“You still think she’s a freak?”

Nix shook her head. “She’s been through a lot.” She told Benny about Riot’s past, about her being a reaper and about how she’d rebelled against that lifestyle and spent the years since helping people.

“Her mom is Mother Rose?” gasped Benny.

“Was,” corrected Nix. “Mother Rose died that day we found the wrecked plane. Riot’s been dealing with that, and I think it hit her harder than she expected.”

“How could it not?” asked Benny. “She was still her mother.”

Nix nodded. “I guess . . . she’s one of us. And she did everything she could to help Eve’s family. She knows now that we were only trying to help Eve too.”

“Well,” Benny said, “Eve’s still here. We accomplished something. We saved a kid. That’s got to count for something, even in this world.”

Shadows moved in Nix’s eyes. Not the dangerous ones that had been there so often since her mother was killed; but shadows nonetheless. Was it because their trip had failed so badly in almost every way, or because this harsh world out here in no way matched Nix’s expectations? Benny was afraid to ask for fear of breaking what resolve she had managed to put in place.

Nix sniffed back some more tears and said, “Listen, Benny, there are some things I have to tell you. Good and bad things, okay?”

“I don’t know how much more I want to hear,” he said, pitching it as a joke and watching it fall flat.

Nix said, “Do you remember seeing the jet?”

Benny brightened. “I—think so. Was it real?”

“It’s real, and it’s here. It’s in one of the hangars on the other side of the compound. But before I show you, I have to warn you about something. I need you to understand how this place works.”

“You’re scaring me here, Nix.”

“I don’t mean to.” She took a ragged breath. “Benny, people have been coming here for years. A lot of them. Long before the American Nation set up the lab. Before they had any kind of treatments for anything. People came here to die in peace, Benny. They came here because this place is run by way-station monks. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yes,” Benny said, though his voice was a hoarse croak. “Way-station monks think the zoms are the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth.”

“Have inherited the earth, Benny. Have.”

He studied her, but her eyes were hard. She seemed to be waiting for him to ask, so he asked. A terrible thought crept into his mind.

“Nix,” he asked, “what happened to all those people?”

Nix nodded and took him gently by the hand and guided him around the corner of the hangar.