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ALETHEA STOOD IN HER DARKENED bedroom, with Spider beside her, looking out at the moonlight. The view from the third-story room looked out over street upon street of the single-story residences that were identical to where Gutsy lived. Beyond those was the high, lumpy expanse of the wall. Spider had once counted all the 16,911 cars used to build the wall. In its way, that wall was one of the most incredible feats of engineering in human history. No mechanized cranes. It had been built by ingenuity and sheer brute strength, by careful planning and genuine cooperation.
Since the completion of the wall, a handful of guards had been able to protect the town against the shamblers, mutated variations, and even some wild animals. It had withstood every attack, and the people in town had always felt safe.
Until now.
The two foster siblings, unable to sleep, had gotten together to talk in hushed voices about what they’d learned from Karen Peak. Now the wall did not seem to be as reliable. How could it be, when the real monsters were here in town?
Here in the lab.
Without knowing he was doing it, Spider reached for Alethea’s hand in the dark. They held on to each other for dear life.
78
SOMBRA RAN THROUGH SHADOWS AND gutsy followed.
The moon was huge and white and colored the world in shades of icy paleness. It was so bright that it seemed to extinguish most of the stars in the sky. Sombra ran without pause, moving in a straight line except to avoid rocks or old wreckage. It wasn’t exactly like watching a dog follow a trail; she didn’t have to let him smell the collar again. It was more like Sombra understood what she wanted of him and was eerily focused on that goal.
Strange dog, she thought as she ran. She realized that she loved the scruffy mutt. Quite a lot. That realization threw a little more gasoline on the fires of her hate.
Gutsy was used to running, and so the miles melted away. Time held no more meaning out here than it did back in her kitchen. It was as if this was the last day of her life, maybe the last day of the world as she knew it. There was only the timelessness of night and whatever lay at the end of her chase.
How long did it take to find the base?
An hour and a half? Less? There was no way to tell. She knew she had found it before she actually saw it. There was no way not to know. Sombra suddenly yelped in fear and Gutsy skidded to a stop at the foot of a hill. Beyond the hill the night had suddenly turned to day.
Gutsy paused, terrified and confused, as she saw the pale blue-white of moonlight washed over with a furious yellow-red. Then she broke into a faster run all the way to the top of the hill.
And stopped. Stunned.
Horrified.
Beyond the hill and stretching as far as she could see, the desert seemed to be burning. Sombra stood with her, trembling in fear. Fires erupted from below the surface of the empty desert. Long fingers of flame reached for the night sky, as if some massive monster of pure fire was trapped underground and clawing to get out. There were explosions. Small at first, muffled, and then much louder as parts of the landscape leaped up into the air, swirling and burning, only to collapse slowly down amid whirlwinds of dust. The ground rippled as if an earthquake was grinding out its fury, but then whole sections of the desert floor folded inward and more fire belched upward.
They had found the hidden military base.
But someone else had found it first . . . and utterly destroyed it.
She could see them, painted in fiery yellow, like demons from the pit. Some of them were shamblers, and some of those were burning too, victims of falling debris. Gutsy saw ravagers, too, dressed in leather and chains. Many were holding guns over their heads, shaking them in triumph.
There were dozens and dozens of ravagers.
There were many hundreds of los muertos.
She scrambled forward, getting closer but staying completely out of sight. Here and there soldiers, scorched and screaming, ran in panic, firing weapons without aiming, wasting their ammunition on an enemy that required control and precision. Gutsy took her binoculars from her backpack and swept the landscape. She saw a familiar face. The soldier, Mateo, from Hope Cemetery, swinging an empty rifle like a club. She watched as a dozen shamblers fell on him. His screams rose into the air in a brief pause between explosions. He cried out for help in a plaintive shriek that rose higher than the gunfire for as long as it lasted. He prayed to God. He called for his mother. He begged for anyone to save him. The dead tore him to pieces and devoured him.
Gutsy watched in horror. Not merely for the gruesome slaughter, but because she now knew that every single one of those shamblers held a prisoner inside—the conscious and aware person they had been. Those people were in there, feeling and tasting all of it. Hearing the screams. Connected to nerve endings and taste buds and optic nerves. Witnesses to a crime in which their bodies were the murder weapons.
Crouching there, Gutsy murmured an old prayer Mama had taught her. It had lost meaning for her over the last few years, but now she hoped that someone was listening. And that whoever heard her prayer cared.
Then she saw other movement and turned to see that many of the ravagers were herding swarms of the shamblers away from the destruction. Pushing, shoving, driving them. Not to save them from the flames, but to direct them elsewhere.
Gutsy turned to stare and saw that scores of them were already moving across the desert landscape.
Not merely away from the destroyed base.
No.
They were heading toward New Alamo.
