Free Benny Imura 03.5: Tooth & Nail by Jonathan Maberry Page A

carried guns—they could simply stand at the edge of the cliff wall and throw stones at him. They’d batter him off the wall and send him plunging down into the jagged rocks below.
    All other potential routes out of here were blocked by reapers. Benny could see some paths beyond them. One wending through dry grass looked well trodden. Benny realized with a jolt that the reapers must have been using this spot to observe Sanctuary. Why weren’t there soldiers up here? There were soldiers across the trench below; Benny had seen a few. Why wouldn’t they have people up here?
    Or . . . had some of these reapers once been soldiers who’d been forced to kneel and kiss the knife, to accept membership into a church built on total human extinction?
    Too many questions. Not enough time to discover answers.
    All that was left for Benny to do was fight.
    The reaper with the scythe had been watching him very closely and must have seen the acceptance of the inevitable in Benny’s eyes. He raised his scythe.
    “Kill him,” he said.
    And the reapers, with their smiling faces and gleaming knives, attacked.

13
    Rattlesnake Valley Motor Court
    Southern California
    “Heather,” snarled Samantha as she crouched over the female reaper. “Watch her.”
    Heather had another arrow fitted and she drew it back, aiming at the woman’s chest. Samantha quickly searched the woman and removed four other knives. Two were very good and she pocketed those; the rest she flung into the brush, where they vanished completely. She did the same with the ax and the weapons of the men. Then, while Heather kept watch, Samantha ran quickly down the path to survey the forest. There were no other reapers that she could see, which meant that they had split up to search the woods. That was good for the moment, but she and Heather would have to get out of here soon and warn the others. As she started to turn away, she caught sight of several figures farther down the slope. Slow, clumsy figures, but they were coming this way.
    Zombies.
    She turned and ran back to the site of the ambush.
    The reaper woman was still semi-dazed from the vicious blow of Samantha’s spear, and her eyes were glassy.
    Samantha knelt in front of her and once more put the knife edge against her throat.
    “Who are you and why are you killing people?”
    The woman sneered. “A killer asks a question like that?”
    “Self-defense, sister. You started this when you tried to kill my friend. So what’s with that? World’s full of zombies and you want to start killing some of the people who are trying to survive?”
    The woman actually managed to smile. “You’re a heathen and a blasphemer and you wouldn’t understand.”
    Samantha had heard those words “heathen” and “blasphemer” only in old Bible stories. She couldn’t imagine how they applied to something like this.
    “Try me,” she said, and emphasized the request by pressing harder with her knife.
    “We are reapers of the Night Church, faithful servants of the Lord Thanatos, all praise his darkness. We are the soldiers of our god. We are sent into the wasteland to find all those who defy our god’s will by clinging to the lie that is life.”
    “What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Not to the unenlightened.” The woman continued to smile. “When the old world ended, many people believed that it was the judgment of their god. And in a way it was, but the god of the old world, the god of the Christians and Jews and Muslims, and the heathen gods of the Hindus and all those other false idols were proven to be lies told by blasphemers. The truth is that Lord Thanatos—all praise to his darkness—is the one true god, and he has judged mankind and found it wanting. He raised the dead, his holy gray people, to open red mouths in the flesh of all who live in this world of sin. Through the sacred doorway of death the impure are made pure, and in the vast and formless darkness they know true peace and