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As she swung through the night she felt the strength in her hands fail at last.
* * *
Benny parried the knife strokes again and again and again.
Then he shifted in and blocked them both at the same time, catching the reaper in a double attack. Benny held the contact for a fragment of a second and lashed out with a kick that caught the older teen on the inner left thigh.
* * *
Spider dropped his bo and heard it bang and clang all the way down through the network of scaffolding, but he didn’t care. As Gutsy swung toward him he saw her bloody, swollen hands open. He lunged and caught what was left of her vest and her T-shirt and flung himself backward.
He fell onto the planking, and Gutsy landed on him. Part of her did. Her legs were still over the edge, kicking in midair.
Spider clawed at her, trying to pull her up before her weight could pull him down. They hung there, on the balance of life and death.
* * *
Benny pressed his advantage, kicking again and catching Brother Mercy’s right wrist hard enough to send a knife spinning off into the darkness. He slashed with the sword, but the reaper was not even close to finished.
Brother Mercy ducked, rolled, and bounced up onto the balls of his feet, springy as a dancer, as he shifted his remaining knife to his right hand. He dropped into a fighting crouch, and then suddenly seemed to lose interest in Benny. Instead he stared, slack-jawed, at something else. Then the reaper gave a small cry of obvious terror, spun around, and leaped off the platform.
Benny, startled, ran to the edge and saw the reaper, nimble as an ape, climbing down. As soon as the killer reached the ground, he ran for the eastern wall and began to climb.
The urge to chase him was incredibly strong. Reapers fighting along with the Raggedy Man? Benny wanted to catch Brother Mercy and force some answers out of him. But a sound made him turn, and he saw Spider trying to keep Gutsy from falling over the edge.
Benny ran over to them, dropped his sword, grabbed Gutsy and Spider with one hand each, and hauled. He was not a big teen, but Benny Imura was all muscle, and his weight, leaning backward, did the trick. Spider fell flat on his back and Gutsy literally rolled the length of him, narrowly missing his face, to collapse beside him.
She clutched her torn hands to her chest, weeping from exhaustion.
Spider lay there, panting, staring upward at the smoke clouds that obscured the sky.
Benny knelt beside Gutsy. “Pull up your pant leg. I saw one of those freaks bite you.”
“No, he didn’t have a good angle; just a bruise. I’m fine.”
There was only steel in Benny’s eyes and in his voice. “Show me.”
Gutsy licked her lips, hoping what she’d said was true. She pulled up her pant leg and angled her calf toward the glow of the distant fires. The skin was badly bruised, but there wasn’t a single drop of blood.
Benny and Spider visibly relaxed.
“Jeez, Guts, you have really weird luck,” said Benny, straightening. “From all the crazy stuff you do, like going out to that base and coming back with a whole skin. You’re either totally out of your mind or you have an angel on your shoulder.”
“Both,” Spider suggested.
Gutsy merely shrugged. Benny offered her a hand and helped her up. The three of them stood for a moment, looking over the wall toward the mass of the dead slowly advancing on New Alamo.
Spider pointed with his bo. “Guys… what is that?”
80
OUT IN THE FIELD, BEYOND the wall, something moved. The light from burning sections of the wall painted it in yellows and oranges, but even with that glow it took the three of them a while to understand what they were seeing.
It was a truck.
Not driving. Not something from the base, but a massive flatbed being pulled along the road by what looked like a thousand los muertos. They were yoked like oxen and moved with the steady, unbreakable, tireless stride of the dead. In the center of the flatbed
was something that looked like a giant chair. Or throne. And upon the throne was a giant of a man. Dozens of ravagers stood around the throne, firelight glinting on rifle barrels, axes, and swords. And behind the truck, spread out like an ocean, were a million shambling monsters. An army so vast that it was lost in the distance.
