The other trouser leg was dirty but not as bad. She cut several long strips off it. She folded the remainder into a thick bandage and used the strips to lash it to her waist and thigh. Her canteen was lost, so she couldn’t clean the wound, but right now it was more important to prevent further blood loss. She’d worry about infection later. If she got down from the tree, there were plenty of things she could find in a forest that were useful in combating infection. As George and Tom had each said, “Nature provides if you know how to ask.” Lilah knew.
With the wound bandaged, Lilah felt her confidence returning.
However, along with the confidence came the full set of memories of everything that had happened before the boar attacked her.
Mother Rose and the reapers. The slaughter in the camp. The four-wheeled motorcycles.
And . . . the thing she had found by the cliff.
She had to get back to Chong and the others and tell them. They were in greater danger than she was, because as far as Lilah knew, the others had no idea what was happening in this stretch of desert forest. She needed to tell them, and then to get them all out of this place before . . .
Below her the boars grunted hungrily.
Lilah looked up, but there was no escape route there. The tree in which she stood reached all the way to the edge of the cliff, but long before it got there it narrowed to a slender wand that could never support her weight.
With the cold efficiency of a survivor, she dismissed it and looked down.
The hogs were there. If she landed among them, they’d close around her and tear her apart, of that she had no doubt.
However, if she were able to somehow avoid them and jump to the outside of their ring, then she might have a chance to use ground cover to help her effect an escape. There were boulders, thick bushes, and plenty of ravines and gullies in the landscape.
That left two questions.
If she climbed to a lower branch, could she manage to jump that far away from them? And if she did, did she simply have enough strength and stamina left to outrun and outmaneuver six tireless creatures?
The answer to both questions was almost certainly no.
But she had no other options. None. It was a bad choice or no choice.
So she took the bad choice.
However, before she made a move, a voice seemed to speak to her out of the shadows in her mind. Tom’s voice. Just an echo.
“Warrior smart,” she murmured. What was she missing that a smart warrior wouldn’t?
Lilah examined the jagged branches that stuck out in all directions around her.
“Warrior smart,” she said again. Then she took her knife and went to work.
39
CHONG TRIED TO RAISE THE BOW OVER HIS HEAD, AS IF IT COULD STOP THE reaper’s killing blow.
“Don’t fight it, boy,” growled the reaper. “This is more mercy than you deserve—OWW!”
The reaper suddenly reeled back, the scythe falling to the dirt as he clapped his hands over his temple. Blood welled from between his fingers.
Chong did not understand what he was seeing. Death had been a heartbeat away.
Then he heard a thwap sound behind him, and something struck Brother Andrew in the cheek. The impact spun the reaper halfway around and opened a red gash beside his nose.
Chong saw something fall to the ground. Small and gray.
A stone?
He said, “What . . .?”
There was another thwap, and another. More stones struck Brother Andrew. The big man howled in pain and tried to cover his face with his hands, but the next stone cracked against his fingers. Chong heard the bones break.
The world seemed to be going hazy and losing sense and clarity. Chong thought he heard a girl’s voice, but Eve stood in front of him, her mouth shocked to silence.
Lilah, he thought. God, here she is to rescue me. Again. She’s going to be so mad at me.
A female figure rushed out of the woods. Lithe and beautiful. Strong and alien. Wearing the fierce glare of a killer.
But it was not Lilah.
The figure raised her weapon and fired, and Brother Andrew howled in pain as another stone struck his forehead.
Chong spoke her name in a thin wheeze.
“Riot?”
The girl looked wild and terrible. Her face was bruised and crisscrossed with scratches. Blood trickled from one ear, and there was a shallow knife cut across the tanned flesh of her bare midsection.
She stood over Carter’s body with tears streaming down her face as she drew and fired stone after stone from her slingshot.
The reaper bellowed and tried to fight through the barrage, dodging some of the shots, taking others on his huge forearms as he sought to protect his face. Riot kept shooting, though, and the sharp stones cut bloody lines in the reaper’s skin.
And yet, the stones were not enough.
Brother Andrew was a monster of a man, with muscles packed onto his limbs. Riot was hurting him, but she wasn’t stopping him, and with a bear’s growl he waded into the attack, scythe clutched in powerful fists, head bowed to protect his face.
“No,” whispered Chong. “No!”
He suddenly lunged for the reaper and grabbed a fistful of the red cloth streamers on the big man’s ankle, yanking them with all the strength he had left. The sudden jerk made Brother Andrew stumble.
“Get off,” snapped the reaper as he smashed Chong across the face with a brutal backhanded blow.
Fireworks exploded inside Chong’s head and he sagged down, but his hand remained clamped around the red streamers. He distantly heard another thwap and Andrew’s howl of pain, but Chong’s vision was filled with black smoke. He collapsed down on his chest.
Andrew kicked free of his grip and raised a foot to stomp down on Chong’s head. But there was a cry like a hunting hawk and the meaty thud of flesh on flesh, and Chong peered up in wonder to see the reaper and Riot fall together in a snarling and deadly embrace. Andrew had his hands on Riot’s throat, but the young woman did not seem to care. She had a small knife in each hand, and as she crashed down and rolled over and over with the reaper, those blades did horrific work. Blood splashed the ground and spattered Chong’s face as he watched, dumbfounded and appalled as Riot—a teenage girl—slaughtered the monstrous reaper.
There was no better word. No cleaner word.
It was slaughter.
Then it was over. Riot rose from the red ruin that had been Brother Andrew. Blood dripped from her knives, her arms, her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked across the clearing at Carter, then at Sarah, and finally at Eve—who stood as still and blank-eyed as a statue.
That was the last thing Chong saw before a massive wave of darkness rose up and then crashed down on him, washing everything else away.
40
BENNY AND NIX KEPT MOVING, HEADING EAST. WHEN THEY LOOKED BACK there was no sign of Saint John, and the sound of the quads had all but faded out. All that remained was a faint buzz far away. There were no more yells or gunshots, either. The forest became quiet, but it did not at all feel like a natural calm.
“I don’t understand this,” said Nix.
“Don’t understand what? That guy back there or the whole freaking day?”
“People,” she said angrily. “The world ended, most of the people on the whole planet died . . . there’s no more reason for people to fight each other. There’s so much farmland we can use that no one will ever need to go hungry again. Even out here in the desert there are berries and figs and streams of pure drinking water. There’s no need to fight. But that’s all we’ve done. First Charlie and the Hammer, then White Bear and Preacher Jack, and now all this. I don’t understand it. When are we going to stop fighting? When are we going to actually want peace? When are we going to stop being so damn stupid?”
Benny shook his head. “I know, it’s crazy.”
“I mean,” Nix went on, “are we being naive about this? Are we just a couple of stupid kids who think that the world should make some kind of sense?”
“I know,” Benny said again. “I was kind of hoping we’d left that stuff behind with Gameland.”
“It can’t be everywhere,” she growled softly. “It can’t be.”
As she said it, Benny noticed that she looked up at the sky, which was just visible through the canopy of juniper branches.
“They said they saw the jet,” said Benny. “That’s something.”
She only grunted, and they walked in silence for several minutes.
Eventually Benny paused for a moment to use the sun and his wristwatch to orient himself. He squatted down and ran his fingers along the topsoil, which was darker than it had been when they’d first entered the forest.
“We should be pretty close to where Lilah went looking for Eve’s parents,” he said. “There’s some moisture in this dirt. Maybe we’re getting near to the creek Eve mentioned.”
Nix nodded, but she studied the woods. “I wonder where Lilah is. Did Chong find her? And where are they both right now?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Benny. “There was a lot of fighting going on back at the field.”
“I didn’t hear Lilah’s pistol anywhere,” said Nix. “In fact, the only gun I heard was that guy Carter’s shotgun. I don’t think the reapers have guns.”
Benny thought about that, and nodded. “I didn’t see any either. That’s something.”
“Reapers,” murmured Nix. “There’s no way that name is going to be anything but bad.”
“No kidding,” he said as they started down the trail again, angling more eastward to follow the richer soil mix. “That Saint John clown didn’t make a lot of sense. Who’s Thanatos?”
“One of the Greek gods of death,” Nix said automatically.
Benny studied her. “How do you—?”
“We studied it in school.”
“We did?”
“Of course. It’s from Greek mythology.”
“I don’t remember anything about Thanatos or Nyx.”
“Well,” Nix said with a sniff, “while you and Morgie were trading Zombie Cards under your desks, some of us were actually paying attention.”
“Okay, then explain to me why a bunch of freaks with knives are running around the woods talking about Greek gods. Did we have a Greek apocalypse, too?”
Nix grinned. “I think your new girlfriend is on Saint John’s team.”
“What?”
“Riot. She has the same tattoos on her head. So did all the reapers on the quads.”
“First, she’s not my girlfriend,” said Benny. “My girlfriend is a crazy redhead with freckles.”
That earned him a small smile from Nix.
“And second, Riot was with Carter. Besides, the woman I saw in the field was dressed like the reapers, and she had a full head of hair. So that doesn’t prove anything.”
“Maybe she wasn’t with the reapers. I don’t know, but the ones on the quads and Saint John had the same kind of skin art as Riot, so—”
“I don’t care. Riot was with Eve’s family.”
A wide gully yawned before them, and they stopped to examine it, but there were no signs of lurking zoms or reapers with gleaming knives. Even so, they moved silently and with great caution, weapons ready, minds alert.
“Well, we have one thing going for us,” Benny said as they left the gully behind them. “We should be safe from the reapers.”
“How do you figure that?” Nix demanded.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the mother of Thanksalot, the personification of death?”
“Thanatos,” she corrected.
“Right. Praise be to the darkness.”
“Ugh. Don’t say that, it’s freaky. Besides, Thanatos’s mother was Nyx. With a y.”
“Right, I’m sure that’s going to make a world of difference,” said Benny sourly. “If we’re attacked, you can dazzle them with spelling and grammar.”
She started to say something back, but Benny caught her wrist and pulled her down behind a tree. Nix started to ask what was wrong, but then she heard it too. The sound of motors coming their way.
Benny drew his sword but kept the blade in the shadow cast by the tree. Nix had her pistol out, the barrel pointed at the lead figure in a line of three quads that bumped and rocked along the forest path. Two men and a woman drove the machines. Reapers, without a doubt.
Benny was acutely aware that Nix had only two bullets left.
Nix thumbed the hammer back, but Benny whispered, “Don’t. Not unless they see us.”
Seconds burned away as the quads tore along the path, the roar of the motors filling the air. Then, a hundred feet shy of where Benny and Nix crouched, the line of vehicles turned and headed due east. The motor sounds diminished quickly; soon the reapers were gone, and an uneasy silence draped itself over the forest once more.
Nix blew out her cheeks and leaned her forehead on her outstretched gun arm. She uncocked the pistol. Benny bent and kissed her on the shoulder.
“They’re gone,” he said as he slid the katana back into its sheath.
Without raising her head, Nix said, “You know, Benny, there was a time—was it only a day ago?—when the sound of a motor would have been like Christmas to us. It would have proved that the world wasn’t dead, that there was something out here to find.”
“I know.” Benny sighed. “And I remember a time not that long ago when we were happy. When we used to laugh.”
Nix raised her head and looked at him for a long moment, her lips parted as if she was going to reply. The look in her eyes was so deeply sad that Benny had to look away to hide the tears that suddenly formed in his eyes.