watch.

  Eventually, though, his impatience ran faster than his fascination with the display of martial arts. Benny cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Hey — Joe!”

  Grimm gave him a single, scolding bark.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” said Benny.

  Benny could almost swear that the dog cocked one eyebrow in wry amusement.

  Finally Joe stepped back from the bag, chest heaving, sweat running in lines down his body and limbs. His face was flushed a deeper red than his sunburn, and his eyes were bright. He no longer looked hungover.

  “Hey, kid, what’s shaking?” asked Joe as he took a canteen from where it rested atop a stack of cinder blocks, unscrewed the cap, and took a long pull. There was no alcohol stink, and Benny was pleased to see that the canteen was filled with water rather than any “hair of the dog” booze. Joe seemed to sense something of that and grinned. “Best way to clean the system out is a lot of water and the kind of workout that gets the blood pumping.”

  “Or you could stay sober.”

  Joe peered at Benny while he took another long pull. “You’re kind of a pain in the ass, anyone ever tell you that?”

  “It’s come up in conversation.”

  “No doubt. So,” said Joe as he raised the canteen for another drink, “to what do I owe the honor of your company?”

  Benny said, “A reaper tried to kill me today.”

  Joe spat water halfway across the enclosure. “What? Where?”

  “Out at the plane.”

  “At the plane?” Joe yelled. “What in the wide blue hell were you doing out there?”

  “Not dying, thanks for asking,” Benny shouted back.

  Joe pointed a finger at Benny. “I thought I told you kids not to go anywhere near that plane.”

  “You did,” agreed Benny. “I ignored you. Mostly because I don’t remember you being the boss of me. When did that happen?”