Then Nix gasped and said, “Oh my God!” She stumbled backward in horror, pointing out into the desert.
“What—?” asked Benny.
But as he rushed to her side, he saw what it was. Outside, near where the three zombies hung on their T-bars, were three people. Reapers.
Two men and a tall woman with masses of dark brown hair.
“Nix!” cried Benny in a strangled whisper, “that’s her. That’s the woman I saw today in the field right before the zoms chased me.”
57
“YOU’RE SURE?” ASKED NIX. “SHE’S THE ONE FROM THE FIELD?”
“Positive.”
They studied her. She was tall and beautiful, and she stood with a grace that spoke of great confidence. Benny recalled the word he had thought of when he first saw her: regal. Queenly. But queen of what?
There were other reapers around her. Men and women, all of them dressed in black with angel wings and red tassels. They all carried weapons. Swords, axes, knives.
“I don’t see any guns,” whispered Benny.
“Not much of a comfort,” replied Nix sourly.
Then they gaped at a man who came out of the woods to take up a very protective post just behind the queenly woman. He was a giant, and he carried a massive long-handled sledgehammer.
“What is he?” asked Nix. “A troll?”
“Close enough.”
The air was split by the roar of quads as more reapers appeared from the forest until there were at least two dozen of them gathered around the woman. Except for her, all of them had shaved and tattooed heads like Saint John. And Riot, thought Benny.
None of them stood very close to her, though every eye was fixed on her. None of them paid much attention to the plane, and it was clear that they had all seen it before, or did not care about it. The woman ignored it completely.
She beckoned over a grim-faced young man, and for several moments they stood apart, their heads bowed together in an intense discussion while the giant guarded them.
“I can’t hear anything,” complained Benny. “Can you?”
Nix’s face was screwed up with concentration. “No.”
That changed a moment later. The young man bowed deeply to the woman, turned, and melted into the forest. The woman stepped onto a small, flat rock, and the other reapers clustered around her. She raised her arms out to the sides and stood for a moment in silence, the wind making the red streamers snap and pop.
Then, in a loud, clear voice she addressed the reapers. “You are the blessed of Thanatos!”
“All praise to the darkness,” they cried.
“In you he is well pleased. As I am pleased.”
“All praise to Mother Rose!”
Nix turned to Benny and mouthed the name. “Mother Rose.”
It was the name Saint John had mentioned.
“My children,” said Mother Rose, “you have all done exceedingly well. Your faith and devotion lifts my heart.”
They smiled, and a few even dabbed at wet eyes.
“Look at where we stand, my beloved ones.” She gestured to the plane, and for a moment Benny’s heart froze, thinking that she was pointing at them. But he and Nix were in shadows, invisible from outside. Even so his heart hammered. “The Shrine of the Fallen. A symbol of the corrupt world that was lies here, broken and empty. This once-mighty war machine and every heretic aboard have been given the gift of darkness. All the war machines of the old, corrupt world are silenced now. The world itself is falling silent. A silence decreed by our god. A silence that is proof of the eternal darkness that waits for us all.”
“Praise be to the darkness!”
“Saint John and his prophet, Brother Peter, have told you many times that we are coming to the end of our long road, that the darkness is a heartbeat away for us all.”
The crowd grew silent, attentive.
“But I tell you that there is much still to do.”
Even in the plane Benny could hear the crowd sigh. It was a sad sound. But Mother Rose held up a hand.
“Do not be afraid, my children. Our god has not abandoned you, and he has not foresworn his holy promise to lift you up and grant you peace. No, I say now, in your hearing, that Lord Thanatos will deliver one hundredfold on his promises. You will have peace and so much more.”
She waited as the crowd milled, the reapers murmuring to one another in confusion, but now Benny could hear a note of hope in their sounds.
“Where once the family of the reapers was weak, now we are strong,” said Mother Rose. “Where once we were scattered like sheep, now we are part of a great family. A community of saints for whom the heavens themselves are ours to sow.”
There were definite frowns on many of the faces, but Mother Rose’s beatific smile never wavered.
“What’s she doing?” asked Nix.
Benny shook his head.
“You all know that the last of Carter’s heretics are in these woods,” said Mother Rose. “What most of you do not know is that she who was my daughter intends to lead them to Sanctuary.”
The collected reapers gasped in horror.
“Saint John and Brother Peter are hunting them now,” continued Mother Rose. “It is their desire that every one of the heretics be sent into the darkness.”
A few of the reapers gave rousing shouts of approval, but Mother Rose looked at them with unblinking eyes until they fell silent. The reapers shuffled like naughty schoolboys.
“Saint John, beloved of Thanatos—”
“Praise be to his darkness.”
“—wants to find and destroy Sanctuary. He wants to open red mouths in the flesh of everyone there. He wants to end the heartbeat of all heresy.”
No one cheered, though it seemed clear to Benny that many of them agreed with what Saint John wanted to do. Confusion and doubt was written on every face except that of Mother Rose and the giant with the hammer.
“But,” said Mother Rose, her voice becoming quieter, almost a whisper, “this is not what our god wants.”
No one even blinked. They stared, stock-still.
“I have had a vision, my beloved children. In a sacred trance, Lord Thanatos himself spoke to me.”
“Oh brother,” growled Nix. “Do you believe this crap?”
“They seem to,” said Benny.
It was true; many of the reapers touched their hands to the angel designs on their chests.
“The lord of the darkness has tested us so many times and in so many ways. Those of you who have been with the Night Church since Wichita remember how many tests have been put before us.”
Several heads nodded.
“There have been failures and setbacks and defeats . . . and yet each time, no matter how devastating each new calamity appeared, we found the holy path through the fire and the smoke. We passed each test, no matter how difficult. We did this. Each of us, serving the will of our god even when God has made the path uncertain and the way forward choked with thorns and fog.”
More heads nodded now.
“And what has this done? All along the way we have seen many of our fellows fall, and while their spirits have gone on into the darkness we have stayed behind, weeping and tearing at our garments, crying out, Why? Why them and not us? Why has the lord of the night punished us so many times when others whose will and whose faith were not as strong as ours were allowed to go into the sacred darkness?”
“Tell us why, Mother!” cried out one of the reapers. It was a thin man with a beaky nose. He fell to his knees and clapped his hands together. “Tell us, please!”
Another reaper dropped to her knees. “What sins have we committed that bar our way to paradise?”
Nix and Benny looked at each other.
“Is it me, or did that look planned?” asked Nix.
“Yeah,” agreed Benny, “I think she seeded the crowd like Mr. Hopewell does when he’s running the Sunday auction.”
Mother Rose stepped forward and touched the bowed head of the kneeling woman.
“Sins, my daughter?” she said. “Did I say that you have sinned?”
She paused a beat and looked at the others.
“Did I say that any of you have sinned?” She drew the kneeling woman to her feet and kissed her on both cheeks. “No, my beloved, we have all passed through that fire together, and in its heat we have been purified.”
The last word hung in the air like the clear note of a church bell. Even Benny felt a chill.
“Each of us here in this sacred place has passed through the fire many times. Each of us has stayed true even when we thought that our god had withdrawn his grace from us. Each of us has proven our faith beyond all doubt. And thus, the lord of the darkness has revealed to me that this—all of this, our struggles, our doubts, our pain, our longing, our faith—has made us the chosen of Thanatos.”
There was another beat.
“Henceforth we will rise to be worthy of that choice. We will sing out in joy for the glory of God’s grace. We will no longer fear life and flee like sheep into the darkness of the grave.” Mother Rose raised her arms in triumph. “We have been reapers at work in the fields of the Lord. This task we have done well and faithfully. The fields are clear of vermin and pests. They are clean, and they welcome us to put down our tools of reaping and set about our new work.”
The woman who had been kissed cried out, “What is our purpose, Mother Rose, beloved of Thanatos?”
Mother Rose turned so that her upraised hands indicated everything. Not just this field, Benny knew . . . but everything.
“The chosen will go out into the world and reclaim it.”
Although Benny didn’t really understand the nature of this church, he thought he had the gist of it. It felt like a weird slant on something Charlie Pink-eye used to say: Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.
Except that now this woman seemed to be changing the rules.
“Is she talking about double-crossing Saint John?” asked Nix, once more proving that she was reading his thoughts.
“I think so.”
“Better her than me,” said Nix. “That guy freaked me out.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not having fuzzy puppy love about Mother Nut Job down there.”
“How many sides are there in this fight? I thought it was Eve’s family against these reapers.”
Benny nodded. “Sorry to make a bad joke, but from what we just heard, I think there’s trouble in paradise.”
“Ugh.” Nix looked around the cockpit. “Whose side do you think they were on?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. The good guys’ side, I hope.”
“Okay, but who are the good guys? Eve’s dad tried to shoot us.”
“Wait, something’s happening,” Benny said.
Down in the clearing, the reapers were arguing among themselves. However, one by one they broke from the group and knelt before Mother Rose.
“Praise be to the mother of us all,” yelled one man. “Praise be to the mother of the chosen!”
Suddenly they were all kneeling and crying out, repeating those words like a chant as Mother Rose stood above them, arms up and out, drinking in their cries. The reapers crawled forward to kiss the bloodred streamers tied to Mother Rose’s clothes. Benny saw, however, that one of the reapers hesitated longer than the others before joining the group. He was a barrel-chested Latino with twin knives thrust through his belt. And Benny saw Mother Rose flick a covert glance to the giant and then to that reaper.
“He’s a dead man,” said Nix before Benny could say it. “He’s not buying any of this, and he’s freaking dead.”
“Sucks to be him,” agreed Benny.
As they watched, the gathering broke up. Mother Rose said a few words to each of them, mostly telling them to spread the word to the other reapers. At no point did she tell them to keep Saint John out of the loop, but it was the impression Benny got.
The man who had been the first to drop to his knees lingered for a moment, as did a few others, and Benny noted that these reapers were the ones who had first “seen the light.” It confirmed his suspicions that they were plants in the gathering, just like the friends of Mr. Hopewell who yelled out the first bids and kept driving up the sale price. These people clustered around Mother Rose and received additional instructions that Benny and Nix could not hear. When Mother Rose nodded in the direction the Latino man had taken, one of the reapers smiled, nodded, and hurried silently into the woods to follow.
Afterward, Mother Rose and the giant stood in silence until the sounds of the quads and the shouts of the “chosen” faded into silence.
The big man shook his head and laughed with a rumble from deep in his chest.
“Well, Rosie,” he said, “you really did it now. There’s no coming back from this.”
“I don’t intend to come back, Alexi,” she said with cold amusement. “It’s all about moving forward. Besides, if we waited any longer, Saint John might actually destroy Sanctuary. And we can’t have that, can we?”
“No, ma’am. But . . . Saint John’s going to be pissed. He has his heart set on seeing that place burn.”
“He can take it up with God. It’s his own fault. He made me the head of this crazy church. Besides,” she said with a smile, “I had a holy vision.”
They laughed and began to walk away.
Then the woman did something that absolutely mystified Nix and Benny while at the same time freezing the blood in their veins. Mother Rose turned, raised her fingers to her lips, and blew a kiss into the air.
Directly toward the plane.
Then she and the giant smiled at each other. They turned away and walked without haste into the forest.