Nix thumbed the hammer back, but Benny whispered, “Don’t. Not unless they see us.”

Seconds burned away as the quads tore along the path, the roar of the motors filling the air. Then, a hundred feet shy of where Benny and Nix crouched, the line of vehicles turned and headed due east. The motor sounds diminished quickly; soon the reapers were gone, and an uneasy silence draped itself over the forest once more.

Nix blew out her cheeks and leaned her forehead on her outstretched gun arm. She uncocked the pistol. Benny bent and kissed her on the shoulder.

“They’re gone,” he said as he slid the katana back into its sheath.

Without raising her head, Nix said, “You know, Benny, there was a time—was it only a day ago?—when the sound of a motor would have been like Christmas to us. It would have proved that the world wasn’t dead, that there was something out here to find.”

“I know.” Benny sighed. “And I remember a time not that long ago when we were happy. When we used to laugh.”

Nix raised her head and looked at him for a long moment, her lips parted as if she was going to reply. The look in her eyes was so deeply sad that Benny had to look away to hide the tears that suddenly formed in his eyes.

They got to their feet and continued moving toward the creek. Neither spoke for a long time. Then they found the stream and followed the muddy banks to a small clearing, and there they found the blood-spattered remains of several tents. They stood side by side at the edge of the creek, neither of them willing to take another step up the bank.

“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.