“You had to say it, though,” said Nix, coming to Benny’s defense. “You have to give people a chance.”
No one replied to that. It was a hopeful statement, but hope seemed to be lying dead somewhere out in the Ruin. For Benny, hope had died with a little girl back at Sanctuary. He looked for some inside his heart, but all he found there was a dark and murderous rage.
They passed through the gates. Benny turned to watch the guards pull it shut.
“God . . . ,” he murmured. He looked around. Mountainside looked like it always looked. And after today he knew for sure that he’d never see it again.
“Benny . . . ?”
He turned at the sound of her voice.
“You have to go, Nix,” he said. “There’s still time.”
She shook her head. “I can’t go.”
Benny felt his heart tearing in half. “Please, Nix . . . I can’t do this if you’re here. I can’t.”
“You have to,” she said. “We have to.”
Benny suddenly reached for her and pulled her close and clung to her. “Nix, please go,” he begged, his voice breaking into sobs. “Please don’t make me kill you, too.”
She started crying too. He could feel the heat of her, even through their body armor, even through the fear. She was so alive, and she deserved to go on living. Someone had to.
“Nix . . . please . . .”
She looked up at him with her green eyes. Her freckles were dark, the scars on her face livid.
“Benny,” she said softly, thickly, “I’m a samurai too.”
“Nix . . .”
“I won’t leave you,” she said, shaking her head stubbornly. “I won’t.”
He leaned his forehead against hers and they stood there, weeping, while all around them the town they grew up in prepared to die.
“Benny . . . Nix . . . ,” said a voice, and they turned to see Morgie there. “They’re coming.”
Benny drew a breath and stepped back from Nix. He fisted the tears from his eyes and nodded. Nix sniffed back her tears. She nodded too.
Lilah, Chong, and Riot stood a few feet away.
“This is it,” said Benny. “They let me make the big speech out there because this was my crazy plan. But I wanted to say something else to you guys. First . . . I told Nix and I’m telling you, there’s still time to leave. You can follow the goat path up the mountain. Or you can go out the north gate on the quads. There’s enough fuel to get you at least a couple of miles down—”
“Don’t,” said Chong. “You know we’re not leaving. My family got out, that’s all I care about.”
Neither of them admitted the reality of that comment. Wagonloads of people had left. Thousands went on foot toward the next town. Only fighters were left here. If everything went wrong, then the reapers would follow the trail north and destroy that town, and the next, and the next. Distance couldn’t guarantee safety anymore. Only an end to the reapers could do it, and that would happen here or it wouldn’t happen at all.
The odds were that it wouldn’t happen, though. The odds were in favor of the Chongs, and everyone else, being hunted down by killers—alive and dead.
Benny turned to Lilah and Riot. “This isn’t even your town. . . .”
“It ain’t about the town, son,” said Riot. “Excuse me for saying it, but I don’t give a rat’s hairy bee-hind about this town or any other town. I want to see that smug bastard and all his minions burn.”
“?‘Minions,’?” echoed Morgie. “Nice.”
There were shouts from the wall. “They’re coming! God . . . it’s the runners! They’re coming.”
Benny said, “Look, if we do this, then we’re not going to be the same people afterward. This is the line that Captain Ledger was talking about. We’re about to become monsters.”