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Everyone knew how this was going to end. He had fifteen rounds in each gun. He had no more magazines.
There were a thousand reapers around him.
Saint John walk
ed slowly down from the top of the knoll. He paused to retrieve his knife from the horse’s throat; then he gave an order and the reapers parted to create a corridor. The saint wiped his blade clean on his thigh and slid the throwing knife into its sheath as he strolled toward the last trade guard. He stopped ten feet away.
The big man said nothing, but he lowered his pistols.
“I am Saint John of the Knife,” said the saint. “You understand that if I wanted you dead, you would be dead.”
The big man shrugged. “Everybody dies.”
His eyes were strange. The irises were red except for a rim of gold. Saint John had never seen eyes like that except in church paintings of vampires and demons.
“The question is, my friend,” said Saint John, “do you want to live?”
9
Sanctuary
Area 51
It took twenty-five grueling, exhausting, sweaty minutes to climb all the way up to the goat path. For most of that time the goat stood there, quietly chewing on a tough piece of vegetable root, watching him with placid curiosity. Each time Benny slipped, he could swear there was a look of pitying amusement on the goat’s face.
Only when Benny climbed onto a flat shelf near the goat did the animal move away. Even then it was at so leisurely a pace that it was as if the goat was daring Benny to give chase. The path it took was less than a hand’s-width wide. Giving chase was very low on Benny’s list of things to do in this lifetime.
Following, however, was another thing. He didn’t want to catch the goat, but he definitely wanted to know how it had gotten into Sanctuary. On his climb he’d figured out what was bothering him.
If a goat could climb over the mountains and reach Sanctuary, so could a person.
Or a lot of people.
The dead would never be able to manage it, of course. They were too clumsy and mindless, and climbing required strength, coordination, observation, sharp wits, and good judgment.
The reapers had all those things.
Benny smiled grimly. If he was able to prove that Sanctuary was unsafe, that it was vulnerable to a sneak attack because of goat trails like this, then he would be able to throw that right in Captain Ledger’s face.
This was being warrior smart.
That’s what Benny’s brother Tom called it. Warrior smart. Using training and good judgment, courage and determination to confront an obstacle and overcome it. The same rules of common sense and education applied. Faced with anything from finding food in the wasteland, avoiding the zoms, preparing a battle plan, to escaping a trap, or defeating an enemy.
Warrior smart was a better way of thinking than the gung-ho stuff Ledger wanted to teach.
Grinning, he began moving slowly and carefully along the goat path.
His courage and confidence stayed with him for almost three hundred yards, but after the first time the walkway cracked beneath his shoes, he began to doubt the wisdom of this plan.
Half an hour later he was only a third of the way to the crest of this broken hill, but the ground looked like it was a thousand miles down. Hot sweat ran down his face, but cold sweat tickled in lines beneath his clothes. His breath came in ragged gasps, and he tried to drill his fingers into the rock wall.
Once, when he closed his eyes, he thought he heard his brother Tom speaking to him.
Yo! Boy genius, said Tom. Exactly what do you think you’re doing?
“Shut up,” breathed Benny. “I’m trying not to die here.”
How hard are you trying?
