Sam snorted. “Since when did you become an optimist?”
“Always was, brother,” said Ledger. “Always was.”
They set off at the fastest speed that a tired horse, a tired dog, and two tired old soldiers could manage.
87
THE DEAD THING CLAWED ITS way to the top of the wall and reached for Gutsy.
“Not a chance, sweetheart,” growled Alethea, and bashed it with Rainbow Smite before Gutsy could react. The creature was one of the smarter ones, and it tried to grab the bat—proving to Alethea that it was not quite smart enough. The impact sent it flying backward off the wall. “Buh-bye!” Alethea laughed out loud and swung at another withered gray face.
Gutsy did not smile as she fought. Every inhuman face she saw seemed to have a human and conscious one painted over it. Her whirling mind convinced her that she saw the pleading in those dead eyes.
And yet, she fought. There was no other choice.
Her crowbar was smeared with black and red blood, and her arm ached from each and every blow she’d delivered. She did not keep track of the number of los muertos she’d fought. Eight, so far? Maybe ten. Even though it was one at a time, the total exertion was incredible, and it would have been bad enough if she hadn’t run all those miles in the dark. Sombra crouched beside her, terrified and furious in equal measure. Gutsy did not want him to fight, because she didn’t know what would happen if the coydog bit an infected. Would he be okay? Would he become one of the living dead animals people reported seeing? Would he become a carrier even if he didn’t become infected? Or would he get sick and die? It was clear the animal wanted to fight, but he obeyed Gutsy’s commands. So far, at least.
The last time she risked a look over the wall to see if she could spot Alice on the street below, the girl was gone. She did see Karen and two of her guards standing firm between a group of old people and kids and a pack of fast-infected. Karen carried a pump shotgun and fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, getting head shots every time because the monsters were too close to miss. The children screamed and hid behind their grandparents.
There was another fight farther along the street, and Gutsy was surprised to see Mr. Cuddly walking almost casually toward some oncoming shamblers, firing a pair of what looked like old-fashioned cowboy six-shooters. His face was completely devoid of expression—not fear, not stress, not joy—as he killed a monster with each shot. He handled the guns with an icy precision, and Gutsy did not believe that his skill came only from battles since the End. Maybe the rumors about him were true, and he used to be a gangster. Maybe even an assassin. He was cold enough.
His wife was nearby, and she had a heavy meat tenderizer mallet in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. Her clothes were splashed with dark blood and there was a trail of crumpled los muertos behind her.
Gutsy grinned, liking the two of them for the first time. Mrs. Cuddly looked up and their eyes met, and then she looked past Gutsy to where Spider and Alethea fought. The woman nodded as if pleased. Then she went back to killing.
It was all surreal.
Not everyone in town was doing as well. There were bodies here and there, and a few were twitching their way back from whatever dark waiting room lay on the other side of death. They rose and stalked forward to join the fight. With a breaking heart, Gutsy saw that one of them was a teenage girl a year younger than her who lived at the Cuddly place. Mrs. Cuddly hesitated before striking her. In that moment, the girl threw herself at the older woman and they went down in a thrashing tangle behind a parked wagon.
Gutsy spun away, sickened and horrified. She rushed to the other side of the catwalk and looked to see hundreds of the dead funneling through the corridor of cars. The outer gate stood open and topped by ravagers. Only the inner gate was still shut, but more of the killers were climbing up the walls. The town was being attacked from all angles. Smoke rose from fires that she couldn’t see, and it was impossible to tell if the ravagers were starting fires, or if lamps in town had fallen. Either way, that created an even worse problem.
Armed guards flanked where she and her friends fought, and Gutsy was happy to see that they were picking their targets and conserving their ammunition. Panic was always nipping at the edge of everyone’s awareness. There were a thousand people on the walls, but every time one fell, it left a gap through which the faster dead and the ravagers poured through.
Below, in the streets, the rest of the townsfolk fought for their lives.
How can we win this? Gutsy wondered as she wiped blood on her jeans to allow her a better grip on the crowbar. Over the years she’d thought of a hundred good ideas for defending the town, but no one ever took her seriously. Most of those ideas were long-range, requiring time and coordinated effort, like a moat around the town filled with thousands of sharpened spikes or pieces of jagged rebar. Or a network of wires and ropes that would create a kind of maze and barrier. The shamblers wouldn’t have the brains to climb over them, and the smarter ones, fewer in number, could be picked off by archers or armed guards working in teams.
Dozens of ideas like that.
This was an immediate problem, though. What could she do right now?
The guard to her right suddenly cried out, and in same instant Gutsy heard a shot. She whirled to see the guard stagger, weapon falling, hands clutching his throat. He stumbled backward and fell from the wall. Into the town.
It was the third guard shot in the chest or throat. No head shots, even though the ravagers had rifles. Why not? In a flash of insight, she realized that the shot was probably not accidental. Not where it was aimed, at least.
They’re not just shooting to kill. They’re creating a new part of their army inside the walls.
Every person who died reanimated as one of los muertos, and that was math that didn’t require Spider’s counting skills.
We’re going to lose this fight, thought Gutsy with dreadful clarity. We’re all going to die.
88
“GUTSY,” CRIED SPIDER, “WATCH OUT!”
She spun to see a pair of burly ravagers running at her. One had a fire ax and the other was inserting a fresh magazine into an assault rifle. Behind her, Spider and Alethea were desperately battling a wave of fast-infected who were swarming over the wall.
Sombra started forward, but Gutsy hip-checked him out of the way, fearing for him even though it meant she was going to die. The ravager with the rifle raised it, a nasty grin on his face, and aimed the weapon dead center at her chest. She was too far away. Even Sombra was too far away.
She snarled and rushed him anyway. If death wanted to take her, then death would have to work for it. With a howl of rage, she charged the ravagers.
Then the head of the ravager with the gun exploded.
It was very immediate and nasty and wet. The body simply puddled down and the rifle clattered to the catwalk. The other ravager paused, gaping at his comrade. There was no accompanying gunshot, but nothing except a heavy-caliber bullet could have done that much damage.
For a split second the ravager and Gutsy stared at the corpse and then at each other. The second burned away, and Gutsy swung her crowbar at the ravager before he could raise his ax. There was a lot of fear and rage and even hopelessness powering that blow. It shattered the ravager’s elbow, sending the ax flying over his shoulder. Gutsy gave the killer no time, no chance. She lashed out with a kick to the knee so savage that it bent his leg backward with a sound like a dry tree limb snapping. As he canted sideward, she jumped into the air and put every ounce of body weight behind a vicious swing to his head. He went down, smashed flat, the unnatural life crushed out of him.
Gutsy landed, turned, and rushed to help her friends but jerked to a stop as a third ravager pulled himself over the edge of the catwalk and fired a pistol at her. Or tried to. As he raised the gun, his head exploded with the same awful force.
She never heard that shot either.
Another ravager fell a second later with the whole lower part of his face disi
ntegrating into a red-black cloud of mist.
89
“NICE SHOT,” SAID JOE LEDGER.
Sam Imura lay on a hummock, his sniper rifle steady on a bipod. Six loaded magazines stood in a row on a clean piece of cloth, ready to hand.
Sam ignored him as he worked the slide and fired, worked the slide and fired.
“Sam, look,” said Ledger, and pointed to where a very tall ravager was walking along the entrance corridor with several other ravagers flanking him like guards. “Is that the Raggedy Man, d’you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Sam sighted at him through his scope. “No clear shot.”
“It’s all good,” said Ledger. He patted Grimm on his armored head, drew his sword, and said, “My turn.”
90
THE RUSTED SIGN SAID TEXAS ROSE CAR WASH.
The place looked deserted, abandoned. It was a single-story block building squatting just off the main highway. Junked cars lay where they’d died when the EMPs blew out the fuses for the world. There were bones among the weeds. In all it looked like ten thousand places Benny and the others had seen out here in the Ruin. Proof that life had existed here once, but further proof that it had passed away.
The four teens circled it with their quads and then stopped outside. Silence fell as they killed their engines and dust clouds wandered off into the night.
The left side of the building was, indeed, a car wash, with brushes and a conveyor belt and hoses. To the right were two service bays for oil changes and tire rotations, as advertised on signs partly covered with creeper vines. The far right-hand side was an office and store with glass grimed to opacity.
“Are you sure this is the place?” asked Chong. “Kind of looks like nothing much at all.”
Benny shrugged. “It’s what he said.”
“Yes,” said Lilah. “This is the place.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Nix.
Instead of answering, Lilah dismounted, took her spear, and approached the first of the two service bays. The others followed, weapons in hand.
Chong saw it first and grunted. Benny and Nix saw it soon after.
There was a bloody handprint on the edge of the entrance. Fresh blood. Red blood. Not the blacker blood of the dead. They heard the moan a moment later and a figure lumbered out of the darkness. He wore a military uniform and held a pistol loosely in a slack hand. He was dead, much of his face and throat torn away.
A second figure moved into view behind him. A woman in a similar uniform. One of her hands had been bitten off. Moonlight could not reach very far into the service bay, but far enough to see the blood spatter from a battle. Three zoms lay on the ground, their bodies stitched with bullet holes. Beyond them, strips of pale light revealed the shape of a door that stood partly open. The light looked electric rather than like firelight.
“The entrance,” cried Nix.
The two dead soldiers reached for them. Benny took one; Nix took the other. Identical flashes of silver and then heads fell with melon wetness to the concrete. They went inside. A third soldier lay on the floor, undead, but crippled by a spine injury. Lilah quieted him.
The door was one-half of a big set of double doors about eight feet wide. Benny and Chong took positions with their hands on the handles. Nix sheathed her sword and drew her pistol, and Lilah did as well. Nix nodded to the boys and they pulled the doors wide.
Behind the door was a corridor ten feet wide that ran on and angled down. Electric lights showed the way, and they showed the damage. There were bodies everywhere. Soldiers, zoms, and the leather-clad ravagers. Blood spatter marked the spots of individual deaths. It was a diorama of bloody destruction.
From far away, down deep in the tunnel and out of sight, they heard a few sporadic gunshots, plaintive screams, and the relentless moans of the hungry dead.
Benny studied the tunnel and then went outside to examine the landscape. When he came back, he said, “The soldier was right. This tunnel goes right toward the town.”
Even from nearly two miles away they all heard the sounds of gunfire and screams rolling across the night-darkened desert. They could see the lights of New Alamo.
“You want us to go running down there?” asked Nix.
“No. I want us to go driving down there,” replied Benny. “I think we can get the quads in there pretty easily.”
“Only single file,” said Chong. “We can’t drive and fight at the same time. Not even Lilah can keep that up.”
“Then we double up,” said Benny. “One person drives, the other shoots. Nix and Lilah are the best shots, so you and me’ll drive.”
“I don’t like it.”
Lilah snorted. “Too late for that, Town Boy.”
“We have all these guns we took from the prison,” said Nix. “We can clear the tunnel and have plenty left over for the people in town. Bet they could use some.”
Chong sighed, nodded, and turned around to go fetch his quad. The others ran to catch up. They buddy-checked each other’s armor. Nix gave Benny a tight hug and climbed onto the back of his machine. Lilah kissed Chong hard enough to make his knees weak, then laughed while he fired his engine.
Benny leaned close to his friend. “That’s what you’re fighting for, dude.”
“Yes,” said Chong, managing a smile. “I know.”
91
GUTSY HAD NO IDEA WHERE the shooter was who had saved her life twice now. From the way the ravagers’ bodies jerked as they died, she was almost certain the shots came from outside the walls. But that made no sense.
Everything around her was madness, and it made it hard to be sure of anything at all. Screams and moans competed to dominate the air around and above New Alamo. Shouts, too. And the grating, mocking laughter of the ravagers.
Alethea and Spider were working as a team, each of them covered in gore, dripping with sweat, and wild-eyed with fear. Alethea caught her looking and gave her a manic grin. She blew a strand of hair out of her face, straightened her tiara, turned, and bashed a fast-infected in the face.
A scream pulled Gutsy’s attention, and she raced to the other side of the catwalk and looked down to see something that chilled her to the bone. Five of the shamblers were closing in around a girl who backed away, holding a length of black pipe like a baseball bat, but caught in a moment of indecision, clearly uncertain which enemy to attack first. Aware that the others would fall on her at once.
The girl was Alice.
“No!” bellowed Gutsy, and before she knew she was going to do it, she was running for the stairs. Sombra following, barking furiously. Gutsy jumped down the last few steps, landed running. Sombra shot past her and leaped at one of the shamblers, slamming into its back to send it crashing face-forward to the hard ground. He did not bite the creature, though, and jumped at another, knocking it down.
That was when Gutsy understood that the coydog had been trained for this. Trained for combat with the infected dead. It sent a thrill of excitement through her, and she caught up and smashed the heads of both los muertos with her crowbar.
The other dead turned at the sound and movement, and Alice took that moment to hit one with her pipe. It was a very hard shot, but the monster was too tall and the pipe hit its shoulder, bounced up, and only grazed its skull. The thing turned and grabbed for her, baring its teeth for a bite.
Gutsy bashed reaching arms aside and hit another living dead in the forehead, driving it to its knees while beside her Sombra knocked the fifth one down. Gutsy ignored that one and attacked the monster who was clawing at Alice’s clothes.
She hit that one very, very hard.
Its shattered skull snapped sideways on a broken neck and it fell away into a motionless heap. The fallen dead thing hit in the forehead started to get up, but Sombra bit down on its pants cuff and jerked it backward. It fell on its chest, and Gutsy smashed the skull.
Five seconds, five dead.
Alice gaped at her, the pipe forgotten in her hands. “Gutsy,” she gasped, “you�
�re amazing.”
Despite everything and all the violent madness around her, Gutsy felt her cheeks begin to burn.
92
THEY WERE OLD AND THEY felt their years, but Mr. Urrea and Mr. Ford stepped up to face the oncoming storm of the dead.
The Chess Players were dressed in makeshift armor—Dallas Cowboys football helmets, hockey pads, SWAT team vests, and antique weapons looted from a museum. Ford carried a medieval horseman’s ax, and Urrea had a Swiss longsword from the early sixteenth century. The weapons were pitted with rust, but they had been sharpened and had already proven their effectiveness. Bodies lay all around them.
They stood in the street in front of the general store. Behind them, crouching in the shelter of barrels of grain and kegs of beer, were dozens of children, pregnant women, the disabled, and people too old to fight. Fights raged up and down the street, and so far every one of the ravagers, shamblers, and fast-infected who had come hunting for the innocent had died there on the street.
“Eleven,” said Ford, panting for breath during a lull.
“What?” asked Urrea.
“I got eleven. You got nine.”
“What are you talking about? I killed the two crawlers,” he said, pointing to infected who had been crippled in some other part of the fight but who’d clawed their way across the street to join this battle.
“You can’t count them,” insisted Ford.
“The heck I can’t.”
“Okay, so maybe those two count as one. That still leaves you with ten. I’m winning. I’m Legolas.”
“What?”
“Legolas,” said Ford, “Lord of the Rings. Remember the Battle of Helm’s Deep? He and Gimli kept a tally? Legolas killed the most orcs.”
“You’re delusional,” said Urrea. “Besides, I’m Legolas.”
“How do you figure that?”
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