into a thick bandage and used the strips to lash it to her waist and thigh. Her canteen was lost, so she couldn’t clean the wound, but right now it was more important to prevent further blood loss. She’d worry about infection later. If she got down from the tree, there were plenty of things she could find in a forest that were useful in combating infection. As George and Tom had each said, “Nature provides if you know how to ask.” Lilah knew.
With the wound bandaged, Lilah felt her confidence returning.
However, along with the confidence came the full set of memories of everything that had happened before the boar attacked her.
Mother Rose and the reapers. The slaughter in the camp. The four-wheeled motorcycles.
And… the thing she had found by the cliff.
She had to get back to Chong and the others and tell them. They were in greater danger than she was, because as far as Lilah knew, the others had no idea what was happening in this stretch of desert forest. She needed to tell them, and then to get them all out of this place before…
Below her the boars grunted hungrily.
Lilah looked up, but there was no escape route there. The tree in which she stood reached all the way to the edge of the cliff, but long before it got there it narrowed to a slender wand that could never support her weight.
With the cold efficiency of a survivor, she dismissed it and looked down.
The hogs were there. If she landed among them, they’d close around her and tear her apart, of that she had no doubt.
However, if she were able to somehow avoid them and jump to the outside of their ring, then she might have a chance to use ground cover to help her effect an escape. There were boulders, thick bushes, and plenty of ravines and gullies in the landscape.
That left two questions.
If she climbed to a lower branch, could she manage to jump that far away from them? And if she did, did she simply have enough strength and stamina left to outrun and outmaneuver six tireless creatures?
The answer to both questions was almost certainly no.
But she had no other options. None. It was a bad choice or no choice.
So she took the bad choice.
However, before she made a move, a voice seemed to speak to her out of the shadows in her mind. Tom’s voice. Just an echo.
“Warrior smart,” she murmured. What was she missing that a smart warrior wouldn’t?
Lilah examined the jagged branches that stuck out in all directions around her.
“Warrior smart,” she said again. Then she took her knife and went to work.
39
Chong tried to raise the bow over his head, as if it could stop the reaper’s killing blow.
“Don’t fight it, boy,” growled the reaper. “This is more mercy than you deserve — OWW!”
The reaper suddenly reeled back, the scythe falling to the dirt as he clapped his hands over his temple. Blood welled from between his fingers.
Chong did not understand what he was seeing. Death had been a heartbeat away.
Then he heard a
Chong saw something fall to the ground. Small and gray.
A stone?
He said, “What…?”
There was another
The world seemed to be going hazy and losing sense and clarity. Chong thought he heard a girl’s voice, but Eve stood in front of him, her mouth shocked to silence.
A female figure rushed out of the woods. Lithe and beautiful. Strong and alien. Wearing the fierce glare of a killer.
But it was not Lilah.
The figure raised her weapon and fired, and Brother Andrew howled in pain as another stone struck his forehead.
Chong spoke her name in a thin wheeze.
“Riot?”
The girl looked wild and terrible. Her face was bruised and crisscrossed with scratches. Blood trickled from one ear, and there was a shallow knife cut across the tanned flesh of her bare midsection.
She stood over Carter’s body with tears streaming down her face as she drew and fired stone after stone from her slingshot.
The reaper bellowed and tried to fight through the barrage, dodging some of the shots, taking others on his huge forearms as he sought to protect his face. Riot kept shooting, though, and the sharp stones cut bloody lines in the reaper’s skin.
And yet, the stones were not enough.
Brother Andrew was a monster of a man, with muscles packed onto his limbs. Riot was hurting him, but she wasn’t stopping him, and with a bear’s growl he waded into the attack, scythe clutched in powerful fists, head bowed to protect his face.
“No,” whispered Chong. “No!”
He suddenly lunged for the reaper and grabbed a fistful of the red cloth streamers on the big man’s ankle, yanking them with all the strength he had left. The sudden jerk made Brother Andrew stumble.
“Get off,” snapped the reaper as he smashed Chong across the face with a brutal backhanded blow.
Fireworks exploded inside Chong’s head and he sagged down, but his hand remained clamped around the red streamers. He distantly heard another
Andrew kicked free of his grip and raised a foot to stomp down on Chong’s head. But there was a cry like a hunting hawk and the meaty thud of flesh on flesh, and Chong peered up in wonder to see the reaper and Riot fall together in a snarling and deadly embrace. Andrew had his hands on Riot’s throat, but the young woman did not seem to care. She had a small knife in each hand, and as she crashed down and rolled over and over with the reaper, those blades did horrific work. Blood splashed the ground and spattered Chong’s face as he watched, dumbfounded and appalled as Riot — a teenage girl — slaughtered the monstrous reaper.
There was no better word. No cleaner word.
It was slaughter.
Then it was over. Riot rose from the red ruin that had been Brother Andrew. Blood dripped from her knives, her arms, her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked across the clearing at Carter, then at Sarah, and finally at Eve — who stood as still and blank-eyed as a statue.
That was the last thing Chong saw before a massive wave of darkness rose up and then crashed down on him, washing everything else away.
40
Benny and Nix kept moving, heading east. When they looked back there was no sign of Saint John, and the
