Lost roads, p.26
Lost Roads, page 26
“They’re inside the walls. Oh God, the wild men are here!”
A chorus of awful howls filled the night.
“We’re out of time,” said Morton.
88
AS GUTSY AND SPIDER RAN, they could hear the howls. First outside the walls, then high up on them, and within moments, inside the town. Far away, outside the gates, there was a burst of heavy-caliber gunfire punctuated by screams so twisted that it was impossible to tell if they were from dying wild men or the small group with Sunny-Day Ray and the vehicles. Of Sergeant Holly there was no sign.
Sombra ranged ahead and twice stopped short, the hairs on his back bristling. Each time Gutsy and Spider faded sideways and hid in shadows as packs of wild men went running past. They were a mixed bag now, some of them clearly from the base and others looking much older and more weathered—converted shamblers. There were a few converted ravagers, too, though now they carried their guns like clubs instead of ready to fire.
Gutsy kept pulling Sombra close, trying to become invisible in the dark. The coydog trembled in her arms.
Then, when the last howls vanished down a side street, the three of them ran on.
“They’re not heading to the hospital,” whispered Spider.
“So far,” Gutsy said, and was immediately sorry she said it. Those words seemed to offer up a challenge to the spirits of bad luck.
As they passed a store, Gutsy slowed to a stop. The sign outside read:
NOTIONS & NOVELTIES
“What is it?” Spider asked.
Instead of answering, Gutsy ran inside. Most of the stock were handmade toys, scavenged stuff like old board games, party supplies for the town’s many small festivals, and the one thing she hoped to find. Something no one fleeing this catastrophe would ever think to pack. She picked up a box and showed it to Spider.
“Fireworks?” he asked, confused, but immediately a smile blossomed on his face. “Yes!”
Without having to say a word to each other, they gathered armfuls of the fireworks, some of which were decades old. They piled a lot of them in the middle of the floor and then dumped other stuff on top. Paper and anything that would burn. They worked fast as Sombra looked on with canine interest. While they worked, Gutsy set some items aside, and they began stuffing their pockets with smaller things like M-80s and TNT Poppers, items neither of them would normally go anywhere near. Not since Jillie Cooper blew off three of her fingers playing with them five years ago.
Gutsy searched her undamaged pockets, produced an old metal lighter, and lit the longest of the fuses. They grabbed a few additional fireworks and fled. They were half a block away when the night of the apocalypse turned into a New Year’s Day celebration. There were loud bangs and pops and rattle-tattle-tattles and whistles and whooshes.
A large pack of wild men came running at the sound, shrieking at the noise as if challenging it, the way one barking dog will try to outbark another. Another pack ran to join them, and another.
The shadows behind them seemed to disintegrate into an ocean of sparks, and then the whole of the storefront leaped outward and upward in a massive explosion. Individually the fireworks were dangerous, but together they were deadly. The blast plucked fifty of the killers off their feet, tore them to rags, and flung them like burning embers in all directions.
Gutsy and Spider, keeping to the shadows as they ran, saw a dozen more small packs of wild men tearing along toward the noise and light.
Running away from the hospital.
Gutsy set up several more fireworks—a kind called 16-shot cakes—in curbside flowerbeds and propped them at an angle to fire back the way they’d come. Spider took the lighter and ignited the fuses. Then they continued running. By the time the fuses hit the powder, they were a block away. Each cake began firing shot after shot into the air, bursting in party colors above the town. Drawing the ears and eyes of the wild men with each loud pop and stunning light.
89
BENNY, CHONG, AND THE SCIENTISTS reached the storeroom that hid the entrance to the tunnel, but they had to fight their way through crowds to do it. The hospital corridors were choked with people, some carrying bundles, others empty-handed and barely dressed. If it wasn’t for the steel spikes bristling from Grimm’s armor, no one would have let them pass. As it was, the refugees flattened themselves against the walls, sometimes three deep. The dog walked ahead, growling at everyone, followed by Chong pushing the cart, Flores supporting Morton, and Benny walking with his katana unsheathed.
When they reached the entrance to the tunnel, Benny drafted four strong-looking men to help carry the laden cart down the short flight of stairs, ordered Grimm to stay with Chong, and then ran ahead.
It took what seemed hours to reach the far end of the corridor, but when he got there, he was gratified to see that the Chess Players were there. They were grouping the refugees together, making sure each group had a copy of the map and knew where to go.
Benny ran along, catching up to several groups.
“Everyone be quiet out there,” he said. “Take only what you can carry, and if you have to run, drop everything except your weapons. Everyone who can fight watches the people directly in front. Don’t look back. Just keep going. No one goes east, because that’s where the shamblers are coming from. No one goes west, because that’s where the wild men are. Follow the map north-by-northeast to Site B. There’s enough moonlight to guide you. Sunny-Day Ray and the convoy will try and keep the attack at the gates, to make it look like we’re doing a last stand. Then they’ll take off due south to try and lead the reapers and zoms that way.”
“Wait,” cried one of the storekeepers, “they’re leaving us?”
“No,” Benny assured him. “My guess is they’ll go south until they’re completely out of sight of anyone chasing them, then split up and circle around to meet us on the road to Site B. That’s the smartest play. Don’t worry; they’ll come for us.”
In the distance Benny could heard the roar of the Bushmaster and other machine guns. The fact that the convoy was still fighting was a good sign.
What he didn’t immediately understand, though, was the fact that there was a pretty impressive fireworks display erupting over the town.
“Has to be Gutsy,” he said aloud, and knew it to be true. Somehow it seemed like something that clever girl would do. It made him like her even more.
90
GUTSY AND SPIDER REACHED THE hospital and saw that the entrance was completely jammed with people. Gutsy climbed onto a big metal trash can and balanced on the rim as she scanned the crowd, looking for Alethea, Alice, Benny, or Chong.
She saw the tiara first. Sparkling with reflected light, nestled in wild chestnut hair.
“Alethea!” she called, yelling through cupped hands. Spider yelled even louder, and Sombra began barking. Alethea did not hear them, though.
It was a full-on panic now. Civility was gone. Gutsy saw a grown man shove two children out of his way so he could squeeze into the entrance. A woman was swinging a golf club at him, missing, and hitting other people around her. On the floor, shoved against the wall, an old couple clung to each other, their faces bloody, their eyes streaming tears, and no one even paused to help.
Alethea had her back to the wall next to the tunnel entrance, and Rainbow Smite in both hands. A knot of children clustered around her. Two men, both of them bruised and bleeding, lay dazed on the floor, and for a moment the frenzied exodus ground to a shocked halt. Alethea’s eyes blazed with terrible fury. One of the children had a badly bleeding nose and he had his arms wrapped around Alethea’s thighs.
Gutsy could read the scene—one or both of the injured men had done something rough and violent to try and get into the tunnel first. That had been a mistake. Another man tried to shove Alethea out of the way, and she rammed the fat end of her bat into his stomach with such force that it lifted him off the ground. He dropped to his knees, face purple, and she kicked him away. Her hair was wild and her eyes wilder, but her tiara was still in place.
“Kids go in next,” she roared, “then adults. Anyone else shoves a kid out of the way and I will murder them right here and now.”
One man—a big hulking fellow who Gutsy recognized as a wall construction worker—laughed at Alethea and told her to get out of the way. He emphasized the demand with a very ugly comment about her weight.
The hardwood tip of a fighting staff tokked him on the top of the head hard enough to stagger him. He dropped to his knees, and then the bo swung around and stopped less than a quarter inch from the tip of his nose. The man gaped and his eyes stared down the length of the staff to a pair of intense green eyes.
“You heard the princess,” said Spider. Sombra took a step past Spider and bared his considerable teeth.
The big man had nothing to say. The kids fled into the tunnel. Alethea and Spider flanked the door, and the congested knot of people transformed into a steady flow.
Gutsy edged over to Alethea. “Where’s Alice and the Carnovskys?”
Alethea shook her head. “Sorry, Guts, I haven’t seen them.”
She took her group of kids and ran into the tunnel.
Gutsy and Spider stayed outside and made several trips deeper into the hospital to drive stragglers toward the tunnel. Gutsy looked for Alice in every room, too, but didn’t see her anywhere. The tide was slackening now, kindling a fragile flame of optimism in her. She had no idea how many people had gotten out. Not all, of that she was sure. Some would have been hunted down by either the dead or wild men. Some were probably hiding, convinced they could wait it out.
Where was Karen Peak? Had she gotten out with Sunny-Day Ray and the vehicles? Or had she fallen with the town, the last defender of the New Alamo?
And… where was Alice?
The flame of optimism in her heart flickered and offered no comforting warmth at all.
“Gutsy,” said Spider, “listen.”
She pulled herself out of her own thoughts and heard the sounds. Howling.
Coming from inside the hospital.
91
AT THE FAR END OF the tunnel, Benny stood at the exit, guiding the fleeing citizens out through the car wash and into the night. Many were weeping as they fled into the darkness. Away from the only home they knew and toward the uncertainty of Site B far to the northeast.
Alethea came through with a bunch of little kids and herded them along, her bat clutched in one fist and her other hand darting out to touch each of them as they ran, tallying them. It was an automatic thing, unconscious. For all her bluster, Benny suspected she had a big, gentle heart. He prayed that she would survive this. Her and those kids. Seeing them gave him hope but also deepened his fear.
“Where’s Gutsy and Spider?” he called.
“Coming,” was her only reply. He peered down the tunnel but could see nothing except shadows and debris.
Not far away, the town was beginning to burn. There were still explosions and yells and even a few scattered gunshots, but most of the fighting was distant.
“God, I wish Joe and Sam were here,” he said to himself. It was not the first time he’d said or thought that. It had become a mantra for him, and he kept hoping the two soldiers would appear as if by magic—as they had during the siege of New Alamo.
Where were they? Had they found Site B? Or had they encountered an overwhelming force of zoms or wild men out there in the Broken Lands?
“Come on,” he said to the people, “hurry. Hurry.”
The last of the refugees were sorted into groups and sent on their way. Morton and Flores still waited, though, because Benny wanted to provide them with his own protection. Chong and Grimm stood with them, all of them silent and frightened. Even the big dog looked small and lost.
Morton limped over and pulled on Benny’s sleeve. “We have to go,” insisted the doctor. “We have to go right now.”
Benny swatted his hand away. “Gutsy and Spider are still in there.”
Morton got up in his face, furious and terrified. “We’re trying to save thousands. Don’t be a sentimental fool. Do you want to get us all killed? Do you want your friends to have died for nothing? Let’s go now.”
* * *
Gutsy and Spider barricaded the door that led to the hall with every piece of heavy furniture and file cabinet they could find. The howls were louder, and definitely coming their way.
“Will that hold?” Spider asked, but a split second later the whole fortification shook with unbelievable force. Howls seemed to punch through the barrier as if mocking its ability to keep the wild men out. The mad killers rammed it again. And again.
Gutsy looked around, but there was nothing else they could use to reinforce the barricade. Sombra barked at it but then retreated, whining as pieces of furniture toppled down.
“Maybe it’ll hold for a few minutes,” she said, but the words tasted like the lies they were.
She pushed Spider toward the tunnel entrance.
“Let’s go.”
They pulled the false cabinet closed behind them, but Gutsy did not for a minute think it would fool the wild men. At best, it would slow them down for a bit. Maybe long enough for her and Spider to get to the car wash and barricade that door too. If Site B was really there, then the townsfolk would need the better part of the night to reach it.
The tunnel was long and empty now, and they ran past tons of food and supplies that she ached to take with her. Canned goods, bottled water, kerosene for lamps, and boxes of military rations. All of it useful. All of it going to waste now.
Behind them the sound of the howling wild men grew louder, proof that they’d broken through the barricade. They would be in the tunnel soon, and then there would be no way to stop them. The doors at the far end hadn’t been properly repaired after the fight in the car wash. There hadn’t been time. And they didn’t hold the wild men back the last time anyway.
There was renewed pounding, and Gutsy turned in horror.
“They broke into the office,” Spider gasped. “They’re at the tunnel door. How’d they know it was even there?”
How indeed, Gutsy wondered. Was it possible that one or more of them somehow, despite disease and madness, remembered the hidden tunnel? It might explain why that group of them had attacked her and Ledger at the car wash. Maybe they had some primitive reasoning powers. That terrified her, because it meant the fleeing people could have walked into a trap.
No, she told herself. If that had happened, she would have heard the sounds of fighting. But that didn’t help her right now. The wild men were going to break into the tunnel. That was inevitable, and from the fury of their attack on the door, it would be very soon.
Too soon.
Please, she begged silently, we just need a little more time.
They kept running, but Gutsy felt something tugging at her mind, wanting her to stop, to turn and go back. She fished for what it was. Something she’d seen… ?
Then Gutsy suddenly stopped and stood there, looking back the way they’d come. Spider ran another dozen paces before he realized that he wasn’t being followed. He wheeled around.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Why’d you stop?”
“Kerosene,” she blurted so loud it made Sombra bark in alarm.
“What about it? We can’t carry lamp oil.”
“No, no,” she said quickly, and began running back.
Confused, Spider followed.
The rows of big plastic containers of kerosene were close to the tunnel entrance. Gutsy skidded to a stop, grabbed two of the containers, and dragged them to the base of the short stairs. Then ran back for two more.
“Help me,” she yelled, but Spider was already there, reaching for a pair of the red jugs. They worked fast as Sombra barked and danced excitedly around them. Within seconds they had a mound of the containers. Gutsy fished in her pockets for several of the M-80s, the big and very dangerous firecrackers. Each of them was a small red cardboard tube, about an inch and a half long, a fuse extending from the side. According to the writing on the tube, each contained three grams of pyrotechnic flash powder. Despite being used at celebrations, they were in no way toys.
Which is what Gutsy counted on.
She knelt and began fitting the M-80s under the edges of the kerosene containers. Spider saw what she was doing and immediately joined her.
“How many should we use?” he asked.
“All of them.”
The pounding was getting louder, and the false door was shuddering in a dangerous way. As they finished, Spider took one of the containers and removed the cap. Gutsy did the same, and they backed away together, leaving a very wet double trail as far as the kerosene would reach, which was about two hundred feet. They dropped the empty jugs. Sombra ran far down the tunnel to escape the noxious fumes. Gutsy and Spider pulled their shirts up to cover their noses and mouths.
The door continued to tremble and shudder.
“You have your lighter?” asked Spider.
She held out her hand to show him. “Get ready to run,” she said.
“I’m ready.”
With a mighty crash, the tunnel door exploded inward and a horde of the wild men came pouring into the tunnel.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she clicked the lighter and knelt to touch the small flame to the end of the kerosene trail. Yellow flame shot away from her, racing like some hellish demon toward the mound she and Spider had created.
They raced as fast as they could down the long tunnel. The howling mob of wild men boiled out of the hospital and chased them.
The fire outran them all.
It reached the mound, and suddenly the world was unbearably loud and unbearably hot. A shock wave of superheated gas punched both ways along the tunnel. By the time it reached Gutsy and Spider, they were more than halfway down the length. It didn’t matter. The blast picked them—and Sombra—up and hurled them viciously away. They shrieked as they flew through the air.
Gutsy heard Sombra yelp in pain as he hit a wall of boxes, but she could not see him. Or Spider. Her vision was seared to bright white and intense black. She felt herself hit. And land. All of the air in her lungs was knocked out of her, and there didn’t seem to be anything left to breathe.
A chorus of awful howls filled the night.
“We’re out of time,” said Morton.
88
AS GUTSY AND SPIDER RAN, they could hear the howls. First outside the walls, then high up on them, and within moments, inside the town. Far away, outside the gates, there was a burst of heavy-caliber gunfire punctuated by screams so twisted that it was impossible to tell if they were from dying wild men or the small group with Sunny-Day Ray and the vehicles. Of Sergeant Holly there was no sign.
Sombra ranged ahead and twice stopped short, the hairs on his back bristling. Each time Gutsy and Spider faded sideways and hid in shadows as packs of wild men went running past. They were a mixed bag now, some of them clearly from the base and others looking much older and more weathered—converted shamblers. There were a few converted ravagers, too, though now they carried their guns like clubs instead of ready to fire.
Gutsy kept pulling Sombra close, trying to become invisible in the dark. The coydog trembled in her arms.
Then, when the last howls vanished down a side street, the three of them ran on.
“They’re not heading to the hospital,” whispered Spider.
“So far,” Gutsy said, and was immediately sorry she said it. Those words seemed to offer up a challenge to the spirits of bad luck.
As they passed a store, Gutsy slowed to a stop. The sign outside read:
NOTIONS & NOVELTIES
“What is it?” Spider asked.
Instead of answering, Gutsy ran inside. Most of the stock were handmade toys, scavenged stuff like old board games, party supplies for the town’s many small festivals, and the one thing she hoped to find. Something no one fleeing this catastrophe would ever think to pack. She picked up a box and showed it to Spider.
“Fireworks?” he asked, confused, but immediately a smile blossomed on his face. “Yes!”
Without having to say a word to each other, they gathered armfuls of the fireworks, some of which were decades old. They piled a lot of them in the middle of the floor and then dumped other stuff on top. Paper and anything that would burn. They worked fast as Sombra looked on with canine interest. While they worked, Gutsy set some items aside, and they began stuffing their pockets with smaller things like M-80s and TNT Poppers, items neither of them would normally go anywhere near. Not since Jillie Cooper blew off three of her fingers playing with them five years ago.
Gutsy searched her undamaged pockets, produced an old metal lighter, and lit the longest of the fuses. They grabbed a few additional fireworks and fled. They were half a block away when the night of the apocalypse turned into a New Year’s Day celebration. There were loud bangs and pops and rattle-tattle-tattles and whistles and whooshes.
A large pack of wild men came running at the sound, shrieking at the noise as if challenging it, the way one barking dog will try to outbark another. Another pack ran to join them, and another.
The shadows behind them seemed to disintegrate into an ocean of sparks, and then the whole of the storefront leaped outward and upward in a massive explosion. Individually the fireworks were dangerous, but together they were deadly. The blast plucked fifty of the killers off their feet, tore them to rags, and flung them like burning embers in all directions.
Gutsy and Spider, keeping to the shadows as they ran, saw a dozen more small packs of wild men tearing along toward the noise and light.
Running away from the hospital.
Gutsy set up several more fireworks—a kind called 16-shot cakes—in curbside flowerbeds and propped them at an angle to fire back the way they’d come. Spider took the lighter and ignited the fuses. Then they continued running. By the time the fuses hit the powder, they were a block away. Each cake began firing shot after shot into the air, bursting in party colors above the town. Drawing the ears and eyes of the wild men with each loud pop and stunning light.
89
BENNY, CHONG, AND THE SCIENTISTS reached the storeroom that hid the entrance to the tunnel, but they had to fight their way through crowds to do it. The hospital corridors were choked with people, some carrying bundles, others empty-handed and barely dressed. If it wasn’t for the steel spikes bristling from Grimm’s armor, no one would have let them pass. As it was, the refugees flattened themselves against the walls, sometimes three deep. The dog walked ahead, growling at everyone, followed by Chong pushing the cart, Flores supporting Morton, and Benny walking with his katana unsheathed.
When they reached the entrance to the tunnel, Benny drafted four strong-looking men to help carry the laden cart down the short flight of stairs, ordered Grimm to stay with Chong, and then ran ahead.
It took what seemed hours to reach the far end of the corridor, but when he got there, he was gratified to see that the Chess Players were there. They were grouping the refugees together, making sure each group had a copy of the map and knew where to go.
Benny ran along, catching up to several groups.
“Everyone be quiet out there,” he said. “Take only what you can carry, and if you have to run, drop everything except your weapons. Everyone who can fight watches the people directly in front. Don’t look back. Just keep going. No one goes east, because that’s where the shamblers are coming from. No one goes west, because that’s where the wild men are. Follow the map north-by-northeast to Site B. There’s enough moonlight to guide you. Sunny-Day Ray and the convoy will try and keep the attack at the gates, to make it look like we’re doing a last stand. Then they’ll take off due south to try and lead the reapers and zoms that way.”
“Wait,” cried one of the storekeepers, “they’re leaving us?”
“No,” Benny assured him. “My guess is they’ll go south until they’re completely out of sight of anyone chasing them, then split up and circle around to meet us on the road to Site B. That’s the smartest play. Don’t worry; they’ll come for us.”
In the distance Benny could heard the roar of the Bushmaster and other machine guns. The fact that the convoy was still fighting was a good sign.
What he didn’t immediately understand, though, was the fact that there was a pretty impressive fireworks display erupting over the town.
“Has to be Gutsy,” he said aloud, and knew it to be true. Somehow it seemed like something that clever girl would do. It made him like her even more.
90
GUTSY AND SPIDER REACHED THE hospital and saw that the entrance was completely jammed with people. Gutsy climbed onto a big metal trash can and balanced on the rim as she scanned the crowd, looking for Alethea, Alice, Benny, or Chong.
She saw the tiara first. Sparkling with reflected light, nestled in wild chestnut hair.
“Alethea!” she called, yelling through cupped hands. Spider yelled even louder, and Sombra began barking. Alethea did not hear them, though.
It was a full-on panic now. Civility was gone. Gutsy saw a grown man shove two children out of his way so he could squeeze into the entrance. A woman was swinging a golf club at him, missing, and hitting other people around her. On the floor, shoved against the wall, an old couple clung to each other, their faces bloody, their eyes streaming tears, and no one even paused to help.
Alethea had her back to the wall next to the tunnel entrance, and Rainbow Smite in both hands. A knot of children clustered around her. Two men, both of them bruised and bleeding, lay dazed on the floor, and for a moment the frenzied exodus ground to a shocked halt. Alethea’s eyes blazed with terrible fury. One of the children had a badly bleeding nose and he had his arms wrapped around Alethea’s thighs.
Gutsy could read the scene—one or both of the injured men had done something rough and violent to try and get into the tunnel first. That had been a mistake. Another man tried to shove Alethea out of the way, and she rammed the fat end of her bat into his stomach with such force that it lifted him off the ground. He dropped to his knees, face purple, and she kicked him away. Her hair was wild and her eyes wilder, but her tiara was still in place.
“Kids go in next,” she roared, “then adults. Anyone else shoves a kid out of the way and I will murder them right here and now.”
One man—a big hulking fellow who Gutsy recognized as a wall construction worker—laughed at Alethea and told her to get out of the way. He emphasized the demand with a very ugly comment about her weight.
The hardwood tip of a fighting staff tokked him on the top of the head hard enough to stagger him. He dropped to his knees, and then the bo swung around and stopped less than a quarter inch from the tip of his nose. The man gaped and his eyes stared down the length of the staff to a pair of intense green eyes.
“You heard the princess,” said Spider. Sombra took a step past Spider and bared his considerable teeth.
The big man had nothing to say. The kids fled into the tunnel. Alethea and Spider flanked the door, and the congested knot of people transformed into a steady flow.
Gutsy edged over to Alethea. “Where’s Alice and the Carnovskys?”
Alethea shook her head. “Sorry, Guts, I haven’t seen them.”
She took her group of kids and ran into the tunnel.
Gutsy and Spider stayed outside and made several trips deeper into the hospital to drive stragglers toward the tunnel. Gutsy looked for Alice in every room, too, but didn’t see her anywhere. The tide was slackening now, kindling a fragile flame of optimism in her. She had no idea how many people had gotten out. Not all, of that she was sure. Some would have been hunted down by either the dead or wild men. Some were probably hiding, convinced they could wait it out.
Where was Karen Peak? Had she gotten out with Sunny-Day Ray and the vehicles? Or had she fallen with the town, the last defender of the New Alamo?
And… where was Alice?
The flame of optimism in her heart flickered and offered no comforting warmth at all.
“Gutsy,” said Spider, “listen.”
She pulled herself out of her own thoughts and heard the sounds. Howling.
Coming from inside the hospital.
91
AT THE FAR END OF the tunnel, Benny stood at the exit, guiding the fleeing citizens out through the car wash and into the night. Many were weeping as they fled into the darkness. Away from the only home they knew and toward the uncertainty of Site B far to the northeast.
Alethea came through with a bunch of little kids and herded them along, her bat clutched in one fist and her other hand darting out to touch each of them as they ran, tallying them. It was an automatic thing, unconscious. For all her bluster, Benny suspected she had a big, gentle heart. He prayed that she would survive this. Her and those kids. Seeing them gave him hope but also deepened his fear.
“Where’s Gutsy and Spider?” he called.
“Coming,” was her only reply. He peered down the tunnel but could see nothing except shadows and debris.
Not far away, the town was beginning to burn. There were still explosions and yells and even a few scattered gunshots, but most of the fighting was distant.
“God, I wish Joe and Sam were here,” he said to himself. It was not the first time he’d said or thought that. It had become a mantra for him, and he kept hoping the two soldiers would appear as if by magic—as they had during the siege of New Alamo.
Where were they? Had they found Site B? Or had they encountered an overwhelming force of zoms or wild men out there in the Broken Lands?
“Come on,” he said to the people, “hurry. Hurry.”
The last of the refugees were sorted into groups and sent on their way. Morton and Flores still waited, though, because Benny wanted to provide them with his own protection. Chong and Grimm stood with them, all of them silent and frightened. Even the big dog looked small and lost.
Morton limped over and pulled on Benny’s sleeve. “We have to go,” insisted the doctor. “We have to go right now.”
Benny swatted his hand away. “Gutsy and Spider are still in there.”
Morton got up in his face, furious and terrified. “We’re trying to save thousands. Don’t be a sentimental fool. Do you want to get us all killed? Do you want your friends to have died for nothing? Let’s go now.”
* * *
Gutsy and Spider barricaded the door that led to the hall with every piece of heavy furniture and file cabinet they could find. The howls were louder, and definitely coming their way.
“Will that hold?” Spider asked, but a split second later the whole fortification shook with unbelievable force. Howls seemed to punch through the barrier as if mocking its ability to keep the wild men out. The mad killers rammed it again. And again.
Gutsy looked around, but there was nothing else they could use to reinforce the barricade. Sombra barked at it but then retreated, whining as pieces of furniture toppled down.
“Maybe it’ll hold for a few minutes,” she said, but the words tasted like the lies they were.
She pushed Spider toward the tunnel entrance.
“Let’s go.”
They pulled the false cabinet closed behind them, but Gutsy did not for a minute think it would fool the wild men. At best, it would slow them down for a bit. Maybe long enough for her and Spider to get to the car wash and barricade that door too. If Site B was really there, then the townsfolk would need the better part of the night to reach it.
The tunnel was long and empty now, and they ran past tons of food and supplies that she ached to take with her. Canned goods, bottled water, kerosene for lamps, and boxes of military rations. All of it useful. All of it going to waste now.
Behind them the sound of the howling wild men grew louder, proof that they’d broken through the barricade. They would be in the tunnel soon, and then there would be no way to stop them. The doors at the far end hadn’t been properly repaired after the fight in the car wash. There hadn’t been time. And they didn’t hold the wild men back the last time anyway.
There was renewed pounding, and Gutsy turned in horror.
“They broke into the office,” Spider gasped. “They’re at the tunnel door. How’d they know it was even there?”
How indeed, Gutsy wondered. Was it possible that one or more of them somehow, despite disease and madness, remembered the hidden tunnel? It might explain why that group of them had attacked her and Ledger at the car wash. Maybe they had some primitive reasoning powers. That terrified her, because it meant the fleeing people could have walked into a trap.
No, she told herself. If that had happened, she would have heard the sounds of fighting. But that didn’t help her right now. The wild men were going to break into the tunnel. That was inevitable, and from the fury of their attack on the door, it would be very soon.
Too soon.
Please, she begged silently, we just need a little more time.
They kept running, but Gutsy felt something tugging at her mind, wanting her to stop, to turn and go back. She fished for what it was. Something she’d seen… ?
Then Gutsy suddenly stopped and stood there, looking back the way they’d come. Spider ran another dozen paces before he realized that he wasn’t being followed. He wheeled around.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Why’d you stop?”
“Kerosene,” she blurted so loud it made Sombra bark in alarm.
“What about it? We can’t carry lamp oil.”
“No, no,” she said quickly, and began running back.
Confused, Spider followed.
The rows of big plastic containers of kerosene were close to the tunnel entrance. Gutsy skidded to a stop, grabbed two of the containers, and dragged them to the base of the short stairs. Then ran back for two more.
“Help me,” she yelled, but Spider was already there, reaching for a pair of the red jugs. They worked fast as Sombra barked and danced excitedly around them. Within seconds they had a mound of the containers. Gutsy fished in her pockets for several of the M-80s, the big and very dangerous firecrackers. Each of them was a small red cardboard tube, about an inch and a half long, a fuse extending from the side. According to the writing on the tube, each contained three grams of pyrotechnic flash powder. Despite being used at celebrations, they were in no way toys.
Which is what Gutsy counted on.
She knelt and began fitting the M-80s under the edges of the kerosene containers. Spider saw what she was doing and immediately joined her.
“How many should we use?” he asked.
“All of them.”
The pounding was getting louder, and the false door was shuddering in a dangerous way. As they finished, Spider took one of the containers and removed the cap. Gutsy did the same, and they backed away together, leaving a very wet double trail as far as the kerosene would reach, which was about two hundred feet. They dropped the empty jugs. Sombra ran far down the tunnel to escape the noxious fumes. Gutsy and Spider pulled their shirts up to cover their noses and mouths.
The door continued to tremble and shudder.
“You have your lighter?” asked Spider.
She held out her hand to show him. “Get ready to run,” she said.
“I’m ready.”
With a mighty crash, the tunnel door exploded inward and a horde of the wild men came pouring into the tunnel.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she clicked the lighter and knelt to touch the small flame to the end of the kerosene trail. Yellow flame shot away from her, racing like some hellish demon toward the mound she and Spider had created.
They raced as fast as they could down the long tunnel. The howling mob of wild men boiled out of the hospital and chased them.
The fire outran them all.
It reached the mound, and suddenly the world was unbearably loud and unbearably hot. A shock wave of superheated gas punched both ways along the tunnel. By the time it reached Gutsy and Spider, they were more than halfway down the length. It didn’t matter. The blast picked them—and Sombra—up and hurled them viciously away. They shrieked as they flew through the air.
Gutsy heard Sombra yelp in pain as he hit a wall of boxes, but she could not see him. Or Spider. Her vision was seared to bright white and intense black. She felt herself hit. And land. All of the air in her lungs was knocked out of her, and there didn’t seem to be anything left to breathe.
