All they could see were dozens of crates lashed together with nylon bands and secured to metal rings set in the floor. Most of the crates were made from some tough-looking plastic; but a few were metal and the biggest were wooden.
“What can you see?” whispered Nix.
“Nothing much. Bunch of big crates and boxes.”
“Boxes of what?”
“Don’t know. Probably not puppies, apple pie, and new baseball gloves. Pretty much bet on that.”
He took a few steps inside, listening for sounds and hearing only his own nervous breathing. The cargo bay stretched past the stacks of crates and vanished into the gloom. He had all-weather matches in his vest, but he didn’t really want to put down his sword long enough to fish one out and light it. Not yet.
The floor creaked under his weight, and Benny remembered all the cracks he’d seen in the plane’s crippled body.
A soft scuff behind him told him that Nix had entered the bay.
“You have your gun out?” he asked very quietly.
“Yes.”
“Put it away. I don’t want to get a bullet in the back because another mouse jumps out at us.”
She muttered something, but he heard the scrape of metal on leather as she holstered it.
Benny’s night vision was kicking in, and he was able to make out some details. There were words stenciled in black on some of the cases, and Benny mouthed them as he read the closest ones. The wooden boxes had labels like:
MRE
LAB EQUIP
MED RECS
HAZMAT SUITS
The metal cases were labeled:
RPG
CLAYMORE MINES
LAW RKTS
M-249 SAW
M24 SWS
“What is this stuff?” Benny asked.
“I have no idea. It must all be lab equipment and science stuff.”
Benny nodded and moved a few steps deeper into the darkness.
“Do you hear anything?” whispered Nix.
“No. You?”
“No.”
“That’s good,” said Benny, and mentally added, I think.
He moved a few steps forward, trying to sort out and identify the shapes of things he saw. The pale light was too weak, and the shadows of the bay seemed impenetrable.
Benny leaned toward Nix and spoke softly into her ear. “Listen, I’m going to walk down the center aisle. Wait for me here. If there’s something hinky, I don’t want to have to run you down to get out of here. This place gives me the super-creeps.”
There was a faint rattle and then the scrape of a sulfur match. Light blinded him, and the sulfur stung his nostrils. He winced and peered through the glare to see Nix holding out a match.
In the intense darkness of the cargo bay, even the pale light of the match revealed so much that was hidden.
Vehicles chained to the floor.
Banks of computer equipment standing inert against the walls.
Gleaming loading hooks on chains attached to the ceiling.
And beyond the rows of crates were row after row of metal chairs.
Benny and Nix both froze in shock.
People sat in the chairs. They were dressed identically in one-piece jumpsuits. At least two dozen of them wore yellow jumpsuits, four were in blue jumpsuits, and two wore green.
They were all dead.
But all of them stared with hungry eyes at Benny and Nix.
Nix screamed.
74
“HONORED ONE,” BEGAN BROTHER PETER, “IF WE ARE TO DOUBT MOTHER Rose and any reapers she has led astray, then I think there is a matter that must be attended to.”
Saint John’s face was bland. “Which matter?”
“The Shrine of the Fallen.”
“What about it?”
“The way Mother Rose protects it, denying everyone—even your own holy self—to enter it, there must be something of great value hidden there.”
“Value is relative,” said the saint. “A man with his house on fire and a man dying of thirst each place a different value on a glass of water.”
Brother Peter nodded, accepting the point, but doubt still chewed at him. “She can’t possibly hope to take Sanctuary with only a few reapers. What does she have—a hundred or two who will follow her? No, she must have some resource we don’t know about. It has to be inside the shrine. It was a military plane. Surely there are some weapons aboard. . . . ”
“I have no doubt.”
“Then, Honored One, shouldn’t we take it instead?”
Saint John shook his head sadly. “Even you, Peter? Even you?”
“I don’t—”
“You think there are weapons aboard that crashed airplane. So do I. Mother Rose knows it for sure. She has done everything short of building a wall around the shrine to make sure no one ever looks inside. For a time I even agreed with her. The plane represents the world that was. Whether it is filled to its rafters with scientific research on how to cure the gray plague, or medical supplies to treat all the many diseases that have been with us since the Fall, or a battle tank, it doesn’t matter what is in that plane. All of it is evil. All of it is polluted.”
“I understand that, Honored One,” insisted Brother Peter, “but surely if we used such weapons, their nature would change. As Mother Rose is so fond of saying, it is the intention that matters when picking up a sword and not the sword itself. After all, you allowed us to use the quads, and they are from the old world.”
“They are not weapons of war.”
“Even so—”
Saint John held up a hand. “I know what you would advise me, Peter, and it would sound like wisdom to both of us. It would even sound like a victory—to take something forged with ill intent and turn it to a holy purpose.”
“Yes, I—”
“But that is a pathway that would lead us from the purity of who we are back to the pollution of what we were.”
75
MOTHER ROSE WALKED THROUGH THE FOREST WITH BROTHER ALEXI by her side. A hundred reapers followed forty paces behind them. Their newest “chosen one,” Brother Mako, walked in the midst of the crowd. He looked slightly dazed but very happy to still be alive. The other chosen talked and laughed with him, clapping him on the back, sharing stories with him. They treated him like a hero, like a brother or cousin who had just done something amazing that benefited the family. And it all drew Mako further into his new role as a chosen of Mother Rose.
This was how it worked, and Mother Rose was pleased. This kind of con was always her gift. Alexi, who had been a highly successful drug dealer for the Russian Mafia before the Fall, was also pleased. The best cons were always those in which the mark felt like he had made all the important choices, and that those choices were the only good ones to make. The world as it was might have ended, but a sucker was a sucker was a sucker.
The process was simple. Invite and include so a person feels like they are a part of something. Like they belong. It was the cement of loyalty; and on some level everyone in the Night Church understood this. It was never spoken about, but because each of them had been brought in this way, every one of them reinforced it with new recruits. Mother Rose knew that it allowed each person to justify their own decision to join. It was an infection of self-justification, and that was how it all worked.
“What do you want to do about the rest of Carter’s crew?” asked Alexi. “They’re hiding like rabbits around here somewhere.”
She waved a hand. “Who cares about them? If we have time later, we’ll see about recruiting some of them. Forget the rest. We’re past that now.”
“Hey, a runner’s coming in,” said Alexi, nodding at the woods to their left. They slowed their pace but did not stop, and Sister Caitlyn came out of the forest and fell into step beside them.
“Holiness,” she said, a little breathlessly, “we got a problem.”
“Tell me.”
“Saint John and Brother Peter just had a long chat with Brother Eric.”
“What kind of ‘chat’?”
“The bad kind. They hung parts of Eric from the trees,” said Caitlyn, her color bad. “The way they do when they’re serious about finding out stuff.”
They walked a few paces in silence.
Brother Alexi ground his teeth. “Eric knew damn near everything.”
“He knew a lot,” agreed Mother Rose. “But not everything.”
“How’d they tumble to us so fast?” asked the giant.
Sister Caitlyn shook her head. “I don’t think any of us went to him.”
“They could have had someone watching from the woods when we met at the shrine,” said Alexi. “Plenty of places to hide and—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Mother Rose. “What does matter is that Saint John knows.”
“This sucks,” grumped Alexi. “I had a nice little timetable for working the new agenda into the army. Real subtle, too. I have a list of all the right people to talk to. The ones who could influence whole groups within the army. Damn.”
Mother Rose said nothing as they continued to walk toward the edge of the forest. Alexi and Caitlyn fell silent, but both of them looked disappointed and nervous.
Rebellion was fine, even imperative, unless they wanted to die young, which neither of them did, but going up against Saint John, Brother Peter, and the main body of the reaper army too soon . . . that promised a short and ugly future. Mother Rose’s insurrection was barely two hours old.
“We really screwed the pooch here,” said Alexi.
“No,” said Mother Rose. “We don’t need the army to take Sanctuary.”
“I’m not just worried about taking Sanctuary, Rose,” said Alexi. “But I have to admit that I’m more than a little concerned about Saint John hunting us with the main force of the reaper army. We have less than three hundred. Even without pulling in all of the legions from Wyoming and Utah, Saint John can chase us down with forty thousand knives.”
“Let him try.”
Caitlyn and Alexi stared at her. Mother Rose smiled as she let seconds fall all around them.
“But . . . ,” began Alexi, but Mother Rose cut him off.
“He has numbers,” she said, “but we have something else. Don’t you think it’s time that the Shrine of the Fallen yields up its mysteries?”
A big, ugly grin bloomed on Alexi’s dark face. “Oh . . . yes. Long past time.”
Mother Rose placed her fingertips on his chest over his heart. “You know what to do, my love. Caitlyn and I will gather the rest of our chosen ones and march on Sanctuary. Take a dozen fighters and go to the shrine. Follow as quick as you can.”
Alexi took her hand and kissed it. Then he turned and began growling orders to twelve of the toughest chosen. Together they vanished into the woods.
Confused, Caitlyn asked, “Mother . . . what’s at the shrine?”
Mother Rose’s smile was small and cold. “A power that not even Saint John, with all of his power, can hope to withstand.”
With that she turned and signaled to her chosen, who followed her on the way to Sanctuary.
76
“NIX!” YELLED BENNY. “GET BACK!”
He shoved her out of the way and brought his sword up in a two-handed grip.
As Nix fell, the match winked out, plunging the room into total darkness.
“Match—match—MATCH!” shrieked Benny.
Suddenly another match flared, and Benny crouched in the corridor between the stacks of crates, sword raised, feet braced, ready to fight to the death to buy Nix enough time to get out and climb down to safety.
The zoms stared at Nix and Benny.
Benny backed up a pace, edging toward the hatch.
Gray eyes, milky and dead, were focused on the two teenagers. They moaned with aching hunger. A strange moan, muted and low.
And they did not attack.
Nix screamed once more and then stopped.
Benny stopped trying to back away.
The zoms stared at them with unyielding need, but they did not move.
And the moment held.
“Benny—?”
All Benny could do was stare.
“Benny,” demanded Nix. “What is—what is—?”
She fell silent too.
The zoms were still seated in their chairs.
Benny licked his dry lips and took a tentative step forward. Toward the zoms. Their eyes shifted to follow him.
The zoms themselves, however, did not.
They could not.
And now Benny could see why. They were all secured to the chairs by rope looped around their ankles, wrists, waists, and throats.
And every mouth had been sewn shut with silver wire.
“Are you seeing this?” Benny whispered.
Nix nodded mutely.
Benny sagged back, sick and disgusted down to a level he could not frame into words. This was so . . . weird, so wrong. So horrible.
On one level he understood the logic of it. Zoms that can’t move or bite are safer. They can be handled without as much fear of the contagion.
But this was . . . awful.
Benny heard Nix retch. Then she spun away and threw up behind the packing cases. When she was done, she leaned heavily against the crates, eyes closed, chest heaving. Beads of sweat like tiny diamond chips glistened on her face. She pushed roughly away from him and then turned warily back toward the ghastly scene before them.
“What,” she gasped, “is this? This is crazy. This is wrong.”
“I know,” Benny said weakly. He stared at the zoms. Each of them had a network of thin wires wrapped around their heads, with sockets drilled into their sinuses, ears, and foreheads. God only knew what that was for.
Nix found a blank writing tablet on one of the crates, rolled it up, and lit it. It was a small torch, but better than holding a match. She held it up as they moved carefully down the corridor, looking at every zom, making sure each one was securely lashed in place.