Mr. Ford was awake and he sat cross-legged, polishing the little chess pieces and putting them into place on the board, ready for another game. There was a set of wooden shelves against the wall on which were more than forty chess sets of different kinds. They were specialty sets salvaged from abandoned towns or obtained through barter with traders. The sets had themes, with the figures carved from wood or stone or cast in metal, and included both World Wars, the Civil War, Napoleon and Wellington, the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Disney and Warner Bros. cartoon characters, classic monsters and monster hunters, and others. The Chess Players loved to share the stories behind each set and often regaled Gutsy and her friends with memorized scenes from those based on novels. The Wizard of Oz set was one of Gutsy’s favorites, though it was missing three flying monkeys and two Munchkins, and so was seldom used. The set currently sitting atop the chessboard was based on the old stories of Robin Hood and his Merry Men against the evil Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
“Well,” said Mr. Ford as he polished a Maid Marian queen, “you clean up pretty well. More like a girl and less like a Dickensian waif.”
“Thanks. I think.” Gutsy wore old but clean blue jeans, a plain green T-shirt, and another of her many fishing vests. Since her machete was missing, she instead wore a broad-bladed farm knife that was as close to her favorite weapon as she could find. It was a bit too heavy, and the handle was a little large for her hand, but it would do until she found a replacement. Gutsy had one of her mother’s favorite scarves threaded through some holes she’d punched and grommeted in the vest. The scarf was pink and orange with some swirls of sea green and blue.
“You have a look of terrible purpose writ large upon your countenance,” said Mr. Ford in a mock theatrical voice.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said, stepping onto the porch.
“You know you can ask nearly anything,” said Mr. Ford. It was how both he and his friend always answered that kind of question. Nearly anything. So far Gutsy had never asked anything they refused to answer, but it often made her wonder where that line was. And why it was there.
“Do you remember when you told me about how some people got sick and turned into los muertos over time instead of dying and coming back?”
“Sure.”
“You saw my mom before she died, right? Is there any way she might have had that same kind of sickness?”
Ford stopped polishing the chess piece and set it down. There was a look of curiosity and concern on his weathered face. “Why do you ask?”
“Can you just answer the question first?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “No,” he said.
“No, you can’t answer or—”
“No, that’s not what she had.” Ford picked up a different chess piece. Friar Tuck, a fat monk.
Gutsy took a half step closer. “How do you know?”
He cocked his head and studied her. “What makes you ask?”
It felt like a bit of a standoff. Gutsy didn’t want to tell him about what had happened at the cemetery or at her house, because he was an adult and he might tell the town council on her. That would probably get her in trouble, and maybe even sent to the Cuddlys’ Home for Foundlings.
“Can’t you just tell me?” she asked. A few slow seconds shambled past while the Chess Player thought about it. When he didn’t answer, Gutsy folded her arms and gave him a flat, hard stare. “What are you hiding?”
A voice drifted up from under the hat on Urrea’s face. “Busted.”
“Go back to sleep,” Ford told him, but Urrea plucked the hat off his face, yawned, and sat up. He did not look at all like he’d been asleep. His face wasn’t flushed and his eyes were crystal clear.
The two old men looked at each other for a five-count, and then Urrea nodded and Ford sighed. But then Ford looked up and down the street, to where people were going to and fro, doing their daily business. “Not here,” said Ford, “and not now.”
“Why not?”
Ford stood. “Do you want an honest answer to your question? About the sickness, I mean? Yes? The school. My classroom. One hour.”
Then he stretched, scratched his stomach, clapped Urrea on the shoulder, and wandered into the general store. Urrea got up too, gave her a sly wink, and followed him, leaving Gutsy standing on the porch feeling very confused. But also excited.
What do they know?
She ached to find out, and an hour was forever away.
Gutsy stepped down off the porch and thought about it, then smiled and headed off toward the rear guard post.
46
THE SOUTHERNMOST PART OF NEW Alamo was called Cargo Town, because it was where large quantities of scavenged supplies were kept under guard.
The Raid had been the first expedition to Corpus Christi, but there had been others, and also plenty of raids on warehouses and factories scattered throughout that part of Texas. Those survivors who knew the area worked with scouts and mission planners to set up the raids. Most of the time those raiding parties found buildings that had burned down, been stripped of everything useful, or were so thoroughly overrun that it would cost too many lives to justify an attempt. Some of the warehouses had been taken over by scavengers. A few had become small communities, and no one in Gutsy’s town wanted to go to war with other survivors.
And then there were the plague towns: places where whole populations had been wiped out by disease. Early attempts to scavenge goods from those unfortunate places had brought death to New Alamo in waves.
It was getting harder to find stocks of clean bulk food, like canned goods that hadn’t swollen with botulism, or sacks of grain, rice, and other staples that weren’t so thoroughly infested by bugs as to be useless.
On the other hand, there were other items in bulk that were worth the effort to bring home. Pots and pans, building supplies, clothes, toilet paper, books, furniture, and supplies of things like aluminum foil, clean plastic bags, tons of baking soda, and more. One raid on a mile-long derailed train yielded two hundred tons of toothpaste, mouthwash, roll-on deodorant, bar soap, and hand sanitizer. The daily diet in New Alamo might not have much range, but everyone had great teeth, and hygiene was remarkably high for a postapocalyptic settlement.
Big Quonset huts were set along the walls and crammed with supplies, and there were guards in each. The area directly around the gate was clear except for a corral of horses and a line of trade wagons. There was a flat catwalk that ran around the entire town atop the stacked walls of cars. Two sentry towers had been erected at each of the town’s gates, and the gates themselves were made from stacks of rubber tires on long vertical poles, lashed firmly together and mounted on a series of heavy-duty sets of truck wheels to make them easy to move. When closed, the gate could withstand a wave of los muertos.
Gutsy and Sombra walked up to an old Winnebago permanently parked inside the wall. It was used as an office for the security supervisor. She peered in through the window to see who was on duty and was relieved that it was Karen Peak, the mother of Sarah, one of Gutsy’s friends from school. Or at least Sarah used to be a school friend. Because of a severe allergic reaction to something inside the school, Sarah had been taken out and was now tutored at home. Sarah was a pretty girl who used to be funny and popular, but now she was sickly and withdrawn, clearly not fully recovered from being sick. Gutsy rarely saw her anymore, though both Karen and Sarah had come to visit the morning after Mama died.
Gutsy tapped on the door and went in. Karen rose and came over to give Gutsy a hug. Mrs. Peak was an athletic woman of about forty, with straight blond hair framing a pretty face. Like a lot of the adults in town, there was a kind of permanent sadness in Karen’s eyes. Gutsy knew that it was an emotional scar that marked anyone who had lived through the end of the world as they had all known it. Eyes that had seen too much and lived in a world full of reminders.
“Hey, Gabriella, how are you doing, sweetie?” asked the supervisor. Karen always called Gutsy by her giv
en name, Gabriella, but Gutsy didn’t hold that against her.
“Okay, I guess,” lied Gutsy. “Getting by.”
Karen looked past her to the coydog standing uncertainly in the open doorway. “Who’s that?”
Gutsy introduced Sombra and made up a story about finding him wandering in the desert. She did not mention Hope Cemetery or the collar the dog had worn. Karen listened and made sympathetic noises, but Gutsy could see the supervisor’s sharp eyes roving over the many injuries, old and new. The expression in her eyes let Gutsy know that Karen was making some of the same judgments about Sombra she had herself.
All Karen said was, “Poor pup’s been through the wringer.”
“Lot of that going around,” said Gutsy. “I heard that some of your guys got hurt the other night. What was that all about?”
“We’re, um, still sorting that out,” said Karen. Her eyes shifted away for a moment. Was she embarrassed? wondered Gutsy. Or was there something else? “Jimmy Quiñones is in the hospital with a cracked skull, a broken leg, and some other injuries. Roberto Cantu was knocked out, but he’ll be okay.”
“Who were those people on the horses?”
“No one knows. Ravagers, probably.”
“How’d they get in, though?”
Shutters seemed to drop behind Karen’s eyes. “We’re looking into that.”
There was some kind of warning in her expression and Gutsy didn’t push it. Instead she asked, “Were they working the night before?”
Karen looked surprised. “No, why?”
“Who was?”
“Trey Williams and Buffy Howell worked that shift. Why?” The suspicion was very evident in her tone.
“Oh, I just wondered if they saw anything before,” said Gutsy quickly. “I mean, were the riders from a wolf pack or something?”
It was a little clumsy, and Gutsy wished she had prepared better for this kind of conversation; however, it seemed to work. Karen’s tone was milder when she answered.
“Nah. Trey and Buffy didn’t see anything. No one on the day shift did either; and we’ve had our own riders out on patrol all week, but no one’s seen a thing. We don’t understand what happened the other night.”
“Really? What’s with the patrols?” Gutsy asked, and nearly winced because it was too quick, and it put Karen back on the alert.
“Why are you asking about all this?”
Gutsy took a breath. “I . . . I guess I’m just scared is all. What with Mama dying and being alone. Being a girl alone . . . you know?”
That did it. Karen’s expression softened and she gathered Gutsy in for a hug of the kind that could only be called “motherly.” Very tight, very long, with lots of pats and soothing words. Woman to girl.
“It’s all right, sweetie. We’ve doubled the guards and I have mounted and foot patrols round the clock. I’ll make sure they check on your house tonight, don’t you worry.”
“Gosh . . . thanks,” said Gutsy, disentangling herself and forcing a smile onto her face. She almost panicked when she realized that her attempt to defuse Karen’s suspicions might lead to a hastening of an official response to Gutsy being a minor living alone. She thanked Karen and got out of there as quickly as she could.
Doubts and fears seemed to nip at her heels as she walked through Cargo Town. Not just because of the risk of being sent to foster care. That was an issue, but not the biggest one at the moment. No, there was something strange about the guard thing. Very strange.
How had the Rat Catchers gotten past Trey and Buffy? How was that possible?
They stopped at a horse trough so Sombra could take a drink, and Gutsy leaned down to give his head a thoughtful scratch. People were moving around as they always had, attending to their own business, a few of them nodding or smiling at her. Where once that might have been completely normal, now every nod seemed to suggest a meaning, and every smile looked suspicious.
“I think I’m getting paranoid,” she told the dog, who raised a dripping muzzle and glanced up at her. Then an old line from a book she’d read occurred to her. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
She shivered despite the afternoon heat.
“Come on,” she said, and they headed off in the direction of the school. Gutsy did not take a direct route, but wandered up and down streets, in and out of stores, glancing around to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Where, she wondered, was the dividing line between paranoia and practical caution?
It was a very important and extremely dangerous little question.
47
GUTSY AND SOMBRA DRIFTED IN the direction of the Home for Foundlings. She wondered what kind of trouble Spider and Alethea were in. So she headed that way. As she approached, she saw Vera Cuddly sitting on a beach chair outside, watching with a stern and unfriendly eye as Spider and Alethea sat on stools and peeled potatoes. A mountain of unpeeled spuds stood between her friends, and a large tub of peeled ones was at their feet.
Before Gutsy could say a word, Mrs. Cuddly growled, “You keep on walking, missy. There’s no one here needs to talk to the likes of you.”
Alethea gave Gutsy a guarded smile. Spider mouthed the words, Kill me now.
Sombra growled at the stern-faced woman, which made her flinch, but Mrs. Cuddly reached behind her beach chair for a shotgun and laid it across her meaty thighs. The coydog gave her an evil look and the woman gave it right back.
“Go on now,” she said—either to Gutsy or Sombra. “Git.”
Gutsy hurried on, feeling the weight of Mrs. Cuddly’s disapproval all the way down the block. At the corner, she looked back and saw that the mean old woman was still glaring at her. Gutsy rounded the corner and walked straight into someone. She staggered back and nearly fell, and the other person did fall. Hard. Into a big, steaming pile of horse droppings someone had swept against the curb.
It was Alice Chung.
The look of absolute horror and disgust on Alice’s pretty face tore holes in Gutsy.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” she cried, and grabbed Alice to pick her up. Gutsy tried for a good grip, got a bad one, and tore Alice’s lovely blue hand-embroidered blouse open. A long piece of it hung from Gutsy’s hand like a dead snake. There was a T-shirt underneath, but that was hardly the point. Alice was one of the best seamstresses in school and took great pride in the delicacy and complexity of her work. That blouse was the envy of everyone in school. It was gorgeous, a work of art.
Now it was ruined.
Alice sat there, legs sprawled, skirt tangled around her knees, smack in the center of forty pounds of sunbaked manure, with her blouse ripped.
Gutsy stood there, the piece of blouse still in her hands. People on both sides of the street had stopped to stare. Two boys from school burst out laughing. So did a gaggle of girls from the next grade up. Everyone who saw it cracked up, and there suddenly seemed to be a lot of people around. Gutsy wanted to die right there, right then.
“I’m sorry, Alice. God, I’m so sorry.”
The look in Alice’s eyes told her everything. Hurt, anger, humiliation, loathing, disgust. She got up very slowly, clumps of stuff falling from her skirt. When Gutsy offered a hand to try to help, Alice stared at it like it was something more foul than the mess she’d fallen into.
“Don’t touch me,” she said in a tone that was ten degrees below freezing. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
Gutsy pulled her hand back as quickly as if she’d been burned. Her face burned too. People were laughing at Alice. But everyone knew that it was Gutsy’s fault.
With great dignity and open contempt, Alice turned around and walked back the way she had come. Going home. She did not try to wipe the mess off her skirt. That would have been worse. It would have been pathetic. Instead she stiffened her back and walked away, dragging all light and cheer from the day.
Not that there had been much to begin with.
Gutsy turned away from the grinning spectators and looked down at Sombra. He
wagged his tail. He, apparently, thought horse poop was a wonderful thing.
Without meeting anyone else’s eye, Gutsy slunk away with her battered dog in tow.
48
MISFIT HIGH WAS ONE OF the few buildings in New Alamo that was not either a Quonset hut or one of the blocky dwellings built as temporary housing for people like Mama—the so-called “illegal aliens.” The school was a former government multipurpose administration facility, half of which was empty. The building was two stories tall and sprawled in all sorts of unlikely directions, as if the architect and the builder were not on speaking terms. In the burning heat of late August, the school was closed except for a few summer school classes, but they were all held in the morning.
Gutsy circled the building, relying on her eyes and Sombra’s nose to locate any lurking threats. There were none, so she entered through a side door that had a faulty lock. She knew because she’d rigged the lock so she could slip inside with Spider and Alethea after hours. Not to steal or vandalize, but because Misfit High had the best library in town. They would sit in the cool darkness of the basement, lost among acres of books, eating oranges and figs and apricots they’d picked on the way. There were thousands of fruit trees in town. Then, inside, they would spend whole evenings reading in silence, or sometimes reading aloud, while camping lanterns bathed them in blue-white illumination.
The door closed silently behind them—Gutsy kept the hinges oiled for that purpose—and they stood listening. It was one of the few places she could go where there was no sound at all. The walls and windows were thick, and not a bird’s peep or a cricket’s chirp could be heard. No human voices either, which was nice. Except for her two friends, and occasional conversations with the Chess Players, Gutsy preferred silence so she could listen to her own thoughts. Sombra walked a few yards along the hall, sniffing at the floor or lifting his head to sniff the air. His body language told Gutsy that he was calm. Good.
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