Chapter 15
Ames, Iowa
December, Year 26 of the Horsemen
I can’t say how long I’ve been crouching on this partially collapsed overpass, waiting for the horseman to trot down the interstate highway beneath me. Nor am I absolutely certain that the horseman will travel this way, or that my half-baked plan will actually work.
All I know is that I’m freezing my ass off and waiting here was most certainly a bad idea.
I breathe on my gloved hands and rub them together. My nose hurts, my ears ache, and my toes feel like they’re frozen. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten frostbite on three separate occasions over the last month, and depending on how long I stick to this miserable task, today might mark four.
But watery sunlight has broken through the clouds, and maybe this day will be a little warmer than the ones that preceded it.
I grab my thermos and take another sip of coffee. I am pretty sure the horseman is coming this way. I know he made it to Minneapolis, and I think the next big city he’s set his sights on is Des Moines.
Just as I set my thermos aside, the wildlife sweeps through. Cats, dogs, chickens, deer, birds, cows, elk—I even see a few bison.
The animals rush down the highway and the fields that border it on either side. As quickly as they come, they’re gone, and that deathly silence sweeps over me, a silence I’ve come to associate with Death.
It takes several minutes, but eventually I catch sight of the horseman, casually riding down the I-35, the highway that runs beneath this overpass.
Before he has a chance to see me, I cut across to the other side of the overpass, nearly tripping over broken bits of asphalt as I do so.
I’ve gotten better at shooting my bow, but my fingers are far too numb to successfully shoot the horseman off his steed.
So today, I’m doing something a little different.
I pull myself onto the low wall of the overpass and, placing a hand on the cold concrete, I crouch there, my gaze locked on the highway below. A portion of the overpass to my left has collapsed, creating a bottleneck of sorts right beneath me, one that the horseman will have to pass through. I’m planning on capitalizing on it.
My breath mists as I wait for the horseman.
It takes a couple minutes, but eventually I hear the steady clop of his steed’s hooves as he gets closer and closer. Quietly, I withdraw my knife as I stare down at the highway beneath me.
Now those hoof beats echo, and I tense as he crosses beneath the overpass. The seconds seem to stretch as I wait.
Finally, I see his horse’s dappled head twenty feet beneath me, then I see the black waves of Death’s hair and his silver armor as he stares ahead, unaware of my presence.
I leap.
For a moment, while I’m airborne, I realize how absolutely stupid and prone to failure this idea is. But by then it’s too late.
Rather than landing in the saddle, as I’d so elegantly pictured, I clobber into the horseman.
He grunts as I knock him off his horse, the two of us tumbling to the road below.
The whole thing is painful and more than a little embarrassing, but before Death can react, I stab him through the neck.
“Lazarus,” he rasps, reaching for his throat. Blood slips between his fingers, and a small sound slips from my lips.
I’ve fought this man before. I’ve hurt and killed him before. But this is … intimate in a grotesque way. Shooting someone from a distance is far more impersonal than this.
Withdrawing the dagger, I release it as though it burned me, my nausea rising.
Regardless, it’s too late for regret. There’s blood everywhere and the wound I’ve inflicted is too deep. Thanatos’s eyelids droop, and then seconds later his body goes limp.
It’s painfully quiet.
There’s nothing to ease the aftermath of this violent moment.
My shoulder and chest hurt from my fall, and I’m still nauseous from my own violence, but I force myself to get up.
Moving like a creaky old man, I head back up to the overpass to grab my things. When I return to the horseman’s side, I finally notice the smell.
Frankincense and myrrh. I glance up and see Death’s horse standing twenty feet away, the horseman’s torch jutting out of one of the saddlebags. Hazy, perfumed smoke wafts through the air, and a chill passes through me.
I know enough about the horseman to know death won’t stop him for long. The only real way to hold the horseman up is to stick around and kill him again before he wakes.
I’ve been confronted with this issue before. I still can’t stomach the thought, particularly not after what I just did.