Flesh-&-Bone(92)

Now . . . Nix would be so happy.

Joe interrupted her thoughts. “You said that the flight crew was zommed out and hung on posts? Anything else around them? Incense bowls, bunches of flowers, anything like that?”

“Yes. And signs around their necks saying that they were sinners.”

“Reapers,” growled Joe. Grimm must have recognized the word, because he gave his own low growl, full of menace and promise.

“These reapers . . . will you please tell me who they are?”

“We don’t have time to go into the whole history of the reapers,” said Joe. “The short version is this. Prior to First Night, Saint John was what the police used to call a serial killer. He was a psychopathic mass murderer, and one of almost legendary status. There were books and movies made about him. No real surprise that he survived the Reaper Plague. About ten years ago, Saint John showed up at a settlement north of Topeka. Set himself up as a kind of preacher, talking about how man did not need to suffer, how there was an end to pain, yada, yada. Long story short, at first his message got no traction because people were still busy surviving the end of everything. They were in full-blown survival mode, and nobody wanted to hear about just giving up and giving in.” He removed the magazine from his gun, checked that it was fully loaded, and slapped it back into place. “But as time went on, things got worse out there.”

He told her about the rampant diseases that swept through a lot of the communities, and the resulting death toll.

“Plus there was radiation in spots from reactor meltdowns, and more radiation from the cities they nuked on First Night. Cancer rates are probably up a thousand percent. For a lot of people in a lot of places it pretty much looked like suffering was all there was and all there was ever going to be.”

“And that’s when they started listening to Saint John?”

“Yup. By then he’d managed to recruit a hundred or so followers. His reapers. They’d go into a town, and at first there were a lot of discussions and sermons about embracing the nonphysical and letting go of the struggle to hold on to a dying world. Crap like that. Saint John presided over mass suicides in one town after another.”

“That’s stupid.”

“It’s people,” said Joe as he began filling the gas tank from a red plastic bottle.

“But . . . how can the reapers convince people to commit suicide when—?”

“When they’re still sucking air? Yeah, well, this whole enchilada gets crazier and crazier. When they’ve wiped out all the heretics and blasphemers, they intend to kill each other, and the last man standing will hang himself. Delightful, huh?”

“Really stupid,” Lilah insisted.

“Not everyone is suited for survival, especially the way people were in the early twenty-first century. People had gotten really soft, really addicted to machines, electronics, and specialists who would come in and do everything from fixing the plumbing to pulling a tooth. Nobody knew how to do things for themselves. It was kind of pathetic.”

“You sound like you agree with Saint John.”

He set down the plastic container and replaced the quad’s gas cap. “No freaking way, darlin’. Just because there are a lot of sheep doesn’t mean everyone’s a sheep. There are a lot—a whole lot—of cases where people really rose to the challenge. They learned what they didn’t know, they built shelters, they rediscovered hunting and farming, they reclaimed those qualities that put man at the top of the food chain in the first place. And they became the leaders who gathered everyone else around them. Your own town, and the other eight there in central California, are examples of that. People pitching in together to make a better life for everyone.”

“How many towns did Saint John attack?”

“Too many,” said Joe bitterly. “Way too many.”

“Is there anyone left?”

He nodded. “Sure. Saint John never made it to North Carolina, and that’s where the real heartbeat of this country is. It’s the new capital. Granted, it’s a small start compared to what we lost, but it is a start. And there are a lot of scattered towns and settlements. It’s a big country, and Saint John hasn’t had time to kill everyone.” He paused. “If his army keeps growing at the rate it’s been going . . . then nowhere’s going to be safe.”

“You make him sound as dangerous as the plague.”

Joe nodded again. “Yeah . . . I guess he is. He uses Mother Rose to recruit people into the reapers so he has a big enough force to destroy any town that won’t simply roll over for him. It’s a useful model for conquest. Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great did the same thing, though their motives were different.”