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“So what?” she demanded. Somehow, with her voice lowered to a whisper, she sounded even angrier and more annoyed with him. “Since when are you an expert on plant growth?”
“I’m not an expert, Nix, but I’m not stupid, either.”
Nix started to say something, then thought better of it and instead said, “It could have crashed after we saw it. That’s eight months. You don’t know how fast juniper saplings grow, Benny. These could be only eight months old.”
“Maybe,” Benny conceded, “but I doubt it.”
They moved forward together, cautiously, eyes searching the dead flying machine.
They were so riveted by the plane that they did not look into the surrounding woods and so did not see the dead zoms sprawled twenty yards down a crooked game trail; or the two bloody spots where a pair of reapers had died from Lilah’s savage attack. Their bodies were gone, and bloody footprints trailed away into the shrubs.
Nix went over and stood by the draped plastic that hung from the open door. Benny continued walking until he was at the base of the upright section of wing, then he stared down the length of the trench at the other wing. He looked at the twisted blades of the propellers. Two six-bladed props had been attached to each wing, and one had fallen off. Benny went over to it and touched the tip of one of the propeller blades.
“I’ll admit that I don’t know everything about planes,” he said, “but after we got back last year, I looked through every book we had in the library and in tons of magazines over at Chong’s. This is definitely not the one we saw. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
“Why?” she demanded, and there was mingled anger, fear, and hope in her eyes.
He was smiling as he turned.
“Nix, the thing we saw flying over the mountain was a jet . . . and this thing has propellers,” he said. “Jets don’t have propellers.”
Nix’s eyes flared and her mouth opened, but for the moment she was totally incapable of speech. Her eyes cut instantly from Benny’s face to the blades of the massive propeller that lay in the dirt behind him.
“And that opens up a whole new can of worms,” he added. He patted the wing lightly. “Because no matter which one of us is right about when this crashed, it definitely crashed more than a dozen years after all the lights went out.”
“God . . . ,” breathed Nix.
“That means there were at least two planes in the air. And if there were two . . . how many more might be out there?”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Just after Christmas I had a big fight with Benny. He found one of my notebooks. He swore that he didn’t mean to read it. He said it was on the porch lying open, faceup. He saw what I’d written, and he flipped through the pages.
He had no right to do that. He had no right to make a big deal about it. So what if I wrote “We have to find the jet” a hundred times on every page? I told him it was a way to focus my mind and help me get ready for leaving town.
He didn’t believe me, and we had a really bad fight.
I am NOT obsessed. Benny’s a jerk sometimes.
42
SAINT JOHN CLEANED HIS KNIVES WITH A PIECE OF CLOTH HE KEPT IN HIS pocket. That cloth had cleaned those knives a hundred times.
He stepped around the red things that lay on the ground. Saint John did not disrespect them by stepping over their corpses. These heretics were in the darkness now, and their bodies were now holy relics, proof of the red doorway that opened between the world of flesh and the infinite realm of spirit.
“Thank you,” he said to them. “Thank you.”
He wept softly as he moved around the spot where the killing had been done. It was a shrine now, and anyone with eyes would be able to understand the beauty of what had happened here. That beauty coaxed tears from Saint John’s eyes; but that was not the only reason he cried.
There were jealous tears on his face, and he lowered his head in shame, unable to look at these transformed ones. His envy of their freedom was nearly unbearable. Though they had been blasphemers mere moments ago, each of them—even the least of them—was more fully and truly connected to the darkness than he was. While he was clothed in flesh, while he lingered here on earth, he was an outsider to the purity of the darkness. An enabler, yes, a conduit, even a guide, but not a part of it.
For that, he wept.
He staggered over to a patch of unmarked grass and dropped heavily to his knees. He slid his knives into their sheaths and then bowed down, placing his forehead on the ground in abject humility.
“Please,” he prayed, “let me come home. Please.”
The darkness whispered inside his brain.
