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She turned and climbed into the quad’s saddle. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
Nix lingered a moment, staring at Lilah. Then she climbed on behind her, and they drove west as the shadows chased them, mile after mile.
Interlude Six The Raggedy Man
TWO YEARS AGO
“WHO ARE WE GOING TO meet?” asked Brother Mercy.
He and Sister Sorrow sat on either side of Saint John on the bench seat of the old-fashioned wagon. It was pulled by four farm horses whose harnesses were hung with red tassels dipped in the chemicals that kept the gray people from attacking. A large expeditionary force of reapers accompanied them, some riding far ahead on quads, two hundred more marching in lines a few miles behind.
“I told you already,” said Saint John.
“All you said was that he was a prophet of Lord Thanatos—all praise to his darkness.”
“And so he is. What else did I tell you?”
“That he calls himself the Raggedy Man,” said Sister Sorrow.
“He has accepted that nickname,” said the saint. “It was first used in a pejorative way by unenlightened sinners.”
“Why?” asked both of the young reapers at the same time.
Saint John shrugged. “You’ll understand when you meet him.”
They were deep in Ohio, moving through ruined and burned cities. Many tall buildings had bowed to the ground during the last days of man’s failed dominion over the earth. Many thousands of the holy gray people moved like ghosts through the ruins or stood watching the reapers pass with unreadable eyes, their mouths moving as if chewing the memory of meat.
“Who is the Raggedy Man?” asked Sister Sorrow. “All I’ve heard are rumors and some tall tales.”
“And what have you heard, my dear?”
She hesitated. “That he was the first of the gray people.”
“This is truth. What else?”
“That he can speak to them,” she said. “That they listen to him.”
“Also true. And… ?”
“That he cannot die.”
The saint’s eyes looked thoughtful. “When the dead were called to rise to cleanse the earth and usher the sinners into the blessed darkness, it began with a single man—one whose kiss was enough to begin the great change.”
In the world of the reapers, a “kiss” was what they called
a bite.
Saint John said, “He is not like any of the children of Thanatos—all praise to his darkness—you have ever seen. He can speak, and he is eloquent in his understanding of god’s purpose. He can command them. What we do with dog whistles and much effort, he does with a whispered word. With a thought.”
Brother Mercy gaped at him. “Really?”
“Really,” said Saint John, and gave one of his rare smiles of genuine happiness.
PART ELEVEN NEW ALAMO
From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.
—SIGMUND FREUD
