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In his earliest memories he was always called “Boy.” If his parents had ever given him a name, it was lost when they vanished. The boy couldn’t recall a single detail about them. Not voices, not faces. He had been unloved forever, and only barely cared for. Less generously than a stray dog would have been treated, and usually much worse.
He fell in with one group of people after another. Some were killed by the gray people, the biters, the dead. Some died from diseases that swept through whole camps. Many were slaughtered by gangs who raided refugee settlements and took whatever they wanted. One day they came and took all the children.
The years that followed were an obscenity that his mind refused to hold on to. He ran away nine times and was found each time. There were fists and whips and worse.
Then the raiders were themselves raided and butchered by a bigger group. And another. And another. He was passed along with the others. With a dwindling few.
Until the people in black came along and killed the killers.
At first the boy thought he had been saved. Truly saved, because these killers wore angel wings on their chests, and they spoke of faith and church and god. But they were not there to save him. No.
They beat him and tied him up along with hundreds of others. More children, and some adults, were added to the long, tethered lines of prisoners as they moved across the blighted face of the world. At first they called him Little Sinner, because of what had been done to him by other people. But because the boy kept trying to escape, and searching for him took time and a lot of effort, they gave him a new name.
They called him the Hated, or merely Hated.
And Hated he became.
“Come here, Hated.”
“Do this, Hated.”
“Kneel and pray for forgiveness, Hated.”
When the captives numbered one thousand, the people in black—reapers, they called themselves, soldiers of the Church of Thanatos—began a pilgrimage. All of the prisoners were to be taken to a place where they would meet and be judged by a man called Saint John. Even the reapers feared—but also loved—the saint.
The pilgrim-captives all looked like scarecrows: emaciated and starved, bruised from countless beatings, numb from loss. They were like the gray people except that the dead felt no pain and had no awareness of their lot; the sinners were all too aware.
They staggered along from Texas to Wyoming, through lands blasted by bombs and blighted by strange diseases. From one wasteland to another, following a beaten trail that many bare feet pounded flat over countless travels. They marched in long lines, bound front and back with rope tied around their waists, links in an awkward chain of staggering bodies. If anyone fell, they were cut from the line and left to bleed out with dozens of bloody red mouths cut into their skin. The ropes would be retied, the line tightened, and the march continued.
There was a girl tied directly in front of Hated. He ached to know her real name but did not dare ask, because conversation of any kind was punishable by beating. A second offense meant being cut from the line and left like a scrap of meat. In his mind he called her Leafy, because one morning several small autumn leaves got caught in her long hair, and they stayed there all day. He watched them dance as she walked.
Over the terrible days of that pilgrimage he created scenarios in his head about how he could escape and save Leafy. How he could get a tree branch—or maybe steal a knife from the guards—and open red mouths in them. Tear them into carrion meat and slash the bonds holding Leafy. Even if he had to die while doing it.
Dying for something would be wonderful. To save Leafy, to make sure she escaped, and to stand fast and kill enough of the guards to erect a mountain of safety between them and that beautiful girl.
Then they would forever after speak of the Hated with dread rather than contempt. And when Leafy remembered him, it would transform him into something possessing wonderful new meaning. She would learn his name. Not “the Hated” but something else. Maybe she would give him a hero’s name.
On a day when the reapers said they were nearing the end of the journey, he decided that he had to act. During a rest break he’d found a piece of broken shell and hid it in the waistband of his torn trousers. As the day wore on, he quietly and secretively began sawing at the rope around his waist. One single stubborn strand at a time.
The line of stumbling figures moved out of the brilliant sun and into a valley of shadows created by a bleached billboard and a rusting big rig truck. The shadows were inky black, and that’s when he made his move. He took a firmer grip on the shell and ferociously cut at the rope. The last strands fell away.
Before anyone knew what was happening, he rushed the closest guard. He slashed with the shell with such unbridled force that it cut like a razor, opening a screaming red mouth below the guard’s chin. The Hated turned as a shower of red splashed him.
The prisoners began screaming. Leafy too. In the shadows he could see only her outline, but her scream was there, filling his ears, filling the world. The sound of it drove him deeper into his rage. He ran past her and attacked a second startled guard. This time it took four cuts to drop him. Then the Hated tossed away the piece of shell, knelt, and tore the knife from the guard’s twitching fingers. Although he had never once held a fighting knife, it felt oddly familiar—as if it belonged to him. As if the weapon completed him in a way he could not understand.
He should have lost that fight. He knew it. The guards knew it. And everyone watching knew it. He was a prisoner, a sinner. He was nothing. A hated thing with no training.
And yet…
He never quite knew how many of the guards he’d killed. Six? Seven? Even the toughest of them fell back in fear and surprise as he came charging. He was covered in red and shrieked as he fought. He yelled at Leafy to run, but she did not know that name. She stood with the others, staring in shock at the monster he’d become.
The prisoners did not join the fight. They did not run. They didn’t say a word. Even those who screamed had fallen into silence.
The Hated turned as another guard fell, looking back to see where Leafy was. But he was out in the blinding sunlight now, and she remained in darkness. There were a dozen uninjured guards left, and they formed a ring around him, closing in, their blades ready to tear him apart.
“STOP!” cried a voice so sharply that everyone froze. The reapers turned and immediately knelt, pressing their fists to their chests as a figure came walking out of the shadows and into the sunlight. It was a tall man, very slim and wiry. Like all of the reapers, he was dressed in loose black clothes, with dark red streamers tied to his wrists and ankles. On his chest was a beautifully rendered chalk drawing of angel wings, and his shaved head was covered with elaborate tattoos of thorny vines.
He stopped a few feet from the Hated. Although handles protruded from sheaths on his belt, thighs, and wrists, he held no weapon. And he stood well within striking range, as if he had no fear of the sharp knife in the Hated’s bloody hand.
