Chong closed his eyes for a moment. Instead of it being dark behind his eyelids, he saw twisted threads of bright red forking like lightning inside his personal darkness.

Then he opened his eyes and took a tentative sniff. He smelled what she had smelled.

“No,” he said, and his denial matched frequency with hers. This wasn’t something you just could refuse to accept.

Riot said nothing.

“Why . . . why would anyone do something like that?” demanded Chong.

“Why do you think?”

The answer was obvious, but it took all his courage to say it. “So . . . even if he just wounded someone . . . they’d . . . they’d . . .”

Words failed him.

Riot sighed and sat down on the floor, placing the arrows well away from Eve.

However, the smell lingered in Chong’s nose. He knew exactly what it was, and why it smelled like cadaverine.

The archer had dipped his arrows in the infected flesh of the living dead.

And now that infection was burning its way through Chong’s flesh.

Chapter 62

62

“HONORED ONE!” CRIED SISTER AMY AS SHE DASHED OUT OF THE WOODS.

The saint and Brother Peter turned and waited for her to catch up with them. Amy was badly winded, and she dropped to her knees before them, bending to kiss the red tassels on their legs.

When she could speak without panting, Sister Amy told them about finding the ranger named Joe, and watching as he rescued a white-haired girl, tended to her wounds, and spoke with her. She told the saint everything and saved the choicest bit for last.

Saint John listened, and when she was finished, his eyes blazed with inner light.

“Nine towns,” he murmured. “In central California?”

“No militia,” mused Brother Peter. “Living up there in the mountains, they probably think they have nothing to fear except wandering gray people.”

“From what the girl said,” added Sister Amy, “they seem to believe that everything beyond their fence lines is wasteland.”

“How naive,” said Saint John. “How arrogant.”

He turned and looked toward the northwest as if he could see across all those miles.

“Nine towns,” he said softly.

Chapter 63

63

“WE BETTER NOT STAY HERE LONG,” SAID BENNY. “LET’S TAKE A QUICK look through this stuff, then get the heck out of here before those reapers come back. And we have to find Lilah and Chong. They don’t know about all this crazy stuff.”

Nix gave a noncommittal grunt as she set to work searching the cabinets and closets in the cockpit.

A few seconds later Nix opened one cabinet and jumped back as papers, maps, and other items came tumbling out. A mouse squeaked and dropped to the floor before scurrying into a tiny opening in the control panel. Benny squatted down and began poking through the papers. Nix picked up the maps and began unfolding them.