It was an epic fight.
His personal philosophy had always been that a fight was won by whoever wanted it more, and he always wanted it more than anyone he faced. A lot of them probably thought they had the skills and drive and determination to win, but Ledger was still alive, and all his old enemies were dead.
He wondered, in his darker moments, whether when he died and went to where killers like him deserved to go, all the people he’d killed would be waiting for him. At other times he wondered if he’d go somewhere like the Valhalla of the Norsemen, where he would fight all day and feast all night, and that was how it would be forever. He thought that likely, or at least fitting, since he had never really known anything but war. A tragedy when he was a teenager had twisted him into a certain shape, forged him into a weapon, and that weapon had been called to use over and over and over again.
No rest for the wicked. That was how he saw it.
Now, he thought that this might be his last great fight.
An army of monsters all around him and no real plan for anything but inflicting as much collateral damage as possible. If he had to fall, then what of it?
His only real regret was that Grimm was going to die too. Ledger liked dogs a lot more than he’d ever liked people, and Grimm had been his friend for a long time.
They fought well together.
Up ahead he could see the ravager who he’d marked as the leader of this little shindig. A big bruiser of a guy who very much needed his butt kicked. Two or three times the ravager had ordered his thugs to gun Ledger down, but Sam Imura punched their tickets. Bing, bang, boom.
The leader leaped down from his hill and was working his way toward Ledger.
Fine, thought the old soldier, if he wants to make a fight of it, then let’s tango.
For him it would be one last brawl to close out a life lived out in the storm lands, in the place where nothing but cold winds ever blew.
Maybe when it was over he’d find peace. Maybe that slim chance was possible, even for someone like him. He thought about his wife, Junie Flynn, who had almost certainly died on First Night. Junie with the tangled blond hair, sun freckles, and the bluest eyes Ledger had ever seen. Sweet-natured, smart, powerful.
Lost.
And their child. Lost. It did not matter to Ledger that their baby had been adopted. Who cared? Family was family.
What mattered was that maybe they would be waiting for him on the other side.
Maybe.
Maybe.
He swung the sword, and Grimm slashed with his spikes, and they fought on.
98
GUTSY STARED AT COLLINS BUT not at the gun. She didn’t really care about it. The world was ending anyway.
Dr. Morton stood holding a duffel bag, eyes wide, mouth open, shocked to silence.
Behind Gutsy, out in the hall, the soldier was screaming in a way that told them all that he was losing his fight with his former “pet.” Good. Sombra had a lot of his own issues to sort out with the man who had beaten him so cruelly and forced him to fight other dogs.
“Bess,” said the doctor, finding his voice, “Darren . . .”
“Darren’s an idiot who can’t even control his own dog,” snapped Collins. “Who cares about him?”
“But—”
“Finish filling the bags. Do it now, Max, or so help me God I’ll put a bullet in you.”
The doctor flinched and began reaching for more of the records.
“Gomez,” said Collins, eyeing Gutsy, “what did you mean when you said the base had blown up? Was that some kind of stupid joke?”
“It’s the truth,” said Gutsy. “I was there. It’s destroyed. So . . . where are you going to go now, huh? You have another bunch of Rat Catchers somewhere else?”