She yelled it so loudly that birds erupted from the trees. The echo bounced off the surrounding rocks. It was loud enough to be heard a mile away.

Loud enough for everyone to hear them.

Chong. Lilah.

Riot.

The reapers.

The dead themselves.

Louder still than her scream was the thunder of Benny’s heart as he saw what had torn that shout of denial out of her.

There was no ring of white rocks. There was no ranger station or a forgotten farmhouse.

It was a huge machine that had been smashed against the unforgiving landscape.

And it was heartbreakingly familiar.

It was an airplane.

Part Two: Broken Birds

PART TWO

BROKEN BIRDS

Shallow men believe in luck.

Strong men believe in cause and effect.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Chapter 41

41

“NO!” CRIED NIX AS SHE SHOVED PAST BENNY AND RUSHED FORWARD, but he darted out a hand and caught her arm.

“Wait,” he warned in a sharp whisper.

“Let me go,” she said viciously, and tore her arm out of Benny’s grasp, giving him a wild and murderous glare. “Don’t you see what that is?”

“It’s a jet—”

“It’s the jet.” Tears broke and fell down Nix’s freckled cheeks. “Look at it. Everything’s ruined. Oh God, Benny . . . everything’s ruined.”

Benny pushed back a low-hanging branch and stepped out of the woods so he could see the wreckage. His heart sank in his chest, and his fingertips were ice cold from shock.

Beyond the trees was a plateau. One side dropped away into a crevasse that was choked with tall pines; the other side leveled out into a section of flat forestland. A long trench was cut into the mud of the flatland, stretching back at least half a mile, and the nose of the craft was smashed into a mound of mud. Benny had slid into enough bases in rainy baseball games to understand the physics of that. The plane had not simply crashed; instead the pilot had tried to land it, coming in low and then sliding to a long, messy stop on the forest floor.