Chong found his voice, but it was thin and fragile. “When we fought Preacher Jack and his people at Gameland,” he began slowly, “I thought I understood what war was really like. But . . . ”
“This is war,” said Nix. “This is what it really looks like. God . . . there has to be something better than this.”
Chong nodded and turned away.
But then a new sound intruded into the moment. A motor sound, but not the sound of quads. It was bigger. Much, much bigger.
They leaned out.
The sound was massive, rolling out over the tops of the trees.
They turned and looked upward.
“Oh my God!” cried Nix.
Even Chong, despite everything, smiled.
The thing was enormous and white, with massive wings stretching on either side. It flew directly over the clearing, and its shadow caressed their faces as they watched. It flew low and descended toward the red desert mountains in a graceful line.
Down among the dead, Joe stopped and shielded his eyes as he looked up. Stained with soot and blood, he smiled.
The jet.
92
IN THE LAST GLOW OF THE DYING SUN, MOTHER ROSE STOOD AT THE EDGE of the forest. She watched the jet descend toward Sanctuary. Once, long ago, she had seen it flying high in the sky, and she’d thought it was a passenger liner. How foolish a thought that had been. She knew what it was now; her daughter had told her. A C-5 Galaxy. A cargo jet that brought staff and supplies to Sanctuary.
Even if Mako hadn’t revealed the location of the place, the landing jet would have been a beacon.
Not that it mattered anymore. Mother Rose had less than one hundred reapers left. A fraction of her force. All the rest . . . ?
Alexi had come running from the shrine, bloody and furious, claiming that children and a ranger were trying to take the weapons from the fallen plane. Mother Rose had sent so many of her reapers back with him. Too many.
And all of them . . . gone. Dead. Torn to rags by the weapons she had hidden and protected from Saint John and the rest of the Night Church.
Her weapons. The tools that would have made her the queen of this world.
Gone. The weapons, her reapers, her dreams . . . gone.
Only Alexi returned. Bloodier still. Defeated. A general without an army.
Her remaining reapers milled in the darkness. Not enough to take Sanctuary away from the monks and scientists who worked there.
Not enough.
“We’re done,” said Alexi.
Mother Rose almost stabbed him. Her hand was on her knife, but her heart was breaking and she simply could not do it. It was over.
“We were so close,” she said.
Alexi leaned on his hammer and hung his head. “One day,” he said. “If we’d jumped on this yesterday. One damn day.” He let the handle of his hammer fall away to thump into the sand. “Now what? How the hell do we come back from this?”
Mother Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. I . . . I’ll think of something.”
“No,” said a voice, soft as a shadow.
Mother Rose whipped her head around.
“Saint John,” she said in a whisper.
“Get back!” barked Brother Alexi, lunging for his hammer. A shadow rose up from behind a bush as the giant stretched out for his weapon, and then Alexi simply sagged forward and collapsed onto the ground. Mother Rose stared in incomprehension as the sand beneath Alexi darkened and glistened wetly. Alexi tried to speak, but there was no possibility of that. Not with what was left of his throat. He blinked once, twice, and then stared at the darkening sky.
The shadow moved into the light.
Brother Peter wore no expression at all on his face. The fading sunlight gleamed on the bloody knife in his hand.
Saint John walked slowly toward Mother Rose. He had no weapon in his hand, but she wasn’t fooled. Saint John himself was a weapon, and every fold and pocket of his clothes hid blades. He was, after all, Saint John of the Knife. How many times had she seen this man reach out in the most casual fashion, his hand seemingly empty at the beginning of a gesture and filled with steel at the end, and between start and finish the air bloomed with red. He was the greatest killer the world had ever known; she believed that with her whole heart, even if she had never believed in the saint’s God or the Night Church.
To her, it was all a scam. A means to an end.
And this was an end.
Not the one she dreamed of. Not the one she wanted.
Saint John stopped inches away. His face, though not handsome, was beautiful, the way the carved faces of saints in churches are beautiful. Cold and remote and inhuman.
Tears dropped from Mother Rose’s eyes. She knew they would do nothing to change the shape of this day. Nor would anything she could say.
If her reapers were closer, if Alexi was alive, if they had the weapons from the shrine, then she would have tried to manage this moment. To shape it, to try and work a con on the saint.
But those possibilities had set with the burning sun.
She said, “I’m sorry.”
Strangely, surprisingly, she meant it.
Saint John bent close and kissed her on the lips. Without passion, but with love. With the kind of love only he understood.
“I know,” he said.
“Please don’t let it hurt,” she whispered.
“No,” he said.
And it did not.
Mother Rose fell into his arms, and Saint John lowered her to the ground. Then he stepped back, turned, and with Brother Peter at his side, walked away.
She lay there as the sun set. Time was dancing away from her.
There was movement somewhere to her right, and she managed to turn her head, just a little. Brother Alexi was stirring, crawling across the grass toward her.
Alive, she thought, her heart filling with joy. My love is alive.
Except that he wasn’t.
The giant was as pale as the distant stars, and as he bent toward her she could see the darkness. It was in his eyes and in his open mouth.
It’s real, she thought. Her last thought. The darkness is real.
93
WHEN BENNY OPENED HIS EYES ONCE MORE, THE WORLD HAD CHANGED.
It wasn’t the inside of the plane. It was daytime.
There was a motor roar, and even though he could not turn his head, he could cut his eyes left and right. There were quads. Riot and Chong on one. Nix and Eve on another. A big dog galloping along with them.
Is that a dog barking? wondered Benny. The dog was all in armor, and Benny thought that was cool.
He heard the motors slow.
“Sanctuary,” said a voice.
Nix?
He thought so.
“We have to hurry,” said another voice. Joe. “He’s slipping fast.”
Benny wondered if they were talking about him.
Or Chong?
The quads moved forward, and Benny looked up to see a big chain-link fence.
We’re home, he thought. We made it all the way back to Mountainside.
But there was a sign beside the gate he’d never seen on the fence back home. It read:
SANCTUARY
GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR
YOUR HUDDLED MASSES YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE
But below that the original words were still visible, though sand-blasted to pale ghosts of letters by the unrelenting desert winds. As Benny passed the sign he read it:
AREA 51
UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
He closed his eyes again and the world went away, taking all its puzzles and mysteries with it.
EPILOGUE
-1-
BENNY SAW TOM THERE IN THE DARKNESS.
His brother stood halfway down a long hallway that vanished into soft gray light. Tom was dressed for the Ruin, with his leather jacket and the kami katana slung over his shoulder.
“Tom?”
His brother turned slowly toward him.
He looked younger than Benny remembered. There were fewer shadows in Tom’s eyes.
“Hey, kiddo,” said Tom. “You have any idea what happened?”
“Yeah, a zombie hit me with a stick.”
“Crazy, huh? Bet you didn’t think that could happen.”
“Guess not.” Benny touched his head. It hurt, but it was all in one piece. That surprised him. In most of his dreams his head was in a thousand pieces and he was crawling around looking for the important ones.
“How come you never told me that zoms could do that?” Benny asked.
Tom shrugged. “World’s a big, strange place, Benny. What makes you think I know everything?”
“Oh.”
“Next time somebody swings something at your head, you might want to think about ducking.”
“Hilarious. Remind me to smother you in your sleep.”
“Little too late for that, kiddo.”
Even though Tom wasn’t moving, he seemed to be a little farther away. For the first time Benny realized that there were other people in the hallways. They were indistinct, more of a sense of movement in the gray light rather than specific shapes. He thought he recognized one of them, though.
“Chong?”
The figure stopped moving, but he stood with his back to Benny.
“Tom—is that Chong?”
His brother turned and looked at the figure. Then he bent and spoke quietly to him, but Benny couldn’t hear what was said.
“Is that Chong?” Benny asked again. “Is . . . is he going with you?”
Tom patted the other figure on the shoulder and then walked toward Benny. The other person remained back in the shadows.
Tom stopped a few feet away. He looked older now, more like he did that day they all left town.
“Can I come with you too?” asked Benny.
Sadness flickered in Tom’s eyes, but he still made a joke. “No, kiddo . . . you got other places to mess up, other people to annoy.”
“Tom . . . I really miss you, man.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Is it wrong that I want to go home?”
Tom touched Benny’s face. His palm was warm. “Where’s home now?” asked Tom.
Benny shook his head. “This isn’t what we expected.”
“What did you expect?” asked Tom.
“I don’t know. I thought we’d . . . I mean, I thought that it would be . . . ”
“Easier? Benny, I wish I could tell you that the world was a better place than it is,” Tom said quietly. “Or that it’s all going to be easier. But you know it isn’t, and I think you knew that before you walked through the fence back home. Nix is looking for something perfect.”
“I know. And we keep not finding it.”
“Perfect doesn’t exist. Not like she thinks. There’s a lot of hurt out here. A lot of pain, and a lot of people doing bad things.”
“Is that all there is? Hard times and bad people?”
Tom smiled. “I didn’t say that everyone was bad. I said that there are people doing bad things. Some of them, but not all of them. You met some good ones too. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“This is the world, Benny. It’s seldom what we expect it to be.” He took his hand away. “But here’s the secret, here’s the thing I wanted to say.”
“What?”
Tom smiled. “You can fix the world. You, Nix . . . your generation. You can fix the world and make it right.”
“You mean put it back the way it was?”
“Was it right the way it was?”
“No.”
“Then there’s your answer.” He cocked his head. “You already know this, though. Don’t you?”
Benny thought about it.
“I guess so.” He looked up at Tom. “Does that mean you’re not really here and that this is some kind of coma thing? Like I’m having one of those vision thingies they talk about in books?”
Tom gave an elaborate shrug. “How would I know, little brother? You’re the hero with the magic sword. I’m just a ghost—who is considerably better-looking than you.”
“Hey!”
“I’m just saying.”
They stood there, grinning at each other.
“I love you, Tom.”
“Love you too, Benny.”
Tom turned and walked away, and Benny let him go.
-2-
“WELCOME BACK TO THE WORLD,” SAID PHOENIX RILEY.
Benny cranked open one eyelid and saw her perched on a chair a few feet away. “Nix,” he said, his voice as weak as a whisper. He lay on a cot surrounded by a screen of sheets hung from metal poles.
“Benny!” Nix flew to him, but her hands were so gentle and tentative. She covered his face with a hundred quick kisses.
He tried to raise his head, to kiss her, but that was impossible. His head hurt too much, and his muscles felt like limp spaghetti. Nix looked worn thin, her face pale, her red hair hanging limp.
“How . . . bad is it . . . ?” he asked, not really wanting to know.
“You . . . almost slipped away from us,” she said, and her smile was a little too bright, her laugh a bit too forced. “God . . . this was the longest week of my life!”
“Week?”
“Benny, we’ve been here for eight days.”
He gaped at her.
“I thought I lost you, Benny,” she said, and she held his hand with all her strength. She bent and kissed his knuckles.
“Where are we?” he asked “This place . . . is this Sanctuary?”
She nodded, sniffed, and dabbed at her eyes, but she kept her smile bolted in place.
“It’s on an old military base,” she said as she helped him sit up. She was very careful with him, as if he were made of glass. “It’s run by the way-station monks. There are a couple hundred of them here.”
All Benny could see was the curtain. “Where is everybody?”
