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“You have a great poker face, kid. I can’t tell if I’m reaching you at all or just wasting my time.”
Gutsy rested her hand on the doorjamb of the entrance to the tunnel.
“I hear you,” she said. “And I appreciate—”
The glass windows of the car wash exploded inward toward them in a shower of glittering shards as dozens of howling figures crowded in.
Interlude Four Brother Mercy and the Strike Team
FOUR YEARS AGO
BROTHER MERCY LED THE RAID. It was his first time as the leader of a reaper strike force. Being one of the soldiers in previous raids was different. Frightening. But also exhilarating, because he knew that both Saint John and god were watching.
Now it was different.
Now he was in charge, and neither Brother Peter nor Saint John were there to guide him. Now it was Brother Mercy who was in charge. Fifteen years old and in charge of forty reapers, some of them three times his age. Many of them much more experienced in combat.
The young reaper stood in the shadowed entrance to an old shopping mall. Outside, dozens of heretics labored in geometric fields that once had been the landscaped green spaces scattered throughout the parking lot. They laughed and talked among themselves, unaware there was any danger. Brother Mercy and several key reapers had come here as refugees and joined the community. They were being trained to farm. Everybody was welcome here, but everyone had to work.
That was fine, thought the young reaper. He had come here to work. To do his god’s work. He didn’t mind a little physical labor in the meantime.
Brother Mercy’s hand trembled as he drew his long knife. Sweat chilled his body despite the heat inside the mall. He licked his lips, which had gone dry. With his free hand, he raised a silver dog whistle to his lips, took a deep breath, and blew.
From the woods all around the mall, a sound rose up in response—a deep, awful, enormous moan of hunger. Rank after rank of the living dead broke from the tree line on the far side of the parking lot. The farmers saw them and screamed, dropping their sacks of fruit and baskets of vegetables, and they ran for safety.
Straight toward the mall entrance. Toward Brother Mercy.
Brother Mercy allowed the heretics to get very close before he spoke two words to the reapers clustered behind him.
“For god,” he said. And the knives of the reapers flashed.
The day turned dark with a beautiful shade of red.
PART SEVEN THE ROAD HOME
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
—EDMUND BURKE, ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
31
NIX AND LILAH DROVE OUT of sight.
To Nix it felt weird. She could actually feel herself leave the energetic connection she usually felt with Benny. It was strange and unsettling, like stepping out of the world she and Benny had shared for so long. The last time they had been physically distant from each other for any length of time was when Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer had kidnapped her. It was only a couple of days before Benny helped her escape, but it was their longest time apart.
Not that they had been glued at the hip. After the reaper war, she’d broken things off with Benny, needing to explore who she was. She still saw him during that time, and continued to train with him and their friends, learning a lot of deadly skills from Captain Ledger. Later, when they started seeing each other again, it was more on her terms. Or on even terms, with Benny growing into his own confidence and not needing her.
The trip from home to New Alamo—all those long miles on the quads—gave Nix a lot of time to think. About life. About her future. And about Benny. She knew she loved him, but was no longer so sure that romantic love mattered all that much to her. She knew that the battle with Charlie and the Hammer, the search for the airplane, and the reaper war had completely warped the process of growing up for all of them. They were so much tougher and more experienced than sixteen-year-olds should be. At least as far as what she always expected life to be like at that age. At the same time, she was mature enough to know that she wasn’t yet mature. Not completely.
Nix had no real idea what that meant. Maybe it would mean she needed to spend time alone again. Maybe for a long time.
She turned to look back and saw that New Alamo had become merely a glint of metal and a smudge of smoke, lacking any details.
* * *
&nbs
p; Lilah drove, pushing the quad as fast as she dared.
