* * *

  Gutsy backpedaled fast and felt the whoosh as the reaper’s blade sliced the air an inch from her face. Then Sombra was there, leaping at the killer, mouth opened to bite.

  But the reaper checked his swing and stabbed at the dog. The thrust missed the coydog’s throat, but the wicked edge slashed a deep red line along Sombra’s breastbone. The animal yelped in pain and fell hard on the ground, right on top of Benny.

  That gave Gutsy a fraction of a second to whip her machete out of its scabbard just in time to parry Brother Mercy’s next vicious cut. Steel met steel with a sound like a ringing bell, and a shock shivered all the way up her arm. The reaper’s blow was so powerful that it nearly tore the machete from her hand.

  Behind him other figures moved. Ravagers with scythes were hustling up the hill, grinning as they saw Benny struggling to get up.

  “Benny!” Gutsy yelled, but then her warning turned into a cry of pain as Mercy slashed again, opening a burning line across her midriff. Only her fast reflexes kept the cut from going deep. Even so, blood welled and ran down her stomach. She wheeled and ran ten paces, then turned again, setting herself for his charge.

  For a moment Brother Mercy paused, looking at Benny with unfiltered loathing, but then his eyes—and the full weight of his hatred—slammed back to Gutsy.

  “Leafy,” he said again. “You stole her from me.”

  Leafy?

  With a jolt of insight, Gutsy realized that this was the female reaper she’d fought on the crane platform. And with the realization came a strange dual reaction. On one hand, she needed to stop this madman, even if it meant killing him. But on the other, he’d lost someone he clearly loved. It drove a splinter of genuine empathy into her heart. It made him less of a monster and more human. More like her. How would she feel if she thought Alice was dead? How would she react if she faced the person who’d killed her?

  And yet… this young reaper had been working that crane. He had dropped the truck on the roof of the Chung house. If Alice was dead, then he had killed her as surely as if one of his knives cleaved her beautiful heart.

  The wave of empathy Gutsy felt was there, but now a bigger, blacker wave of pure hatred rose up in her own heart. The air in front of her eyes seemed to blossom with black flowers, and she heard a terrible roar fill the air as some beast howled with a fury beyond speech, beyond control. Gutsy heard it and knew it to be her own cry, torn from the darkest place in her heart. She charged Brother Mercy, slashing with her machete in a series of strikes so fast they were blinding. They beat at the reaper’s knives and he stumbled back in surprise, her unbridled ferocity overriding even his own.

  * * *

  Benny heard the shriek of fury as he got to his feet and drew his sword. He knew who it was, but not really the why of it. Maybe it didn’t really matter. What did was that it put steel into Benny’s trembling legs. It made his feeble hand grip the sword handle with real strength. He yelled his own war cry, the one taught to him by his brother, Tom.

  “Warrior smart!”

  And he rushed to meet the ravagers.

  * * *

  Sam Imura burned through a full magazine and swapped it out with the smooth ease of someone who’d stood on a thousand battlefields, large and small, and fought a legion of enemies before this. Those enemies were all dead.

  So, too, were these. The fact that it was an army of the dead that closed in on him seemed like some kind of ironic, cosmic joke. He felt his lips carve into a feral grin as he fired and fired and fired.

  * * *

  “You!” roared a bass voice, and Ledger turned fast—but not fast enough—as something smashed into him. It felt like being hit with a cannonball, and he fell backward, but tucked and rolled and came up on fingers and toes, staring at the thing that had hit him.

  It was a human head.

  The blank, empty eyes of a zombie stared into his own. The mouth opened and closed once and then was still forever. Ledger raised his eyes and saw who threw the grisly object.

  The Raggedy Man.

  Grimm rose to his feet and began to charge, but Ledger growled a word of command. The king of the dead was toxic, the source of all the plague in this broken world. This was the monster whose first bite started a chain reaction that killed nearly everything Ledger ever loved. His wife and child. Most of his friends. This man had destroyed everything that was beautiful, replacing it with pain and ugliness.

  Ledger rose and stood his ground, letting the king of death come to him.

  “Come on, Homer, haul your wormy butt up here,” he taunted. “Let’s dance.”

  The zombies and ravagers and reapers closed in, but the Raggedy Man snarled them back. “This one is mine.”

  * * *

  Gutsy hammered at Brother Mercy with unrelenting force, but he blocked every strike. Then he twisted aside and kicked her in the stomach. If she hadn’t seen it coming and began to turn, it would have crippled her, but even so it exploded in red hot pain and sent her staggering backward.

  She almost lost her machete again, but managed to hold on to it and even bring it up as he slashed first right and then left.

  It was immediately obvious he was a much better fighter, far superior because he was trained and she was not. But he attacked as if he was aware of that—too aware. He slashed and chopped with a kind of arrogance born of a belief that he would win, that such an outcome was inevitable. He even teased her, cutting her here and there with quick, shallow cuts. Making her hurt. Making her bleed. Trying to humiliate her, to teach her a lesson before he killed her.

  Gutsy wasn’t there to be schooled.

  She saw movement behind him and yelled, “Now!”

  And something moved with the speed of the wind. Gray and ugly, battered and covered with blood, it struck Brother Mercy’s left leg, clamping teeth around the base of his thigh. The reaper screamed and stumbled, and Gutsy Gomez taught him a lesson with the edge of her machete.

  He fell with a look of deep and profound surprise on his face.

  His lips formed a word, or tried to. Then he collapsed back onto the grass and lay still. Sombra stood over him, chest heaving, blood dripping onto the ground, eyes blazing.

  * * *

  Thirty feet away, Benny Imura fought the ravagers. He looked like a ghost from an old manga—bled pale and wild-eyed—but he moved like a dancer, his body blurring, his sword a whisper of mercury on the wind.

  Several times ravagers tried to circle him and attack from his blind side, and each time there was a crack as a bullet from Sam Imura’s gun spoke with deadly eloquence. Together, the Imura brothers fought as if they had done this a hundred times before.

  * * *

  Gutsy turned and saw Ledger squaring off against the Raggedy Man.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. Homer Gibbon was indestructible. The unkillable lord of death. No matter how tough the soldier was, the Raggedy Man was worse.

  * * *

  Joe Ledger let Homer Gibbon swing first. He was ready for it, his weight on the balls of his feet, knees bent, hands loose and ready. The former serial killer was no fool, though. He swung a big, hard left, but it was a fake, and he immediately drove an uppercut to Ledger’s stomach that would have doubled the older man in half.

  Had it landed.

  Ledger clubbed it aside with a snort of annoyance and counterpunched a left-right-left to the zombie king’s face. The blows were blindingly fast but did not lack power. Ledger was a master fighter. Possibly the best combat specialist left on earth, and one of the best of all time. There was a reason he had survived this long.

  The Raggedy Man fell back a step. He was not in pain, but he turned and spat a broken tooth onto the dirt.

  “Oo’ho, look what we got here,” he said. “You’re a real schoolyard tough guy, ain’t you?” He began walking in a wide circle around the old soldier.

  Ledger said nothing but turned with the monster.

  “You the big bad boy who organized these Happy Meals and taught ’em to fight?” asked Homer.

  “No, they seem to be pretty good at whipping your ugly butt without me.”

  Gibbon suddenly darted in and struck at Ledger’s throat with stiffened fingers. The soldier leaned back and snapped out a kick that cracked something in Homer’s knee. The king of the dead staggered. Ledger feinted right and shifted left and kicked the monster again, this time in the face. Before Homer could fall, Ledger cupped the back of his head and punched him four times in the face with crushing force, breaking bones and splitting the patchwork skin. Then he spit in Homer’s face and kicked him in the chest to send him sliding five feet down the hill.

  The reapers and ravagers gasped and then surged forward, but Homer Gibbon shouted them back. Grimm stalked in a rough circle around the two combatants, his spikes gleaming, eyes blazing, daring any of them to interfere. Gutsy and Sombra edged forward, uncertain how—or even if—they should do anything.

  Homer got to his feet, damaged but truly unhurt. He was no more able to feel pain than any zombie, and even if he could, all that would have done was make his desire to literally devour this man all the greater.

  “I’m going to enjoy—” he began, but Ledger leaped from the hill and hit him with a devastating right cross that spun the monster around in a complete circle. Ledger squatted over Homer, picked him up, and locked one brawny arm around the creature’s throat.

  “Listen to me, worm meat,” he said in a fierce whisper, “if I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead. You think just because you started this that you’re actually unkillable. Yeah, I know you’ve been blown up, cut up, and sewn back together, but that was because the people who did that wanted to study you. I heard they tried hard to kill you once they realized you could talk to the dead. Guess they didn’t try hard enough to end you. Well, I’m here to tell you that I do know how to put you down for good. Don’t believe me? Just look.”

  He dragged the monster back to the top of the hill, limping as the wound in his leg—torn open now from his jump—threatened to cripple him. It did not matter to Ledger. He needed Homer to see what was happening out in the dark.

  “See that?” he murmured in Homer’s ear, turning him to face the mass of his zombie army. “That’s your kingdom. That’s your Night Army. That’s your future.”

  Homer Gibbon stopped struggling and stared.

  Beyond the front ranks of his army there was a boiling, thrashing fury of movement. The plague of paracide infection from the wild men had spread beyond anything the Raggedy Man thought possible. Exponential. Faster than a wildfire. Not stopped—or even slowed—by the walls of flames.

  Where there had been thousands of wild men, now there were hundreds of thousands. More than half of his army had become his enemies.

  With a howl of rage Homer drove an elbow back into Ledger’s stomach, catching him off guard enough to break his hold. The Raggedy Man shoved the soldier back and spun, raising his arms. The reapers and ravagers and shamblers who’d been watching the fight—more than a hundred of them—moved forward.

  “Then if I die, you go with me,” he growled. “Everyone. We’ll kill them all before those wild things take us. See if we don’t.”

  Joe Ledger backed away a few steps, waving Gutsy back too. Benny and Sam broke off their battles and ran to join them, chased by killers both living and undead. The dogs retreated, and they stood in a tight knot as the mob closed in. Gutsy looked up at Ledger to see how a hero prepared himself to die.

  Ledger’s face was tight with pain, but there was no defeat in his eyes.

  Then there was a strange sound. A squawk of static, like the sound the satellite phone had made when Nix was testing it. Ledger raised his hand and touched something Gutsy hadn’t seen before—a small black device fitted into his ear. He pressed it.

  “Well, it’s about darn time, Top,” said Ledger. “Been trying to keep these freaks entertained until you got here. Go weapons hot. It’s a target-rich environment. Let’s rock and roll.”

  “What’s happening?” demanded the Raggedy Man. “Who are you talking to?”

  Ledger looked at Homer Gibbon. “You have your army, sport. Turns out it just so happens I have one of my own.”

  Suddenly there was a sound like a thousand cats screeching all at once, and Gutsy looked up in wonder to see that the stars were obliterated by dozens of lines of mingled fire and gray smoke. Not dozens—hundreds. They scratched like matches and arced down into the fields where the wild men and the living dead struggled for dominance. They struck, and the world was transformed from moonlit night into sun-bright day. The combined detonation of five hundred Hellfire missiles was the loudest sound Gutsy had ever heard.

  She screamed and clapped her hands to her ears.

  Then she whirled to see a flight of nightmare locusts rise up from over the horizon. She knew the word but had only ever seen broken husks of these things.

  Helicopters.

  From one side of her sightline to the other, the sky was filled with them.

  Wave after wave of them. Firing missiles as they blew the dreams of the Raggedy Man into burning ruin.

  Some, faster than others, flew over the field and opened up with machine guns, chasing down the ravagers and reapers. Others skirted the edges and dropped cannisters that exploded into massive clouds of flame.

  Gutsy looked at Ledger and Sam and Benny. They were all grinning. She understood. Nix and Lilah had gotten through to someone. Maybe Benny’s other friends, Morgie and Riot, had reached Asheville after all. And maybe Ledger and Sam had made a call for help from Site B.

  Or perhaps all of that happened. Maybe, just once, the stars aligned in the direction of hope instead of extinction.

  Homer Gibbon screamed in rage and horror as his dreams burned. There was a ravager near him, and he tore the creature’s rifle from its hands and swung it toward the small group of humans on the hill.

  With a movement too fast to follow, Joe Ledger drew his pistol and shot the Raggedy Man in the head. Six fast shots that blew all of the dark dreams from the mind of the king of the dead. The body of Homer Gibbon stood for one moment longer and then crumpled.

  “You stole the world from us,” said Ledger quietly, “and we’re officially taking it back.”

  The reapers stared at the beloved of Lord Thanatos, and the sight of him dead broke them. They scattered like leaves, and the fiery wind chased them. They tried to outrun the helicopters, but they could not. Ledger yelled to them to stop, pleading with them to throw down their weapons, to give up. To live.

  Some did. A little more than half. The choppers did not fire on those who’d given up. But so many of the reapers were too far gone along the path to the shadows to which they prayed. Even as they ran, they shook their weapons in defiance to the machines that represented the hated world from before their god raised the dead. Gutsy watched in horror and wondered if such a death somehow filled those defiant reapers with joy even as the bullets found them. In a strange way, she hoped that it did.

  A pair of Black Hawk helicopters dropped down low and hovered a dozen yards above the hill, doors open, machine gun barrels pointing down at the ravagers and shamblers circling the four humans and two dogs. The guns roared.

  105

  THE NIGHT WAS DARK AND filled with fire and blood.

  But even the darkest night is burned away by the light of a new day. The sun, half blinded by smoke, peered in horror over the horizon. In its glow, Gutsy and Benny held on to each other, leaning like a pair of old people, as they made their way along the road to where the refugees from New Alamo waited. Toward Site B.

  There was a mass of people in the weed-choked parking lot of a small industrial complex. The door to the main building was open, and the two horses Sam and Ledger had ridden out on were tethered there, munching grass as if there had not been a war raging a few miles away.

  Chong and Spider ran to meet Benny and Gutsy. They hugged and wept, and everyone spoke at once. Trying to make sense of it.

  Then Alethea was there, pushing everyone aside and wrapping her arms around Gutsy in a bear hug so fierce it nearly broke bones. Then Alethea pushed Gutsy back, alarmed by the bloody bandage wrapped around her torso.

  She straightened her tiara and gave Gutsy a frank up-and-down appraisal. “Well,” she said, “you look like crap.”

  Gutsy laughed, but then she glanced around. She saw Sarah Peak clinging to Mr. Howard.

  “Where’s Karen?” asked Gutsy. “Did she make it out?”

  Alethea’s smile flickered, and she shook her head. Gutsy felt like she’d been punched. “Where are the Chess Players?”

  Tears broke from the corners of Alethea’s eyes. “Mr. Ford… and Mr. Urrea…”

  This was worse. Now Gutsy felt like she’d been shot through the heart. Her knees began to buckle, but Spider caught her.

  “Have… have you seen Alice… ?”

  Alethea did not look away. Her love for Gutsy was too real for that. But she could not speak the words. Instead she bent at the waist and crumpled slowly to the ground. Rainbow Smite fell from her hand and rolled a few feet away.

  Gutsy felt the world tilt and the ground collapse under her. She screamed as she fell. Spider grabbed her and knelt with her, holding her. Alethea crawled to them, and they wrapped one another up, sobbing and screaming.

  “Please,” Gutsy begged, but there was no answer. Some prayers cannot be answered.

  Not for so many. Not for Alice. Not for Karen or Urrea or Ford, or for Sergeant Holly or Sunny-Day Ray. Because this was war, and war was hungry. It was unfair, and it loved to hurt.

  Gutsy buried her face in the hollow of Alethea’s neck and wept.

  EPILOGUE

  One

  The winds, so fierce the night before, faded, and a sky of absurd and tranquil blue owned the day.