“Smart boy . . .”
“But,” said Jolt, “here’s the thing. That’s your gig, man. That’s what you believe. It sure as heck is a popular belief around here. We got this whole ‘hey, we’re alive and ain’t it cool?’ thing going on. I can respect you for your beliefs, man, but you’re going to have to take them somewhere else. You can’t come into my zone and force your ideas down my throat.”
“This is the will of god.”
“Dude, not really all that interested in a religious debate,” said Jolt. “I’m telling you to leave us alone. You say ‘walk away’ to me? I’m giving you that same message. Beat it. Go.”
“Or—?”
“Or I’ll make you,” said Jolt.
“I thought you said you were a pacifist.”
Jolt suddenly jumped up and kicked Brother Andrew in the face with a lightning-fast snap kick. The big reaper went flying backward and crashed into the side of a car, then slid down to land on the ground, legs sprawled.
“I said that we don’t believe in killing,” said Jolt, smiling down at the fallen reaper. “And you ain’t dead.”
Before Andrew could shake off the shock and pain, Jolt whirled. “Gummi! Get out—go loud and long. Sound it!”
The boy picked his bike up, turned it around, and stood on the pedals to get into motion. The two reapers lunged for him, but then Riot leaped off the top of the car and was among them.
“No killing!” yelled Jolt.
Riot pretended not to hear him.
She crashed into one of the reapers and sent him sprawling, then she wheeled on the other. She and the reaper had knives of almost equal length. Riot knew this man—Brother Colin—and he was a superb knife fighter. He was in an entirely different league from Connie, Griff, and Jason. They began circling each other warily, feinting with their knives but not committing to any attacks yet, looking for an opening.
“Riot . . . please,” implored Jolt.
Suddenly Brother Andrew surged off the ground, wrapped his arms around Jolt, drove him across ten feet of open space, and slammed into the side of a UPS truck. The impact drove the air from Jolt’s lungs, and for a moment his eyes went blank, then he sagged to his knees.
“No!” cried Riot, and in that moment of distraction Brother Colin lunged, jabbing and slashing at her. Blood erupted from Riot’s upper arm as the reaper’s knife opened up a long gash.
Riot danced backward, hissing in pain, narrowly avoiding a second cut that would have torn open her throat.
In the distance she heard the rising scream of Gummi Bear’s siren.
Was that what Jolt meant? To “sound it”? But why? Calling the living dead now would only take a terrible situation and collapse it into absolute defeat.
Nearby, Brother Andrew grabbed Jolt by the arms, hauled the boy upright, then flung him back against the truck.
The third reaper, Brother Max, climbed to his feet and shifted to Brother Colin’s right. Riot knew that the moment was slipping away. They could come at her in a combined attack that would overwhelm her. She couldn’t block two expert knife fighters at once. That’s why Saint John had sent them out, and why Brother Andrew had picked them for this ambush. Their combined skill was more than a match for hers. The only chance she might have—and it would be a slim one—would be to slaughter them, to go in fast and use every bit of skill she had to cut them apart and kill them.
But Jolt’s words kept ringing in her ears.
We don’t kill.
There’s been enough death in the world.
In a flash of a moment, Riot thought of all the lives she’d taken before she realized how horrible the Night Church was. She felt like she now stood ankle-deep in a river of blood. She could feel the bloodlust, the murderlust, burning in her heart and tingling in the fingers of the hand that held the knife. She realized with total horror that she wanted to kill these men; she longed to open red mouths in their flesh. To give them the gift of darkness.
It was everything her mother had ever taught her.
Everything Saint John had taught her.
It was the thing about her that allowed them to own her.
The blood hunger, the murder hunger, the need to kill in order to make the world right.
Riot thought she had escaped all of this when she’d run away from the Night Church.
But it was there in her hand. In her pounding ear.
In her need.
“Please,” she said to the two reapers. “Please.”
They rushed at her.
Something inside Riot’s mind . . . twisted.
She moved.
So fast.
As she had been taught.
Their blades drove toward her flesh. She parried hard, knocking one hand aside so that the tip of the knife drove through the empty air an inch from her hip. With the other hand she snapped the tip of the blade down, finding flesh, finding bone.
There was a scream.
There was blood.
Brother Colin’s knife dropped to clatter on the ground.
Riot moved, turning lithely. She may not have been able to dance a bicycle like Gummi Bear or run like the desert wind over every obstacle like Jolt, but in this, in the dance of blades and bodies, she was perfection in form and function. Elegant, in the way that perfect control can be elegant even in the commission of a violent act. Smooth, effortless, flawless.
Riot turned, and the blade whipped across Brother Max, cutting cloth and skin. Finding the redness beneath flesh. Drawing drops of it out in a spray of rubies. Drawing the scream out.
She turned in, completing a dancer’s pirouette, coming to an abrupt stop as if painted on the canvas of the moment. Brother Max was on his knees, arms crossed over his chest, holding his blood inside. Brother Colin leaned against a car, one hand clamped over a ruined forearm. Both of them torn by her knife.
Both of the them only torn.
Both of them alive.
“Riot,” said Jolt.
She stood there, panting, eyes wide and unfocused, staring through the world.
“Riot,” he said again.
And she looked at him.
Jolt leaned against the truck; Brother Andrew held him in place with a flat palm on his chest and a fist the size of a bucket poised to deliver a killing blow.
Brother Andrew sneered at her, at her refusal to kill. “How far you’ve fallen, little witch.”
He drove the punch at Jolt.
Jolt laughed.
He suddenly dropped into a low squat, letting his body simply go limp in a deadweight plunge. Andrew’s hand slid with him, and the incoming punch missed Jolt’s curly blond hair by ten inches.
It did not miss the side of the truck.
The impact was huge, a massive ka-rang that shook the whole vehicle.
The sound was so loud it masked the sound of all the bones in Andrew’s fist breaking.
The echo of the sound bounced off all the cars. It drew moans from the dead—the closest of which were now no more than a dozen paces away.
Brother Andrew did not scream.
He stared at his shattered fist, and for a moment the only sound he made, the only sound he was capable of making, was a high-pitched whistle that approached the ultra-sonic.
Jolt rose to his feet and shoved Brother Andrew away from him. The big reaper staggered back, his face flushing scarlet as he fought to articulate his agony.
“Finish it,” cried Riot.
Jolt looked at her. “What?”
“Kill him!” begged Riot. “While you still have the chance.”
The young man glanced at Andrew, who reeled away from him, cradling his hand against his chest and making small keening sounds.
“No,” said Jolt. “It’s over; he’s done.”
“He’s not.”
“Yes, he is.” He looked past her at the two wounded reapers. “They all are.”
“No . . . you don’t understand. . . . There are more of them out there.”
Jolt po
inted past her and she turned. Beyond the line of cars, near the town and coming hard in their direction, was a mass of people. Fifty of them. A hundred. More. Riding in front of them, his siren still wailing, was Gummi Bear.
Riot lowered her knife.
The dead were getting closer now, climbing over the locked bumpers of crashed cars.
Jolt walked over to Brother Andrew’s scythe, hooked his foot under the handle, kicked it into the air, caught it, and then spun his whole body and hurled the weapon as far away as he could. It arced over the cars and over the heads of the oncoming mass of zees. It fell out of sight, its clatter of impact lost beneath the moans of the dead.
Brother Andrew looked in the direction of his lost weapon and then turned slowly back to Jolt. His eyes were wet with unshed tears of pain, but his face was a mask of murderous fury.
“Jolt . . . ,” pleaded Riot, “please . . . you have to. . . .”
But Jolt shook his head. “I told you already, Riot. There’s been enough killing.”
Brother Andrew managed a small, tight smile. “She’s right, boy,” he wheezed. “This is your only chance.”
Jolt caught Andrew by the throat and stood him up, leaning in close to stare the man in the face. “Get your sick friends and get the hell out of here. You don’t belong around decent folks.”
He shoved the big reaper away from him and pointed to the only path through the cars that was not blocked by any of the living dead.
Andrew growled at the others to go, but he lingered at the mouth of the narrow path.
“You think you did something smart and noble here,” he said. “But all you did was cry out for the wrath of god. The darkness will come for you. It will come for you and everyone you love . . . and I’ll be there to see it happen.”
Jolt just shook his head. “Go.”
Brother Andrew looked past him at Riot.
“This is on you, girl. You know that we’ll be back. You know what we’ll do.”
Riot pointed her knife at him. “If I ever see you again, Andrew, I’m going to kill you.”
The reaper smiled. “Ah . . . now that’s my girl.”
He turned and lumbered away, trailed by his bleeding companions.
Riot hurried over to Jolt and got right up in his face. “He’s not joking, Jolt; they will be back.”
“I guess they will.”
She studied him. “Y’all are barn-owl crazy.”
Jolt grinned. “Been told that.”
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded, her voice a fierce whisper. “Y’all are stepping into harm’s way here, and you don’t even know me.”
“Does that matter? How long does a person have to know someone before they do what’s right? You’re a girl out here, starving and fighting for her life. Am I supposed to just ignore all that? What kind of person would that make me? What kind of world would that make? Look, Riot, I wasn’t joking about what I said. How much killing is enough? How much pain is enough? When do we stop and say ‘that’s it, no more’?”
Riot opened her mouth to respond, but she didn’t know how to answer those questions.
“The world that died couldn’t answer those questions either,” he said, and gave a small shrug. “The people Gummi and I travel with—we don’t pretend to know all the answers, but we’re working on them.” His grin returned, brighter than ever. “And we’re having some fun while we work it out.”
“Y’all are definitely crazy,” said Riot, and she too grinned.
The dead, smelling blood on the air, moaned in hunger. They crawled over the cars toward the living meat.
“Time to go,” said Jolt, and he started to turn away. Then he paused and reached out a hand to her. “Want to come . . . ?”
She gave it a lot of thought. Maybe a full second.
Then she took his hand, and together they climbed onto the nearest car.
“Let’s go!” bellowed Jolt. He let out a huge whoop of sheer joy, took two running steps across the hood, and then jumped high and wide, sailing over the heads and mouths and reaching arms of the biters.
Riot watched him—his strong back, his lithe body.
What in tarnation have you got yourself into, girl? she wondered.
Behind her the dead were massing, scrambling over the cars now like a swarm of wriggling worms. Off the road, hundreds of people were rushing toward her, coming to help her and Jolt. People she did not know. Orphans and refugees. Scavengers.
Friends?
Maybe. As strange as that concept was.
But what kind of friend could she be to them? Brother Andrew was right. He would be back. The reapers were out there, and there were so many of them. If they came in force, what could a couple of hundred people do?
“Please,” she said to the hot air. But she did not know exactly what she was asking for. She watched Jolt run and leap and twist and land and run. “Please.”
Riot cast one last look behind her, to where Brother Andrew had gone.
“Please,” she begged.
The reapers would come for her.
No, that wasn’t quite right. They would come for Sister Margaret. They would come for the girl who once belonged to them, to the Night Church.
Maybe they would not find her. Maybe by the time they came back the scavengers would have moved on to another town. And another. Maybe if it took too long to find her, the reapers would give up.
She hoped so.
She desperately wanted them to understand that the girl they were looking for did not exist anymore. Not a trace of her.
The girl she had been, Sister Margaret, was dead and gone.
She turned and ran and leaped and followed, hoping that she was free.
THE END
Don’t miss the next exciting chapter in the world after First Night!
Reeling from the tragic events of Dust & Decay, Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists, then humanity itself must have survived . . . somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.
But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any of them can imagine. Something strange is happening to the zombies: Swarms of faster, smarter zoms are coming from the east, devouring everything in their paths. Has the zombie plague mutated, or is there something far more sinister behind this new invasion of the living dead?
BENNY IMURA THOUGHT, I’M GOING TO DIE.
The hundred zombies chasing him all seemed to agree.
FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO NOTHING AND NOBODY WAS TRYING TO KILL Benny Imura.
Benny had been sitting on a flat rock, sharpening a sword and brooding. He was aware that he was brooding. He even had a brooding face for when other people were around. Now, though, he was alone, and he let the mask fall away. When he was alone, the melancholy musings were deeper, more useful, but also less fun. When you’re alone, you can’t crack a joke to make the moment feel better.
There were very few moments that felt good to Benny. Not anymore. Not since leaving home.
He was a mile from where he and his friends had camped in a forest of desert trees deep in southern Nevada. Every time Benny took another step on the road to finding the airplane he and Nix had seen, every single inch forward, he was farther from home than he had ever been.
He used to hate the idea of leaving home. Home was Mountainside, high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of central California. Home was bed and running water and hot apple pie on the porch. But that had been home with his brother, Tom. It had been a whole hometown, with Nix and her mother.
Now Nix’s mom was dead, and Tom was dead.
Home wasn’t home anymore.
As the road had unrolled itself in front of Benny, Nix, Chong, and Lilah, and melted into memory behind, the vast world out here had stopped being something ugly, something to fear. Now this was becoming home.
Benny wasn’t sure he liked it, but he felt in some strange
way that it was what he needed, and maybe even what he deserved. No comforts. No safe haven. The world was a hard place, and this desert was brutal, and Benny knew that if he was going to survive in the world, then he would have to become much tougher than he was.
Tougher even than Tom, because Tom had fallen.
He brooded on this as he sat on his rock and carefully sharpened the long sword, the kami katana that had once belonged to Tom.
Sharpening a sword was an appropriate task while brooding. The blade had to be cared for and that required focus, and a focused mind was more agile when climbing through the obstacle course of thoughts and memories. Even though Benny was sad—deep into the core of who he was—he found some measure of satisfaction in the hardships of the road and the skill required to hone this deadly blade.
As he worked, he occasionally glanced around. Benny had never seen a desert before, and he appreciated its simplicity. It was vast and empty and incredibly beautiful. So many trees and birds that he had only read about in books. And . . . no people.
That was good and bad. The bad part was that there was no one they could ask about the plane. The good was that no one had tried to shoot them, torture them, kidnap them, or eat them in almost a month. Benny put that solidly in the “win” category.
This morning he’d left the camp to go alone into the woods, partly to practice the many skills Tom had taught him. Tracking, stealth, observation. And partly to be alone with his thoughts.
Benny was not happy with what was going on inside his head. Accepting Tom’s death should have been easy. Well, if not easy, then natural. After all, in Benny’s lifetime the whole world had died. More than seven billion people had fallen since First Night. Some to the zombies, the dead who rose to attack and feed on the living. Some to the mad panic and wild savagery into which mankind had descended during the collapse of governments and the military and society. Some were killed in the battles, blown to radioactive dust as nuclear bombs were dropped in a desperate attempt to stop the legions of walking dead. And many more died in the days after, succumbing to ordinary infections, injuries, starvation, and the wildfire spread of diseases that sprang from the death and rot that was everywhere. Cholera, staph and influenza, tuberculosis, HIV, and so many others—and all of them running unchecked, with no infrastructure, no hospitals, no way to stop them.