Nothing. No voice in his head, no answer.
Benny tried to remember his training. One of the Warrior Smart rules was to always be aware of your resources. And always know your routes into and out of any situation.
Behind them was the ravine filled with zoms. Across the ravine was certain death in the form of a legion of pale flesh-eaters. There were dense forests to hide in, but they were on the other side of the pack of lions.
Crap, Benny thought. C’mon, Tom . . . now would be a really good time for some snazzy battle tactics. How do we get out of this? How do we not die?
But all he heard inside his head were the echoes of his own pounding heart.
20
LILAH INCHED FORWARD SO SHE COULD HEAR BETTER.
“Sanctuary is a myth,” declared one of the reapers.
“No, it’s not,” said another reaper. “I heard that the monks there are really scientists.”
“I heard that too,” said another. “They used to work for the government. Some kind of bioweapons thing.”
“No,” a female reaper chimed in, “the monks there are supposed to be trying to cure the disease so people can repopulate the world.”
“Sinners!” growled a few.
“Before I joined the Night Church,” said a man with a Navajo face, “I heard that there are two Sanctuaries. It’s supposed to be split down the middle, with the monks on one side and the scientists on the other side. The monks are just taking care of people—like hospice workers used to—and the scientists are trying to cure the plague. The monks are well intentioned but misguided. The scientists are the ones we shouldn’t trust.”
“That’s right,” said another of the reapers. “I heard that they had cures for stuff like cancer and all those other diseases, but they kept it all secret because they had deals with pharmaceutical companies. It was all a big moneymaking scam.”
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.