Fire & Ash (40 page)

Joe did not comment as he flicked the switch and the unnatural wail of the sirens rose like the screams of the damned.

They closed the door as they left. Across the airfield the R3’s were already flooding across the bridge from the other side of the trench and running toward the bunker. A million running feet kicked up a dust cloud that blocked out the lingering fires in the hangars and rose to challenge the pillars of smoke for dominance of the morning sky.

Benny wrapped his arm around Riot and kissed her head and walked with her to the helicopter. All this made his back
hurt, but he would die rather than complain about that kind of pain. Not now. Not anymore.

They closed the helicopter doors, and when the first of the running zoms reached the turnaround, Joe lifted off and rose high into the air. The Black Hawk hung in the screaming air until the dead were so tightly clustered below that Benny couldn’t see the ground.

Joe spoke to them from the radio speakers.

“Last chance to say no.”

Nix said it for all of them. “We can’t.”

The Black Hawk tilted toward the west, and the helicopter tore through dust and smoke back to the hangars.

“Can you blow up the bridge?” asked Chong.

“No. If there are any survivors hiding, that’s the only way they’ll ever make it to the blockhouse.”

“Is there even a chance of that?”

“No matter how bad things are, there’s usually some chance left,” said Joe. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Chong said, “I guess so.”

But he saw Riot, who huddled inside a ring of Nix and Lilah’s overlapping arms. He knew that Joe was not always right about that.

“Setting down,” said Joe. “Some R3’s are already coming back this way. You’ve got about three minutes. Don’t stop for coffee.”

The Black Hawk touched down between the burning dormitory hangar and the row of parked quads.

This was the second part of Benny’s plan. Since the helicopter didn’t have enough fuel to take them to Mountainside—and the pilot was pushing his own personal limits in flying at
all—they had to find another way to get home. The quads were the only real option. Benny had a road map in one pocket, courtesy of Colonel Reid. Mountainside was 470 miles away. In a straight run, they could be there in twelve hours. Having driven the quads for weeks now, he knew that on flat ground they averaged about forty-five miles to the gallon, and that the tanks held 4.75 gallons of fuel. That meant that they could get a little less than halfway home on a full tank. However, there were equipment racks on the bikes capable of holding a couple of gas cans. Neither Joe nor Reid had been able to decide whether they could carry enough gas to get them all the way. It was a gamble.

If the quads ran out of fuel, then they would have to go on foot or find a traveler with a horse to carry the message the rest of the way to the Nine Towns.

Provided there were any towns left.

Saint John and the reaper army had left a month ago.

A month.

On a forced march, they could already have been there.

They had to march under hot Nevada suns and then climb the long mountain roads in California. If they stuck to the main roads, the path was serpentine, closer to five hundred miles. If they had to forage for food, that would slow the pace. But even so, they could conceivably be at the fence line. That was a stretch, though, and Benny doubted they were already there.

However, Haven was many miles closer. Would Saint John want to take the towns in order?

There was no way to know until they got there.

After a month here at Sanctuary, they were now in a desperate race.

As soon as the Black Hawk settled, Benny and Chong pulled back the door. Roasted air blew in at them, carrying with it the burned-meat stink of so many deaths. Benny gagged and covered his mouth with his palm.

Nix and Lilah jumped down first, and they helped Benny and Chong down. Riot lingered for a moment in the doorway. She hadn’t yet spoken a word.

“You can stay here,” said Nix.

Riot leaned out and looked around, then turned and stared back the way they’d come. The bunker was invisible behind the mass of running zoms, but the siren towers marked the spot, the metal voices wailing with a grief no human voice could articulate.

“No,” said Riot. “I can’t.”

It was all she said.

Nix helped her down.

“Tick-tock,” yelled Joe.

They worked fast. Benny checked the fuel tanks and found five that were topped off. They grabbed a bunch of plastic two-and-a-half-gallon cans and began filling them from a hundred-gallon tank set on trestles. With the fuel truck destroyed, it was the last source of the precious ethanol. The process seemed to take forever. When Benny looked at the zoms, he felt his heart sink. The leading edge was less than a half mile away. They were running at full speed, drawn by the noise of the helicopter and the sight of fresh meat.

Lilah fired up one quad and was yelling at Chong as she explained how it worked. Benny thought it was probably the worst example of a “crash course” that he could imagine. Luckily, Chong was the smartest person Benny knew; his
ability to acquire and process information was superb. His reflexes and mechanical skills were less impressive, and he drove the quad straight into a wall.

As he trudged toward another one, Lilah trailed behind, explaining in a very loud voice how useless he was. But on his second try Chong proved her wrong by driving a wide circle around the Black Hawk.

When he passed in front of the bridge, he slowed for a moment as he saw how close the dead were.

“Joe!” Benny yelled.

The Black Hawk shuddered and rose a few feet off the ground and drifted toward the bridge. Benny knew that Joe didn’t want to blow the bridge, but time was carving away the question of choice.

Nix and Riot began strapping the filled gas cans onto the backs of the quads. Chong and Lilah pitched in to help.

“Hurry!” yelled Joe, his voice booming from external speakers mounted high on the chopper’s hull.

“That’s it,” shouted Chong. “Let’s go.”

They hauled the last gas cans over and strapped them on. Each quad could carry two cans, a total of five extra gallons. A bit more than a full refill for each bike. Would it be enough?

“Get moving!” bellowed Joe.

They secured their weapons and climbed onto the quads. Five engines growled to life.

“Go, go,
go!
”

They roared away as, behind them, Joe opened up with the chain guns.

Benny had the route committed to memory. He zoomed ahead and took the lead. The others followed. When he
looked back, he saw that the Black Hawk had settled back onto the ground. The dead were pouring over the bridge. They swarmed like cockroaches over the chopper, climbing over each other to get to it. The big propellers turned and as the pile rose and rose, the blades chopped at heads and arms. The guns kept up a continuous fire for almost a minute, and then they fell silent.

Benny slowed and stopped. The vibration of the engine and the posture he needed to maintain in order to ride were setting fires in the knife wound in his back.

Why had Joe landed? Why was he still there?

There were so many zoms around the chopper now that all they could see were the dead.

“No,” Benny said.

The others stopped in a line and they all looked back.

There was no more gunfire.

But many of the zoms were running down the access road toward where the five quads idled.

“Benny,” said Nix softly, “we have to go.”

He hung his head for a moment, sick at heart. But when he caught Riot staring at him and saw the look in her eyes, the rage flared up in his chest again. He bared his teeth and ate his pain as he gunned the engine.

Under the noonday sun, the five quads rocketed along the road toward the gates of Sanctuary.

92

T
HEY LEFT
S
ANCTUARY BEHIND AND
found the highway marked on Reid’s map. They headed north on Route 375, and hours later turned west on US 6—the old Grand Army of the Republic Highway.

They met no reapers on the road.

They wanted to. It would have been satisfying in the worst possible way.

The road was open and empty.

Miles melted away behind them, but the road was so long and straight and the scenery so repetitive that it felt like they were standing in place. Only the movement of the fuel gauge seemed to add perspective to their flight. The endless whine of the motors became a mind-numbing monotony, but beneath it was the rage and the fear. Nobody wanted to quit.

They drove in a ghastly silence, each of them in a different kind of pain.

Except for Lilah. She rode beside Chong, and most of the times Benny looked back at them, she was smiling.

Strange girl,
he thought, and he wondered if this meant that she would regain all the developmental ground she’d lost since Chong got sick. Would the joy of having her “town boy”
be enough to carry her through the coming years of dealing with the limitations of his illness and the risk of contagion?

For now, though, she was happy. It was the only bright spot in their day.

Riot? She was gone. She rode the bike with competence, and during rest times she did her share of the chores without protest or comment. But she was gone. Benny reckoned that most of her was still inside a stone bunker with a small figure who lay on a makeshift bed. Maybe part of her would always remain in that dreadful place.

The day burned down. They lost time going offroad to avoid clogged highways, washed-out bridges, roving packs of zoms, and collapsed buildings. Each lost minute hurt Benny; each wasted hour was like a knife in his heart. They pushed on until Benny’s fuel indicator was nearly buried near the outskirts of Benton, California. According to the map they had to cut through the town, and they didn’t want to do that at night. Not as tired as they were. So they took shelter in a house trailer that had been part of a construction site before First Night.

While Lilah changed the dressing on Benny’s back, Nix filled Riot and Chong in on the flight to find McReady and the battle under Sanctuary. Benny began cringing when Nix got to the part about Archangel, but Riot said nothing.

Chong said, “Guys, we’re busting our butts to get home to warn everyone, but let’s face it, this is really bad.”

“I’ve been thinking about that all day,” said Benny.

“Me too,” said Nix, and even Lilah nodded.

“Well, call me crazy,” said Chong, “but don’t you think we should be talking about this out loud? I mean . . . let’s come up with an actual plan.”

They took turns outlining the problem as they each viewed it and then throwing out ideas about how the towns could respond. After a while it became clear that Nix had the best suggestions for tactics of warfare—traps, ruses, physical defenses, weapons. But Benny surprised them all with his grasp of strategic thinking. He saw things from a distance. After Nix—and to a great degree, Lilah—presented a long and gruesome list of battle tactics that could be implemented very quickly, Benny told them how he thought they could win the actual war.

Chong, the logician of the group, played devil’s advocate to poke holes in each suggestion. But for once he was unable to tear apart Benny’s plan.

“Wow,” said Chong when they were done, “I’m very nearly impressed with you.”

“Bite me,” said Benny.

“Which reminds me,” said Chong. “Time for my pills.”

Benny went outside to take first watch, and Nix stayed up with him for a bit. They sat close, but they didn’t touch.

After a while she said, “Do you hate me now?”

He took his time and thought about what to say before he opened his mouth. “What I am is hurt and angry. Not angry at you, but angry at us. We held hands, closed our eyes, and stepped off a cliff.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “I can’t be angry with you for telling the truth.”

Nix got up and shivered in the chill of the desert night.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” said Benny, looking up at her.

“What?”

“I
do
love you. I have for a long time, and I think I always
will. When this is over—if we’re both still alive and if the world hasn’t burned down—I’m going to come looking for you. If the situation and the moment are right, I’m going to ask you out on a date.”

“A date?”

“We never had one. We went from being friends to being a couple. The closest thing we had to a first date was getting chased by Charlie Pink-eye, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.”

He saw her smile etched in starlight.

“So . . . I’ll ask and we’ll see what happens.”

Nix turned and went into the trailer.

Benny sat on a rock and watched the stars wheel in their slow, endless dance above the battered little blue world.

93

T
HEY WERE REFUELED AND ON
the road before first light.

Benton was a terrible place. At the intersection where they turned from Route 6 to California State Route 120, they saw the rusted remains of a major crash involving two school buses and several cars. There were zoms everywhere, and it was likely they had been standing there for fifteen years until they heard the sound of the quads. The whole mass of them—adults and children—began shuffling toward the machines. Benny veered off the main street and cut behind houses and through yards to avoid the zoms. It cost time and fuel, but they managed to escape without a fight.

Benny realized that the one main flaw in his plan was the noise the quads made. Zoms would hear them miles away and be drawn to the sound, so they’d be in the path of the five machines.

But what choice did Benny and his friends have? California was far more densely populated than Nevada, and the deeper they went into greener areas, the more likely there would be zoms. Even so, the whole landscape seemed more brown than green. It had been an early and unusually hot spring, and it was clear that there hadn’t been much rainfall. Everything
looked brittle and dry. There was none of the lushness of spring, and that depressed Benny. It made him wonder if the whole world was getting ready to die. Or to burn. The fires of hatred ignited by the reapers seemed inescapable.