Saint John found that he liked this young man. He had manners, and that was rare in these troubled times.
“Do you know why I am here?” asked the saint.
“Yes, sir,” said Benny. He coughed and wiped more tears from his face.
“Have you come to offer terms for surrender?”
“Would it do any good?” asked the boy. “If we open our gate and let you come in, will you show us mercy?”
Saint John smiled. “The day will end more quickly.”
“Right . . . meaning we’ll be dead before noon and your guys can take a siesta.”
The smile faded.
“Look,” said Benny, “we both know how this works. You come out here and we talk. What’s it called? A parley? Okay, so we’re parleying. I know what your terms are. Join you or go into the darkness, right? You have seven more towns to pillage, so you probably want a bunch of us to—what’s the expression? Kneel to kiss the knife? Wow . . . creepy and unsanitary. How do I know where that knife’s been? Point is, some of us get to live if we agree to help you and your reapers slaughter everyone we know. I mean . . . that is the offer, right? That’s the plan?”
“You are dangerously close to—”
“To what? Seriously, man . . . what is it you want me to be afraid of? Torture? You’re already going to kill me. I don’t know if it really matters all that much if I spend the last few hours screaming. I’ll still be dead at the end of it. You want to threaten my friends and family? Go ahead . . . you’re just going to kill them, too.” Benny made a sour face of disapproval. “Maybe nobody’s told you, but offering different kinds of murder isn’t really a terrific sales pitch. Kill me now, kill me later, torture me . . . in the end all you really want is for us to be afraid of you. You dig the fear. You’re like a vampire, only you suck up the terror and pain. You want us to be afraid of you? Sure. You’re a serial killer psycho with an army. Pretty scary.”
“Are you finished?” asked Saint John.
“Why, what have you got?”
“You had a single chance for a peaceful death. The death of the knife. Handled with care and compassion, a blade is a mercy. Like a scalpel, it cuts away the infection of a life lived in sin. I came to offer you the quickest and cleanest of deaths. A single red mouth and you would feel nothing. The darkness would open its arms to enfold you and give you rest.”
“And I blew that with my smart mouth, I know, I get it,” said Benny. “It was kind of my intention.”
“Do you know what the penalty is for your impudence?”
“I have a pretty good guess. Does it involve lots of very fast dead guys with eating disorders?”
The white boy behind him snorted with laughter. The redhead and the Chinese boy were smiling. Saint John wasn’t fooled, though. He could see the fear that turned their eyes glassy and sent lines of cold sweat down their faces.
“The forests behind me are filled with my reapers and with uncounted legions of the dead who—”
“Why do you talk like that?” asked the Chinese boy, speaking for the first time. “Oh, hey, I’m Louis Chong. It’s just that I’m listening to this and I’m wondering why you sometimes talk like you’re in a fantasy novel. You have kind of a Lord of the Rings vibe going on, and it doesn’t really work. I mean, sure you have an actual army, and I guess the zoms are good stand-ins for orcs, but really, man, who uses words like ‘impudence’ and ‘uncounted’?”
“Yes,” said the white-haired girl, “it makes you sound stupid.”
The six teenagers all laughed.
Saint John’s Red Brothers growled in anger and drew their knives.
In the same heartbeat three guns and a bow were pointed at them.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Benny. “We all know that we’re mouthing off to you because we’re scared, and you’re letting us get away with it because you brought knives to a gunfight. Personally, I’d rather go back to the parley. Less flop sweat all around.”
Saint John made a small gesture with his left hand, and the reapers reluctantly sheathed their weapons.
“Oh,” said the redhead as she lowered her gun and slid it back into its holster, “speaking of knives.”
“Right,” said Benny in a bad imitation of having just remembered something. “I’m going to pull a knife and toss it to you. It’s not an attack, so let’s nobody get all weird about it.”
Saint John nodded, curious.
Benny reached around behind his back and slid a long knife from a leather sheath clipped to the back of his belt. He weighed it in his hand for a moment and then tossed it onto the ground in front of the saint.