Lost roads, p.11
Lost Roads, page 11
Gutsy turned and looked at the tunnel doors, which were a dozen feet behind them. Ledger and Grimm were holding the line, but if they turned to run, the horde would pour in and overwhelm them before they could get to the tunnel. And even if they somehow managed it, the doors might not hold. The reality chilled her to the marrow.
They were going to lose.
“No!” she growled, and leaped forward, swinging the machete, cutting with the heavy blade. Sombra, confused about what he should do, retreated to the wall and crouched there, tail between his legs, shivering and wretched.
Each blow of the machete did awful damage to reaching arms or howling faces, but cleaving through muscle and bone sent painful shocks up Gutsy’s arm. They battled on, and time lost all meaning. Her arms moved, her feet adjusted to drive power into each blow or shifted to yield ground. Breath burned in her throat, and her heart beat like a snare drum.
“Gutsy,” roared Ledger, “retreat left.”
At first it seemed like a crazy suggestion, because to go left would be to move between the wall and the rusted heap of a delivery van, which was the long way to the tunnel. But then she understood. The van was parked close to the wall, which gave only a narrow alley for the attackers to come at them two or three at a time. The longer way to the tunnel was the safer, smarter choice. Maybe the only possible choice.
All of this flashed through Gutsy’s mind, and she began edging that way. The shrieking horde followed.
They’re not smart, Gutsy thought as she swung her blade with each sideways and backward step. They want to kill us so much that they can’t plan the best way to do it.
Even as she fought, Gutsy’s logical mind was assessing and evaluating. The intelligence of these creatures was greater than the shamblers—evident by their use of weapons—but less than the ravagers, who could plan and strategize. She also noticed that none of the ones she fought had obvious bite marks. Virtually all shamblers did, because that was usually how they died. Ravagers had some, but not always. These new mutations—if that’s what they were—had none.
A killer swung a broken broom handle at her, and as Gutsy ducked, she chopped down on his foot. The thing toppled over and screamed, but whether it was in pain or frustration, Gutsy couldn’t tell. Although not badly injured, the fallen attacker caused two more of them to trip over him. Gutsy took one across the back of the neck, and Grimm ripped the other apart. A few feet to the left, Ledger was burning through his last magazine. There were heaps of dead now, but more seemed to be coming out of nowhere, drawn by the noise of combat. They tripped over corpses and crawled forward, compelled by their awful bloodlust.
The only advantage Gutsy, Ledger, and Grimm had was how tight the space was for the fight. If this attack had taken place in the open, they would have been overwhelmed already. Here, though, the infected had to come at them in a half circle, and the floor was littered with their own dead, creating obstacles. Grimm further disrupted things by hurling his bulk against the legs of undamaged killers, breaking bones and dropping them before slashing their throats and faces with his shoulder spikes.
Ledger’s magazine was spent, and, without the slightest pause, he rammed the empty pistol into the face of one of the maniacs, kicked another in the hip so that it fell back against two others, and drew his sword with movement fast as lightning. Suddenly the air was filled with drops of red as the attackers seemed to fly apart.
One of the killers dove at Gutsy, but she twisted around and chopped down with the blade. The lunge turned into a fall, and Gutsy smashed down with the butt of the machete.
“Into the tunnel!” roared Ledger as he backed away, losing ground step by desperate step. “Get ready to close the doors!”
Behind them, the big set of double doors stood slightly ajar, and beyond that was the slope that led down from the fake office of the Texas Rose Car Wash to the corridor that ran straight to a secret entrance in the hospital. It was the only possible way out, but they had to get inside and pull those doors closed.
Gutsy had no choice; she had to retreat, but these savage living dead were everywhere. Some were clearly smarter than their fellows, and these few seemed to understand what she was doing. Their howls changed in pitch as four of them tried to circle her. Gutsy swung her weapon with all her strength. Pain bloomed like heat in her shoulders and lower back, and her breath rasped out of her. There was no time to rest.
Then the blade of her machete missed a killer as an infected woman leaned back to evade the blow. None of los muertos had ever done that before, and even the ravagers were often incapable or unwilling to get out of harm’s way. But this female soldier did it, and as a result Gutsy’s blade struck the thigh of the maniac next to her and lodged tight in a heavy femur bone. The infected woman grinned like a ghoul, grabbed the handle of the blade, and tore it from Gutsy’s grasp with such force that it knocked Gutsy off balance. She fell onto a killer whose skull she’d crushed. The monsters howled in delight and rushed to leap on her.
But something struck the infected woman like a missile, driving her back into the others.
Sombra.
Somehow the coydog had fought past his own terror and helplessness, for her. Or maybe there was only so far the dog part could go before the feral coyote emerged. The coydog’s powerful jaws snapped, and the female soldier’s reaching arm was suddenly handless.
“Noooooooo!” screamed Gutsy. To bite the dead meant that infected blood and tissue were now in the animal’s mouth. In Sombra’s saliva.
The coydog had reverted to pure predator, shedding its concern for its own life in order to protect the first human who’d shown him kindness. It was an act of both animal savagery and of love.
Gutsy, riding on the edge of panic, snatched up her machete, shook off the dead hand that still gripped it, rose to her feet, and attacked. If her coydog was going to die, then it would not be in vain. She swung and smashed and cut and chopped, and the screaming infected fell before her.
Ledger was fighting now with his katana, and the sword was a glittering blur, as if he was painting the air with molten silver. He body-blocked Gutsy sideways, knocking her toward the van, and then stepped in front of her. Grimm smashed into anyone who tried to grab her. Gutsy lost sight of Sombra and screamed.
“Get inside!” roared Ledger. “Try to get one of the doors closed!” When Gutsy didn’t move, he shifted his sword to one hand and pushed her through the open doorway with the other. She stumbled and fell a few feet down the slope, caught the bannister, and ran back up to grab the edge of one heavy door. Ledger backed into the entrance, then stepped aside like a matador to allow Grimm to pass by. There wasn’t enough room, however, and one of the dog’s spikes slashed a vicious red line across Ledger’s thigh. He cried out as blood poured down his leg, but he kept fighting the relentless monsters pressing forward.
“Sombra!” wailed Gutsy, but she could not see the dog. The cries of the infected seemed to blow past her like the wind and filled the stone corridor with horror.
It was all Ledger could do to stay on his feet and fight, but he wasn’t able to close the door because too many of the infected crowded around him. Gutsy ran back up the slope, chopping with the heavy machete, hitting faces and chests and hips, knocking several of them away from the soldier. It gave her the chance to grab the handle of one of the two big doors and push it shut. It clicked into place, but the other was open, the way blocked by a huge soldier who kept trying to grab Ledger’s clothes and hair and wrists.
Then, abruptly, Ledger staggered backward and down as a smoky four-legged body hurled itself over him and through the doorway. Sombra struck Gutsy, and the two of them fell backward down the slope, being brutalized by every inch of the concrete ramp. Gutsy wrapped her arms around Sombra as they rolled. The collision tore yelps from her and the coydog, and then the corridor floor punched the air out of her lungs. Grimm jumped over them, skidding on the concrete floor. He scrambled around and started back toward the ramp to help his master, but there was a loud whooom as Ledger slammed the other door shut.
There was a moment of stillness and silence.
“Will it hold?” whispered Gutsy.
As if in cruel answer, the mass of the howling killers slammed into the doors. They bowed inward against the locks. The doors held, but dust puffed out from around the hinges.
Ledger didn’t need to answer her question. He threw his weight against the door just as the second impact hit. The whole tunnel seemed to tremble. Cracks splintered outward from the hinges.
“Run,” he gasped, pushing back against the press of all those bodies.
“Let’s go,” she said, but then the horror of what he meant hit her. He wanted her to run.
“Come on,” she pleaded. “We can both make it.”
“Not with this leg, kid,” he said. “They’d bust through and catch me before I got a quarter of the way up the tunnel.”
“Lean on me,” she begged. “I can help you.”
“Sure, and maybe we’d get halfway there before they swarmed us.” Ledger wiped sweat from his eyes. There was a bleak acceptance in his face, and it broke her heart to think that someone who’d fought so long, won so many battles, would simply die down here in the dark like this. He caught her studying him and gave her a fierce grin. “Everybody dies sometime. At least I can buy you enough time to get all the way to the other end. Block it solid. The door there should hold. Forget this tunnel. If things go bad, find some other way to get everyone out of town. Now come on—go!”
Gutsy felt the horror of it rise up inside of her. A dozen bad reasons to stay with him filled her mind. Grimm growled softly, and Sombra whimpered.
“I’m sorry,” cried Gutsy.
Then she turned and ran.
36
SPIDER SAT IN A CHAIR in the empty storage room. His bo was on the floor and his chin propped on his fists as he stared a hole into the middle of his thoughts.
When they’d come back from seeing the two California girls off, he lingered to wait for Gutsy. He didn’t mind that they seemed to be taking their sweet time. Being alone was okay with him. Especially now.
He felt strange. Stranger than usual, and Spider generally felt strange. Most of the time it was a matter of feeling like he did not belong in New Alamo. Not in the Cuddlys’ orphanage, not in school, not in town. The more people thought he was an oddball, the odder he wanted to become. He was aware that he was unlike anyone he’d ever met—partly because of how he looked. When the town was formed, built on the bones of a detention facility for what were called undocumented workers, the population had been mostly made up of white people, Latinos, and a few Native Americans. Very, very few African Americans, and no one at all in the community with skin as dark as his.
As he sat, he brooded on how everything was changing. And how those events were changing him. For years he’d trained with the bo until he could make the stave spin like a whirlwind. He’d sparred with Alethea and Gutsy, went out into the Broken Lands and fought a hundred mock battles with dead trees, withered cacti, and even old bones set like targets on rusted car hoods. He’d imagined a thousand battles.
Now he’d fought in two actual battles. Actual life and death. The fact that the victims were the living dead didn’t matter.
He had killed. He was a killer. A shiver rippled through his thin body.
How did people deal with having committed violence? It was a question he couldn’t answer. He knew that fighting had done him some harm. Maybe lasting harm. And Spider was afraid that the person he’d been, the person he liked being, might have been beaten to death by his own weapon.
He tried not to look at the bo on the floor. He did not blame it, of course. The staff was only a tool. But looking at it seemed to trigger the most vivid memories and all the feelings associated with those fights. It was like looking at his own guilt.
He wondered if anything could ever make him want to touch that stick again. Maybe he’d break it up and use the splinters for something good. Stakes for new tomato plants. Tools to dig in the dirt, looking for spiders. Kindling to light a happy fire on a cold desert night. Or—
“Help!”
The scream came from far away, bouncing through the open doors of the fake cabinet, twisted from the concrete corridor that led to the Broken Lands.
It was Gutsy.
Screaming.
Spider exploded from the chair and snatched up his bo, running to help his friend.
37
GUTSY SAW SPIDER RUNNING TOWARD her.
“No!” she yelled, waving frantically at him. “Go back! Get help!”
Spider’s feet outran his ability to understand her words or warning. By the time he got to Gutsy, she grabbed his shirt and, in a voice so ragged she barely recognized it as her own, told him what happened. Then she shoved him back the way he’d come. Spider was confused, but he didn’t waste time trying to sort it all out. Instead he whirled around and raced back to town.
Gutsy turned, too. Sombra stood beside her, reading her intent. He began barking at her, scolding her. Warning her.
“No,” said Gutsy. Growling out the word. “No.”
She wheeled and ran back to Captain Ledger.
38
“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU doing here?” roared Ledger. “I told you to get to safety. To warn everyone.”
“Spider’s doing that,” said Gutsy as she threw her weight against the door. The concrete around the hinges was crumbling, and the stacks of canned goods were vibrating their way inward. Gutsy shoved them back, trying to toughen the wall, but she knew—as Ledger did—that if the hinges failed, then the crates would not be enough.
“This door’s not going to hold,” warned Ledger. “Go barricade the far end of the tunnel.”
Gutsy looked at the crates that still lined the hall. The wood was pine. Not very strong. But an idea sprang into her head.
“Hold on,” she said, and launched herself from the trembling doors. She grabbed a case of canned pinto beans with both hands, turned it, and dropped it. The case landed on the point of one corner and instantly broke apart, sending cans bouncing and rolling everywhere. Gutsy snatched up two slats and chopped the ends into sharp tapers with her machete. She repeated this with several other pieces until she had a small pile of wooden shims.
Watching, Ledger began to grin. “You are one smart freaking kid.”
Gutsy took a shim and stuck the tapered end into the crack between door and frame. It didn’t slide in easily, but she managed to force it, hammering it in with the butt end of her machete handle. It only went in a couple of inches and stopped, jammed solid.
She grabbed another shim and repeated the action on the far side of the doorway.
“Between the doors, too,” said Ledger. “And underneath. Use them like doorstops.”
The reinforcement was not going to stop the maniacs from breaking down the door, but it would definitely slow them down.
“Will this hold long enough?” Gutsy asked, but then followed Ledger’s gaze to the cracks around all the hinges.
“Crates,” he said, and immediately they grabbed crates of food and began stacking them against the door, building row on top of row. He stacked them higher and she added extra rows until there was a slanted wall, like one side of a pyramid. The two dogs barked and snarled at the things outside. There were not enough to cover both of the big doors, but maybe enough to keep the doors from being smashed in.
The pounding on the other side of the doors was getting more furious, and the hinges were grinding their way out of the stone. It was obvious to Gutsy that if they left now, they’d never make it to safety—and a fight midway along the tunnel would be suicide.
They both leaned their weight against a part of one door that wasn’t blocked by boxes. With every impact Gutsy could feel the shock wave go right through her. It felt like punches to the heart.
She heard Ledger hiss and looked down to see him tear open his pant leg. The cut from Grimm’s spoke was deep and bleeding freely. She glanced at the dog and saw that almost all of his spikes glistened with the dark blood of those howling monsters. Her eyes met Ledger’s, and again there was that fatalistic acceptance.
“Yup,” he said, “there’s a pretty good chance I’m infected.”
“No…”
Ledger sighed and leaned his head back to rest it against the crates, gritting his teeth each time the killers slammed into the doors. “Be almost funny if that was how I went out after all the stuff I’ve dealt with.”
“God, how can you even joke about that?” cried Gutsy, appalled.
Another massive strike made the wood around one of the hinges crack loud as a gunshot.
“Who’s joking?”
Before she could answer, both dogs began barking. They turned toward the long corridor and—to Gutsy’s enormous relief—began wagging their tails.
In the distance, way down the hall, Gutsy could see people running. A lot of them.
“Ah,” said Ledger without much excitement, “the cavalry.”
39
“HURRY,” SCREAMED GUTSY. “THEY’RE BREAKING through!”
As if to punctuate her fears, three of the wedges popped out from between one of the doors and the jamb as the next barrage struck. The top crates were vibrating, jerking inch by inch away from the assault.
The distant figures in the corridor resolved into shapes. Benny was out front, running like crazy, his sword in one hand; half a step behind him was Spider. Other people were coming, too: Karen and some of the reliable men and women from town. Coming fast, but still a long way down the tunnel.
“Gutsy,” warned Ledger, “get back. It’s giving way.”
She spun and slapped her hands onto the crates, trying to hold back what she could. The doors, battered and weary, finally split apart, breaking inward with such force that the shards punched the whole top row of crates off. Gutsy dove for Ledger, knocking the old soldier backward as the crates smashed down on where he’d been standing.
