“But what?”
“Go take a look,” said Riot as she unlocked a door to one of the cellblocks. Lilah handed him a torch, giving him a strange look. Her face was always hard to read because for so much of her life she’d lived alone and didn’t have any reason to show emotions. Now he thought he saw a deep sadness in her eyes but had no idea why it was there. When Benny turned to Nix, he saw an identical expression. Actually, all of them looked like they were at a funeral.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s in there?”
No one answered him.
So Benny took the torch and went into the cellblock.
There were cells on either side of a concrete walkway. All the cell doors were locked.
None of the cells were empty. Figures in filthy orange jumpsuits stood inside each one. They were bearded, wasted, withered. Some had collapsed and lay twitching on the floor. A few gripped the bars with leathery hands. Some thrust arms at him, but they could not reach him; and they probably did not have the strength to do much if they did. In a few cells figures stood draped in cobwebs and dust, and only their wax-pale eyes moved to follow Benny.
“God . . . ,” he breathed. That one word echoed in the stillness, and it made him wonder how many of these prisoners had cried out to God for help, for their freedom, for mercy.
“None of them have bites,” said Chong. “Not one.”
Benny nodded. He’d seen that too.
Morgie joined them. “The people who busted in could have let everyone out. They raided the kitchen and the armory. But . . . no one opened the cells or fed the prisoners.”
“I think the people who burst in here saw them and made a choice,” said Riot.
“What kind of choice?” asked Morgie in a pleading tone.
“There was food here,” she said. “But only so much. You saw all those cars. There were a lot of mouths to feed. People came in here to survive, and they had their families with them. They were scared. The world was falling down, and I guess they knew no help was coming. Then those EMPs blew out the lights.”
They all stared at the zombies. Every single one of them was skinny, wasted. All their prison uniforms looked too big, and each of the six teenagers had seen enough zoms to know the difference in how bodies looked if they were skinny to begin with or wasted away after death. These living dead had all starved to death.
“The people who came in here made a choice,” repeated Riot. “Between them and these prisoners. I sure ain’t saying I agree with it, but I understand it.”
“It’s insane,” said Morgie.
Riot studied him. “What choice would you have made?”
“Not this,” he cried.
“Really? If it was your family? If it was you and a bunch of kids, old people, people you needed to protect,” she said coldly, “you want to stand there and tell me you wouldn’t even consider doing this?”
Morgie turned away, but everywhere he looked there was more evidence of a kind of cruelty he’d never seen before. Benny put his hand on his friend’s beefy shoulder. He had been deeper into the Rot and Ruin and seen many more horrors. This, though . . .
“God,” Benny murmured.
“God was never here,” said Morgie wretchedly.
“How many prisoners are there?” asked Benny.
Riot looked sick and sad. “According to the papers we found in the guard’s office . . . thirteen hundred and fifty-three. Why?”
He just stared at her, and she began shaking her head.
“You’re out of your mind. There’s mercy and then there’s being stupid.”
“She’s right,” protested Morgie. “Besides, we have a mission, and this would take forever.”
Nix drew her sword with a slithery rasp that seemed unnaturally loud in the cold silence of the cellblock. After a moment Benny drew his, too.
It did not take forever.
It took a day.
It took a long, bad, wretched day.
Interlude Four
KICKAPOO CAVERN STATE PARK
ONE WEEK AGO
THE HUNTER SLAMMED INTO THE soldier, drove him back, smashed him down to the ground.
He did not pause to pick up his knives or guns. He did not need them. The hunter had killed many men and many things with his hands; he was a superbly skilled fighter. Deadly, fast, and brutally efficient. His father had taught him jujutsu as soon as he could walk; his mother taught him karate and aikido. He’d studied those and other fighting arts in gyms and dojos around the world. Those skills had been sharpened like a sword in special forces, and honed further by having to use them in combat on every continent, even in the frozen wastes of Antarctica.
The hunter had never lost a fight. Never. Not outside of a dojo or training hall. Never when his life depended on it.
Until that day.
In his woods.
With an injured and possibly dying old man.
His lunge bowled the soldier over and drove him hard into the dirt, but the big soldier did not fall the way he should have. He wasn’t crushed into helplessness.
No.
Instead the soldier seemed to absorb the attack, yielding to the sudden mass, turning with it as he fell, sloughing off the foot-pounds of impact by turning like an axle. The hunter was whipped around and it was he who hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs with a great whoosh. It was a movement so precise, so sophisticated that it appeared simple. And it was fast. God almighty, the soldier moved with shocking, blurring speed.
Then the soldier was atop him, parrying the hunter’s strikes, and then delivering counterstrikes, hitting the hunter in the biceps, the inside of the deltoids, the centers of each pectoral, the nerve clusters beside his nose. Fast, fast, fast. The soldier used precise one-knuckle punches, hitting for effect rather than trying to merely smash. A series of small explosions seemed to detonate inside the hunter’s body and he felt his arms go dead, his chest turn to fire, his shoulder sag.
Then suddenly the soldier was behind him, kneeling as he swiftly pulled the hunter into an awkward sitting position, limp arms hanging as a thick arm wrapped around his throat in a kata gatame judo choke that was so beautifully executed that the hunter could not break it. He fought to breathe, but there was no air left except what was trapped in his lungs. He knew three different counters to this move, but the strikes to his pressure points had robbed him of the strength and coordination necessary to use any of them. He was caught. Trapped.
Helpless.
The world spun toward blackness as the choke hold blocked air and blood to his brain. The hunter knew that this hold compressed both carotid arteries. He would be totally unconscious in eight seconds.
After four seconds the soldier bent close, his lips brushing the hunter’s ear, and spoke two words. Two impossible words.
“Sam,” cried the soldier. “Stop.”
Sam.
The hunter had not heard his own name spoken in over a decade. No one in this part of the country knew it. He had almost forgotten that was his name. Like so many things, “names” seemed to have lost their importance.
And yet . . .
“Sam, please,” begged the soldier.
The hunter raised one hand, weak and clumsy as it was, and tapped the forearm of the choking arm. Tapped to admit defeat.
Tapped to signal release.
Sam.
Dear God.
The soldier eased the pressure. Very slowly, with great care, with suspicion and an implied threat of punishment for a trick. “Easy, Sam . . . ease it down,” he murmured. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s all going to be okay.”
And then the soldier released the hold and fell back, covering his battered face with both hands. The hunter—Sam—turned painfully and got to his knees, then fell back hard on his butt and sat staring at the old soldier. The soldier lay there, totally vulnerable. Sam rubbed his aching throat and stared. Their legs were still touching; they were still within range of a lethal kick. Neither took that a
dvantage.
The fight was over.
Sam reached out a hand, fighting to make his arm work, and he gripped the soldier’s wrist. Pulled. The hand came away, revealing half a face. Sam pulled the other, and he looked into the soldier’s eyes. There were tears there. And pain. So much pain, and none of it had to do with his wounded leg, of that Sam was positive.
“How . . . how do you know my name . . . ?” he begged.
The soldier, against all sense and reason, smiled. A great big smile filled with an unvarnished joy of a kind the hunter had not seen in many years.
The soldier brushed years from his eyes. “You’re saying that you don’t recognize me? After everything we went through? All those years? All those fights? Come on, Sam . . . it’s me.”
Then Sam suddenly saw it.
In a flash of insight and recognition he saw through the bruises and the blood, past the dirt and gray hair and the distortion of years. He cried out in alarm and scuttled clumsily backward.
“No!” he gasped, and he could feel the whole world began to crack and tear and come apart. The fractures in his mind turned to fissures, and he wanted to scream. All the years of fighting to stay sane in an insane world crumbled away and here—right here in front of him—was proof that his mind was already gone. “You’re dead. You’re dead . . . you have to be dead.”
The soldier tried to stand but hissed in pain and collapsed back. There was fresh blood on his injured leg. He spoke through the pain, and his voice was kind, gentle, almost pleading. “I’m not dead, Sam, but it’s not like the world hasn’t been trying.”
The hunter shook his head, still unwilling to accept it.
“Sam,” said the soldier gently, “it’s me. It really is. I didn’t die. I’m not a ghost. This is happening. It’s really me, Sam. I’m Joe Ledger and you’re Sam Imura. And boy do I have some things to tell you.”
PART NINE
NEW ALAMO, TEXAS
LATE AUGUST
RUMORS OF WAR
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war,
while defeated warriors go to war first
and then seek to win.
—SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR
44
THE GUARDS ON THE WALL asked Gutsy and her friends a lot of questions but didn’t make too big a thing of the fact that three teenagers had spent a night outside the wall. Not after Alethea spun a convincing tale about them bedding down in an old gas station that had secure windows and doors. The guards said that they would have to report it anyway, but Gutsy doubted they would. A lot of people went into the Broken Lands for days at a time. As long as they didn’t come back infected, the guards seemed blasé about it. Well, more like if anything happened, it was on you. It wasn’t really much of a relief. Not that Gutsy wanted a fuss made, but the fact that it was all waved away so easily made her uneasy. Alethea, who was driving, wasted no time getting the wagon in through the gates.
They stowed the wagon, took care of Gordo, and walked the long way to Gutsy’s house, making sure to avoid the Cuddlys’ place.
As they went into the house, Spider asked, “You think those soldiers are going to come back here?”
“Probably,” said Gutsy, “but not in broad daylight.”
Morning light sparkled through the windows and there was birdsong everywhere and hummingbirds droned happily from one rose to another in the yard. Sombra immediately went over to the couch and jumped up on it.
“Hey! Off,” said Gutsy sternly. She pointed down the hall. “Kitchen.”
Sombra got down and trudged out of the living room.
“That was mean,” said Alethea.
“He’s filthy and he stinks. We all do. You two are also in trouble. The Cuddlys probably reported you to the town council by now.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” said Alethea, though Spider looked nervous. The Cuddlys never used corporal punishment on any of the foster kids—though they threatened it when they were mad—but there were always tons of extra chores for anyone who broke a house rule, the worst of which was cleaning the bathrooms. A few dozen orphans could do a lot of damage to a couple of bathrooms, especially when they knew one of the house “weirdos” had to clean it up. Spider once said that he would rather floss the teeth of a dozen los muertos than clean those toilets again. From the look on his face now, Gutsy knew that he was imagining long hours of disgusting work.
Gutsy had been so glad her friends were with her when they put Mama into the ground for the last time. They’d been there when Mama’s ghost kissed her face with that soft wind and went free. However, most things have consequences. Everything was a process of cause and effect, as the Chess Players so often said.
“You want to clean up here before you go home?” she asked. They were all covered in dirt and dried sweat.
“No, thanks,” said Spider. “Probably should get this over with.”
Alethea gave a nod and a bleak stare. The Cuddlys, unlike most adults, were not people she could order around. Gutsy wondered, though, if that would change when her friend turned seventeen. After that no one could tell any teenager what to do. It was a year and a half away, though, and Mr. and Mrs. Cuddly could make life miserable for her until then.
They hugged each other, and Gutsy stood in the doorway to watch her friends trudge home. Most likely she wouldn’t see them for a day or two. House arrest, as Mr. Cuddly, called it, was part of the punishment for rule breaking. She tried hard not to wish a full-out living dead attack on the Cuddlys, but . . .
Then she closed her door, stripped off her vest, T-shirt, and pants, and went into the kitchen in her underwear. Sombra lay in a patch of sunlight by the window, looking at her with suspicious eyes as Gutsy opened a closet and removed the same soap and sponges she’d used on the dog the day before. Sombra whined and closed his eyes as if pretending to be asleep.
“Nice try,” she told him. “Come on.”
With great reluctance, as if walking toward his execution, the coydog followed her into the bathroom and climbed into the tub. He whined piteously as she soaped and scrubbed him and even howled a few times.
“Stop being such a baby.”
He contrived to stare at her with large, liquid, accusing eyes. Gutsy couldn’t help but grin. Sombra may not have spent much time in houses with people who cared about him, but he was learning fast how to manipulate.
Once the suds were gone, Sombra looked skinny, battered, and unhappy, but he smelled of soap and wet dog. It was a nice smell. Gutsy patted him dry, pausing to examine his injuries, all of which were healing nicely. She wrapped him in a towel and he curled up on the bathroom rug while she rinsed the tub and filled it for her own bath. Gutsy heated some water on a little wood-burning stove she’d installed in the corner of the bathroom, and when it was perfect, she stepped out of her underwear and sank gratefully into the steaming water.
It was the single best feeling in the world.
She lay there for a long time, thinking things through. There was no guarantee that the Rat Catchers would think that she’d brought her mother home. There was no guarantee they’d come to steal her body the way they’d stolen all the others. It would be a dangerous thing to do. Risky. After all, they had to believe Gutsy would tell the town council about what happened.
Gutsy hadn’t, though, and she had her reasons.
She thought about the fact that they’d brought her mother back twice. There were many weird things about that, and she began cataloging them in her mind. Many questions, too.
The riders had attacked the night guards the second time, but not the first. Why?
Why bring Mama’s body back at all?
What did Simon, the big lieutenant, mean when he asked the captain: Do you think she told her anything after we dug her up?
Did he expect Mama to actually say something? Gutsy knew that there were many different versions of the disease that made the dead rise. As far as she knew, though, the only infected who could speak were those people who had the ve
rsion of the disease where they slowly turned into monsters. That wasn’t what happened to Mama, though. She’d died of tuberculosis and had none of the symptoms of the wasting mutation Mr. Ford told her about. She wished she’d asked him about it, and decided to go find him later and ask.
Do you think she told her anything after we dug her up?
Even if Mama could think and talk, Gutsy mused, what on earth did they think she might have said?
Why and how did the Rat Catchers know her?
She looked over at Sombra, whose gray eyes peered out at her from inside his towel nest. “What are they doing with all those bodies?”
The dog, the house, and the day had no answers.
Yet.
45
THE TOWN OF NEW ALAMO was the only place Gutsy had ever lived, but it was strange.
It wasn’t like the places she read about in books. It always felt awkward to her . . . though she admitted that it might be that it was she who was awkward. Or both. Hard to say.
After cleaning up, fixing food for Sombra and herself, and doing other busywork that wouldn’t interfere with the thoughts running through her head, she went out. Her list of questions had grown very long, and now Gutsy wanted to start making sense of things. The problem, as she saw it, was that she wasn’t sure who to talk to first. Or if talking to anyone was safe. The fact that the Rat Catchers had brought her mother into town the first time without causing any disturbance with the guards worried her. Either they had a secret way in—in which case, why hadn’t they used it the second time?—or they had friends in town, possibly among the guards.
Before she left her yard, she asked Sombra, “What would Sherlock Holmes do?”
The coydog wagged his tail.
“Exactly,” said Gutsy. “Let’s go.”
Her first stop was the porch where the Chess Players were always to be found. Mr. Urrea was asleep, his straw hat pulled low over his face, arms folded over a comfortable belly, legs stretched out, and ankles crossed. He was usually barefoot, as he was now.
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