Lilah said nothing, but her honey-colored eyes lost some of their intensity. Nix gave a single curt bob of her head.
Preacher Jack turned to Benny. “Peace to you, little brother.”
“Um … yeah, sure. Back atcha.”
Preacher Jack ignored Chong altogether, but he fixed Tom with a knowing smile. “I won’t offer my hand again, Brother Tom, for fear that it will once more be left hanging in the wind. So I’ll tip my hat and bid you all a farewell. May the Good Lord keep you from snakes and snares and the evil that men do.”
With that the preacher replaced his hat, tugged his lapels to adjust the hang of his jacket, and walked back into the woods, where he vanished so quickly into the shadows that the whole encounter might have been a dream. Tom and the others stood where they were for a full five minutes, listening first for Preacher Jack’s soft footfalls and then to the forest as the ordinary sounds one by one returned.
Benny let out a chestful of air and turned to Tom. “What was that all about?”
“I really don’t know,” said Tom.
Benny could see that Tom was troubled. He followed his brother over to the edge of the road, and they both squatted to study the dirt of the game trail along which Preacher Jack had gone. Benny watched as Tom used a twig to measure the man’s shoe impressions. “Good-quality hiking shoes,” murmured Tom. “Pre–First Night, which means they’re either scavenged or purchased for a tidy stack of ration dollars.”
Benny nodded and bent low to study the pattern of the shoes, just as Tom had taught him. The tread was pretty well worn, and there was a crescent-shaped nick out of the right heel.
“That nick is pretty distinctive,” Benny said, earning him an approving nod from Tom.
“It’s as good as a fingerprint. Remember it.” Then Tom called the others over to look at it too, pointing out the unique elements of each sole.
“Why bother?” asked Chong. “Is he our enemy?”
“I don’t know what he is,” admitted Tom, “but out here it’s a good idea to observe as many details as you can. You never know what’s going to be useful.”
“Was that really Preacher Jack?” asked Nix.
Tom rose and squinted down the game trail. “Well … he fits the description Dr. Skillz gave me. At least physically.”
“Is it okay if I say that he was the single creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been face-to-face with decaying zoms?”
Tom nodded. “Yeah, Nix, you can say that and mean it.”
“I don’t like him,” growled Lilah, her fists clenched tightly around the shaft of her spear. “If I see him again …” She let the rest hang in the air.
“I think it’s a good idea if we all watch our backs,” suggested Tom.
“Are you sure he’s really a preacher?” asked Chong.
Tom shook his head. “I’m not sure of anything about him. Not one thing.”
He looked up at the sky.
Benny started to ask something, but Tom shook his head.
“We’re burning daylight,” Tom said. “We need to get to the way station, and I need to think while we’re doing it. We’ll talk then. For now, we’ll go at Scout pace. That means we walk two hundred paces, run three hundred, walk two hundred. It’ll chew up the miles.”
And it’ll keep us too busy to ask questions, whispered Benny’s inner voice. Smart.
“Nix—this is up to you. Can you handle the pace? No screwing around: yes or no?”
“Yes,” she said with real fire. “And I promise to tell you if I can’t keep up.”
Without another word, Tom turned toward the southeast and set off.
The others followed. Running and walking and running. They didn’t have time to ask questions, but about ten thousand of them occurred to Benny, and he knew that the same questions would be occurring to Nix.
Who was Preacher Jack?
Was he connected to the dead man? Who had killed the man? And why? Could Charlie Pink-eye still be alive? Was he out in these same hills? Did he know they were out here?
And, maybe more important than any of those questions: How come the dead man had not reanimated? Since First Night, everyone who died, no matter how they died, came back to life.
Why hadn’t he?
What did it mean?
The questions burned in Benny’s mind as he ran.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
How many people are still alive out there?
Tom says that there’s a network of about five hundred bounty hunters, traders, way-station monks, and scavengers in central California. And maybe as many as two hundred loners living in isolated and remote spots. Sounds like a lot, but it’s not. Our history teacher said that California used to be the most populous state and that there used to be almost forty million people living here.
28
THEY LEFT THE OLD ROAD AND FOUND WHAT USED TO BE A HIGHWAY, so they turned and followed that. Despite the fact that his toe was hurting like crazy and his clothes were thoroughly soaked with sweat, Benny still mustered the energy to look left and right, left and right, checking every shadow under every tree for some sign of movement that could be either zoms or worse.
Charlie’s dead, he told himself, but his inner voice—the less emotional and more rational aspect of his mind—replied, You don’t know that.
He cut looks at Nix, who was also sweating heavily and yet seemed able to keep going, despite the pain and the injury. It wasn’t the first time that her strength amazed and humbled him.
They ran and walked, ran and walked.
During one of the walking times, Benny leaned to Nix. “What the heck was that?”
“Preacher Jack,” she said, and shivered. “I feel like I need a bath.”
Benny counted on his fingers. “We know—what—seven religious people? I mean people in the business.”
“You mean clerics? There’s the four in town, Pastor Kellogg, Father Shannon, Rabbi Rosemann, and Imam Murad …”
“… and the monks at the way station: Brother David, Sister Shanti, and Sister Sarah. Seven,” finished Benny. “Except for the monks, who are a little, y’know …” He tapped his temple and rolled his eyes.
“Touched by God,” Nix said. “Isn’t that the phrase Tom uses?”
“Right, except for them, everyone else is pretty okay. I mean the monks are okay too, but they’re loopy from living out here in the Ruin. But even with different religions, different churches, they’re all pretty much the kind of people you want to hang with during a real wrath-of-God moment.”
“Not him, though,” said Nix, nodding along with where Benny was going with this. “He’s scarier than the zoms.”
“‘Zoms’ is a bad word, girlie-girl,” Benny said in a fair imitation of Preacher Jack’s oily voice.
“Eww … don’t!” Nix punched him on the arm.
They walked another few paces as the road bent around a hill.
“Weird day,” Benny said.
“Weird day,” Nix agreed.
Around the bend were dozens of cars and trucks that had been pushed to the side of the main road, which left a clear path down the center. Some of the cars had tumbled into the drainage ditch that ran along one side. Others were smashed together. There were skeletons in a few of them.
“Who pushed the cars out of the way?” asked Chong.
“Probably a tank,” said Tom. “Or a bulldozer. Before they nuked the cities, back when they thought this was a winnable war.” He gestured to the line of broken cars, many of them nearly invisible behind clumps of shrubbery. “This is a well-traveled route. Traders and other people out here. All these cars have been checked for zoms a hundred times.”
Nix wasn’t fooled, and she gave Tom a sly smile. “Which doesn’t mean they’re safe. We have to check them every time, don’t we?”
Tom gave her an approving nod. “That’s the kind of thinking—”
“—that’s going to keep us alive,” finished Benny irritably. “Yeah, we pretty much get that.”
To Tom, Nix said, “He’s cranky because he didn’t think of it first.”
“Yes, I did,” Benny lied.
They moved on.
As the sun began edging toward the western tree line, they crested a hill and looked down a long dirt side road to where an old gas station sat beneath a weeping willow.
“Take a closer look,” suggested Tom, handing Benny a pair of high-power binoculars.
Benny focused the lenses and studied the scene. The surrounding vegetation was dense with overgrowth, but there was a broad concrete pad around the cluster of small buildings. An ancient billboard stood against the wall of trees. It had long ago been whitewashed, and someone had written hundreds of lines of scripture on it. Rain had faded the words so that only a few were readable.
“This is Brother David’s place?” asked Chong in a leaden voice. Between the catastrophe with the rhino and finding the dead man, and then the weird encounter with Preacher Jack, Chong seemed to have lost his humor and virtually all trace of emotion. He barely spoke, and when he did his voice lacked inflection. It was like listening to a sleepwalker.
Tom caught the sound and cut a look at Benny, who nodded.
Tom mouthed the words, “Keep your eye on him,” and Benny nodded again.
“Yup,” said Benny. “He was the first monk I ever met out here. It’s him and two girls. Sister Sarah and Sister Shanti.”
“And Old Roger,” added Nix.
“Who?” Chong asked.
“He’s a zom they take care of. Remember I told you?”
Chong nodded but didn’t comment.
They descended along a path that ran beside a mammoth line of white boulders dumped there ages ago by a glacier. A thin stream of water trickled between the rocks, but it was so small that it made no sound. Chong lagged behind the rest, and Benny slowed to keep pace with him. When Benny caught a look at Chong’s face, he almost missed his step.
There were tears at the corners of Chong’s dark eyes.
“Hey, dude. What’s—?”
Chong touched Benny’s arm. “I’m really sorry, man.”
Benny shook his head and started to protest.
“No,” Chong interrupted, “I should never have come. You guys are better off without me.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Benny said, though his voice lacked total conviction. “Besides, this way you get to spend a couple of days with Lilah—”
Chong dismissed that with a derisive snort. “Ever since the rhino thing, I’m less than dog crap to her.”
“C’mon, dude, she’s like that with everyone. I mean, she’s been trying to quiet me for a coupla days now.”
Chong merely shook his head. “I spoiled everything.”
“No way. Don’t even go there.”
“I’m sorry I came,” Chong insisted, but this time he said it more to himself. Benny was fishing for something encouraging to say when Tom stopped them all with a raised fist.
He scanned the terrain for a moment, then waved everyone over.
“Is everything okay?” Benny asked.
“Let’s find out,” Tom said guardedly.
Tom headed down the slope and the others followed. For Benny this was the first moment today that wasn’t wrapped in tension. He thought Brother David was halfway to being crazy, but he was one of the nicest people Benny had ever met, and the two girls with him were sweet-natured and pretty. All three of them were good cooks, too, and even after everything he’d seen, Benny was sure he could eat a full-size rhinoceros.
They came down onto the concrete pad, on which the single gas pump stood like a great rusted tombstone to a dead culture. Tom knocked loudly on the pump’s metal casing. The echoes bounced off the hills and came faintly back to them before melting into silence.
There was no response. Tom narrowed his eyes. “Stay here.” He walked carefully to the front door of the station and knocked. Nothing. “Brother David?” he called.
Absolutely nothing.
Scowling, Tom waved the others over and they approached with great caution, their weapons in their hands.
“Be ready,” Tom said as he reached for the door handle. It turned easily, and the door swung inward. Tom drew his pistol and moved silently inside. The others crept after him. Lilah broke to Tom’s right. Benny slipped in next, with Nix at his back, and they shifted to Tom’s left.
However, there was no need of caution.
“Where is everyone?” whispered Nix.
Tom shook his head and took a few tentative steps into the room.
Most of the front part of the station was set up for trading and an attempt at comfort. There were folding chairs, a wood-stove, and a table for meals. Benny, Tom, and Nix had stayed here several times and eaten the modest but well-cooked food offered by the Children of God; and Tom always brought some supplies as gifts.
The rest of the way station had been converted into living quarters for the monk and the two female disciples. There were bedrolls and plastic milk crates that served as bureaus and night tables. Sheets were strung on clothesline to provide marginal privacy. Garlands of flowers and herbs were hung from pegs set into the walls.
“Where are they?” Nix asked again.
“Lilah,” Tom said, “check the sheds.”
She nodded and slipped out the door without a word. It annoyed Benny a bit that Tom never asked him to do something like that, but this wasn’t the time to start an argument.
Nix crossed to the stove and looked into the pots, then held her hand above the burners. “It’s cold, but there’s food in the pots. Hasn’t gone bad yet.”