Dust & Decay(114)

“‘Guide’ them,” corrected Preacher Jack.

“Okay, guide them out of these hills. We’ll put people to work building new fence lines, but we’ll do it at rivers and gorges and natural barriers. We’ll take back farmable lands, we’ll run cattle again. Not just a few hundred head like they got in town—we’ll run tens of thousands of heads. We’ll plant a million acres of food. And we’ll figure out how to start the machines again. Mills and factories, tractors and combines. Maybe some tanks, too, to keep everything working smooth.”

“Who’s going to do all that labor?” asked Nix dubiously.

White Bear grinned. “There’s a lot of lazy people sitting behind the fences. Me and my crew have been working all these years, taking all the risks. Now it’s time that other people broke a sweat and got their hands dirty.”

“You’re talking slave labor,” said Nix.

“It’s not slave labor,” protested White Bear, trying to look innocent, “it’s cooperative labor. No different from the ration dollar system we got now. They want to eat, then they’ll work. They work, and we’ll protect ’em.”

Benny turned to Preacher Jack. “What about the Children of Lazarus? I thought you said that this world was theirs now?”

The preacher’s lips twitched. “Don’t confuse philosophy with practicality, child.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means that the dead don’t need farmland and clean water,” said White Bear. “They’s already been raised up to the Lord, so to speak. All they need is to be. So … we’ll just herd—I mean guide—them to areas where they can be without chowing down on us. Hell, nobody’s using Utah and Arizona and New Mexico. Who needs fricking deserts? We’ll keep ’em there, and they won’t know or care.”

“Such is the will of God,” agreed Preacher Jack, and the two thugs with him murmured, “Amen.”

“How are you going to guide millions of—” Benny almost said “zoms” but caught himself. “How are you going to guide all those dead?”

“It was the dead who gave us the idea,” said White Bear. “’Bout a year ago they started moving in packs. Swarming, you might say.”

Nix frowned. “Flocking?”

“We call it swarming, but yes,” said the preacher. “It’s one of God’s mysteries.”

White Bear nodded. “It started down in Mexico and in some of the Nevada towns. Masses of the dead who had been standing around doing nothing for years just up and moved. Scared the stuffing out of some people. Bunch of settlements were completely overrun. Every week it gets worse. Or better, depending on how you see it. Something causes a couple of the dead to start walking, and soon all the others in the area do the same thing, hundreds—sometimes thousands of them—all shuffling in the same direction. Weird.” He chuckled. “The thing that’s going to make this work, kids, is that we figured out how to steer the swarms.”

Benny stiffened. “You led a swarm to Brother David’s last night!”

“I did that,” admitted Preacher Jack. “White Bear’s scouts said that Tom was heading there, so I sent some of my lay-preachers out to gather some swarms. It was wonderful, wasn’t it? I counted seven thousand of them.” His smiling face turned dark. “And then you burned them.”

Uh-oh, said Benny’s inner voice. “You, um, saw that, huh?” he asked, trying on a smile that didn’t fit.

“I saw everything.” Preacher Jack’s eyes were filled with dangerous light.

“I didn’t see you.”

“That’s because you did not look up.”

“Huh?”

“Until the fire reached me I was sitting very comfortably on a folding chair on top of the way station. A grand view to watch the Children of Lazarus come down the mountain slopes. It would have been a grand view to watch them drag you and this slut and the white-haired witch out of the station. I wanted to see them feast on your bones.”

“You really blame me for defending myself?” Benny said, standing straight. “You claim to respect Tom for being a warrior, and you blame me for defending myself when you attack me? I mean … what did we ever do to you?”

White Bear smiled at him with burned lips. “See this face? Tom did this when he set fire to Gameland. Nearly killed me.”