“It wasn’t a duel. I had a plan.”
“A plan to get stabbed?”
“Yes,” Benny said, and he explained what he’d done. “It was like sacrificing a queen to get a checkmate.”
Chong stared at him. “That hovers somewhere between the bravest thing I ever heard of and the stupidest. It’s probably both.”
“Probably,” agreed Benny.
Chong shook his head. “As for the rest, I got bits and pieces of everything else. That guy Joe is here somewhere too. Is he the same Joe Ledger from the Zombie Cards?”
“Yes. Is he all right?”
“He caught a break too. They operated on him and were able to save his life. Lots of damage, though. Dr. McReady said it’ll be months before he can fight again.”
“Oh, man . . .”
“Point is, Benny, we’re both alive, and so are Nix and Lilah.” Chong paused. “After what happened, after things started to go bad in the forest out there . . . I thought this was it, you know? I thought we were all dead. It seemed like the logical end to all of this. I mean, who were we? Four kids who had no business leaving home. Okay, so maybe Lilah’s different, but after Tom died, we should have gone back to Mountainside.”
And that fast the cobwebs in Benny’s head blew away.
“Mountainside!” he cried. “Oh my God!”
87
THEY FORMED A CIRCLE AROUND Joe Ledger’s bed. Benny in a wheel-chair, Chong and Lilah holding hands, Nix standing next to Benny. Dr. McReady and Colonel Reid were there too.
The ranger was awake and in great pain. His color was bad, and sweat beaded his forehead. Dr. McReady was angry with him because he refused to take any pain meds.
“I need to think,” he growled, “and I can’t do that pumped full of morphine.”
“Pain increases stress and—”
“Oh, stick a sock in it, Monica,” he fired back. “I’ve had a lot worse than—”
“I know, I know, Joe, I’ve heard all the stories. You’ve been shot, stabbed, run over, and mauled by wild animals. I’m very impressed with your level of testosterone, but the simple fact remains that those injuries happened to a much younger man and—”
“Like I said, stick a sock in it.”
Grimm—no longer wearing his armor—lay beside the bed and gave a hearty whuff.
Joe turned his red-rimmed, bleary eyes to Benny. “Go on, kid . . . what did you want to tell us?”
Benny repeated what Brother Peter had said with his dying breath.
Mountainside will burn.
“We have to get home,” finished Benny.
“We can’t,” said Colonel Reid. “We’ve secured this facility, but topside it’s still a war zone. All my soldiers are either dead or in the infirmary, and there are half a million infected out there. More, now that they’ve probably killed all the people in the hangars. God knows how many reapers.”
“And all the monks,” said Nix. She wore a fresh bandage over the cut from Brother Peter.
Chong said, “What about Riot and that little girl, Eve?”
No one wanted to meet his eyes.
“They were up there,” said Benny. “We . . . didn’t see them when we landed.”