Which, of course, they did.

  79

  GUTSY FEINTED RIGHT AND DODGED left, ducked, and chopped down on the foot of the closest ravager. The blade cut through shoe, skin, and bones, and the strange red-black ravager blood welled out. The ravager bellowed, and in an insight of crisis, Gutsy realized that they actually could feel pain. All of los muertos actually felt pain, because that was how the parasite worked; that was Volker’s sick design. The dead could see, hear, feel, smell, and touch, but could not do anything about it. At least, the shamblers could not. The ravagers not only felt pain, they could scream in pain. But, being zombies, pain did not stop them, though damage did slow them. This one tried to rush her, but his maimed foot gave out and he fell.

  Gutsy rose fast and drove her shoulder into the killer’s side, knocking him toward a second ravager. She stepped on the back of the one she’d injured and swung at the third ravager, who was taken completely by surprise.

  Her blade missed his head and instead clanged off the chain he carried as a weapon. Gutsy’s momentum sent her crashing into the monster, knocking him backward with such force that he had to take a step to catch his balance—except that he was at the edge of the platform, and there was nowhere to step. His arms windmilled for a frantic second, and several nails welded to the links of the whirling chain caught Gutsy’s vest. As the ravager fell, the chain jerked her toward the edge. She screamed, dropped her machete, and grabbed one of the steel cables with both hands. She swung out over the edge with the full weight of the ravager pulling at her. Her vest tore open, spilling the many useful things she carried for all eventualities. All, but not this one.

  “Spider!” she wailed as her hands began to slip, but her friend was still nowhere to be seen.

  When hands suddenly caught her and pulled her back, they were not the brown hands of her best friend. These hands were pale and diseased, and they grabbed her leg to pull her toward a mouth full of snapping teeth. It was the ravager who’d been knocked down by the injured one. He clung to her legs, his weight pulling her down while at the same time he tried to climb high enough to take a bite.

  Gutsy hung between two deaths—the unforgiving ground if she fell, and the monster’s teeth below.

  * * *

  Benny thought he had an easy fight—a long sword against knives—but the teenager he fought was fast as a scorpion. The young man danced away from the katana time and again, parrying thrusts and cuts with his knives as if they were the superior weapons and not the ancient blade of the samurai.

  Benny and the reaper dueled there on the platform, steel ringing on steel, both of them moving with quick, small steps, darting and lunging.

  The reaper reminded Benny of someone else he fought last year. A young reaper not much older than this one, but who had a harsh, unsmiling face. Brother Peter, the right hand of Saint John. They’d fought a duel while both reapers and Benny’s friends watched; at the time it seemed a foregone conclusion to everyone that Brother Peter would win. He was the more skilled fighter, the protégé of Saint John. Benny was barely an apprentice to a deceased master, his brother.

  What Benny learned that day was the skills Tom taught him ran deep, but the second layer of training he had gotten from Captain Ledger ran deeper still. Not the elegance of combat or the nobility of the samurai but something else Benny had gotten from Tom. An animal cunning. During that fight Benny had actually allowed Brother Peter to cut him, gambling that the cut he allowed would be damaging but not fatal. He used the moment of that cut—the certainty that Brother Peter would take the obvious opening—to deliver a killing blow.

  It was not as stupid a move as everyone watching thought it was. Even then, Benny had been sure he would kill the killer and thereby save his friends from the reaper master’s deadly knives.

  Now he fought someone who was every bit as good as Brother Peter. Another master of slaughter.

  The blades rang and clanged; they sliced the air and whistled like strange flutes. Playing their song of death.

  * * *

  Sister Sorrow crawled toward the edge of the platform, reaching out a trembling hand toward the handle of her machete. Blood dripped from her nose and mouth, and her head felt like it was full of bees. She wanted that knife so she could chop the little witch into pieces and then feed them like treats to the gray people.

  Then the blade simply vanished.

  It moved on its own out over the edge and was gone. Stolen from her as if by magic. Sister Sorrow threw herself flat in a vain hope of catching it as it dropped, but her flailing hand closed on empty air.

  * * *

  Gutsy’s hands slipped on the steel cable, and the braided wire tore at her palms. Her arms ached abominably, and her shoulders seemed to ignite with fire. It was ten times worse than lifting the roof beam off Alice.

  She tried to kick at the ravager who held her leg, but the killer gave a savage jerk and pulled himself up and then darted forward to bite her calf.

  Pain—like nothing she’d felt before—exploded in her leg, and Gutsy screamed.

  * * *

  Brother Mercy fought Benny Imura back and forth across the platform, each of them gaining and losing ground, taking and yielding the advantage. It was a more evenly matched contest than he had any right to expect. Was Sister Sorrow right? Was this the one who’d fought and killed Brother Peter? The Imura who defeated Saint John of the Knife? How was it possible? That boy was out west, in California.

  Brother Mercy shuffled back out of range and paused for one moment as he spoke the name.

  “Imura.”

  The dark-haired boy paused, his sword raised, shock in his eyes.

  “It is you,” said Brother Mercy. “You are the great sinner, the despised of god. It’s you.”

  Benny Imura lowered his sword for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “But don’t bother to tell me who you are. ’Cause I really don’t care.”

  “I am the servant of Lord Thanatos—all praise to his darkness. I am the herald who has made the path smooth for the chosen of god. The Raggedy Man will devour this town, and I will be at his left hand as he marches on to wipe Asheville from the face of the earth. The Night Army, with all of its holy gray people, its ravagers, and my battalions of reapers will crush the American Nation into blood and dust. And then they will hunt all of you down. The living, the sinners. They will sweep like a tide across this continent.”

  Benny Imura raised his sword.

  “Whatever,” he said, and then his blade was a flash of silver fire.

  * * *

  Gutsy swung her free foot and kicked down, catching the ravager in the face over and over again in a frenzied effort to dislodge the teeth clamped around her calf. She stamped and stamped, screaming shrilly, until she broke his jaw and seeded the air with his rotted teeth. But still the monster held onto her ankle, hurt but by no means stopped.

  And then a hand reached down and clamped strong fingers around the shoulder of her canvas vest.

  It was a dead hand and she looked up into the face of another ravager who knelt on the edge of the platform. She was being pulled into two directions now. Death played tug-of-war with death, and she was the fraying rope.

  * * *

  Sister Sorrow tried to rise, needing to rejoin the fight, but she couldn’t. Something held her fast to the deck planks, and at first she could not understand what it was.

  She placed her palms flat against the boards and gave a great heave, and that’s when she felt it.

  The pain.

  If pain was a word that fit.

  There was a white-hot immensity of sensation in her stomach, and somehow it held her to the boards. It was some kind of sorcery, some strange magic, and her mind fought to understand it.

  Then whatever held her was gone, and she was rising, surging backward onto her knees. She froze then, as if kneeling in prayer as she stared down at her stomach. Her lips formed two words, but there was no sound.

  Red mouth.

  For so it was. An enormous one had opened in her stomach, and she could feel a corresponding one on her back. As if an invisible blade wielded by a demon hand somehow passed through her. She looked at the planks, but there was no blade anywhere to be seen.

  Then something rose up over the edge of the platform. A face. Young, dark, with a lot of hair and eyes that were not at all like a demon’s. They were kind eyes, and so very sad.

  A boy clambered up onto the platform. He had a long bo tucked through the back of his belt, and in his hand was a machete.

  Her machete.

  As the whiteness of pain ebbed, a bright clarity opened in Sister Sorrow’s mind. This boy had seen the handle of her weapon as he climbed up. He’d taken it, and as she lay down to try and catch it, he’d driven the blade up between the boards. Into her.

  She tried to say that, despite being a sinner, she thanked him for the gift he’d given her: sending her into the eternal darkness where Lord Thanatos—all praise to his greater darkness—was waiting to enfold her. Sister Sorrow wanted to say all of that. Needed to.

  But she had no voice left. There was no breath left in her. She felt herself go… to fade. The blessed darkness wrapped its gentle wings around her, and she was gone.

  * * *

  Brother Mercy parried the sword, lunged with one knife, and whipped out with the other, but as he did so he saw something that tore a terrible cry from him.

  He watched Sister Sorrow topple forward like a broken doll and then roll off the platform, vanishing into the darkness below.

  His scream was so big, so filled with despair, that it made Benny Imura pause and step back. The scream tore a huge hole in the night, and for a moment there was nothing except that sound.

  * * *

  Spider crawled over the edge and onto the platform, winded, bloody from stabbing the reaper woman. Then he saw Gutsy and tore across the boards. He dropped the machete and pulled his bo free from his belt, swinging it at the ravager who clung to the edge of the deck. The staff hit solidly, knocking the zombie forward. The killer started to fall, but his fingers caught in the pockets of Gutsy’s canvas fishing vest. The impact tore the bottom third of the vest away, dropping the ravager onto the one clutching her ankle. The shock broke his grip, and both ravagers plummeted to the ground. However, the initial downward tug on Gutsy’s vest nearly broke her grip. She managed to hold on, even though blood welled from between her clutching fingers.

  “Gutsy,” Spider cried as he used his bo to try and snag the cable. The angle was impossible, though. “Don’t let go.”

  “Spider,” she yelled, “push me.”

  “What?” he yelped.

  “Push me. Make me swing. Come on, do it… I’m slipping.”

  Spider looked terrified, but he changed his grip on the staff, leaned out, placed the end against her hip, and pushed. It made her swing about a foot away, but on the return, she didn’t come anywhere near close enough to the platform.

  “Harder!”

  * * *

  Brother Mercy made a guttural sound of raw hatred and attacked with renewed ferocity, driving Benny back step by step.

  Benny realized that he was too close to the edge and abruptly threw himself at a right angle, tucking into a roll and coming out of it running. He stamped down, pivoted to arrest his momentum, and met Brother Mercy’s charge.

  Their blades met again and again.

  * * *

  Gutsy knew she was going to fall. There was no strength left in her arms. Everything was numb, except for where it was on fire. She thought of Alice down there, hurt, needing her. Had the Carnovskys gotten her to the hospital? Would that even be enough? Gutsy had no idea how bad Alice was hurt. She hated herself for not staying with her. For not caring enough for her.

  Except that wasn’t true, and on her deepest practical level, Gutsy knew that. Stopping the crane meant saving the whole town. If the reapers and ravagers had torn down the wall, then nothing Gutsy could do would save Alice. Or any of the people she cared about.

  As she swung through the night she felt the strength in her hands fail at last.

  * * *

  Benny parried the knife strokes again and again and again.

  Then he shifted in and blocked them both at the same time, catching the reaper in a double attack. Benny held the contact for a fragment of a second and lashed out with a kick that caught the older teen on the inner left thigh.

  * * *

  Spider dropped his bo and heard it bang and clang all the way down through the network of scaffolding, but he didn’t care. As Gutsy swung toward him he saw her bloody, swollen hands open. He lunged and caught what was left of her vest and her T-shirt and flung himself backward.

  He fell onto the planking, and Gutsy landed on him. Part of her did. Her legs were still over the edge, kicking in midair.

  Spider clawed at her, trying to pull her up before her weight could pull him down. They hung there, on the balance of life and death.

  * * *

  Benny pressed his advantage, kicking again and catching Brother Mercy’s right wrist hard enough to send a knife spinning off into the darkness. He slashed with the sword, but the reaper was not even close to finished.

  Brother Mercy ducked, rolled, and bounced up onto the balls of his feet, springy as a dancer, as he shifted his remaining knife to his right hand. He dropped into a fighting crouch, and then suddenly seemed to lose interest in Benny. Instead he stared, slack-jawed, at something else. Then the reaper gave a small cry of obvious terror, spun around, and leaped off the platform.

  Benny, startled, ran to the edge and saw the reaper, nimble as an ape, climbing down. As soon as the killer reached the ground, he ran for the eastern wall and began to climb.

  The urge to chase him was incredibly strong. Reapers fighting along with the Raggedy Man? Benny wanted to catch Brother Mercy and force some answers out of him. But a sound made him turn, and he saw Spider trying to keep Gutsy from falling over the edge.

  Benny ran over to them, dropped his sword, grabbed Gutsy and Spider with one hand each, and hauled. He was not a big teen, but Benny Imura was all muscle, and his weight, leaning backward, did the trick. Spider fell flat on his back and Gutsy literally rolled the length of him, narrowly missing his face, to collapse beside him.

  She clutched her torn hands to her chest, weeping from exhaustion.

  Spider lay there, panting, staring upward at the smoke clouds that obscured the sky.

  Benny knelt beside Gutsy. “Pull up your pant leg. I saw one of those freaks bite you.”

  “No, he didn’t have a good angle; just a bruise. I’m fine.”

  There was only steel in Benny’s eyes and in his voice. “Show me.”

  Gutsy licked her lips, hoping what she’d said was true. She pulled up her pant leg and angled her calf toward the glow of the distant fires. The skin was badly bruised, but there wasn’t a single drop of blood.

  Benny and Spider visibly relaxed.

  “Jeez, Guts, you have really weird luck,” said Benny, straightening. “From all the crazy stuff you do, like going out to that base and coming back with a whole skin. You’re either totally out of your mind or you have an angel on your shoulder.”

  “Both,” Spider suggested.

  Gutsy merely shrugged. Benny offered her a hand and helped her up. The three of them stood for a moment, looking over the wall toward the mass of the dead slowly advancing on New Alamo.

  Spider pointed with his bo. “Guys… what is that?”

  80

  OUT IN THE FIELD, BEYOND the wall, something moved. The light from burning sections of the wall painted it in yellows and oranges, but even with that glow it took the three of them a while to understand what they were seeing.

  It was a truck.

  Not driving. Not something from the base, but a massive flatbed being pulled along the road by what looked like a thousand los muertos. They were yoked like oxen and moved with the steady, unbreakable, tireless stride of the dead. In the center of the flatbed was something that looked like a giant chair. Or throne. And upon the throne was a giant of a man. Dozens of ravagers stood around the throne, firelight glinting on rifle barrels, axes, and swords. And behind the truck, spread out like an ocean, were a million shambling monsters. An army so vast that it was lost in the distance.

  “Oh my God,” Benny breathed.

  None of them had to ask what they were seeing. Not anymore. Now they understood.

  Homer Gibbon, the Raggedy Man, king of all the world’s hungry dead, had come to New Alamo.

  81

  THE MASS OF ZOMBIES SEEMED to bulge outward as if the vast body of them took a deep breath. Then the bulge broke free as a group of about a thousand of them seemed to rush forward faster than the others. They did not walk but actually ran, and for a moment Gutsy was confused. Were they ravagers? Or the faster los muertos? The R3 mutations? She’d thought there weren’t many of them. Certainly not this many.

  But as they neared the wall, firelight bathed them in brightness, and Gutsy could see that these were not los muertos at all. Nor were they ravagers or wild men. They were living people. Dressed in black clothes with red tassels attached to ankles and wrists. Their heads were shaved and elaborately tattooed, and each of them carried a weapon—scythe, ax, sickle, sword, or pitchfork.

  “Reapers,” gasped Benny. “So many of them.”

  Fires sparked to light among the reapers, and, with mounting horror, Gutsy and the others watched as they threw bottles set with flaming rags at the walls. The bottles, filled with alcohol or fuel, exploded and sheets of flame shot up, driving the defenders back from the edges of the wall. Hundreds of the bottles arced high, landing on the ramparts or falling into the town. Houses next to the wall caught fire at once. Several of the firebombs exploded on the crushed roof of Alice’s house, and in seconds it was burning.