was.”
“He’s a ghost, not a carnival magician.”
“Tom knew her middle name,” said Nix. “Ask him. If it’s really him, then he’ll know.”
“That’s stupid—”
“Ask him!” she yelled.
“I can’t!” he yelled back.
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work like that.”
“How do you know how it works? Come on, Benny, we’ve been on the run since we got up this morning. Exactly when did you have time to process everything and come to the unshakable conclusion that you’re the expert on all things spiritual?”
“Why are you getting mad at me? I’m trying to get some help here ’cause I think I’m really screwed up, and you’re giving me crap.”
“Benny, how do you know this is Tom?”
“I just know.”
“No,” she snapped, “that’s not good enough. How do you know?”
“I just do. He was my brother. I think I’d know my brother’s voice. This is him.”
“Then ask him my mother’s middle name. What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of that.”
When Nix didn’t say anything, Benny sighed.
“Look,” he said, “why are you badgering me about this? You think I want to hear my dead brother’s voice?”
“Why not? I’d give anything to hear my mother speak to me,” said Nix in a voice that was filled with fragile cracks.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because,” shouted Nix, “I can’t even remember what she sounded like.”
After a long moment, Benny said, “What?”
“God… I’d give anything for her to start talking to me.” A sob hitched in her chest. “Benny… I can’t even remember what my mother looked like.”
67
Sitting with Eve steadied Chong. He understood why. It was harder to let yourself sink if someone else needed you to be their rock. He saw Benny and Nix do that for each other, even though he was positive they weren’t aware of it.
It did not mean that Chong was less terrified, but the girl’s terror and trauma were worse than his own. Even if he died, what she was going through was worse. She’d seen her parents murdered right in front of her. When Chong died, his fear would end; Eve would have to live with those memories.
Everything’s relative.
Eve sat close to him, sucking her thumb, occasionally humming disjointed pieces of lullabies.
Riot went outside to make sure they were still safe, then came back and sat down. Chong studied Riot’s face. She was a puzzle to him. She reminded him of Tom’s bounty hunter friend, Sally Two-Knives. Tough, fiercely individual, violent, and clearly with a heart.
“Talk to me,” said Chong.
“About what?” she asked. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with some smart way out of this bear trap, but every which way I look there’s just more traps.”
“Yeah, let’s not talk about that,” said Chong. “Why don’t you tell me your story? I mean… are you a reaper?”
She looked away for a moment. “Not as such,” she said.
“Okay, that was evasive.”
She shrugged. “I was a reaper once upon a time. Ain’t now. End of story.”
“No,” said Chong. “I’m dying, I get to be nosy. You’re a walking contradiction. You have the same skin art as the reapers, but you went after Brother Andrew like you owed him for a lot of hurt.”
Riot ran a hand thoughtfully over her scalp, then sighed. “I was no more’n two years old when the plague hit,” she said slowly. “My dad was raising me. He was a country doctor down in North Carolina. He’d divorced my ma ’cause she was a drunk and a bum and no damn good.”
“I’m sorry,” Chong began, but she waved it away.
“That’s the nice part of the story. Y’all want to hear it or not?”
He nodded. His skin was cold and clammy, and he had an incredibly bad headache. He sat cross-legged with his back to the wall.
“I could use the distraction,” he admitted.
“Well, when the whole world turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet, Pa packed me in his car and drove northwest. Got as far as Jefferson City, Missouri, before the EMPs killed the car. After that we joined up with a buncha folks who was running from the dead. I don’t remember nothin’ about that. All kind of a blur. We was always running, always hiding, and always hungry. People came and went. Then we met up with a bigger bunch of folks, and when they found out Pa was a doc, they made sure that he was always safe. Me too.
“My pa was always trying to steer over toward Topeka, which was the last place he knew my mom to be living. And sure enough, she was there and she was alive. My pa said it was like a miracle. Only thing was, Ma was hooked up with a group that was calling itself the Night Church, and she was keeping company with its leader, a man named Saint John.”
Eve wormed closer to Chong, her thumb still socketed in her mouth. It frightened Chong that the child was barely talking. She’d said a few words after she woke up, but then she seemed to shut down. It was so sad.
“Saint John said that it really was a miracle that my ma found me,” continued Riot, “and he said that it made me special. Like I was some kind of holy person.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Me. Holy. Right.”
“This Night Church,” asked Chong, “they’re the reapers?”
She nodded. “They didn’t start calling themselves that until much later. By then I was being trained to be a fighter. Saint John knows every kind of evil move there is. Karate and all that. Dirty fighting. Hands, feet, knives, strangle wires. He taught me all that stuff, and I was the head of my class. Hooray for me.” She touched her scalp. “This stuff was actually a health thing first. We all came down with the worst case of lice in the history of bugs. Couldn’t shake ’em, couldn’t wash ’em out, so Pa suggested everybody shave all their hair off. Worked, too. But while we was all bald, somebody took it in their head to go and get tattooed. Not sure who started it, but everyone in the Night Church did it. Saint John, too, and he called it the mark in flesh of our devotion. Some crap like that.”
“Why don’t you grow your hair back?”
She ran her fingers lightly over her scalp. “I tried, but it don’t grow in right. Comes in all patchy and nasty. Better to keep it like this. Besides, the reapers can’t stand that I have the mark and I ain’t one of ’em. Drives Ma nuts too.”
“Your mother is still with them?”
“My dear old ma,” said Riot acidly, “is the high holy muck-a-muck of the Night Church. Calls herself Mother Rose. An’ she’s the only one who didn’t get her head tattooed. Grew her hair back, and Saint John somehow spun that as it was a special mark that only she could have. No, don’t look too close at it, ’cause you’ll hurt yourself. It don’t make a lick of sense.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I wised up,” she said. “I guess I kind of had what you might call a ‘moment.’ I was fourteen by then and leadin’ my own team of reapers. All girls, daughters of the inner circle of the church. We were getting ready to hit this little walled-in town in Idaho — and the thing is, I never even found out its name — and the night before the raid, I was on recon with a couple of the other girls when I heard something from over the walls.”
