Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

• • •

Saint John’s aides brought up a supply cart, and he climbed onto it to get a better view. The sight nearly took the heart from him. The field in front of the town was a madhouse of battle. Reapers fighting the gray people. Forty thousand of the living against eighty thousand of the dead.

And the town . . .

The town still stood.

He turned to his aides, teeth bared, his face an inhuman mask of fury. “Slaughter the gray people. Pass the word. Do that first, do it now. And then we will pull down that fence and show those heretics the true meaning of holy wrath.”

• • •

The Red Brothers raced out into the crowds, shouting orders, using curses and kicks and fists to force the reapers into some semblance of order. To get them to fight back. Some of the reapers threw down their weapons and tried to flee, but after the Red Brothers butchered them, the others fell into line, and with the elite warriors leading them, they counterattacked.

The dead, even the running dead, were frightening and incredibly dangerous.

But they were brainless monsters. They had no tactics, no strategy, no skill at arms. The reapers knew how to fight them. Of course they did. Killing was their pathway to paradise, even the killing of the dead.

The Red Brotherhood waded into the fight, swinging two-hand swords and fire axes and farming scythes. They cut swathes through the dead, slaughtering and dismembering with machinelike precision.

Saint John watched this and slowly, slowly, his smile returned.

Any single reaper should be able to defend himself against two or three of the dead. Reapers working together, fighting in military wedges led by the fiercest of their own kind—they were a force like nothing else on earth.

• • •

Benny Imura saw the precise moment when this part of his plan failed. The reapers had turned on the monsters that had turned on them. Thousands of blades flashed in the sunlight, and the massive army of the Night Church crushed the legions of the dead.

He leaned his head against the ladder and sighed.

The last of the propane tanks had blown up. The Freedom Riders at the fence line were still firing, but there were only so many bullets.

Benny knew this would happen.

He had planned for this failure.

But he dreaded the next stages, knowing that with each step he was venturing into darker and darker territory. Even in the slim chance that

he lived through this . . . could he ever find his way out of the abyss?

He doubted it. Joe’s advice about becoming the monster they were afraid of did not come with a suggestion for how to reclaim his humanity.

He already felt lost.

103

BENNY CLIMBED DOWN FROM THE tower. The pain in his back was like a constant scream, but he didn’t care. Everything was screaming. The very air seemed to cry out in pain.

Nix and the others ran to meet him. They still held their torches. Chong climbed down and joined them, picking up a torch from the bonfire.

They stood for one moment in a circle.

“Go,” said Benny, and everyone turned to run.

All except Nix.

“Benny . . . ,” she began, but he gave a fierce shake of his head.

“Not now,” he begged.