He reached up and touched the silver whistle that hung around his neck. He stroked it contemplatively for a moment and then raised it to his lips. He blew into it, long and hard and with no apparent effect.
Soon, however, he heard the sound of clumsy feet crunching on dead leaves, and the swish of pine branches brushing against bodies that moved without delicacy but with the implacability of the stars themselves.
Then the saint of all the killers left on earth ran after Nix and Benny, and behind him an army of the living dead followed.
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Tom taught us that the samurai lived according to a code of ethics and behavior called Bushido. You’d think something that means “The Way of the Warrior” would be all about killing the enemy, but that’s not how it was. There are seven “virtues” that true warriors had to live by.
1. Justice. This is about doing the right thing or making the right decision (even if it’s the hardest choice at the time).
2. Bravery. We can’t really be fearless, but we can act brave even when we’re scared green.
3. Benevolence. Warriors should always show mercy, charity, and kindness.
4. Respect. Everyone deserves it. (I have to keep reminding myself of this one!)
5. Honesty. This includes trust and sincerity, too.
6. Loyalty. Yeah. This one’s really important if we’re going to survive out here in the Ruin.
7. Honor. Tom says this means that when you give your word, then that’s set in stone. He said, “Honor isn’t a convenience. It’s a way of life.”
34
An arrow thunked into the tree trunk an inch from Chong’s face.
He screamed and threw himself down and away.
In the clearing, Brother Andrew shouted, “Danny! Did you get him?”
“He went right down,” cried a second voice from well behind where Chong lay. “Go get him and I’ll cover you.”
Chong had no intention of waiting while the muscle-freak with the scythe came to kill him. He sprang to his feet and bolted for the crooked line of shrubs twenty yards away. He ran bent almost in half, sword clutched in one fist. Another arrow struck a tree directly in front of him, causing him to skid to a stop and dive down behind a thick pine. A third arrow hit the pine, and when he risked a look, a fourth cleaved the air so close to his head that it tugged at his hair. It tangled in a creosote bush and fell to the ground. Chong gave it a microsecond’s glance. The arrow had an aluminum shaft, with black plastic fletching and a wicked barbed head that was smeared with some black goo. Poison? Either way, Chong did not want to touch it. He scuttled away as fast as he could.
“There he is,” called the archer, Danny, as he stepped out of the woods. “It’s just a kid with a toy sword.”
Danny was a thin black man, dressed identically to Brother Andrew, shaved head and all. He had a leather quiver of arrows slung over his back, the fletched ends ready above his shoulder so all he had to do was reach up and slide an arrow out and down into his bow. Chong had seen plenty of hunters coming back from the Ruin with quivers identical to that. What struck him, though, was the bow this man carried. It was not one of the old- fashioned red-elm recurve bows made by the Gibson brothers in Haven; nor was it one of the sixty-two-inch plain longbows Chong and all his friends used in gym class. No, this was something from before First Night: a metal-and- fiberglass compound bow fitted with cables and pulleys to bend the limb, allowing the archer superior accuracy, velocity, and distance. Chong had seen only one like it before. A moody, scar-faced trade guard named Big Mike Sweeney gave a demonstration with one at the New Year Festival two years ago. He’d outshot every archer in the Nine Towns, and each of his arrows sank twice as deep as even the longbow arrows used by Cleveland Dave Wilcox. The Motor City Hammer had offered Big Mike a thousand ration dollars for the bow, but the scar-faced man had laughed and walked away.
Chong recognized and feared that weapon. His stomach clenched into a tiny knot of ice.
He ducked so low that he was almost on all fours and wormed his way into the densest tangle of brush he could find. He heard another arrow strike a tree, but the archer was aiming in the wrong direction. Chong felt a splinter of relief. If he could stay out of sight for another couple of minutes, then he could circle behind Danny and lose himself in the forest. He risked one peek and saw that the archer was now between him and Andrew. Chong smiled grimly and kept moving.
“Hey! Where’d he go?” growled Brother Andrew. “Watch out, Danny, I can’t see him—”
“Carter!” A woman’s voice suddenly cried out in total horror, and everyone — Andrew, the archer, and Chong — turned to see a woman with an ax standing wide-eyed with shock at the edge of the clearing. Sarah. Eve clung to her mother’s leg, face blank with incomprehension.
The archer smiled and drew another black-tipped arrow.
“Sarah,” said Brother Andrew, and he actually looked relieved. “Looks like we’ll get the whole family, praise be to the darkness. Carter won’t have to go into the darkness alone.”
The compassion in his voice chilled Chong. It was so weirdly inappropriate, and yet it seemed genuine.
“Carter!” Sarah’s eyes blazed with madness, and she kept screaming her husband’s name as if somehow the depth of her need could call him back from the dark place to which his soul had fled. Her body trembled as she fought between the desire to run to her husband and the need to protect her daughter.
“Sarah,” said Andrew, “Carter is in the arms of Thanatos now — all praise his darkness.”
“N-no…”
“He’s waiting for you, sweetheart. He wants you and Evie to join him.”
Tears streamed down Sarah’s face. Eve began whimpering.
“I want my daddy,” she wailed.
Brother Andrew smiled at the little girl. “You see? She wants to be with him. The darkness offers peace and an end to suffering for all of you.”
“You bastards killed my husband,” growled Sarah, her voice made rough by the jagged pieces of her breaking heart. “And now you want to kill my baby?”
“We want to save Eve and all the other children,” insisted Andrew. “Please, Sarah… don’t fight this. Embrace it.”
Chong knew that it was all hopeless. Sarah was on the edge of panic, and she could never defeat both reapers. She should never have come into the clearing, but Chong understood that she could not have done anything else. It was a terrible script written by an evil hand, and she and her daughter were going to become victims of their own drama.
The archer strung his arrow, the barbed head gleaming with black goo; Andrew hefted the scythe with its wicked three-foot-long curving blade.
Time seemed to have slowed for Chong, but this moment was stretched so taut that it was going to snap. He knew he could flee this encounter and head into the woods. Physically he could do that; but that was not possible on any other level. He also knew that he was no one’s idea of a hero. Benny was, although his friend would laugh at the suggestion; and both Nix and Lilah were heroes. Chong was a self-admitted sidekick. No one should ever depend on him for anything heroic. He didn’t have the mentality or the musculature for it. His bokken was clutched in his fists, and his teeth were clenched.
The reapers were distracted — Chong could simply run away.
“Move it, town boy,” he snarled at himself; and then he was up and running.
Toward the tableau that was suddenly coming unstuck from time. Sarah screamed and rushed at Andrew;
