“Put it away. I don’t want to get a bullet in the back because another mouse jumps out at us.”
She muttered something, but he heard the scrape of metal on leather as she holstered it.
Benny’s night vision was kicking in, and he was able to make out some details. There were words stenciled in black on some of the cases, and Benny mouthed them as he read the closest ones. The wooden boxes had labels like: MRE
LAB EQUIP
MED RECS
HAZMAT SUITS
The metal cases were labeled:
RPG
CLAYMORE MINES
LAW RKTS
M-249 SAW
M24 SWS
“What is this stuff?” Benny asked.
“I have no idea. It must all be lab equipment and science stuff.”
Benny nodded and moved a few steps deeper into the darkness.
“Do you hear anything?” whispered Nix.
“No. You?”
“No.”
“That’s good,” said Benny, and mentally added, I think.
He moved a few steps forward, trying to sort out and identify the shapes of things he saw. The pale light was too weak, and the shadows of the bay seemed impenetrable.
Benny leaned toward Nix and spoke softly into her ear. “Listen, I’m going to walk down the center aisle. Wait for me here. If there’s something hinky, I don’t want to have to run you down to get out of here. This place gives me the super-creeps.”
There was a faint rattle and then the scrape of a sulfur match. Light blinded him, and the sulfur stung his nostrils. He winced and peered through the glare to see Nix holding out a match.
In the intense darkness of the cargo bay, even the pale light of the match revealed so much that was hidden.
Vehicles chained to the floor.
Banks of computer equipment standing inert against the walls.
Gleaming loading hooks on chains attached to the ceiling.
And beyond the rows of crates were row after row of metal chairs.
Benny and Nix both froze in shock.
People sat in the chairs. They were dressed identically in one-piece jumpsuits. At least two dozen of them wore yellow jumpsuits, four were in blue jumpsuits, and two wore green.
They were all dead.
But all of them stared with hungry eyes at Benny and Nix.
Nix screamed.
74
“HONORED ONE,” BEGAN BROTHER PETER, “IF WE ARE TO DOUBT MOTHER Rose and any reapers she has led astray, then I think there is a matter that must be attended to.”
Saint John’s face was bland. “Which matter?”
“The Shrine of the Fallen.”
“What about it?”
“The way Mother Rose protects it, denying everyone—even your own holy self—to enter it, there must be something of great value hidden there.”
“Value is relative,” said the saint. “A man with his house on fire and a man dying of thirst each place a different value on a glass of water.”
Brother Peter nodded, accepting the point, but doubt still chewed at him. “She can’t possibly hope to take Sanctuary with only a few reapers. What does she have—a hundred or two who will follow her? No, she must have some resource we don’t know about. It has to be inside the shrine. It was a military plane. Surely there are some weapons aboard. . . . ”
“I have no doubt.”
“Then, Honored One, shouldn’t we take it instead?”
Saint John shook his head sadly. “Even you, Peter? Even you?”
“I don’t—”