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:
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.
Half a minute later another reaper appeared. He stepped out of a pocket of dense shadows where no one had apparently noticed him. He was a tough, unsmiling young man with intense dark eyes. He walked to the spot where Mother Rose and Brother Alexi had stood. Even from all the way up in the plane, Benny could see the muscles bunch at the corners of his jaw and the rigid lines of muscle definition that stood out on his arms as he clenched his fists. Benny wasn’t sure if he had ever seen anyone that totally and utterly furious.
The man spat on the ground where Mother Rose had stood, then turned and melted like the specter of murder into the forest.
Benny and Nix stared for a long time at the empty clearing.
“What the hell was that all about?” breathed Nix.
Benny shook his head. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”
58
Before they set out to find the others, Joe went over the functions of the quad with Lilah. She didn’t ask why. It was practical information shared from one fighter to another. It was what Tom would have done.
“This thing will go all day long without much fuel,” he explained. “Runs on ethanol, and the reapers had a tanker of the stuff.”
“Had?”
“I, um, borrowed it from them,” he explained. “Got it hid in an arroyo a few miles from here. When we find your friends, we’ll see about borrowing a few more quads. Beats the heck out of walking everywhere.”
“How come these machines work? I thought the EMPs…?”
“They blew out a lot of stuff, but not everything. I’ve been to places where people have cars — well, had cars. Gasoline wasn’t made to last more than a year or two, and by now it’s all bad. Only things still running are vehicles that used to run on ethanol. There are plenty of cornfields left. Saw a couple of junkers powered by hand- crank generators, solar panels, and even a few with little mini wind turbines. They only get up to about ten miles an hour, but that still beats walking.”
Lilah drove the machine around the big boulders a few times while Joe watched, nodding his approval. Grimm gave a single deep bark to show that he, too, was impressed.
Joe waved her to a stop and switched off the machine. “Okay, you’re good to go, and your bandages aren’t leaking, so that’s good too. I won’t ask if you feel fit enough to pull a trigger. Already know that answer.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to have to fight these people,” she said. “I want to find my friends and continue on our way.”
“Yeah, about that,” Joe said. “You never really told me why four teenagers are way the heck out in the Ruin. It’s not the place for a class trip.”
Lilah considered whether to tell him. She couldn’t see how the information could be used to hurt her or the others. So she told Joe about the jet. And about the plane she’d seen on the plateau.
“Hold on, hold on,” said Joe, suddenly excited. “You saw the transport?”
“What?”
“Big C-130J Super Hercules. Prop job, not a jet. You saw that plane somewhere out here?”
“I saw the jet and—”
Joe cut her off and explained the difference between a jumbo jet and a propeller-driven military transport plane. When he described the latter, she began nodding.
