Flesh-&-Bone(66)

“God . . . ,” whispered Nix in a voice that was filled with horror.

Benny spotted something and made himself climb the slope to the camp. He bent and picked up a stuffed rabbit. It was smeared with blood. He held it out to Nix, but she just shook her head.

“There must have been an attack,” he said. “That’s why Eve ran. In the confusion she must have gotten separated from her family. From all this gear, it looks like there were a lot of people here. We only saw her parents and that girl, Riot.”

“Benny, look,” Nix said, pointing to the stream bed. Two bodies lay half-submerged right at the next bend. They walked cautiously down and saw that they were truly dead. Neither was a reaper. They were ordinary-looking folk, and savage blows to their heads and necks had probably killed them and prevented them from rising. An unintended mercy buried within a heinous crime.

A few yards away they found a third body, and they squatted down to examine it. It was a middle-aged woman, and it was clear that she had been stabbed in the chest. Nix tilted her head to one side and grunted.

“She wasn’t quieted,” she said. “No head wound, no incision at the brain stem.”

Benny double-checked and then nodded. “It’s happening here, too. Not all of the dead are reanimating.”

“I wish I knew if that was a good thing,” said Nix.

“It was for Tom.”

She looked at the ground for a few seconds, then nodded. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. In silence they rose and moved along the stream. They found other bodies. Many others.

This had been the scene of a terrible slaughter. Here and there they found dead reapers, too, and each of these had been quieted by knives to the base of their skulls. But most of the dead were not reapers. Benny stopped counting when the toll reached fifty. Men, women, and children.

No one had been spared.

No one.

Nix’s lips curled back from her teeth in a feral grin. “Who are these freaks?”

Benny sat down on a rock and looked at his shoes. Then an idea struck him. “I think this is some kind of death cult,” he said.

She turned sharply. “What?”

“Think about it,” he said. “What else could it be? You said Thanatos was the Greek god of death, and Saint Jerk-o kept talking about the ‘gift of darkness.’ Seems kind of obvious.”

Nix snorted. “I said Thanatos was one of the Greek gods of death. The nice one, the one that takes away suffering. These reapers don’t seem like they’re trying to alleviate suffering. Besides—I can’t think of anything stupider than a death cult after an apocalypse.”

“Maybe,” Benny said dubiously.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Benny looked at her, surprised. “Really? You’re telling me that you can’t see their point?”

“Their point?”

“Shh, keep your voice down.”

Nix stepped closer. “Benny, what are you saying? That you agree with—?”

“What?” He almost laughed. “Agree? Are you nuts? I never said I agreed with anything. All I asked was whether you could understand their point.”

“What possible point could there be to a death cult?”

Benny stared at her. “You’re serious?”

She punched him on the arm. Hard. “Of course I’m serious.”

“First . . . ow. Second, I thought you were the one who was always all torn up about people back home being so depressed and fatalistic. You were always going on about how people have just given up. That’s why we’re out here, isn’t it? Trying to find some survivors who still believe that there is a future.”

“That’s my point,” she snapped. “We need to focus on being alive.”

“We do, sure, but that’s you and me and Chong and Lilah. Maybe a few others. Everyone else is still acting like they’re at a funeral for the human race.”

“That’s grief and depression,” said Nix, “not a freaking death cult.”

“Maybe those things aren’t all that far apart. C’mon, you’ve heard all those stories about how many people committed suicide after First Night. Mayor Kirsch said that almost half the people who settled Mountainside killed themselves within eighteen months.”

“It wasn’t nearly that many,” Nix said defensively, but it was a weak parry.