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The woman in red turned toward her. “You saved my daughter’s life.”
Rags said nothing.
“You probably saved all our lives. Some of those things might have gotten us, or gotten past us.”
“Both,” said Rags bluntly. “You were going to lose this fight.”
The woman studied her face for a long time, and then she nodded. “I guess so. It . . . um, wasn’t what we had planned.”
Rags said nothing.
“We teach the kids to draw them in, one at a time. The kids are fast.”
“You risk your kids?” asked Rags, biting back harsher words.
“No, we train them. Charlotte’s good at this. She’s done it fifty times. Today . . . well, today she did it wrong. She left the gate open, and a whole bunch of them came in.”
“I told you, there was no one at the gate,” said Rags. “I know. I came in that way too.”
“There was supposed to be someone there.”
“There wasn’t.”
They both looked down the street. “Then,” said the woman sadly, “either Donnie’s dead or he ran off.”
“He have a grudge against you? I mean . . . leaving the gate open and all.”
The woman shrugged. “This was a training session. He’s supposed to let one in every few minutes so some of our newbies can practice hunt, control, evasion. Like that. Donnie’s supposed to keep it controlled. Not too many and such. But Donnie’s lazy and he’s not a very good team player. Maybe an even worse lookout.”
She stopped, frowned, and then walked to the far side of the street to where three zombies lay in a heap. She bent, grabbed one of them by the shoulder, and hauled him off to reveal a fat woman and a thin man.
The woman had clearly been dead for years.
The man was different. His skin had gone pale from blood loss, but it wasn’t weathered. Except for the color—and the deep impact crater on the top of his head from one of Rags’s clubs—he could have been sleeping.
He was dressed as Robin from the old Batman comics.
“Ah . . . jeez,” said the woman.
“Donnie?” asked Rags.
“Donnie.”
Rags did not comment. The man had made a mistake—inattention or perhaps falling asleep—and had paid for it. The fact that his error could have resulted in a slaughter—not just of the little girl but of everyone—was obvious, so she left it all unsaid. The truth burned in the air all around them.
The woman straightened and began walking
toward the gate at the far end of town. Rags fell into step beside her and sent Ghoulie ahead to scout for lurking dead.
“Look . . . who are you people?” asked Rags. “And what’s going on here?”
Rachael smiled, and it was a bright and genuine smile, so at odds with the carnage spread around them.
“We’re training.”
“Training?”
“Sure. Teaching the kids, mostly. Helping some of the adults get better at fighting the Orcs.”
