Free Fire & Ash by Jonathan Maberry Page A

through the air toward his throat.

21
    B ENNY SCREAMED AND FLUNG HIMSELF backward and felt wind whip past his Adam’s apple as the blade missed him by a hairbreadth. His heels hit a gnarled twist of an exposed tree root, and Benny went down on his butt with a thump that snapped his teeth together with a loud clack!
    The reaper grinned in obvious anticipation of an easy kill. “I bring the gift of darkness to you, my brother.”
    “Bite me,” gasped Benny, and snatched up a handful of pebbles, hurling them at the killer. The reaper twisted away and took the stones on shoulders and hip instead of full in the face.
    Benny’s sword was ten feet away, the steel blade gleaming with deadly potential. The killer stood between Benny and the katana , so it might as well have been on the far side of the moon. The big plane lay a few yards behind Benny’s back.
    The reaper crouched, knife in hand, muscles bunching as he prepared to pounce. He was a tall man in his early twenties, all wiry muscle and sinew, dressed in black jeans and a muscle shirt with angel’s wings hand-stitched across the chest. The man’s head was shaved bald and comprehensively tattooed ina pattern of creeper vines and locusts. Strips of red cloth were tied to his ankles and wrists and looped around his belt. The cloth smelled like rotting meat—evidence that it had recently been dipped in chemicals that were used to prevent the living dead from attacking. Benny smelled every bit as bad from the cadaverine he’d sprinkled on his clothes.
    Benny scooted backward on the ground, putting as much distance as he could between him and the reaper. The killer faked a lunge and then kicked sand in Benny’s face; but Benny was already in motion, already scooping a handful of sand to throw at the reaper. Both masses of sand hissed through each other and struck their targets. Benny whipped his arm up to save his eyes, but he got a choking mouthful. The reaper tried to turn away and partially succeeded, so that the sand pelted his cheek and ear.
    With a growl that was equal parts anger and fear, Benny drove his shoulder into the reaper’s gut, exploding the air from the killer with an oooof . Benny’s rush drove them both into the curved metal side of the gigantic transport plane. The impact tore a cry from the reaper, and he dropped his knife. Benny head-butted him, smashing the man’s nose. The reaper screeched again, but a split second later he jerked his knee upward as hard as he could into Benny’s crotch.
    Benny staggered back, hands cupped around his groin.
    The reaper moaned and sagged to his knees, blood pouring down his face from his shattered nose. “I will . . . open . . . red mouths . . . in your . . .”
    “Yeah, yeah,” wheezed Benny in a tiny voice as he fought against pain and nausea, “. . . open red mouths in my flesh . . . send me into the darkness . . . got it . . . owwwww! ”
    Gagging and coughing, the reaper reached for the knife.
    Benny kicked it away.
    They got slowly and painfully to their feet. The reaper’s nose was a purple bulb; his mouth and teeth glistened with red. Benny was sure that his testicles were somewhere up in his chest cavity.
    The reaper sneered at Benny. “Are you really so stupid that you think you have a chance?”
    “Yes,” said Benny defiantly, then he frowned. “Wait, no, I mean I’m not stupid, but yes, I have a chance against you.”
    “I’m not talking about this fight, brother.”
    “Don’t call me brother, you enormous freak,” muttered Benny.
    “The army of the Night Church will sweep away all defiance to god’s will.”
    “Yeah, I know, you’re invincible. Oh, wait, didn’t you idiots get your butts handed to you by one guy with a rocket launcher? How’s that ‘sweeping away all defiance’ thing working out for you?”
    The reaper spat blood onto the sand. “The reapers who died at the Shrine of the Fallen were heretics and traitors to Thanatos—praise be to