8
BEYOND THE FENCE . . .
Through the long eye of the telescope, the boy with the sword slung over his back and the girl with the spear looked like they were standing only a few feet away. Close enough to touch.
Close enough to kill.
“I will open red mouths in your flesh,” whispered the man with the telescope. “Praise be to the darkness.”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Zoms rely on one or more senses in order to hunt. Smell is big, we know that. They can smell healthy flesh. That’s why cadaverine works; it smells like rotting tissue.
Sight and hearing are just as important to them.
There has to be a strategic way to use these three senses against them. I’m going to talk to Captain Ledger about it. He seems to know more than anyone about fighting zoms.
9
SIX MONTHS AGO . . .
Saint John stood under the leaves of a green tree while the two most powerful women in the Night Church argued with each other.
“It’s old-world heresy,” insisted Mother Rose, who was the spiritual leader of the Night Church. She was tall and lovely, graceful as the morning, as beautiful as a knife blade. “That plane and its contents represent everything the church opposes.”
“I don’t dispute that,” said the other woman, a frail Korean named Sister Sun. A year ago she had been athletic and strong, but over the last few months cancer had begun consuming her. By her own diagnosis she had less than a year to live, and she was determined to use that year helping the Night Church conquer the heretics. “My point is that we need to examine those materials to understand what’s happening with the gray people.”
“Nothing is happening with—”
“Mother, you know that’s not true. Our people have seen case after case of gray people moving in flocks. That never happened before. There are rumors of gray people who move almost as fast as the living. Even some incidents of them picking up rocks and stones as weapons.”
“So what?” countered Mother Rose in her haughty voice. “All life changes. Even un-life. It’s part of nature, isn’t it?”
“That’s just it,” insisted Sister Sun. “The Reaper Plague isn’t part of nature, as I’ve said many times.”
Saint John turned now and held up a hand. Both women fell immediately silent.
“The plague that raised the dead and destroyed the cities of sinful man was brought to earth by the divine hand of Lord Thanatos.”
“All praise to his darkness,” said the women in unison.
“Therefore it is part of the natural order of the universe.”
“Honored One,” said Sister Sun, “please listen to me. Both of you—listen. I know this plague. I studied it after the outbreak. My team was working with the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. No one alive knows this disease better than me except for Monica McReady.”
“That heretic is dead,” said Mother Rose.
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Sister Sun. “We sent five teams of reapers out to search for her, and two teams never returned.”
Mother Rose dismissed the argument with a flick of her hand.
“If McReady was tampering with the disease—if she was trying to create a cure for it, then she might have caused it to mutate,” said Sister Sun passionately. “Any possible change to the disease can have a significant impact on the predictable behavior of the gray people, and that is a danger to our church. You know it is. If you let me look at the research materials on the plane, I might be able to determine what she was doing. Maybe I can stop it, or perhaps learn enough to predict what changes are occurring so we can adapt behavioral modifications into our church doctrine. But we can’t allow random changes to manifest without a response from the church. Think of how disruptive that would be, especially to reaper groups that have a high percentage of new recruits. Doubt is our enemy.”
Mother Rose shook her head the whole time. “The plane is a shrine, and I have put my seal on it. It stays closed.”
She turned her back and walked away.
Sister Sun gripped Saint John’s sleeve. “Please, Honored One, surely you understand the danger.”