Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

Then she winced as a scream echoed up from the burning town.

“I’d love to see them all burn,” she said viciously. “If I thought it would stop them, I’d set myself on fire and go running into their camp. Oh yeah . . . I’d sacrifice myself for that. . . .”

“Don’t even think about it,” snapped Nix.

Benny walked to the edge of the hill. With the quads running at top speed, they could be in Mountainside in three or four hours. He did some crude math in his head and figured that it was a three- or four-day march for the reaper army. That was no time at all. Even with Nix’s book filled with diagrams of earthworks and trenches, even if everyone in town worked together to reinforce the walls, three or four days wasn’t enough. The realities of this math conjured images of the reapers invading the town, setting fire to Lafferty’s General Store and the school and the town hall. If he closed his eyes, he knew he’d see images of R3’s chasing the children from the Sunday school, and climbing in through every door and window of Chong’s house. He had witnessed so much carnage since leaving town that it was far too easy to imagine more.

He thought about Morgie Mitchell standing on his front porch, maybe holding the bokken he’d used during those long afternoons with Tom. Morgie, fighting to protect his mother and sisters. Morgie being pulled down and torn to pieces.

There were a few scattered gunshots beyond the veil of smoke. Someone was still alive, still fighting back.

However, Benny’s mind was churning on the word Riot had just used.

Sacrifice.

Is that what it would come to? Is that what it would take to stop this?

The gunshots were fewer and farther between. The whole world seemed to be on fire.

Lilah spoke in the silence. “The trees are burning.”

It was true. The drought and the heat from the reapers’ fires had leeched the last of the moisture from the trees, and the intense heat caused them to burst into flame all around the town. Flaming figures ran among the trees. Zoms, Benny thought, set ablaze but unable to yield to pain until the fires melted their muscles and tendons.

It was horrible.

So horrible.

And yet . . .

It ignited a dreadful idea in Benny’s brain.

95

THEY GOT BACK ON THEIR quads and drove away.

Twice they had to veer off the roads to avoid running into zoms. They passed through a few small ghost towns that had been cleared of zoms. They rode beside rusted steel tracks on which sat a cargo train that had to be more than a mile long. All the coal hoppers had long since been picked clean by teams of scavengers, as had some of the big chemical tankers. As they passed, Benny saw that each had been marked to indicate content and remaining quantities. There were nine bleach tankers, each one holding thirty thousand gallons. Farther along the road they passed a propane and kerosene company. Benny knew that much of the cooking oil and fuel used in town was brought in from somewhere close. This must be it. There were rows of massive tanks—rusted but still intact. He reckoned there was enough here to supply the eight thousand residents of Mountainside for the next fifty years.

They drove on.

But within a thousand yards Benny slowed, looked over his shoulder, and cut around in a looping U-turn. He saw everyone’s puzzled faces as he headed back to the fuel company yard.

The gate was closed but not locked. There was nothing here to attract zoms and more than enough fuel for any of the traders to come and take some. The cost wasn’t in finding it but getting it safely back to town. The others pulled up beside him.

Chong looked at the DANGER: FLAMMABLE sign. “While I admire your thinking, dude, I don’t think we’re going to able to talk the reapers into gathering here for a big psycho-killer cookout.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” said Benny. He told them the idea that had begun forming on the hill above Haven and was taking shape minute by minute.

They stared at him with a mixture of expressions.

“You’re freaking nuts,” said Chong, appalled.

“It’ll never work,” insisted Lilah.

“In your dreams,” said Riot.

Only Nix remained silent, her eyes narrow and cunning.

“The other day,” said Benny, “when I was talking to Joe Ledger, he asked me how far I’d be willing to go to stop Saint John if he was coming after me and mine. He said that if I could look inside my own head and see the line that I won’t cross or a limit that’s too far, then Saint John will win.”