Lost Roads (Benny Imura 7)

“Leafy,” he murmured into the empty night, “I’m sorry. I tried to keep you safe…”

The part of him that was still the Hated—the battered child on the pilgrim’s road—was still clutching that broken clamshell, still fighting for the girl with autumn leaves in her tangled hair.

But Leafy was gone.

Sister Sorrow was gone.

Just as Mother Night and Brother Peter and Saint John were all gone. Killed by Imura and his unclean kind. They had polluted his life, darkened his skies, and burned down the Night Church.

He had never felt more alone in his entire life.

A few houses were burning, but most of the town still stood. It defied him and defied god, as if saying that it had endured everything since the End and would outlive this, too.

“No,” murmured Brother Mercy.

He walked across the street, stepping over corpses, feeling the last of his love and hope die within him. A general store was filling the street with its burning light, but the fire was not spreading. Even as he approached, the roof collapsed, and the force of it extinguished all but some peripheral fires.

“No,” repeated the reaper.

He bent and picked up a stick that lay partly ablaze. He saw that it was an old hockey stick. The plastic blade had mostly melted, and small fingers of fire danced along the wood handle. Brother Mercy tore off his shirt and wound it quickly around the burning end. He stuck it back into the fire until the shirt was burning. Then he raised it and turned, walking from house to house to house, entering open doors, touching his torch to chairs and beds and curtains. Setting it all alight. Creating out of New Alamo a funeral pyre for Sister Sorrow.

For Leafy.

For love.

95

THREE MILES AWAY, ALONG THE road to Site B, Alethea was trying to keep the fleeing people of New Alamo alive.

“Run!” she screamed, shoving the refugees forward.

Pale-faced figures seemed to materialize out of the shadows, reaching with dead hands, biting the air with dead mouths, filling the night with moans of endless hunger. People cried out and ran in all directions, avoiding one set of clutching hands only to run into another.

Alethea swung her baseball bat at every pale face she saw, but so many people needed her all at once.

You can’t save them all.

The words flashed through her head and broke her heart with their truth.

Then she was moving. Rainbow Smite rose and fell, shattering wrists and knees and necks. The dead fell. People fell too, crying out in agony as gray teeth bit into their flesh.

As Alethea fought, some of the panicked people shook off their despair and rallied. A few. Not all. They used whatever weapons they carried. Some did not have weapons and used fists or rocks they picked up.

She saw Amos Gunderson, the town farrier, fall, his throat spurting blood.

She saw Isabella Sweetwater use a golf club to batter two teenage zombies away from a stroller that was filled with babies orphaned during the two previous attacks. Isabella had to be at least eighty, but she swung the club like a brutal warrior, grunting and snarling.

She saw Mr. Ford—who Alethea had not even realized was with her group—kneeling on the ground, one hand clutched around a wrist that was bleeding heavily. Their eyes met, and she saw a deep hopelessness there, a realization that the old Chess Player knew this was his end. Despite all of that, he managed a smile as he struggled back to his feet. He tore off his scarf, wrapped it around his wrist, picked up the antique sword he’d brought, and went back to the fight.

Alethea’s bat seemed to move without conscious thought, and Alethea felt herself shifting inside, in her head, even in her muscle memory. There had been so many fights since the first ravager attack that battle seemed to define her. She was of this, not just in it.

She fought and killed. Fought and killed.

The shamblers crumpled beneath her onslaught, and even as she bashed and smashed, Alethea seemed to view herself from a distance. Where was the sassy queen of snark who loved nothing more than to sprawl on the summer grass with Spider and Gutsy? Where was the princess of New Alamo who made everyone, even adults, jump? Where was the girl who loved life? Who was this person? Grief for who she had been and would never be again stabbed at her.

And yet she fought on.

Then, suddenly, there was a shrieking agony in her leg, and Alethea was falling. A shambler, its legs broken, had crawled up behind her and clamped teeth on her calf. Terror was a huge black wave that wanted to smash down on her as she used the butt of the baseball bat to hammer at the dead face. Bones and teeth broke, and it fell away; then she got to one knee and chopped down, ending the thing.