There were so many things they didn’t know. Or . . . hadn’t known. Now they had to make as dramatic a readjustment to their lives, their worldview, their expectations of the future as they had when the dead first rose. Now it was the living who were rising to conquer the world.
It was all so strange, even to Benny.
There was a world again, a real world; and that world had a future.
Benny looked around at all the people who’d come to the party. He saw Fluffy McTeague—for once without his pink carpet coat—talking with Captain Strunk and Sally Two-Knives. Solomon Jones was grilling steaks on a fire pit made from an old fifty-gallon drum that had been split down the middle. The two surfer dudes, J-Dog and Dr. Skillz, had started a make-it-up-as-you-go game called “goofball,” and they had half the kids in town running around and laughing.
Mayor Kirsch and his wife, Fran, sat at the head table, drinking beers and listening to Captain Joe Ledger explain how he’d survived that day after the fall of Sanctuary. Benny had heard the story. There wasn’t a whole lot to it—zoms, even the fast ones, can’t eat through a helicopter. The ranger simply waited them out, chowing on military-issue ready-to-eat meals and singing old blues songs until the staff from the blockhouse were sufficiently recovered to rescue him. It was a long five days. He said that the hardest part of it all was the fact that neither he nor Grimm could step outside to relieve themselves. Joe said the helicopter had to be cleaned out with a high-pressure hose.
The zoms at Sanctuary were all gone, collapsed into rotting heaps as the mutagen burned through them.
At the same table, Dr. McReady and Colonel Reid sat and listened and nodded. The doctor had brought enough of the mutagen to give the Freedom Riders a lot of work—spreading the chemical and then dealing with the faster, though doomed, zoms. Everyone’s best guess was that the zoms would be a problem for years. Maybe decades. There were, after all, seven billion zombies in the world. No one was dropping their guard. There would still be gates and fences and doors and fear.
It would end one day, though.
As for the infected like Chong . . . there was heartbreak there. McReady was working on a real cure, but who knew how long that would take. Or if there ever would be a cure. Until then, Chong took his pills and he lived a careful life. But he lived.
The colonel must have felt Benny’s eyes on her, because she turned and looked at him. They nodded to each other.
Before leaving Sanctuary, Nix had asked the colonel not to forget the people in the Nine Towns. It was as much a challenge as a plea, and the officer had risen to it. Two days after the surrender of the reapers, the morning sky had been shaken by the thunder of helicopter rotors.
Forty of them.
Colonel Reid’s people had managed to fix one of the radios, and she’d sent an urgent call to the nearest American Nation base. Her call was passed all the way up to the commander of the army and then to the president, Sarah Fowler. Reid had begged for help to stop the reapers from destroying the Nine Towns. For help in protecting citizens of the new nation, even those who had become disenfranchised and almost forgotten. There was almost a full day of inaction as the highest ranking military advisers and the political advisers wrangled over it. But in the end, Reid’s plea hit its mark. The Air Cavalry was dispatched. Had things worked out differently, those helicopters would still have arrived too late to save Mountainside, but they would have been able to save the other towns.
Instead the army’s role was not combative but administrative. They helped process the tens of thousands of reapers.
That was an awkward part of this, Benny knew. Many of the reapers claimed to have sided with Saint John only out of fear for their own lives. But there were still some true believers among them. These zealots refused to lay down their arms or remove their wings. There were some clashes, a few skirmishes, but the army, backed by the Freedom Riders, won out. The surviving zealots were not imprisoned or executed—Solomon and Benny argued ferociously for this, pushing hard on the message that the time for killing was over. Instead these reapers would be transported to islands off the California coast. They would be given some simple tools, seed for planting, and materials for building shelters. As long as they wore the angel wings of the Night Church, they were barred from setting foot on the mainland.
“They’ll sneak off the island and come back,” said Nix as they watched the helicopter transports lift off.
Benny did not think so. What he feared—what saddened him to think about—was that those lost souls would find a different escape. Into the darkness through mutual murder and suicide.
The rest of the reapers were given a choice. They could join the construction teams who were rebuilding New Haven and Reclamation, or they could enlist in the American Nation’s Rebuild Now corps and work to spread the mutagen and reclaim the zombie-occupied territories. The only other choice was to join the zealots on the islands.
Not one of them chose exile.
It would be impossible to ever identify former reapers who had killed in the name of Thanatos, but when Benny watched these new “citizens” at work and saw the passion with which some of them helped to heal the damage done . . . he thought he knew. For many, the question of redemption would be a very personal thing.
Over the weeks since the Battle of Mountainside, the American Nation sent more troops, engineers, medical teams, and others to help integrate the Nine Towns into the new country.
The war was over.
Maybe all wars were over. Just as the old world was over. The new world wasn’t going to be built on a foundation of misery and pain.
Solomon Jones, head of the Freedom Riders, was appointed by President Fowler to serve as the interim governor of California. His first act was to appoint Sally Two-Knives as his lieutenant. Benny wondered how that would look in some future history book.
Someone snapped fingers under his nose, and he realized that people had been speaking to him while his mind wandered. He turned to Chong. “What?”
“I said the new Zombie Cards come out tomorrow.”
“Big whoop.”
“We’re all on them,” said Morgie. “Even me.”
“Let me rephrase that . . . big freaking whoop.”
“We saw the proofs the other day,” said Chong. “I look heroic . . . though they’re still making my skin look too green.”
“That’s because you’re a half-zee,” said Morgie. Lilah punched him on the arm. Very hard.
“Owww.”
“He’s not a zombie,” she said.
“I didn’t say he was a zom, I said he was a half—”
Lilah pulled her knife and drove it into the tabletop in front of Morgie.
“Point taken,” said Morgie. He turned to Riot and offered her the plate of corn. She took an ear, hiding a smile.
Benny noted that Riot seemed to smile at everything Morgie said and did. And he seemed to find whatever she did endlessly fascinating. Benny smiled too as he spread butter on an ear of roasted corn.
“What are you smiling at?” asked Nix.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just smiling.”
Nix pushed her knee against his. But it was under the table, where nobody but Benny knew about it.
Benny took a bite of the corn and chewed as he thought about all that had happened. Next Tuesday would make one year since he’d agreed to apprentice with Tom. It seemed impossible that so little time had passed. A year.
He thought about the kid he’d been. The Benny of one year ago had been so mired in assumptions and inflexible opinions, few of which were valid. That Benny had hated Tom, and believed him to be a coward.
Tom. A coward.
Benny smiled and shook his head.
A year ago Nix’s mother had been alive. A year ago Benny, Chong, and Morgie idolized Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer. A year ago none of them had ever set foot outside the gates. A year ago zoms were the most frightening thing Benny could even imagine.
So much had hap
pened since.
So much.
Pain and loss. Heartache and blood. Tears and death.
And so, so much had been gained.
More than Benny thought was possible.
The world was not at all what he’d thought it was. And he still didn’t know what else was out there. Europe, Asia, and so many other places were still unknowns, still silent and ominous places. There was a whole new world to explore. Benny wanted to explore it. Nix did too. They weren’t town kids anymore. They weren’t yet adults, either; Benny knew that and accepted it. That would come.
So what was he? Benny knew the answer to that question, and he knew that this answer would be a defining characteristic from now on and all through his life. For him, and for Nix, Lilah, Chong, Morgie, and Riot.
And even now, as everyone celebrated peace, Benny could feel the pull of the road. He could hear the siren call of unknown places sing to him.
He turned and saw Nix staring at him the way she often did. The way she looked at him when she was tapping into his thoughts.
She smiled and nodded to him.
He nodded back. There was no need to say anything. They both understood on a level that Benny no longer tried to define.
He looked around at all the people he knew, and at all the strangers. There was so much laughter, so many smiles. He didn’t remember it ever being like this. He wished Tom were here to see it. To share it.
This was a better place. Not just this new town, but this new world. So much brighter and cleaner than the old world of rot and ruin, fire and ash.
Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel comics writer. He’s the author of many novels, including Assassin’s Code, Dead of Night, Patient Zero, Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, and Flesh & Bone. The topics of his nonfiction books range from martial arts to zombie pop culture. Since 1978 he has sold more than 1,200 magazine feature articles, 3,000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, poetry, and textbooks. Jonathan continues to teach the celebrated Experimental Writing for Teens class, which he created. He founded the Writers Coffeehouse, cofounded the Liars Club, and is a frequent speaker at schools and libraries, as well as a keynote speaker and guest of honor at major writers’ and genre conferences. Jonathan lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Sara, and their son, Sam. Visit him online at jonathanmaberry.com and on Twitter (@jonathanmaberry) and Facebook.
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Also by Jonathan Maberry
Rot & Ruin
Dust & Decay
Flesh & Bone
Dead & Gone (An e-book original)
Tooth & Nail (An e-book original)
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry
Jacket photograph copyright © 2013 by John E. Barrett
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Jacket photograph copyright © by John E. Barrett
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maberry, Jonathan.
Fire & ash / Jonathan Maberry. — First edition.
pages cm. — (Rot & ruin ; book 4)
Summary: When Benny and his friends learn that a scientist may have discovered a cure for the zombie plague, they mount a search and rescue mission, unaware that the reapers want the cure to wipe humanity off the face of the earth.
ISBN 978-1-4424-3992-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4424-3994-8 (eBook) [1. Survival—Fiction. 2. Zombies—Fiction.]
I. Title. II. Title: Fire and ash.
PZ7.M11164Fi 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012047976
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Part One: The Hinges of Destiny
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part Two: The Storm Lands
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Part Three: The Truth in Distant Places
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Part Four: Invictus
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Part Five: Inferno
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Epilogue
About Jonathan Maberry
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