Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

“Then they’re hiding. Find them.”

Saint John stopped at the entrance of town and looked around. The guard towers appeared empty too. Except for . . .

“There,” he said, and his aides looked up at the closest tower. A single figure stood by the rail.

The boy with the Japanese eyes.

“Bring him to me,” said the saint. “Alive and able to scream. I will tear the answers from him.”

Four of the Red Brothers hurried toward the tower, but before they could reach it, the figure far above raised the bullhorn and spoke. His eyes streamed and burned from all the chemicals in the air. The bleach burned his throat and made breathing difficult. But Benny’s rage shaved all thoughts of pain and discomfort away.

“Listen to me,” he roared. “This is Benjamin Imura, samurai of the Nine Towns.”

The reapers laughed and jeered. Some threw rocks at the tower, though no one could reach the observation deck.

“Listen to me,” bellowed Benny. “While you still can.”

That chilled some of the laughter, though a few rocks still banged off the structure.

“I made you an offer before,” said Benny. “It still stands. Lay down your weapons. Do it right now. Lay down your weapons and tear those stupid angel wings off your shirts. The Night Church is a lie, and most of you probably know it.”

The rest of the laughter died away.

“Look at what happened already. More than half of you are dead. Whose fault is that? Saint John forced you to fight us. He forced you to die for him. I’m giving you a chance to live. To have lives again.”

One of the Red Brothers stepped away from the rest of the army and pointed at Benny.

“I think you’re about played out, son,” he said. He had a leather-throated voice that carried his words to everyone. “Right now you’re all alone up there. Your friends at least had the smarts to run off . . . though we’ll catch ’em. But you, sonny boy, you’re just a little kid playing in a tree house.”

“Not exactly,” said Benny. “What I am is a kid playing with matches.”

He pointed with the bullhorn, and everyone turned to see figures emerging from the ground as if by magic. They rose up from camouflaged spider holes outside the fence that had been hidden by plywood trapdoors covered with mud. A massive and improbable figure in a bright pink carpet coat rose up just outside the fallen gates. He held a smoking torch in his big fist. Fifty yards away another figure—a dark-haired young man with a pair of baseball bats slung over his shoulder—stood up. He, too, held a torch. All around the outside of the town, just beyond the fence line, figures rose up, each of them holding torches.

The man in the pink carpet coat smiled a charming smile. He had thick eyeliner and dangling diamond earrings. He blew a kiss to Saint John, pulled a thick cloth over his face, and tossed the torch over his shoulder. Everyone else flung their torches too.

Not toward the reapers.

But backward into the field.

There was a gassy sound that rose from a hiss to a roar, and the world suddenly caught fire.

104

THE FIRE ROARED ACROSS THE ground with incredible speed. A speed possible only if the ground itself was . . .

Suddenly Saint John understood. He now realized that the bleach served a double purpose. Not only had it destroyed the gray people’s sense of smell, but it hid other smells. Kerosene or gasoline or whatever flammable liquids these insane people had used to saturate the mud.

The reapers recoiled from the flames, even though the walls of fire were well beyond the town’s destroyed fence line. The heat, however, was tremendous. It buffeted them back, smashing them with superheated chlorine. The gas clouds of superheated chlorine bleach rolled against the reapers, making them cough and gag, driving many of them to their knees. Men and women reeled and vomited. The reapers began to scatter, to run into houses, where they grabbed curtains and towels to cover their faces.

But immediately they screamed and dropped the cloths. There was something on them. Some chemical they couldn’t smell with their bleach-burned noses.

They staggered back to the streets. Hundreds of them jumped into the reservoir to escape the fumes.

“Here!” cried one of the Red Brothers as he kicked aside one of the small bonfires to reveal a trapdoor. He whipped it up and saw a crudely dug tunnel. Smoke curled upward from the tunnel, and Saint John suddenly understood how the defenders had escaped. They’d gone through the tunnels to the spider holes outside, taking their torches with them.

The Red Brother standing over the trapdoor gagged and staggered backward, blood spraying from a slashed throat. A figure rose up out of the hole, carrying a long spear whose bayonet tip was painted red. She had a wet towel around her nose and mouth, but her white hair danced in the hot wind. She carried a torch in her left hand, and she bent and drove the end into the ground close to where she stood.

Another man screamed a few yards away, and Saint John turned to see the heretic Sister Margaret crawl into the light, a knife in one hand and a torch in the other.