“Nix?” he asked.
A small, warm hand took his, and Benny tried to turn toward her, but his head wouldn’t move. His whole body felt weird, like it was tied to a board. How crazy was that?
Nix leaned over, and he saw her face. She was so pretty.
“Nix, is your mom here?”
Pain flickered in her green eyes.
“Mama’s dead, Benny. You know that.”
“Oh. I thought I heard her laughing. She was baking muffins.”
Something hot and wet fell on his cheek.
A tear.
Where did that come from?
The roar of quads filled the whole cabin. Benny thought it sounded like a zillion of them. People were yelling. Roaring. Cursing, too.
“They’re coming!” shrieked Nix. “They’re climbing up!”
Joe’s voice roared: “Fire in the hole!”
There was big hissing sound, and then the whole plane shook with a gigantic rolling booooom!
The sound was too big for Benny, and he went back down in the darkness. He was sure Nix’s mom was baking muffins.
91
NIX AND CHONG STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE HATCH AND STARED DOWN at horror.
The air was thick with smoke from the LAW rockets and rocket-propelled grenades that the ranger had fired. The air tasted of gunpowder and wrongness.
The clearing and the whole edge of the plateau was a slaughterhouse. Burned and blasted bodies lay everywhere. Even the trees at the edge of the forest had died in the barrage as the weapons of the old world wrought their carnage.
They were both crying.
“One man,” whispered Nix.
Chong nodded, unable to speak. Sick in body, sick in soul.
One man.
The ranger, Joe, had used those terrible weapons. The reapers, the chosen ones, the elite of Mother Rose’s army, had poured out of the forest, brought back by Alexi to claim the weapons hidden in the shrine. They thought themselves to be the most powerful force left on earth. They thought themselves to be unstoppable—those among them who believed in God and those who only believed in Mother Rose—they surged forward to slaughter the pitiful handful of people who stood against them.
And they all died.
Every last one of them. More than half of Mother Rose’s army. Gone.
Nix and Chong had not fired a shot.
Nor had Lilah.
Or Riot.
Even Grimm had only watched.
One man.
Now Joe walked among the bodies, looking for signs of reanimation. Every now and then a hollow crack broke the silence. As he reloaded, he looked around, and his eyes met those of Chong and Nix. The ranger’s face was totally without expression as he pocketed the empty magazine and slapped a new one into place. His eyes were not bright with battle lust or dark with emotion. His eyes were . . . nothing. They were as dead in their way as the zoms. Joe stood for a moment, watching them watching him, then turned without a word and went about his grotesque but necessary work.
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.