Lost roads, p.25
Lost Roads, page 25
The gunfire from the walls diminished to a few sparse, desperate shots as most of the defenders deserted their posts.
“What do we do?” asked Spider. “We can’t stay here.”
Gutsy looked up at the crane, wishing she knew how to operate it. Wishing there was time to learn. The thought of using it to drop cars onto the reapers was compelling. Benny glanced up, too.
“Yeah,” he said, as if reading her mind. “I wish we had catapults, too.”
“Let’s go,” said Gutsy, turning away. “We need to get to the rally point. We need the Dòmi, and we need to get out of here.”
“We should have left right away,” said Spider. “As soon as you and Sergeant Holly got back.”
“I thought we’d have a little more time,” Gutsy said helplessly.
They’d just reached the edge of the platform when the night was split by a new sound. Gunfire, but different. It was a harsh, heavy rat-a-tat-tat.
“That’s a machine gun,” Benny cried as he ran back to the other side. He pointed. “Look!”
Out in the troubled darkness were uncountable flashes of orange flame seeming to come out of nowhere. Then two massive spouts of flame shot out, sending tongues of fire toward the reapers. The screams of the burning killers rose louder than any sound so far that night. The illumination from these streams of fire chased back the darkness, and the three teens stared in shock as four vehicles smashed their way through the ranks of los muertos, firing machine guns and flamethrowers.
“It’s Holly!” cried Spider.
Gutsy stared, her heart torn. The people who’d gone to the base had survived and returned.
But… with only four vehicles.
Not nearly enough.
82
THEY CLIMBED DOWN AND RAN to the west gate, which had been cleared by the flamethrowers, but as the vehicles raced inside the surviving reapers charged, backed by many thousands of the dead. It took everyone’s strength to close the gate in time.
Karen called bucket brigades up to douse the fires on the wall so they could continue defending the gate.
Sunny-Day Ray climbed out of one vehicle—it was called a Stryker Dragoon, a massive eight-wheeled monstrosity with a huge gun mounted on top.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
Sunny-Day Ray shook his head. “We got swarmed and had to split up. Not sure if the others made it, but they didn’t make it here, that’s for sure. We wouldn’t have either, except for that big Bushmaster up there.” He pointed to the gun. “Don’t matter if it’s a ravager or a shambler, ’cause that thing plum tears them all apart. Flamethrower’s pretty goldurn handy, too.”
He looked around and frowned. “You evacuating the town?”
“Trying to,” said Benny.
“Looks to me like you left ’er too late.”
“No kidding.”
“Work faster,” said Holly. She and one of the other drivers were handing out automatic rifles and bundles of loaded magazines to the people clustered around. “We saw a lot more coming.”
“We can hold them off for a while with these,” Spider said, pointing to the big machine guns mounted on the vehicles. “Can’t we?”
Holly and Sunny-Day Ray both shook their heads. “You ain’t been out there, Spider,” said the old man. “You ever heard the expression ‘between a rock and a hard place’?”
“Sure, but—”
“You seen the rock already. That big mook on that throne? That’s the Raggedy Man.”
“We know.”
“Well, what you don’t know is it weren’t them zombies made the convoy split up.”
“What do you mean?” asked Spider, but Gutsy clutched his wrist.
“He means the wild men are coming.”
“No,” said Sergeant Holly. “The wild men are already here.”
83
BROTHER MERCY TRIED TO FIND the rest of the strike team that had infiltrated the town with him and Sister Sorrow. He found only Brother Cactus and Sister Moon. The rest were scattered, doing their assigned tasks. He told the two he found about seeing the wild men. They were aghast. They knew about Wodewose from the ravagers who’d been at the base. It was a great evil to those half-zombies. None of them had known that wild men would be here. Right here.
“We have to get out of here,” he said urgently. “Forget this cursed town. Let the wild men have it. We need to get outside and turn our army back.”
Brother Cactus looked past him to the empty street. “Where’s Sister Sorrow?”
The sneer was replaced by a mask of such deep hate that the others recoiled. “She’s gone,” he said. “Into the darkness. Now come on!”
They swarmed up the eastern wall, scaling the tires and bumpers and door handles of the stacked cars until they reached the walkway. There were only a few guards left over here, and the reapers cut them down.
Below, in the field outside, the first of the ravagers and the rest of Brother Mercy’s strike team reached the wall. They hurled grappling hooks over the top of it and began to climb. Brother Mercy leaned out and waved them back.
“No!” he called down to them. “Go back. Go back!”
They stared at him in confusion. There was too much noise, too many things happening at once, and Brother Mercy knew that this army was going to fail. The gray people—the sinless dead who were beloved of Lord Thanatos, all praise his darkness—could not stand up to the wild men. The Raggedy Man and some of the ravagers had told tales about this new threat. A single one of the howling madmen could begin an infection that would sweep through the king of the dead’s shambling army. Even the ravagers were vulnerable. Taking this town of sinners was not worth the risk, and the Raggedy Man did not know the wild men were coming. That they were nearly here.
Brother Mercy sheathed his knife, took hold of a grappling line, and slithered down the outside of the wall. The other reapers followed, silent as ghosts.
84
GUTSY AND HER FRIENDS RAN to the west wall and climbed to the gate. A few ravagers and reapers, along with several hundred shamblers, had attacked that side of town, but it was more of a diversion, drawing resources away from the main assault on the east gate. Now those same attackers were themselves being attacked. How soon before the Wodewose infection reached the larger army on the other side? And then what?
Gutsy stared in horror as the wild men overran the living dead, attacking the shamblers and ravagers, but also tearing down the reapers with relentless savagery. Mad howls filled the night.
The undead had no chance. Not only were they attacked with hands and teeth but their bodies were assaulted by Wodewose spat at them or delivered through bites. Within moments the living dead began twitching and thrashing as a second war was fought in their bloodstreams—paracide versus parasite. A few of the more recent reanimates actually screamed in very human voices as the disease swept through them, awakening parts of their brains, reconnecting them to the realization of what was happening. Driving them insane within seconds.
It was horrible to see.
But the fight was not entirely one-sided. The reapers, seeing and understanding that something terrible was happening to their undead allies, mounted a sophisticated defense. They were all excellent fighters—as Gutsy had just learned—and while the wild men could use clubs and stones as weapons, the reapers had skill and cunning. They met the attack, often putting themselves between the wild men and the living dead. Blades flashed, and bodies fell.
The fight shaped itself that way, with the reapers learning from success. They formed a curved wall around the uninfected shamblers. Some of the ravagers stood behind them, firing pistols and shotguns at the wild men.
“I don’t know who to root for,” mumbled Benny.
“Us,” said Spider.
“Right now,” Gutsy said, “those reapers are slowing down the wild men, and the wild men themselves are shifting the focus away from us. Maybe that’s the break we’ve been praying for.”
“I could use a better break,” said Benny. “Like a fleet of American Nation helicopters and a hundred pounds of pills for Chong and Sarah and the others.”
“Yeah,” said Chong, who’d caught up with them moments before. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Gutsy gave a dry laugh, then said, “Benny, maybe you and Chong should get over to the hospital. Make sure Morton and the stabilizer stuff get out.”
“What about you?”
“Spider and I will do what we can to get everyone to the hospital rally point. We need to get them outside and heading to Site B before those monsters stop fighting each other and remember us.”
Benny abruptly held out his hand. “See you on the other side, sister.”
She paused for half a moment, then shook his hand. “See you there, brother.”
She hugged him and Chong and watched them run off.
85
KAREN KNEW IT WAS ALL falling apart.
The plans and preparations, the fortifications and the careful selection of who should defend what—it all seemed pointless now. There was no way to prepare for this. Two armies, each created by a different warped science, were coming now to exterminate what was left of the living.
New Alamo was going to die, and she knew it.
Though it hurt her to do it, she went to where the huge old air raid siren stood on a corner of the wall. It was operated by a crank, and as she wound it around and around, the voice of doom woke up. The banshee wail rose high and floated out across the town. Other sirens, one on each corner of the wall, picked up the shriek.
Evacuate.
Nearby, a handful of defenders paused in their work of reloading guns and throwing rocks and stared at her. She saw their faces, saw the hopelessness there. The dread of what was going to happen.
Karen released the handle, and the siren began to fade away.
“Go on,” she said. “Save yourselves. Save your families. I’ll stay here.”
One of them, a tall man who’d brought his family to America all the way from Ecuador in the weeks before the outbreak, stepped toward her.
“What about Sarah?”
She smiled at him. “Josué… get your family. Take Sarah with you. Her pills are in the blue backpack in the living room.”
Josué lived two doors away from the Peaks. He looked pained, torn. He did not want to desert his post, but he had a wife, two grown children, and three grandkids.
“I…,” he began, but words failed him.
Karen gave him a brief, fierce hug. “Tell Sarah that I love her very much. Tell her I’ll try to find her. If I can.”
The last three words were as thin and false as they both knew them to be.
Josué nodded and hurried toward the ladder. Of the eight other defenders on the wall, only two others went. Both had families.
The rest, some single, some whose remaining family members had died in the two recent attacks, stayed. They looked at one another. There was so much fear, but there was also acceptance. She saw how acceptance firmed their chins and straightened their spines.
As one, they turned back to the wall.
All around the town, other defenders were making the same choices. Some going. Some willing to stay and fight.
And die.
86
GUTSY, SPIDER, AND SOMBRA RAN toward the east gate. The evacuation siren had been wailing for what seemed like forever, but now it wound down, the blare fading as if in despair.
Halfway to the gate they met Sunny-Day Ray, who, already old, seemed to have aged another twenty years. He was soaked with sweat and splashed with mostly black blood. He saw them and began waving them back.
“No,” he cried, “we’re losing the wall.”
“What about Karen and everyone?”
“She ordered them all to the rally point,” the old man panted. “I’m going to try and get out the gate with the other vehicles. Those machine guns might give us a chance to break through and protect your backs while you get moving to Site B.”
Spider looked past him. “Did you see Alethea?”
Sunny-Day Ray nodded. “Saw her shepherding a passel of kids toward the hospital.”
Gutsy started to turn, then stopped as she heard several spaced gunshots from high on the gate. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the smoke and shadows and saw Karen still there, holding a handgun, taking careful aim, and firing. Again and again. Gutsy started to run in that direction, but the old man caught her by the arm in a surprisingly strong grip.
“No,” he said.
“She’ll die up there. She needs help.”
There was a sad smile on Sunny-Day Ray’s face. “She’s helping us. Buying us time.”
“She can still—”
“Listen to me, Gutsy,” he said. “We’ll try to pick her up on the way out. That’s my plan.”
But as he spoke, the gun fell silent, and the top of the gate was obscured by smoke.
“God save our souls,” said the old man. “You kids better run. And I mean right now.”
Spider and Gutsy, their hearts breaking, turned and ran. Sombra lingered a moment longer and wagged his tail at the old man, and then he, too, fled.
87
“WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?” demanded Benny as he and Chong burst into Dr. Morton’s lab, a nearly frantic Grimm at their heels.
The injured physician and Manny Flores both looked up from their work. They were haggard, pale with fright, and sweating badly, but Morton looked more dead than alive. His skin was a grayish green, and sweat rolled down his cheeks. All around them were boxes and bags filled with the fertilizer-based stabilizer. Heaps of the smelly manure were drying under a row of lamps.
“I thought it had to be moist in order to bond with the Dòmi,” said Gutsy.
“Only slightly moist,” explained Flores. “We’ve already treated most of this stuff and have been drying it out so it’s lighter to carry and easier to disperse.”
“Someone said they would be bringing a cart for all of this,” said Morton irritably. “But they haven’t come back yet.”
“Is it true those things are in the town?” asked Flores, his eyes jumpy with fatigue and terror.
“Some got in,” Benny confirmed.
“Wild men?” Morton’s voice was nearly a screech.
“Not yet,” Benny said quickly, and then explained what was happening outside the walls and watched the words hit the two scientists like a series of punches. “So, we need to get out right now.”
“We still need that cart,” cried Flores. “Otherwise all of this is for nothing.”
“I’ll find one,” said Chong, but paused at the door. “Will this Dòmi stuff actually work?”
Flores glanced at Morton, who also paused, and then he nodded. “It will work best if the reanimates are already infected with the paracide.”
“What if regular people breathe it in?” asked Benny.
Morton shook his head. “We just don’t know. Our tests never—”
“—Got that far, right. Got it.” Benny went to a table, took a trowel that was stuck in a pile of the Dòmi-treated manure, and began shoveling it into one of the many bags prepared for that purpose.
“What happens when the reapers get exposed to Wodewose?”
“Probably nothing,” said Morton. “Captain Ledger and young Miss Gomez were exposed and were not turned, so we can assume that it hasn’t mutated into a threat to regular humans.”
“It would drop you,” said Benny.
“We don’t know what it will do to me, or to Mr. Chong or Karen’s daughter. It could drive us mad, or kill us, or do nothing at all.”
Benny raised a heap of stabilizer. “Well, at least we have magic horse poop.…”
Morton ignored that. “We also don’t know what the effects of Dòmi will be on ordinary humans. Or on reanimates who have not yet been exposed to Wodewose.”
“Swell,” said Benny. “But it will stop those wild men… right?”
Morton looked down at his work, avoiding Benny’s eyes.
“Hey—right?”
“Once the reanimates are infected with the paracide,” said Morton slowly, “then even the smallest particle of Dòmi should shut down their aggression… or at least in theory.”
“In theory,” Chong said. “Swell.” He took a breath, then said aloud to himself, “Go get a cart, Lou Chong. Don’t think about all the ways you could die tonight. Nope, don’t do that at all.”
He left. Grimm trotted behind, armor clanking.
Benny looked at Morton. “Okay, be straight with me, Doc. Even though you never did tests, you’re still a scientist. You must have a theory. What’s going to happen if he gets exposed to the paracide or the Dòmi? Just tell me.”
Morton shook his head. “I really don’t know. I know I don’t want to risk exposure. And if you care for your friend, keep him away from it too.”
“How do we do that if you guys find some way of spraying this magic poop all over the wild men? How do I keep Chong safe then?”
“Maybe tie him up. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or use that sword and end it all for him, Mr. Imura,” said the doctor coldly, his eyes finally meeting Benny’s. “Given what could happen, that might be the greatest kindness.”
There was a rattle in the hall and Chong appeared, pushing a big laundry cart with canvas sides.
“Perfect,” cried Flores, and immediately began grabbing bags of the stabilizer. Despite his injuries, Morton tried to help. It was clearly agony to do it, and for a moment Benny was content to let him suffer. But then he took a heavy bag from Morton and pushed the doctor gently toward the door.
From somewhere outside they heard a man yell in a voice raw with terror.
