—MARCUS AURELIUS
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Tom once asked us each if we knew what we would fight for. What we would kill for. What we would die for.
He said if a person didn’t know the answers to those questions, then they should never go to war. He also said that if a person did know the answers to those questions, they should never want to go to war.
I don’t know if I can answer any of those questions yet, but I feel like I’m already living inside a war.
66
“NIX?” ASKED BENNY GENTLY. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
She kept crying and didn’t answer.
“Look . . . Tom was right,” said Benny, “the plague is changing, and maybe that’s good news. Those papers said that it was mutating. Maybe it’s mutating into something that won’t be as bad.”
“Oh sure, and when’s the last time something changed for the better?” she sobbed. “Everything is wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t how any of this is supposed to be. It’s all wrong, Benny. God, I’m so stupid.”
“Wait—what? Nix, what are you talking about? How’s any of this your fault?”
“You don’t understand.” She was crying so hard those were the only words he could understand. “You just don’t understand.”
“Nix . . . I want to understand . . . just tell me what’s wrong.”
Benny felt his own tears running in lines down his face and falling onto her hair.
What storms raged inside Nix? Benny could make a list, but he was achingly positive that any list he could make would not be complete.
“I’m sorry,” he said, because he had nothing better to say. “It’ll be okay.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not going to be okay.”
He pushed her gently back and studied her face. “What do you mean?”
There was a strange light in her beautiful green eyes, and an even stranger half smile on her lips. The smile was crooked and filled with self-loathing and self-mockery.
“Oh, Benny,” she said in a terrible whisper, “I think I’m in trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“I think I’m going crazy.”
He smiled. “You’re not going crazy.”
“How would you know?”
“Nix, don’t you think I’d know?”
She shook her head. “No one knows. No one understands.”
“Try me, Nix. If something’s wrong, then tell me. Let me in.”
“God, if you knew what was going on in my head, you’d run so fast. . . . ”
“No.”
“Yes, you would.”
“No,” he said firmly, leaning all his weight into the word, “I wouldn’t. You can tell me anything.”
She continued to shake her head.
So Benny said, “I hear voices.”
He dropped it on her, and for a moment she stopped crying, stopped shaking her head, and stared at him. A twisted half smile kept trying to form on her lips.
“Yup,” said Benny, tapping his temple. “Sometimes I have a real party in here.”
“This isn’t a joke. . . . ”
“Do I look like I’m laughing?” He did smile, though, and he knew that smile was probably every bit as crooked as hers.
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Why haven’t you?” Benny sighed. “It’s not like we’ve been communicating that well lately, Nix.”
She sighed. “A lot’s happened.”
“I know, but we haven’t talked about it. I think that’s the whole problem.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Okay, so if it’s not the whole problem, then it’s the doorway to the problem. C’mon, Nix, it’s been a month since Gameland. Since then, what have we talked about? Hunting for food. Cooking. Routes on the map. Which leaves are safe to use as toilet paper. Jeez, Nix, we talk about stuff that just gets us through the day, but we don’t talk about what happened.”
Nix said nothing.
“We killed people, Nix.”
“I know. We killed people seven months ago at Charlie’s camp, too.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t really talk about it. Not in any way that made sense of it, or cleared it. Don’t you think that’s a little weird?”
She shrugged. “Everything’s weird.”
“After everything that’s happened, Nix, I really don’t think either of us has a chance of being totally sane. I guess ‘normal’ was last year.”
She thought about that and gave a grudging nod.
“Okay,” Benny continued, “but it can’t be good that we don’t talk about this stuff. We never really talked about your mom and what happened.”
Nix turned away.
“And . . . that’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “I even start to mention it and you lock up. That can’t be the best way of dealing with—”
“What kind of voices?” Nix interrupted.
“It . . . used to be what I guess you could call my ‘inner voice,’” he began slowly. “It was like me, but not me. It was smarter, you know? It knew about stuff. It’s hard to explain.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“All kinds of stuff. Even how to talk to you.”
The ghost of a smile flitted across her lips.
“But that’s not what really has me scared,” Benny continued. He took a breath and then blurted it. “I think Tom’s talking to me too.”
“Oh.”
“At first I thought I was just remembering things he said. But lately . . . I don’t know. I think he’s actually talking to me. Like, maybe it’s his ghost.”
“Ghost?”
Benny nodded. “God, this is why I don’t talk about this stuff, because you’re definitely going to think I’m totally monkey-bat crazy.”
“You always have been,” she said with another small smile.
“Since Tom died . . . I knew that I had to keep him alive somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but it makes sense to me. I have to remember everything Tom ever said. Every lesson he gave us. Everything. God, Nix, he was the very last samurai, do you realize that? The last one. Think about everything that . . . died . . . with him. Everything he knew. Everything he could have taught us is gone. Do you get how bad that is? All that knowledge. How to fight, how to do things. Gone. Just—gone.”
“I know, Benny. My mom knew a lot of things too.”
“Look, Nix, I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. It’s okay.”
Benny licked his lips, which had gone completely dry. “I can’t stand it, Nix. I can’t stand that it’s all gone. I can’t stand that he’s gone.” His nose was starting to run, and he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped it.
“I know,” she said.
“But,” Benny said, “maybe he’s not. That’s what I’m trying to say. Today, when I was down in the ravine . . . he actually spoke to me. It wasn’t a memory. It was like he was right there.”
“You were surrounded by zoms, Benny. You were probably in shock.”
“No kidding. Doesn’t change anything. Tom started speaking to me, and I could hear him as clear as I’m hearing you now.”
“Why are you scared of that? He’s your brother.”
“Um . . . hello? He’s a ghost?”
“You only think you’re hearing Tom’s ghost.”
“Yes.”
“Is he here now?” Nix asked. “Can you ask him a question? Ask him what my mom’s middle name was.”
“He’s a ghost, not a carnival magician.”
“Tom knew her middle name,” said Nix. “Ask him. If it’s really him, then he’ll know.”
“That’s stupid—”
“Ask him!” she yelled.
“I can’t!” he yelled back.
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work like that.”
“How do you know how it works? Come on, Benny, we’ve been on the run since we got up this morning. Exactly when
did you have time to process everything and come to the unshakable conclusion that you’re the expert on all things spiritual?”
“Why are you getting mad at me? I’m trying to get some help here ’cause I think I’m really screwed up, and you’re giving me crap.”
“Benny, how do you know this is Tom?”
“I just know.”
“No,” she snapped, “that’s not good enough. How do you know?”
“I just do. He was my brother. I think I’d know my brother’s voice. This is him.”
“Then ask him my mother’s middle name. What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of that.”
When Nix didn’t say anything, Benny sighed.
“Look,” he said, “why are you badgering me about this? You think I want to hear my dead brother’s voice?”
“Why not? I’d give anything to hear my mother speak to me,” said Nix in a voice that was filled with fragile cracks.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because,” shouted Nix, “I can’t even remember what she sounded like.”
After a long moment, Benny said, “What?”
“God . . . I’d give anything for her to start talking to me.” A sob hitched in her chest. “Benny . . . I can’t even remember what my mother looked like.”
67
SITTING WITH EVE STEADIED CHONG. HE UNDERSTOOD WHY. IT WAS harder to let yourself sink if someone else needed you to be their rock. He saw Benny and Nix do that for each other, even though he was positive they weren’t aware of it.
It did not mean that Chong was less terrified, but the girl’s terror and trauma were worse than his own. Even if he died, what she was going through was worse. She’d seen her parents murdered right in front of her. When Chong died, his fear would end; Eve would have to live with those memories.
Everything’s relative.
Eve sat close to him, sucking her thumb, occasionally humming disjointed pieces of lullabies.
Riot went outside to make sure they were still safe, then came back and sat down. Chong studied Riot’s face. She was a puzzle to him. She reminded him of Tom’s bounty hunter friend, Sally Two-Knives. Tough, fiercely individual, violent, and clearly with a heart.
“Talk to me,” said Chong.
“About what?” she asked. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with some smart way out of this bear trap, but every which way I look there’s just more traps.”
“Yeah, let’s not talk about that,” said Chong. “Why don’t you tell me your story? I mean . . . are you a reaper?”
She looked away for a moment. “Not as such,” she said.
“Okay, that was evasive.”
She shrugged. “I was a reaper once upon a time. Ain’t now. End of story.”
“No,” said Chong. “I’m dying, I get to be nosy. You’re a walking contradiction. You have the same skin art as the reapers, but you went after Brother Andrew like you owed him for a lot of hurt.”
Riot ran a hand thoughtfully over her scalp, then sighed. “I was no more’n two years old when the plague hit,” she said slowly. “My dad was raising me. He was a country doctor down in North Carolina. He’d divorced my ma ’cause she was a drunk and a bum and no damn good.”
“I’m sorry,” Chong began, but she waved it away.
“That’s the nice part of the story. Y’all want to hear it or not?”
He nodded. His skin was cold and clammy, and he had an incredibly bad headache. He sat cross-legged with his back to the wall.
“I could use the distraction,” he admitted.
“Well, when the whole world turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet, Pa packed me in his car and drove northwest. Got as far as Jefferson City, Missouri, before the EMPs killed the car. After that we joined up with a buncha folks who was running from the dead. I don’t remember nothin’ about that. All kind of a blur. We was always running, always hiding, and always hungry. People came and went. Then we met up with a bigger bunch of folks, and when they found out Pa was a doc, they made sure that he was always safe. Me too.
“My pa was always trying to steer over toward Topeka, which was the last place he knew my mom to be living. And sure enough, she was there and she was alive. My pa said it was like a miracle. Only thing was, Ma was hooked up with a group that was calling itself the Night Church, and she was keeping company with its leader, a man named Saint John.”
Eve wormed closer to Chong, her thumb still socketed in her mouth. It frightened Chong that the child was barely talking. She’d said a few words after she woke up, but then she seemed to shut down. It was so sad.
“Saint John said that it really was a miracle that my ma found me,” continued Riot, “and he said that it made me special. Like I was some kind of holy person.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Me. Holy. Right.”
“This Night Church,” asked Chong, “they’re the reapers?”
She nodded. “They didn’t start calling themselves that until much later. By then I was being trained to be a fighter. Saint John knows every kind of evil move there is. Karate and all that. Dirty fighting. Hands, feet, knives, strangle wires. He taught me all that stuff, and I was the head of my class. Hooray for me.” She touched her scalp. “This stuff was actually a health thing first. We all came down with the worst case of lice in the history of bugs. Couldn’t shake ’em, couldn’t wash ’em out, so Pa suggested everybody shave all their hair off. Worked, too. But while we was all bald, somebody took it in their head to go and get tattooed. Not sure who started it, but everyone in the Night Church did it. Saint John, too, and he called it the mark in flesh of our devotion. Some crap like that.”
“Why don’t you grow your hair back?”
She ran her fingers lightly over her scalp. “I tried, but it don’t grow in right. Comes in all patchy and nasty. Better to keep it like this. Besides, the reapers can’t stand that I have the mark and I ain’t one of ’em. Drives Ma nuts too.”
“Your mother is still with them?”
“My dear old ma,” said Riot acidly, “is the high holy muck-a-muck of the Night Church. Calls herself Mother Rose. An’ she’s the only one who didn’t get her head tattooed. Grew her hair back, and Saint John somehow spun that as it was a special mark that only she could have. No, don’t look too close at it, ’cause you’ll hurt yourself. It don’t make a lick of sense.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I wised up,” she said. “I guess I kind of had what you might call a ‘moment.’ I was fourteen by then and leadin’ my own team of reapers. All girls, daughters of the inner circle of the church. We were getting ready to hit this little walled-in town in Idaho—and the thing is, I never even found out its name—and the night before the raid, I was on recon with a couple of the other girls when I heard something from over the walls.”
“What?” asked Chong.
“Weren’t much, just a lady singing a lullaby to her baby.” She paused as if looking into that memory with perfect clarity. “I was up in a tree where I could see over the wall. The guards don’t watch trees because the gray people can’t climb.”
Chong nodded.
“I could see into a lighted window, and there’s this gal, maybe twenty years old, holding a little baby in her arms as she rocked in a chair. Just a single candle lit on a table. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. The woman was so . . . happy. She had her baby, and she was in a safe town, and there was music and laughter in the streets. The world outside might be full of monsters and the whole world might have gone to hell, but here she was, rocking her baby and singing a song.”
“What happened?”
Riot sniffed and shook her head. “When I came back to give my report . . . I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. So I lied. I spun a yarn about the whole town being filled with armed men and lots of guns and suchlike. I said that we’d get ourselves killed sure as God made little green apples.”
“Did they believe you?”
She looked at Eve and smiled sadly.
“No. Saint John had other people scoutin’ too, and they saw the truth, that the town was wide open, that the defenses were only good against gray people.”
“What happened?”
“They came in and killed ’em all. Every last man, woman . . . and child . . . in that town. Saint John sent his pet goon, Brother Peter, to drag me in for a talk, but I read the writing on the wall and cut bait. I was gone before sunup. Just up and went.”
“They let you just leave?”
“‘Let’? No. I had to muss a few of them ’up some, but I got away.” She sniffed again. “After that I fell in with a gang of scavengers. That’s where I got the nickname. Riot. Did a bunch of bad stuff and raised a lot of Cain. Then . . . I got real sick, and a way-station monk took me to a place called Sanctuary. They fixed me up right and proper. They wanted me to stay there, but I snuck out of that place like I did from my mom’s camp. Didn’t hurt nobody, though. After that I knocked around a bit, got into some more trouble. But . . . a year ago I found a bunch of refugees on the run from some reapers. I helped ’em slip away, but there were a lot of sick and injured, including a bunch of kids, so I took ’em to Sanctuary. Kind of dropped ’em at the door and ran. Done that a few times now. The folks at Sanctuary don’t mind people coming in for help, but they really don’t like people leaving. I think they’d as soon put a leash on me if they had the chance. I don’t give them no chance. I drop and run, drop and run. That’s what I was trying to do with Carter and his crew. Guess I kind of made it my calling.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s penance.”
“But . . . the stuff you did while you were with the reapers, that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know any better, and when you did, you left.”
“Maybe. That don’t make me sleep any better at night.”
She reached over and stroked Eve’s hair.
“I got wind of the reapers planning on making a move on her town. Treetops it was called. I’d been there a few times with the scavengers. Nice folks, so I tried to get there in time to warn people, but I was about four hours too late. All I could do was offer to lead the survivors to Sanctuary.”