Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

“I keep telling you—I’m not. I’m trying to communicate with you people, but you keep stonewalling me. What’s that about? ’Cause the way I figure it, you guys owe me and my friends. If we hadn’t told Captain Ledger about the weapons on the plane, that reaper army would have come in here and killed everyone—you, all the sick people, the monks, and everyone in this stupid blockhouse.”

The plane in question was a C-130J Super Hercules, a muscular four-propeller cargo aircraft built before First Night. Benny and Nix had found it wrecked in the forest. It had been used to evacuate a scientist, Dr. Monica McReady, and her staff from Hope One, a remote research base near Tacoma, Washington. The team had been up there studying recent mutations in the zombie plague.

“Don’t confuse heroism with mutual self-interest, Mr. Imura,” said the woman scientist in an icy tone. “You told Captain Ledger about those weapons and materials because it was the only way you and your friends could survive. It was an act of desperation that, because of the nature of this current conflict, benefited parties that have a shared agenda. Anyone in your position would have done the same.”

“Really? That plane was sitting out there for a couple of years—pretty much in your freaking backyard—and you had no clue that it was there. If you spent less time with your heads up your—”

“Mr. Imura . . .”

He sighed. “Okay, so maybe we had our own survival in mind when we told you about it—we’re not actually stupid—but that doesn’t change the fact that we saved your butts.”

“That’s hardly an accurate assessment, Mr. Imura. Saint John and the army of the Night Church are still out there. Do you know where they are?”

Benny’s answer was grudging. “No.”

In truth, no one knew where the reapers had gone. Guards patrolling the fence had seen a few, and Joe Ledger said that he’d found signs of small parties out in the desert, but the main part of the vast reaper army was gone. Saint John himself seemed to have gone with them, but nobody knew where. At first Benny and his friends were happy about that—let them bother someone else; but on reflection, that was a selfish and mean-spirited reaction. An immature reaction. The reapers had only one mission, and that was to exterminate all life. No matter where they went, innocent people were going to die.

“So,” said the scientist, “you can’t really make the claim that you—and I quote—‘saved our butts.’ We might all be wasting our time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” There was no answer. He kicked the wall. “Yo! What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nothing.

Then the lights came on and the door hissed open. Outside, the sirens were already blaring.

7

BROTHER ALBERT ESCORTED HIM ACROSS a bridge to the monks’ side of Sanctuary. On the other side, Benny spotted Lilah walking along the edge of the trench. He fell into step beside her. They walked for a while in silence. Behind them the guards used a winch to raise the bridge.

Lilah was tall, beautiful, with a bronze tan and blond hair so sun-bleached that it was as white as snow. She had wide, penetrating eyes that were sometimes hazel and sometimes honey-colored, changing quickly with her fiery moods. She carried a spear made from black pipe and a military bayonet.

Every time he saw her, Benny felt an odd twinge in his chest. It wasn’t love—he loved Nix with his whole heart, and besides, this girl was too strange, too different for him. No, it was a feeling he’d never quite been able to define, and it was as strong now as it had been the first time he’d seen her picture on a Zombie Card.

Lilah, the Lost Girl.

He finally worked up to the nerve to say, “They let me see him today.”

Lilah abruptly stopped and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “Tell me.”

Benny gen

tly pushed her hand away and told her everything that had happened. He left out the part about the soldier trying to hit Chong with his baton. There were already enough problems between Lilah and the soldiers. For the first few days after Chong had been admitted into the labs for treatment, Lilah stayed by his side. Twice soldiers had attempted to remove her, and twice soldiers were carried to the infirmary. Then on the eighth night, Chong appeared to succumb to the Reaper Plague. His vital signs bottomed out, and for a moment the doctors and scientists believed that he’d died. They wanted to have him quickly transported outside so he could be with the zoms when he reanimated. Lilah wouldn’t accept that Chong was dead. Either her instincts told her something the machines did not, or she went a little crazy. Benny was inclined to believe that it was a bit of both. When the orderlies moved in to take Chong away, Lilah attacked them. Benny never got all the details, but from what he could gather, four orderlies, two doctors, and five soldiers were badly hurt, and a great deal of medical equipment was damaged in what was apparently a fight of epic proportions. The soldiers came close to shooting Lilah, and if she hadn’t used one of the chief scientists as a shield—holding her knife to the fabric of his hazmat suit—they might have done it.

It was a stalemate.

And then the machines began beeping again, arguing with mechanical certainty that Chong was not dead. The scientist, fearing for his life and seeing a way out of the standoff, swore to Lilah that they would do everything they could to keep Chong alive, and to find some way of treating the disease that thrived within him. Lilah, never big on trust, was a hard sell. But in the end, Chong’s need for medical attention won out. She released the scientist. Chong was injected with something called a metabolic stabilizer—a concoction based on a formula found among Dr. McReady’s notes on the transport plane. Once Chong was stabilized, Lilah was taken—at gunpoint—outside the blockhouse and turned over to Benny, Nix, and the monks. She was forbidden to cross the trench. Four guards were posted on the monks’ side of the bridge to make sure of that.

As Benny described Chong’s condition, Lilah staggered as if she’d been punched. She leaned on her spear for support.

“He spoke, though,” said Benny hopefully. “That’s something. It’s an improvement, right? It’s a good sign and—”

Lilah shook her head and gazed across the distance toward the white blockhouse. “My town boy is lost.”

“Lilah, I—”

“Go away,” she said in a voice that was almost inhuman.

Benny shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged off to find Nix.