Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

48

BROTHER PETER PULLED HIS QUAD into the cleft of a tumble of huge rocks and killed the engine. Sister Sun sat on a stool under the shade of an awning erected for her by her reaper bodyguards. She sipped water from a plastic cup. She looked older than her years and as frail as an icicle on a warm morning.

“How did it go?” she asked as Brother Peter came over and sat down across from her.

He poured himself some water, sipped it, and set his cup aside.

“It went exactly as planned,” he said.

She reached out and patted his hand.

“Good.”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Benny isn’t the same boy I grew up with.

It’s been less than nine months since all our troubles started. Nine months ago Benny was really young. Cute and smart, but immature for his age. Everyone thought so, but nobody was mean enough to say it to his face.

After the first time Tom took him to the Ruin, Benny started to change. He smiles a lot less, and sometimes he still says dumb things and acts immature. But . . . sometimes I wonder if the way he acts during those times is a defense mechanism. I wonder if he’s still trying to be a kid when everything else in the world is trying to make him old.

Is he aware of it?

Since we came to Sanctuary, he’s changed even more. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like he’s leveled out. He’s even. Does that make sense?

This new Benny is a lot more like Tom. Independent and strong, but also not like Tom. Maybe Benny’s becoming someone else.

I hope Benny likes the person he’s becoming.

I do. Maybe more than I ever have.

49

MILES AND MILES AWAY . . .

The sign read SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROAD.

It made Saint John smile, as much for the visceral imagery that it conjured in his mind as for the poetry that he always found written into the mundane events of each day.

He stood in the shade of a billboard on which a smugly smiling figure once promised that everyone could, without question, hear him now. Saint John had never owned a cell phone. Even before the Fall he had believed that they whispered suggestions of temptation in the ear and sucked away both common sense and faith the way a tick sucks blood. Besides, before the dead rose, whenever Saint John felt the need to say something of importance to someone, he took them to some remote place and shared his secrets in the pauses between screams.

The weeds and grasses grew tall all around the billboard, and a haphazard forest of young trees had grown up along the road. The road surface was cracked by roots and weather, but it was relatively clear of vegetation. When Saint John’s scouts saw this, they alerted him, and a platoon of the Red Brotherhood had come this way, following what was clearly a well-traveled route. Dried mud from recent rains showed the marks of horses’ hooves, wagon wheels, and booted footprints. A trade route or something else had been the guess, and now here was the proof.

Four trade wagons made their slow way along the road. All of them had been converted from farm carts. The frames were a mix of truck chassis and wooden cart wheels, with big boxes bolted to the frame. Each box was covered in sheet metal, and the teams of horses were protected by carpet coats covered in nets made of steel washers connected by heavy-gauge wire. The horses of the men riding alongside the carts were similarly armored, and all the men and women in the party wore ankle-length carpet coats, thick leather gloves, and helmets of all kinds, including fencing masks, football helmets, old Norman steel caps looted from museums, and even a plastic fishbowl with holes cut for ventilation. There were four mounted riders and ten guards on foot. Everyone was armed, and apart from knives and swords, many of them had guns.

It was a considerable defensive force, and old bleached bones lying along the road spoke to the effectiveness of their many preparations.

Saint John approved of the weapons, the clever design of the carpet coats and metal armor. All of it was more than sufficient to stop an attack by the living dead.

“Take them,” said Saint John.

The reapers of the Red Brotherhood, who had been poised like a fist, struck.

Arrows, carefully aimed, darkened the sky for a moment, and then bodies were falling and horses were screaming. Suddenly all those careful preparations disintegrated as predators far more dangerous than the walking dead proved what all wise killers already knew: that nothing was more dangerous than living men.

50

ONCE BENNY AND THE GIRLS were back at Sanctuary, they parked their quads and hurried over to the bridge.