I turn from the horseman when I hear it. Somewhere in the distance comes a child’s cry. Everything in me stills.

But he killed everyone.

I wait to hear the sound again, and sure enough, I do, only now, there are several more cries that join in. I don’t want to believe it. This must be another part of my punishment, making his creatures sound like the living.

The zombies suddenly begin to move, separating enough to make an aisle from the edge of the clearing to the dais.

Beyond them, I see movement, and now there’s more crying and a few shouts. Several dozen zombies stride forward, looking grisly from their recent deaths. They move down the aisle, coming right up to where my guards and I stand. With them, the human noises get louder.

I’m holding my breath as they step away from the aisle, slipping into the crowd of dead, leaving behind a line of very confused, very frightened, very living people. At the head of the line is Zara and Mamoon.

I choke on a sob, nearly falling to my knees.

Behind me, I hear War rise. Then, the ominous sound of his footfalls. He comes right up to me, and he presses his lips to my ear.

“For your soft heart.”

Chapter 46

“That was stupid of you,” Hussain says.

The phobos rider finds me later that day sitting amongst a line of empty tents. I’ve already embraced my friend and her nephew and I’ve processed—or at least I’ve tried to process—the horrors of the day.

Now I’m simply hiding from what’s left of the world.

And judging from Hussain’s presence, I’ve clearly done a shit job of it.

Hussain might be the only one of War’s phobos riders I actually get along with, though I haven’t talked to him in a while. Ever since a rider tried to kill me, the horseman has been a little reluctant for his men to get close. Now, apparently, that’s no longer the case.

“So many others have already tried to kill him,” Hussain says, sitting down next to me. My undead guards don’t attempt to stop him from getting close. “You must’ve known it wouldn’t work,” he adds.

I don’t bother asking him how he knows I tried to stab the horseman. My best guess is that War let his men in on his plan. They, after all, stood passively by as the dead killed their comrades. Only the children and the morally pure were spared from death today—oh, and Zara. She’s no innocent, but she was my friend, which apparently saved her in the end.

“I wasn’t trying to kill him,” I say to Hussain.

At least, not permanently. Even I know that’s an impossibility. I just wanted the massacring to stop. Coaxing him hadn’t worked. I thought violence might get through to him; it was a language War understood.

“Then it was an even stupider idea,” Hussain says.

“Did you come here to make me feel bad?” I snap. “Because I already do.”

The truth is, I don’t know what exactly I feel. I was cutting these people down in battle only a week ago; I shouldn’t be sad they’re gone, especially considering that War saved the deserving from his wrath.

Still feel like shit.

“There is no stopping him, Miriam,” Hussain says.

“Pestilence was stopped,” I say.

“You don’t really know that, though, do you?” he says.

Yes, I want to reply, War essentially told me so himself.

But maybe the horseman lied. Maybe Pestilence simply finished his mission before he killed off everyone. How am I supposed to know what each horseman’s divine plan is?

“So what’s your solution?” I say. “Continue fighting until the world ends?”

Hussain gives me a look. “My world already has ended. My wife and children are gone, my friends were slain before my eyes. There is no world for me to go back to.”

I glance over at him then, my brows furrowing. I hadn’t thought of the phobos riders as victims. Not when they are so good at killing.

“Why do you fight for War if he’s done so much to hurt you?” I ask.

Hussain gives me a long look, then squints at the sky. “The only part of War that is human is his memory of every battle that has ever been waged. Has he ever told you about those memories?”

I frown at him.

“War’s seen us kill tens of millions of people over the centuries, and many of those deaths have been unnecessarily cruel.” Hussain exhales, the sound full of weariness. “He’s just projecting back on us our very worst nature.”

I give Hussain a skeptical look. “And that convinced you to fight for him?” Because what I got out of that was that humans need to do a better job of being kind. Not go on being savages until we’ve destroyed ourselves completely.

“That convinced me that there is something inherently wrong with us,” he says.

I stare out at the empty tents. Some of them are sprayed with blood.

“So you believe we deserve this?” I ask.

Hussain kicks a rock with his boot. “Maybe.”

He gets up and begins to walk away, but then he stops, half turning back to me. “What you did also took a lot of courage, you know.”

I release a shuddering breath. That one statement, that brief spark of approval, makes my heart hurt and gives me life all at once. We are all part of humanity. We all want to live. We should protect each other, and I tried. I failed, but at least I tried.

“I can’t stand idly by while he continues to kill,” I say, my voice breaking.

The phobos rider turns more fully to face me. “Husband and wife pitted against one another—now that’s the true war.” He backs away. “I’m interested to see who will win.”

I don’t move back into War’s tent.

I can’t, not after my punishment. I could barely wrap my mind around being close to the horseman after he wiped out Mansoura. And now, when I tried to gut him with his sword and he killed off most of camp for the offense, it feels like the two of us have finally crossed some hard line.

It’s easy enough to move out; I simply choose one of the thousands of abandoned tents. I pick the one next to Zara, even though in her words—

“Your dead stink.”

Still, she puts up with my decaying guards who haven’t stopped guarding me. They aren’t the only dead either of us has to put up with; War’s now undead army still lingers along the outskirts of camp, the mass of them waiting for the horseman’s next orders.

Eventually I get my things back from War—a zombie drops them off at my tent’s entrance and walks away. Amongst the pile, there’s my tool kit and my half-finished arrows, the aged picture of my family, my romance novel and the dinged up coffee set that I never use. I even get the horseman’s old dagger, the one he gave to me shortly after we met.

I guess he’s no longer worried about me harming myself …

The world moves on. One day turns into two, two into four, then it’s a week, then weeks.

What’s left of camp packs itself up, moves, then resettles—packs, moves, resettles. Life takes on a kind of predictability to it. I ride with the other humans, and I live alongside them too. There are more children per adult than before, so we take turns watching them, and at night, we have them sleep in several of the larger tents.

We pass through Damanhur, then Alexandria, then Tanta and Banha, slowly making our way south through Egypt. The dead now fight and protect the camp, so the living no longer have to bloody their hands (phobos riders aside).