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No one had an answer to that.
“And what’s the lab?” asked Spider. “A lab for doing what? And why hide that, too?”
No one had any answers.
After a while, Alethea asked, “What now? You weren’t able to follow them, I guess. Any idea where their base is?”
Gutsy sighed. “I watched for a while, and they headed east.”
“To where? San Antonio?” asked Spider, but then he shook his head. “No. Too far. Too many los muertos there, anyway.”
Alethea nodded. “Are you going to follow the road tomorrow when you can look for tracks?”
“No,” said Gutsy, “I don’t think I need to.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Gutsy. She glanced over at the wagon, where her mother’s body lay still and cold, covered by a canvas tarp. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to come to me.”
Alethea gaped at her, and then pointed to the body in the back of the wagon. “Please do not tell me you’re seriously going to use Mama as bait? Don’t tell me you think you’re going to set a trap for these Rat Catchers.”
Gutsy scratched Sombra’s head but remained silent.
“You,” said Spider, pushing her shoulder with a stiff finger, “are out of your mind.”
“Well, say something,” demanded Alethea.
Gutsy climbed into the wagon and lay slowly back with her face pointed to the cold and distant stars. She reached under the tarp and took one of her mother’s hands and closed her fingers around it. The shroud had been removed and filled with rocks, so all that was left was a weather-stained old piece of canvas. Gutsy tried to be practical about it, telling herself that Mama was past caring. Even so, it felt wrong. But then again, nearly everything felt wrong.
Holding Mama’s hand, though, was different. That felt right. It was precious and powerful to feel the reality of her mother. Now that Mama was no longer a monster, she was merely dead. It was as if some measure of dignity had been returned to her. Mama felt real in a way that she hadn’t while she had been one of los muertos. Somehow it made the loss more real, too.
“These Rat Catchers are soldiers of some kind,” Gutsy said quietly. “People become soldiers to go to war, right? Well . . . if it’s a war they want, then that’s what they’re going to get.”
A piece of ancient space junk—a meteorite or a dying satellite—burned across the sky. It looked like someone scratching a kitchen match into flame. Sombra looked up at it and, after a long moment, leaned back and howled at the night.
41
THEY BURIED MAMA GOMEZ IN a small grove of trees south of the Abrams.
The three of them shared the task. No one spoke while they worked. Not a single word. The only sound was the chunk of shovels biting into the earth and the sigh of dirt being tossed onto a growing mound. When the hole was deep enough, they wrapped Mama in the stained canvas and lowered her down. Then they filled in the grave. Gutsy used a rake to break up and distribute the leftover dirt, and when it was all done, the ground was smooth.
Spider collected stones and placed them at the four corners of the plot, and Alethea gathered wildflowers. Sombra sat watching all this and listening to the night, alert to predators of any kind. There were none. Not then, anyway. Gutsy knew that the darkness hid thousands of dangers, and she was glad to have the coydog there to smell and hear what she could not.
When it was all done, they stood together at the foot of the grave. Spider held Gutsy’s hand and Alethea stood behind them, leaning her cheek on Gutsy’s shoulder.
“Dulces sueños, Mama,” said Gutsy.
Sweet dreams.
Her friends said it too.
Those were the only words spoken.
A small wind blew past them, swirling the dirt on the grave, touching their faces and then blowing on toward the south. The breeze smelled of flowers and spices. It smelled like Mama’s kitchen when she was cooking. There was nothing in that lonely place to account for those smells. Nothing. They all smelled them, though, and exchanged looks.
All three of them had tears in their eyes. All three of them were smiling.
The wind took the smells of better times and whirled into the infinite darkness. Going south. Toward town. And past that, toward Mexico. Gutsy did not believe in much, but she knew what that was.
