Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(106)

Tom gave an elaborate shrug. “How would I know, little brother? You’re the hero with the magic sword. I’m just a ghost—who is considerably better-looking than you.”

“Hey!”

“I’m just saying.”


They stood there, grinning at each other.

“I love you, Tom.”

“Love you too, Benny.”

Tom turned and walked away, and Benny let him go.





-2-


“WELCOME BACK TO THE WORLD,” SAID PHOENIX RILEY.

Benny cranked open one eyelid and saw her perched on a chair a few feet away. “Nix,” he said, his voice as weak as a whisper. He lay on a cot surrounded by a screen of sheets hung from metal poles.

“Benny!” Nix flew to him, but her hands were so gentle and tentative. She covered his face with a hundred quick kisses.

He tried to raise his head, to kiss her, but that was impossible. His head hurt too much, and his muscles felt like limp spaghetti. Nix looked worn thin, her face pale, her red hair hanging limp.

“How . . . bad is it . . . ?” he asked, not really wanting to know.

“You . . . almost slipped away from us,” she said, and her smile was a little too bright, her laugh a bit too forced. “God . . . this was the longest week of my life!”

“Week?”

“Benny, we’ve been here for eight days.”

He gaped at her.

“I thought I lost you, Benny,” she said, and she held his hand with all her strength. She bent and kissed his knuckles.

“Where are we?” he asked “This place . . . is this Sanctuary?”

She nodded, sniffed, and dabbed at her eyes, but she kept her smile bolted in place.

“It’s on an old military base,” she said as she helped him sit up. She was very careful with him, as if he were made of glass. “It’s run by the way-station monks. There are a couple hundred of them here.”

All Benny could see was the curtain. “Where is everybody?”

“They’re here,” she said, but her eyes darted away for a moment. “We’re all here.”

“I want to see Lilah and Chong.”

Nix hesitated. “Okay,” she said eventually. “Let me get your robe and mask.”

“Mask?”

“Everyone has to wear them in the houses. It’s confusing . . . it’s easier if you see it.”

Nix helped him stand and put on a robe made of heavy wool. Then she took a blue cotton mask and tied it around his mouth and nose. She put one on too.

“Sanctuary isn’t exactly what we thought it was,” she said, and her voice sounded ready to crack.

Nix slowly pushed back the curtains, and Benny stared wide-eyed.

They were in a vast room, hundreds of feet long, with a massive arched ceiling and huge windows at either end.

“It used to be an airplane hangar,” she explained. “There are eight like this one. And more on the other side of the compound.”

Benny hardly heard her. He stared numbly at the rows of cots that stretched from one end of the hangar to the other. Every bed was filled. Some of the beds were screened off, as his had been. Most were not, and most of the figures lay as still as death. Farther down the row, separated by a line of sawhorse barricades, was a larger screened-off area. Benny heard continuous coughs coming from there. Everywhere there were soft cries, the sound of weeping, moans of pain. Way-station monks in their simple tunics moved from bed to bed, washing the patients, hand-feeding them, talking to them. A few sat reading to people who seemed to stare up at the nothingness above their beds.

“Oh my God.”

“There are a thousand people in each hangar. All the hangars are full.”

Benny was appalled. “What is this place? Nix, this isn’t right. I thought there was a lab where they were studying the plague, trying to cure it.”

“That’s the other Sanctuary,” said Nix. “The labs are on the other side of the compound. I’ll show you.”

They walked slowly between the rows. Benny’s balance was bad and his legs weak, but Nix supported him and they walked with great care. Some of the patients looked at them, their eyes glazed with pain or bleak with despair.

“Who are these people?”

“Refugees from all over. The way-station monks bring a lot of them here. Some find their own way. Riot brings some.”

“Did the reapers do all this?”

Nix shook her head. “Benny, after First Night, there were no real hospitals left. No factories to mass-produce drugs. No local doctors to prescribe them. Everything broke down. Diseases just went wild. Everything, even simple infections, went crazy. It’s like this everywhere. People are dying everywhere faster than the zoms can kill them. The monks can’t help everyone. They aren’t real doctors . . . they’re just monks. They have a few places like this.”

“Hospitals?”

She gave another sad shake of her head. They paused to look at an old man who lay curled into a fetal position, his skin mottled with dark blisters.

“It’s a hospice, Benny. This hangar is a healing place, but not the others. The monks call those transition houses. They bring people here to take care of them while they’re dying.”

“Where are the doctors and nurses?”