“Hmmm,” I pretend to ponder this. “Wednesday is the most underrated day of the week. Hot baths can take away just about any ailment. Phlegm is the most horrible word in existence—not moist, like my mother insists. The world is worth saving, and I want to call you by something other than Pestilence because, despite what you say, names do matter.”
I hadn’t meant for the conversation to suddenly get deep, or for me to get preachy, but there you go.
Pestilence stiffens around me. “I do not seek to change you; why must you try to change me?”
Because you are destroying my world.
“I can’t change you, Pestilence, only you can do that.”
“Hear me, Sara: I won’t change.”
Now it’s my turn to stiffen in his arms.
He turns us so that he can gaze down at me. “I am merely pretending to be a man, nothing more,” he says. “My body does not need food, nor water, nor sleep, nor all the mysteries of the flesh. I indulge in them because I indulge in you.”
“Oh, and that’s the only reason?” I say, just a wee bit snidely.
I mean, give me a goddamn break. He indulges in all those things because he enjoys the taste of food and strong spirits and the feel of his body close to mine. Pestilence may not be a man, but he very desperately wishes to be one.
“Enough of this,” he says, sharp like a knife. “Do you want to know why it is I wear this crown?”
I can already tell by his tone that he means to hurt me, to scare me, to remind me of the monster he is. Should I tell him that this, too, is a human trait? How we mortals love to push each other away to protect ourselves from our own pain?
“I am the first horseman,” he continues, “the one who was tasked with toppling your old way of living. You and your foolish brethren believed you could outpace God. You built and innovated, and in your quest you robbed the earth of its purity and forgot that you all had another master.
“You all turned your backs on God—yes, even you, dear Sara—and I am here to make you remember.
“I am your mortality. I am the ugly truth that your bodies are impermanent, feeble, corrupt. I am the reminder that all men must face a great and fearsome reckoning.” The rain thunders with his voice. “This is who I have always been and will always be—undying, unchanging.”
He falls to silence.
“That is such horseshit.”
I feel, rather than see, his surprise. “You think I’m lying?”
“You’re acting like you cannot change, but to live is to change, and right now, you are alive. Even though you can’t die, you still walk among us. You love like us, and you feel pain like us.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, so I plow on.
“Maybe the world has forgotten God, and you’re supposed to rain down His righteousness, but don’t act like it isn’t a choice. Every time you pass through a city, you choose to infect it. You choose to kill, and no god you stand behind can protect you from that truth.”
Several seconds pass, the violent patter of rain against our tent the only sound between us.
“If I am such a monster,” Pestilence finally says, “then what does that make you, who have willingly fallen into my arms?”
“A fool and an idiot,” I say, “but that’s nothing new.”
“I will not stop.”
I could swear he sounds bothered, but I can’t say which part of our conversation got under his skin.
“And I won’t shut up about it until you do.”
“You cannot hope to win this,” he warns.
“If you think this is about winning,” I say, “then you haven’t been listening to me at all.”
“Hmmm,” he muses, stroking his hand down my arm while he gazes down at me. “You have given me much to think about.”
Wait, something I said actually got through to him? And just when I’d assumed I’d have more sway talking to a wall.
“Enough of this for tonight. I want to feel those foolish, wicked lips of yours on mine and your body beneath me—for such is the price of my companionship,” he says, his breath fanning against me.
“Awfully optimistic of you to think about getting boned after that little speech of yours …”
“Boned?”
“I’ll explain it later.”
“Good. I’m tired of making war with that mouth of yours.” He leans in. “Show me the other side to living.”
And so I do.
Chapter 44
I should be wary of days like today, when the sun burns bright and the sky is a blinding shade of blue—the kind of day that hurts your eyes and squeezes your heart. It’s the kind of day that, even in the heart of winter, reminds you what summer felt like.
It’s a fucking liar of a day, and just like all painfully beautiful things, I should know better than to trust it.
Last night’s campsite is far behind us when Pestilence and I enter our first town of the day, the two of us soaking up the morning sun as we chat.
“… I heard a noise beneath my sink,” I tell him, right in the middle of my story, “and when I went to check it out, there was not one, but three rats.” I pause dramatically.
“I don’t understand how this led to the … fire alarm going off,” he says, hesitating a little before repeating the term. I’d only just explained to him what a fire alarm was, and how the one in my apartment escaped the Arrival unscathed.
“They ran at me!” I exclaim.
“So?”
“So?” Rats don’t run at people. Particularly not in an age when people will eat said rats. “So I grabbed a can of hairspray and a match, and I made a flamethrower.”
No one drives this bitch out of her home.
At that, the horseman throws his head back and laughs. I stop speaking just so that I can turn in the saddle and stare at him.
Only Pestilence could outshine the sun.
“Don’t tell me you tried to hurt the creatures?” he asks when his chuckles die down.
“You know, that’s real precious coming from you.”
He starts laughing again, and new life goal: get Pestilence to laugh more.
“Did it work?” he asks.
“Of course it didn’t work.”
That only makes him laugh harder.
“Well, I didn’t think it was very funny at the time,” I say, but I can’t keep a straight face. It’s impossible when he lights up like this.
He manages to smother his laughter enough to say, “Isn’t your job to put out fires, not—”
BOOM!
My body is violently thrown forward as the world explodes around me. I feel the heat, the terrible, scorching heat, at my back as I tumble through the air. It sizzles against my skin, though Pestilence’s body shields me from the worst of it.
I slam into the ground, my side flaring in pain at the impact. All around me, sizzling bits of asphalt and dirt rain down, singeing me in a dozen different places.
I lay on the ground for several seconds, breathing hard as thick smoke billows through the air.
What the hell just happened?
On the other side of the road, Pestilence lays pinned beneath Trixie, a pool of blood spreading out from the back of his head. His horse’s body is partially gone, and what remains is bloody and singed.
I let out a whimper at the sight.
Pushing my torso up, I begin to drag myself to them, my limbs screaming in protest.
Some of the road has been blown away, and it’s that, more than Pestilence’s unconscious form or Trixie’s ruined body that makes me realize we just survived an explosion.
Someone planted a bomb.
Dear God.
They come out of the woods as I crawl to the horseman, their forms quiet and sinister. There’s at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and unlike the last ambush, these people don’t bother wearing masks.
Know they’re going to die.
They do, however, dress in a similar fashion. Lots of black leather and camo print.
Gang, my mind fills in.
Their hate is visceral; it contorts their faces and thickens the air.
They won’t be like the others.
I’m not going to survive this.
“Pestilence.” I try to call out to him, but my voice is too hoarse from pain and smoke.
Even though he can’t possibly hear me, he slowly swivels his face to mine from where he’s pinned.
His eyes are full of fear.
For me, I realize, as the men close in on us.