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“What . . . ?”
Ford’s smile looked like a wince of pain. “When secret government labs created bioweapons, this group infected people with them and then tracked them in order to measure how fast these designer diseases spread. It was part of something called biological warfare.”
“They made people sick?” Gutsy demanded, appalled at the thought.
“Oh yes,” said Urrea. “But these weren’t doomsday diseases. Nothing that would, say, endanger the general US population. No. This was much more insidious. These were diseases that already existed—mumps, measles, pertussis, rubella, tuberculosis . . . all kinds of diseases that modern medicine had either eliminated or controlled. These were new strains. Nothing so radical that they would look like designer diseases, because the misuse of antibiotics had already created mutations. And maybe that’s where the scientists in the program got the idea in the first place. Who knows? Juan didn’t know either. However, he believed that he and his family had been part of this program. His wife died of whooping cough. His three-year-old daughter died from a new strain of the mumps. All of them had been at the relocation camp. Juan found all their records. None of the other families in the same barracks as his family got sick. So . . . how did they? Why did they?”
“I don’t understand,” she said, then held up her hands. “What does any of this have to do with what’s happening now?”
“Because,” said Mr. Urrea, “even though the department didn’t have a name, the research team did. Groups like this use code names. Want to take a guess what their code name was?”
Gutsy felt her mouth turn dry as dust, and there seemed to be a distant ringing in her ears. The room felt strange, as if it—or maybe the whole world—was beginning to tilt.
Even so, she forced herself to say the words. “The Rat Catchers.”
It wasn’t a q
uestion. It was a statement. And both the men nodded.
“Oh my God,” breathed Gutsy.
“It gets worse,” said Urrea softly. “The program Juan Cruz told me about was conducted partly at the camp. This camp. And partly out of a government facility hidden in a fortified bunker somewhere near here. That bunker is still there, still in operation. And, I guess, all overseen by the lab, wherever that is.”
“How do you know that?” demanded Gutsy.
“We don’t know all of this,” admitted Ford. “A lot of this is a patchwork of bits of information, things we’ve picked up or overheard, and a whole lot of guesswork.”
“We’ve had years to put this much together,” said Urrea.
“We have to tell someone about it,” cried Gutsy.
“There’s more,” said Ford. “You know about the ravagers, yes? You know what they are?”
“I know what everyone else knows,” said Gutsy. “They’re infected with a different kind of disease. They’re turning into los muertos, but a lot more slowly. They’re like the living dead except they know what they’re doing.”
“All of that is true,” said Ford, “but like most things, there’s more to the story.”
“Like maybe they’re herding los muertos?”
“What?” asked Urrea. “Where did you hear about that?”
“I saw it,” she said. “I didn’t tell you that part, because it didn’t seem to have anything to do with Mama or the Rat Catchers.” She told them about the footprints in the wash and the smaller group of living dead with one of the ravagers moving them along.
Urrea turned away and walked over to the window. He stood for a moment peering out through the blinds. “So, it’s true . . .”
“What is?”
Ford answered. “It’s true that the ravagers are infected, but it’s not with the same plague that created los muertos. They’re not going to become shamblers. They’ve already become what they are. They are living dead, but their minds aren’t gone. They can think and talk.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Gutsy,” said Urrea, “the disease they’d been infected with was not a bioweapon, not like the one that started this whole thing. They were given something that was intended to be a cure.”
“A cure? But they’re monsters.”
“Oh yes,” said Ford. “They are the scariest monsters in the whole world. They are the most dangerous by far. Do you want to know why?”
“Because they can think?” she ventured.
