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Samantha and Tiffany plunged into the woods, and a veil of cool shadows dropped behind them. They ran hard and fast along a deer path for fifty yards and then cut sharply left toward a small stream that fed the larger creek. They stepped into the ankle-deep water and kept going, moving slower now, making sure they didn’t splash water onto the dry mud along the banks or dampen any of the low-hanging leaves. There was no way to know if their pursuers understood anything about tracking, but the girls were long practiced at stealth and concealment.
Samantha bent close to Tiffany. “Who were those people? Who or what are reapers?”
The younger girl was gasping for breath after her exertions, but she managed to get out what she’d learned. “I . . . was hunting in the eastern woods . . . and I heard a scream. I went running, thinking the dead were attacking someone, but it wasn’t that at all. Three men in black were chasing an old couple—they had to be seventy or eighty. The old lady saw me and begged for help.” She looked at Samantha for approval. “What else could I do?”
“No, Tiff, you did the right thing, I’m sure,” Samantha assured her. “Then what happened?”
Tiffany quickly told the tale. The old couple were the last of a small group of survivors who had been living in an old shopping mall. They barely had enough to eat, but they were safe from the dead. Then the people in black and red—the reapers—broke into the mall and just started killing everyone.
“Why?” asked Samantha sharply.
“That’s just it . . . they didn’t give any explanation. They kept yelling things about someone named Thanatos and about sending everyone into the darkness. Crazy stuff like that. The old couple and a few others escaped, but they were chased. They’d survived on the road, constantly heading west toward the mountains and forestlands, but the reapers picked them off one by one. Or they sent packs of the dead after them.”
“How?”
“The old man said that the reapers made up some kind of chemical stuff that keeps the dead from attacking them. They dip pieces of cloth into it and tie the cloth around their ankles and like that.”
Samantha nodded. “The red tassels,” she said. “But how do they make the zombies do what they want?”
“The old man thinks they use dog whistles.”
“But how does—?”
“The dead can hear it. Certain calls make the dead come to them, other calls make them go away. So, I guess they use the whistles to, I don’t know, steer them? Crazy, isn’t it?”
“It’s smart,” said Samantha. “Really smart.”
There was a sound in the woods and they both stiffened, ready to run or fight, but it was only a couple of zebras. More zoo escapees. The striped animals turned to where the girls hid, sniffed the air, and then whinnied in irritation and trotted away.
“Why were these reapers chasing you?”
Tiffany flushed. “Well, what I left out was how I had the chance to talk to the two old folks.”
“Tell me.”
It was a simple thing to say, but Samantha knew that there was a lot behind it. There’s always more to something than what it seems.
What Tiffany said was plain and honest and brutal. “They were trying to kill those two old people, so I killed them.”
Samantha studied Tiffany’s eyes. There were ghosts there, moving from one room of her mind to another. The reapers might have deserved the fate they got, but Tiffany would still carry the memory of what she’d done—what she’d been forced to do—for the rest of her life. Samantha saw similar ghosts when she looked in the mirror.
It made her wonder
if the reapers were similarly haunted by the terrible things they were doing. Why, in fact, were they raiding camps and killing innocent folks? In a world where there was almost no one left, it was bad enough killing in defense of the innocent or oneself; but to kill for the joy of it, or for some other equally crazy reason, was a sin.
“What happened to the old people?” asked Samantha tentatively, afraid of the answer.
“I . . . was bringing them home. I thought we could help them. . . .”
“But . . . ?”
“But the reapers caught us. So many of them. They attacked us, and before I knew it the old couple was down. It was awful, Sam. What they did to those people was bad.”
Tiffany’s voice was fragile with pain and anger. And with shock, and Samantha knew how dangerous that was.
“I took another of them down, but there were too many, and I ran. You know the rest.”
“Reapers,” echoed Samantha. “If they’re coming this way, we may have to leave the motor court. We can’t defend that place against an army, and if they can control the dead, then that’s what they have.”
