As they milled around, turning on a lantern, checking the area and so on, they spoke very little, but enough so that Gutsy would recognize their voices again. She heard the white man call the woman “Cap,” and the Latino man called the black man “Loot.” Since they had a definite military air about them, Gutsy reasoned that the nicknames were short for captain and lieutenant. But . . . of what? There were people in town who used to be soldiers, of course, but none of them were active. How could they be? There was no army anymore. No air force, navy, or marines. And yet these four acted like there was an active chain of command, and they moved with precision.
Gutsy found that curious but also deeply disturbing. Then they removed their dusters and she saw that all four of them were wearing identical military uniforms. Neat, new, and professional.
“What the . . . ?” she murmured, then caught herself. The soldiers did not hear her, though. Gutsy hunkered down and studied them, making sure to commit every line, every detail to memory. These people were strangers to her. They did not look like maniacs, and definitely not ravagers. They looked calm, intelligent, and they moved with efficiency and purpose, but they could not be good people. Not if they were here, sneaking to her mother’s grave under cover of night. One of them tossed shovels to each of the others.
“Let’s dig this rat up and get back,” said the woman.
The words hit Gutsy with a one-two punch.
This rat.
Rat?
Gutsy felt a fierce and deadly outrage at the cold contempt they showed toward her mother’s body. That immediate reaction was swept away by a deeper realization triggered by what that word meant. Rat. Her mother’s dying words came back to hammer at her.
“The rat catchers are coming, mi corazón. Be careful. If they come for you . . . promise me you’ll run away and hide.”
Mama had been terrified when she said that.
“Ten cuidado. Mucho cuidado. Los cazadores de ratas vienen.”
“Oh my God,” breathed Gutsy as she realized that Mama’s words had not been conjured by the dark magic of a dying mind. Even while teetering on the edge of the drop into the big black, Mama had used her last breaths to try to warn her daughter about a very real threat. A real terror.
Take care, take great care . . . the hunters of rats are coming.
The Rat Catchers were real.
The Rat Catchers were the riders in town.
And the Rat Catchers were here.
PART SIX
RECLAMATION, CALIFORNIA
ONE WEEK EARLIER . . .
ROADBLOCK
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
—T. S. ELIOT, THE WASTE LAND
31
THE SIX QUADS DID NOT tear along at full speed.
This was the Rot and Ruin, after all, and it was not their world. They lived in it, but it belonged to a much larger, stranger, colder, and vastly more dangerous population. Calling it Tomsland did not mean that the gentleness and optimism of Benny Imura’s older brother somehow magically transformed everything out here into a garden full of hummingbirds and bunnies. Of that Benny was positive.
Once they were away from the trade routes that had been cut through the forests around Reclamation, they turned onto Route 140 West. That route took them away from the sprawling Yosemite National Park, because there were recent reports of swarms of zoms sweeping that area. Then the six of them made small turns onto various roads, heading toward Route 99 South, which they’d be on for over 130 miles. It was the clearest known route to go south to avoid the swarms and then east toward North Carolina. It also kept them well away from the nuclear wasteland of ash that was all that was left of Los Angeles 250 miles away.
Driving at half speed created a good balance between being able to outrun anything that came up behind them and being able to spot trouble ahead in time to react. The noise of the quads was a problem, though. The living dead were attracted by sound and movement.
Each of the six riders wore a carpet coat made from salvaged rugs and banded with leather, old electrical wire, and pieces of metal to protect the most vulnerable places. Lilah was the only one who wasn’t wearing hers and instead wore a heavy denim work shirt with dense plastic elbow, shoulder, and knee pads. They had football helmets strapped to the backs of their quads, ready to grab if things got weird.
Between the harsh sun and the carpet coats they were all sweating heavily, and that bothered Benny. Before setting out they’d each dribbled a few drops of cadaverine on their clothes and any bits of exposed skin. Cadaverine was a nasty-smelling molecule produced by protein hydrolysis during putrefaction of animal tissue, which was a survival fact they’d learned in school. The chemical made people smell like rotting corpses, and that usually—but not always—kept the hungry dead from targeting them as prey. As food. Zoms didn’t eat one another.
Sweat and the friction of the wind into which they drove at high speeds diluted the cadaverine, weakening it. They could only obtain so much of the chemical without raising eyebrows at home, and they had a long, long way to go. Every drop they used would be one less for the rest of the trip to Asheville.
Benny was driving point, leading the others by fifty yards, with Nix directly behind him. Lilah followed last to watch their backs. They all switched roles every two hours to allow fresh eyes in front and behind.
So, it was Benny who saw the problem first.
He slowed and raised a clenched fist. The drone of the other engines diminished at once and the convoy drew into a cluster, engines idling low.
“What is it?” asked Morgie, shading his eyes with a flat hand.
“Trouble,” said Benny.
Trouble it was.
There was a cluster of buildings on either side of the road ahead. On one side, there was the burned-out shell of a building with the cartoon heads of three smiling men on a sign above the words PEP BOYS. Several cars had long ago been pushed across the entrance to the parking lot, and there were enough scattered skeletons to tell Benny that someone had put up a good fight there. Or tried to.
On the other side of the street was a Shell station, a Starbucks, and a Denny’s. Benny knew what they were from the journey he, Chong, Nix, and Lilah had taken from home to Nevada. Gas, coffee, and food. All of them had been damaged by fire and were partially collapsed. Between the two scenes of destruction on opposite sides of the road were zoms.
At least fifty of them.
Some were dressed in the rags of ordinary clothes, a few wore the faded threads of old uniforms, but most of them—two-thirds at least—wore dark clothes with distinctive white symbols painted, drawn, or sewn onto their chests. Angels. Benny knew that even without having to use binoculars. Those zoms also had shaved heads covered with elaborate tattoos.
“Jeez,” breathed Chong.
“Reapers,” said Morgie.
“Dead reapers,” amended Chong, tugging at the neck fittings on his carpet coat. Sweat ran in lines down his cheeks, and his oddly colored face had flushed from grayish yellow to a kind of purple.
“Doesn’t make them any less scary or dangerous.”
“No,” agreed Chong, “it does not.”
Lilah’s lips moved as she counted them. “Sixty-three.”
“No,” said Riot, “there’s not that many . . . oh . . . wait . . .” She dug out her binoculars and swept the area, then saw another bunch standing in the shadows of a faded brown UPS truck. “Crap.”
Nix made a low hissing sound and they all turned toward the forest on their left. Fifteen years ago it had been the manicured decorative green space around a large, one-story white building. Only pieces of the walls still stood amid the aggressive weeds, young maples, scrub pines, and wildflowers that had escaped the boundaries of the landscaping, torn up the asphalt with root growth, and become a young for
est. Nature was patient but unstoppable. The weeds were eight feet tall in places, running wild and reaching for the sky. An inexperienced eye would think they shivered as winds blew through them. None of the six teenagers was inexperienced. The movement was not in harmony with the pattern of the wind.
Zoms were coming toward the sound of the quads and maybe the smell of fresh meat.
32
“WE HAVE TO GO BACK,” said Morgie.
“We can’t,” said Chong, pointing with a bony finger. “We can’t go back. Look.”
The others swung their binoculars back the way they’d come. Vague forms moved in bunches, their bodies distorted by heat haze. Zombies. So many zombies. The dead who had come shambling to the road because of the engine roar and who kept following the sound. A slow scan of both sides of the road revealed more zoms, seeming to come from everywhere.
To their right, Benny saw the hulking shape of a big blocky gray building behind a chain-link fence.
“Chong,” he said, “see the sign over by that building? What’s it say?”
Chong peered at it. “Valley State Prison,” he said slowly.
“That’s not good,” complained Morgie.
“Better than staying here,” said Benny.
Morgie pointed to the exhaust smoke curling up from the back of Benny’s machine. “Smell that? It’s all over us, and it stinks worse than the cadaverine. I don’t know that we’d make it through those biters.”
“Then we’ll need to go really fast,” said Riot. When Morgie tried to say something else, he was drowned out by the roar as Nix and Lilah revved their engines. He and Benny turned to see the girls exchange identical wild grins, slap the visors down on their helmets, turn their quads, and go roaring off across a field.
“Wait,” yelled Chong urgently. “Lilah—put your carpet coat on!”
But the Lost Girl could not hear him over the roar of her engine. Chong revved hard and kicked his machine forward, racing desperately to catch up. Benny shot Morgie a weak smile of encouragement and followed.
For a moment Riot and Morgie sat there on their machines, watching the others go.
“We’re all going to die out here,” said Morgie.
Riot laughed as she pulled her helmet off the back and fitted it over her bald head.
“Everybody dies somewhere. Don’t be a baby.”
Then she was gone.
Even so, Morgie lingered, looking at his friends, then back in the direction of home.
“Damn,” he breathed, and gunned his engine just as the weeds parted beside the road and three dead reapers stepped out, reaching for him with gray hands. He left them in a cloud of smoke and kicked-up dust.
33
THEY BUMPED AND THUMPED ACROSS the field, cutting around the wrecks of dead cars, avoiding the reach of dead hands. There were old bones hidden by the weeds, and Benny heard them crunch and snap as his wheels rolled over them.
The chain-link fence looked mostly intact, and the gates were closed. That could mean that they’d be safe once inside, but nothing was certain. The prison could be filled with thousands of the dead, either locked in their cells or wandering free.
“Benny,” cried Nix, “watch out!”
Benny twisted in his seat as something rushed at him from behind the corner of an overturned golf cart. There was a flash of milky-dead eyes and the snap of gray teeth, but he ducked under it and bashed his arm upward and back, knocking away the hands that tried to snatch him from the quad. The zom stumbled back into the path of Lilah’s machine, but the Lost Girl let go of her handlebars, raised her spear, and slashed as she cut sharply to the left. The empty eyes of the zom showed no trace of pain or surprise as the head leaped into the air. The body collapsed at once and the head rolled into the weeds.
The Lost Girl immediately released one hand from the weapon and grabbed for the handlebar, but it was too late. The right front wheel of her quad struck the edge of a thick, half-buried thigh bone and that side of the machine lifted, trapped by momentum. The engine roared as the quad leaned drunkenly over on two wheels. Lilah leaned hard to the right to try to save it, and Chong zoomed up and bumped his quad into the left rear of her vehicle. Lilah’s quad thumped down hard onto four wheels, but the jolt pitched her out of the saddle. She spun in the air, screaming, the spear pinwheeling over her. She crashed down between two of the dead, who spun toward her, reaching for the meal delivered to them with such unexpected force. The spear struck point-first into the ground and stuck quivering, ten feet too far away.
Benny saw all this over his shoulder, immediately jammed himself into a sliding, skidding, shrieking turn, and was blinded by his own dust plume. He jumped free of his quad and whipped his sword from its scabbard in an overhand draw that drew a line of silver fire through the dust. A hulking gray figure, naked except for one work boot, lunged for him and Benny cut through both arms below the elbow, then pivoted on the balls of his feet as he ducked low and sliced through both shins. The blade was razor sharp and Benny had trained hundreds upon hundreds of hours since inheriting the sword from Tom. The zom fell and Benny leaped over it. Quieting it could come later; Lilah was in danger right now.
As he burst out of the cloud and into the clear air, he saw how bad it was. Lilah was down in the weeds, wrestling with one zom and trying to fend another off with savage kicks of her sneakered feet. Blood completely covered one side of her face, and her mouth was twisted with pain and fury.
The truth of what was happening hit Benny like a baseball bat upside the head, and it meant that his earlier fear had come true. The cadaverine had worn off. The zoms came at them without hesitation and with a ravenous, unstoppable aggression.
Chong was nearby, fighting against a zom who must have been a basketball player before he died. Somehow he had lost his helmet, and his eyes were wild. The creature was nearly seven feet tall and moved with unnerving speed to not only try to grab Chong, but to evade counterattacks. Benny’s heart sank. This was one of the rare faster zoms, the ones either fully or partially infected with the mutagen. There was thought, planning, intelligence—however primitive—in its actions. Chong’s bow and arrows were still on his quad, and he fought with a bokken—a hardwood training sword. Unlike Nix and Benny, Chong preferred the wooden sword to sharpened steel.
Nix was fighting her way toward Chong, but there were zoms coming in from everywhere. Most were slow.
Some were not.
None, though, were as fast as the giant who was winning its fight against Chong.
The other quads were spaced out across the field. Riot and Morgie were way over to the right, more in line with the prison gate but farther back. Benny was torn between helping Lilah and rescuing Chong. He was sure they were both going to lose their fights.
“Nix!” he screamed as he peeled off toward Lilah. She was fighting two of them and was clearly hurt. As he tore across the bone-littered ground, Benny prayed that he hadn’t just killed his best friend.
Then he had no time for thinking.
There were three zombies closing in on the struggling form of Lilah. Of the two on the ground with her, she’d kicked one in the face so many times that its jaw hung loose and shattered, with rotted teeth falling all around. And yet it still tried to bite her.
The other zom had one handful of Lilah’s hair and with the other was pawing at her, trying to grab her throat.
Benny launched himself into a flying kick, catching the left-most zom square on the belt buckle. The impact propelled the zom backward and Benny landed on the balls of his feet, nearly fell face-first into the dirt, used his sword as a momentary brace, and turned a fall into a run. How he managed to keep hold of his sword he could never tell. He slashed with the blade, and the broken-jawed zom reeled back with the top three inches of its skull leaping up to expose a worm-infested brain. It collapsed down and Benny spun to try to take the other, but with her feet free, Lilah rolled onto her upper back, locked her ankles around the other zom’s neck, and snapped downward w
ith such force that the creature’s neck broke like a dry stick. Lilah got to her feet, snatched up the spear, and with a series of cuts so fast they were nothing but a blur, tore the zombies apart.
Then she screamed as she saw Chong go down behind his quad, crushed beneath a wave of the dead.
“If he dies,” she snarled at Benny as she broke into a run, “I’ll kill you.”
Fair enough, thought Benny, and ran to catch up.
The day, spinning downward, continued to fall.
34
LILAH ROARED OUT A SCREAM like a viking warrior from one of the old books Benny had read. Her clothes were in tatters, her face was painted bright red with blood, her pale hair whipped around her as she leaped into the air with her spear. The blade slashed down before she landed, the cut powered by her dropping weight and furious muscular strength. A zombie head flew and a zombie arm fell. Lilah spun the spear into a lateral cut that sent another undead monster toppling away, its jaw sheared off. Lilah kicked another in the side of the head, knocking it away from the struggling form beneath it.
The giant zombie fell back with a deep cut through the muscles and tendons of its right thigh, but it did not go all the way down. It swiped at Lilah, and there was a terrible light in its eyes as if the sight of someone so unprotected awoke the darkest of hungers. Lilah shifted away, engaging one of the zoms still trying to bite Chong, and the giant’s fingers closed—for the moment—on empty air.
Then Benny was there, and so was Nix, who seemed to come out of nowhere. They chopped at the living dead like fiends, like demons, and the dead fell before them. Benny cut a zom in half above the waist and shouldered another out of the way. He saw Chong’s face, gray with terror, eyes wild as he held his bokken like a barrier to push a snapping set of teeth way from him. Benny dared not cut again so close to Chong, so he kicked, and kicked again, and again until the weight pressing down on his friend shifted. Then he grabbed Chong by the tough collar of his carpet coat and heaved backward, aided by Chong’s frenzied kicks. Nix and Lilah tore into the zoms who tried to snatch at Chong’s ankles.
Broken Lands Page 12
