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Benny laughed and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You’re really something, Gutsy Gomez.”
She gave him a strange look. “We’re supposed to be kids.”
“The world’s supposed to make sense,” he said. “Life’s supposed to be fair. Isn’t that what the grown-ups all told us? And yet…”
“Yes,” she said. “And yet.”
Gutsy took a steadying breath and slapped dust from her clothes, looking around. “What’s happening outside?”
Benny pointed back the way he’d come. “Everyone out,” he said. “At least everyone who came to the rally point. We broke them into groups and gave them maps. Alethea got out too; she’s leading one of the groups. Morton and Flores are right outside with Chong. We have all that Dòmi stuff mixed with horse poop in a big cart. We were just waiting on you.”
“Benny,” she asked, “did you see Alice in the hospital? Did she get out?”
But he looked uncertain. “Maybe. She was in a wheelbarrow, right? I saw a couple of people pushing injured folks in them, but there was so much going on… I’m not really sure.”
“It’s okay,” said Gutsy. She took another breath, forcing back the pain she felt in every cell of her body. “Let’s go.”
She and Spider limped after Benny, but as they went the shock began to ebb and she could feel adrenaline in her system, giving her some strength, sharpening her vision. That was a costly benefit, though, and at some point she would have to pay for it. There was an end to strength and stamina, and Gutsy just prayed that what was left for her would be enough to get to safety.
* * *
Chong stood in the tunnel mouth, an arrow fitted to his bowstring. He lowered it when he saw who was coming toward him. “What happened?” he demanded.
“Gutsy blocked the tunnel,” said Spider.
“How?”
“Fireworks.”
They left the car wash and joined Morton and Flores, who were visibly nervous. Grimm and Sombra wagged their tails and sniffed each other. Flores pointed toward town, and they all turned.
The entire sky in that direction glowed with a thousand shades of orange and red, and hands of flame reached up to scratch at the roof of the world. Inky black clouds twisted and roiled above the conflagration. There were howls carried on the wind, but they were not howls of hunting. These were shrieks of dying. It was as if a chorus of demons sang a lament for the death of New Alamo.
They stood, struck by the horror of it all. The entire town was on fire. Every house, every building. It could not have been from the tunnel explosion, though that probably added to it. It was as if the devil himself had decided to make New Alamo part of his domain. Now and forever.
Spider wept openly. Flores kept shaking his head as if unable to accept it.
“We have to go,” said Morton, but his voice lacked emphasis, as if even he, monster that he was, mourned the loss of this place.
It took so much for Gutsy to turn away. Somewhere out in the vast fields around the dying town was the army of the Raggedy Man. The fire and explosions might have distracted him and drawn every eye, living and dead, but soon the hunt would begin again in earnest.
“Yes, we have to go,” she said. “We don’t belong here anymore.”
As she turned away, she caught Benny’s eye. “Fifteen,” she said.
“Sixteen,” he replied. It was a conversation that made perfect sense to them, in a world that made no sense at all.
94
BROTHER MERCY STOOD BY THE open east gate. Bloody, flash-burned, furious, and brokenhearted.
Once the hated Imura and his friends were gone, he’d returned to the crane to find Sister Sorrow. He released the other reapers to hunt for any sinners still hiding in town, and for the wild men.
There were dreadful fights in the street, with the reapers protecting the gray people and the ravagers and sending any of their own holy infected into the darkness lest this strange new disease spread.
They killed hundreds of the wild men.
But neither they nor Mercy found Sister Sorrow. There was only blood on the ground in the place where she’d landed after that long fall. Red-smeared footprints led away from the spot.
