Brother Peter nodded again. “Go down to the fence and wait for the net crews. Sister Sun will be giving t
he signal.”
The man bowed and left.
Sister Sun smiled at Brother Peter and reached for his hand and squeezed it with what little strength she had. “You’ll let me do that? That’s so kind of you, Peter.”
“This is your victory, sister.”
“I know that Saint John is so proud of you,” she said, “and you will be gathered in with loving arms when it is your time to go into the darkness.”
He bent and kissed the skeletal hand and pressed it to his cheek. On the other side of the desert, beyond the red rock mountains, the sun was beginning its long fall toward a fiery twilight. To both of them, the vital young man and the dying older woman, it looked like the whole world was about to burn.
There was a rustling sound behind them, and they turned to see a dozen reapers walking in pairs along the shaded path by the rock wall heading down to the fence. Each pair held a bundle of rope ends that were connected to huge nets. The nets looked impossibly huge, but they were wrapped around clusters of brightly colored balloons. Thousands of them in each net.
The men in each net crew nodded their respect as they passed. Down below, closer to the fence, the reaper known as Sister Alice was tossing handfuls of sand into the air to watch the direction of its fall.
“It’s time,” said Brother Peter.
But before she could give the signal, a terrible coughing fit struck Sister Sun. She bent over as sharply as if she’d been punched in the stomach, and drops of blood splattered her lap and knees and the dust at her feet. Brother Peter watched helplessly as the fit tore the dying woman apart. Other reapers stood by, their faces mournful. Even though each of them wished only the soothing darkness for Sister Sun, they ached for her to first witness the triumph of her plan.
By slow, torturous degrees the coughs eased in intensity and then slowly, slowly passed.
Sister Sun perched on the edge of her stool like a frail puppet held in place by a single frayed string. The reapers—and the world around them—held their breath, and even the wind slackened for a moment as if unwilling to blow without her permission.
Her right hand trembled in her lap, and it was clear that she could barely lift it. Finally it rose. First barely an inch, then another, and another.
Brother Peter let out a burning ball of air that was searing the walls of his lungs, and in a ringing voice he called, “Sister Sun has given the word. May the darkness bless us all.”
The reapers at the fence made final cuts in work they had already begun with tin snips and bolt cutters. A quarter-mile length of the fence collapsed to the ground. Immediately the net teams rushed onto the airfield, running between the two southernmost of the siren towers. They formed a long line, and other reapers ran up to help them slash the lines that formed the nets. Immediately the captured balloons tumbled out and were shoved away by the wind that blew out of the southeast.
Darkness was closing around Sister Sun’s thoughts, but as the red and yellow and blue and green balloons bobbed and danced across the hot sands, she thought a single word and her lips formed it silently.
“Beautiful.”
Then the darkness wrapped her in its arms and she fell forward.
66
“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?” asked Benny. “What kind of monsters did they make here? Or is that a naive question?”
The ranger didn’t answer.
Benny snorted in disgust. “More and more often I get the feeling that growing up after civilization ended is a better deal.”
“More and more often I agree with you, kid.” Joe nodded toward the dead man. “That’s why I resigned today. I reached my limit of shame and guilt for being a part of the old system.”
“Did you know about the Reaper Plague?” asked Nix.
“Nah, that’s not what I mean. Like I told you, I was the guy who tried to stop this sort of thing. I loved my country, and I guess I still do, though I kind of feel the way a kid might feel when they discover that not only are their parents not perfect heroes, but they’re deeply flawed.”
“Was the whole country like that?” asked Benny.
“No—not even close. For the most part it was pretty great. But there never was a country, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, that wasn’t infected by a greedy and power-hungry few. It’s no different from those parasites infecting the zoms. We can’t really blame the afflicted person any more than we can blame the entire country, but we can sure as hell despise those parasites.”
Lilah stood closest to the dead man. “Who was he?”
“According to the paperwork we found, he was the deputy director of this facility in charge of operations. He kept this place running, before, during, and after First Night. He’s been keeping those old secrets all this time This place is way off the grid. . . . I’ll bet there are all sorts of things here that shouldn’t be anywhere.”