Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

The zombie’s last running steps were confused, and the headless body puddled down onto the ground, leaking pints of black, wormy blood.

18

HIS NAME WAS CHONG.

He knew that much, though the name was more of a sound, something familiar to which he reacted. He did not know what the name meant. Or if it meant anything at all.

Chong squatted in the darkness, arms resting loosely on his knees, hands dangling, head lowered, looking up from under threads of filthy hair. Every once in a while his fingers twitched, a spasm very like the motion of grabbing something. Of squeezing something that would scream.

Spit glistened on his lips and ran down his chin.

He thought about the boy who had been in here earlier. There was a sound for him, too. A word sound that triggered memory. Not memories of laughing or talking or fishing or trading Zombie Cards. Those memories sometimes flashed through his brain, but they were meaningless fragments. No, what he remembered was the smell of the boy.

The smell of meat. So much of it. So close.

As he thought

about that boy, he felt his lips move. He heard his throat make a sound. Listened as the sound filled the air.

“B-Benny . . .”

Hearing the name intensified his hunger.

That meat had been so close. His teeth had almost had it. His stomach ached at the thought. He crouched there in the shadows and waited for the other boy—for the meat—to come back.

19

THREE MONTHS AGO . . .

Saint John loved the screams. They sounded like prayers to him.

With each shriek of pain, each cry for mercy that would not come, he knew that the eyes and minds and souls of the heretics were opening to the truth. The old gods, the old religions, could not protect them, because they were all false. When the blades of the reapers opened the red mouths, each mouth spoke the truth. The only salvation was oblivion.

He stood in the burning street with Sister Sun. She pleased him. The woman was brilliant by any standard, and as cold as moonlight. She kept disease from sweeping through the reaper army, though the withering winds of cancer were destroying her day by day. In the last six months she’d lost forty pounds, and soon she would be a skeleton.

If she had a flaw beyond physical infirmity, it was a stubborn refusal to let go of the science of the old world. That brought her into conflict with the more hard-line reapers, but it also provided an interesting X factor that Saint John occasionally found useful. The fact that Mother Rose hated and feared Sister Sun was another useful thing. By observing that dynamic without becoming involved in it, Saint John often learned valuable things about each of them. They were, at present, the two most powerful women in the Night Church.

Now he accompanied Sister Sun along a burning street toward the center of this doomed little town.

“What is it you wanted to show me?” he asked.

“Brother Victor was injured in the fighting,” wheezed Sister Sun. “A sucking chest wound. He was taken to a gazebo we’ve been using as a triage center for this engagement, but he bled out. The Red Brothers were going to release him outside of town so he could wander, but . . .”

She let her words trail off as they arrived at the gazebo that stood in the village square. The structure was surrounded by members of the Red Brotherhood—the combat elite of the reapers. They were each marked by a bloodred palm print tattooed on their faces. They parted to allow Saint John and Sister Sun a better view but kept everyone else away.

As Saint John approached, he saw Brother Victor on the other side of the rail. The reaper’s face was dead pale and his mouth dark with blood. He turned toward the movement of the newcomers and immediately crouched like a cat ready to spring. He bared his teeth and snarled. A black, viscous goo, thick as motor oil, dribbled over his teeth and down his chin. Small white worms writhed in the muck.

It was clear that Brother Victor had become one of the gray people.

The dead thing suddenly hurled himself at Saint John.

Four muscular Red Brothers leaped to intercept the rush, and they forced Victor back with wooden poles. The reaper retreated, but he began pacing back and forth, occasionally lunging at the rail with cat quickness.

Saint John frowned. “I don’t understand this. Is he dead?”

“He is,” said Sister Sun.

“But he’s so fast.”