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Southern California
Before Marty Kirk was a reaper, he’d been a top Hollywood producer. He put together movie deals that made hundreds of millions, he worked with the A-list of talent. His was a household name known even to people who didn’t often go to the movies. Marty Kirk. He was a regular guest on Jon Stewart and Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien.
But that was before Jon and Jay and Conan and their audiences of millions were swept away by a tide of flesh-eating madness.
That was before the Fall.
Now he was known as Brother Marty.
Now he was a reaper of the Night Church.
He wore the black clothes, the red tassels, the white wings. He dabbed his tassels in a chemical mixture that kept the living dead—the gray people—from attacking. He spent hours each day reciting prayers and singing hymns and listening to sermons about a god that Brother Marty had never even heard of before the Fall.
A god that, even now, he didn’t believe in.
Not at all. Not even a little.
And yet it was a god in whose name he had killed, and in whose name he had ordered other reapers to open red mouths in the flesh of the heretics and blasphemers.
Brother Marty never once spoke of his lack of personal faith. He never even hinted at it.
Brother Marty, above all else, wasn’t stupid.
As the old saying goes, he knew on which side his bread was buttered.
Over the last nine years he had risen within the ranks of the Night Church, first from the least capable foot soldier in the service of Saint John, to a member of the logistics team, to the head of recruitment, all the way to his current position as a member of the Council of Sorrows and a personal aide to the saint.
Now he traveled everywhere with Saint John. He’d gone with him from Wyoming to Utah, to Idaho and Montana, and all through Nevada. Zigzagged throughout the west, raising armies of reapers, burning towns and settlements of blasphemers, carrying out the will of Thanatos.
Or, as Brother Marty privately viewed it, carrying out the master plan of an absolute total nutbag. Saint John was a monster by anyone’s standards. A serial killer of legendary status before the Fall, a menace to society who had nonetheless been the inspiration for half a dozen movies and twice as many books, and who was now the charismatic leader of a vast army of killers. It was a crazy place to be, but in this world it was the only safe place left to stand. Marty always looked out for Marty. First and foremost. And to accomplish that, he did whatever he had to do, to whomever he had to do it.
He did not consider himself evil. Marty didn’t believe in evil. Evil was something priests and rabbis droned on about, and Marty hadn’t seen the inside of a synagogue since he was ten. He didn’t believe that there was anything after death. All there was after this was bones in a box. No redemption, no paradise. Nothing, zip, nada.
So the only smart thing to do was stay alive as long as possible, and stay as well fed and protected as possible until the last gasp.
Nowhere was safer than with Saint John. The reapers were an unstoppable force.
And Saint John knew how to call on an even bigger and far more dangerous horde—the living dead. The saint and his reapers used their protective chemicals to be able to walk among the gray people, and employed dog whistles to call and direct the rotting walkers.
Who could ever stand in the way of that?
A few weeks ago Saint John had left Nevada, taking the main body of his reaper army with him in search of a string of nine previously unknown towns in central California. Nine towns packed with people whose flesh, according to the saint, ached to feel the kiss of the knife.
The problem was . . . California was a big darn state, and these towns hadn’t existed back when maps were still being made. They were refugee camps that had grown into gated communities. Saint John wanted them destroyed. He wanted to burn them as a statement that no one may defy the will of Lord Thanatos.
All praise to his darkness, thought Brother Marty sourly. All praise, yada yada yada.
But as he approached the saint, he composed his face into one of reverence and humility.
He dropped to his knees. “Honored one,” said Marty as he bent and kissed the dirt caked on Saint John’s shoes. Then, like an obedient dog, he glanced up at the saint.
Saint John’s dark eyes were so deeply set that they made his pale face appear skeletal. His head was tattooed with a pattern of thorny vines. He wore black trousers and a billowy black shirt, his legs and arms wrapped with bloodred ribbons. On his chest was a beautifully rendered chalk drawing of angel wings. He was Saint John of the Knife, and the reapers were his flock, and he was the single most impressive and charismatic person Brother Marty had ever met. And he’d met everyone in Hollywood.
“Did you find a scout for me?” asked the saint.
Brother Marty hesitated for a moment. “I did . . . and I didn’t. It’s complicated.”
“Stand up and talk to me,” said Saint John. “Let me see your face.”
