Several of the reapers growled agreement with that. Even Lilah had heard some of these rumors. Mostly pre–First Night stuff she’d read in old books and newspapers she had salvaged, but in Mountainside everyone had one kind of conspiracy theory or another. Wriggly Sputters, the town’s eccentric mailman, was a walking encyclopedia of such stories, and he frequently said that there was a bunker or lab somewhere out in the Ruin where the government still existed. And in that bunker, the government maintained their power over the other survivors because they had control over cures to every known disease. No one really believed it, but few of the townsfolk stepped up to say that this was total nonsense. Lilah had no opinion on the subject—she cared very little for rumors.

What she heard now, however, was fascinating.

One reaper, a big man with a thick dark beard, laughed at the others. “Oh, please . . . you really think that the government would keep the cure to a doomsday plague to themselves after all that’s happened? Why would they let so many people die?”

“Because it’s easier to rule a small population than try and control seven billion people,” insisted Brother Simon. “C’mon, Eric, that’s basic math. They took the best and the brightest and hid them away in these big caves and tunnels, and then they released the Gray Plague. You watch, one of these days they’re going to come out and announce a ‘cure,’ and then everyone who’s left will flock to them and hail them as the saviors of mankind. You watch.”

“God won’t allow that to happen,” said Brother Eric.

That quieted the reapers for a moment. It was a hard argument for any of them to knock down.

Brother Simon shook his head. “Sure, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. Rather die in glory and join the darkness than live as slaves.”

The rebuttal stalled Brother Eric for a moment, and he cut a look to Mother Rose. She gave him a bland smile.

To Simon, Brother Eric said, “Don’t believe the myth of Sanctuary. It’s a lie told by refugees and heretics to give them false hope and to confuse us.”

Before Brother Simon could reply, Mother Rose said, “Sanctuary is not a myth.”

They all looked at her in surprise.

“It is a very real place,” she continued, “and it is the most dangerous place on earth. Dangerous to everyone living, and dangerous to our own holy purpose.”

Eric and Simon and the others shuffled in uncomfortable silence.