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“Us,” said Spider.
“Right now,” Gutsy said, “those reapers are slowing down the wild men, and the wild men themselves are shifting the focus away from us. Maybe that’s the break we’ve been praying for.”
“I could
use a better break,” said Benny. “Like a fleet of American Nation helicopters and a hundred pounds of pills for Chong and Sarah and the others.”
“Yeah,” said Chong, who’d caught up with them moments before. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Gutsy gave a dry laugh, then said, “Benny, maybe you and Chong should get over to the hospital. Make sure Morton and the stabilizer stuff get out.”
“What about you?”
“Spider and I will do what we can to get everyone to the hospital rally point. We need to get them outside and heading to Site B before those monsters stop fighting each other and remember us.”
Benny abruptly held out his hand. “See you on the other side, sister.”
She paused for half a moment, then shook his hand. “See you there, brother.”
She hugged him and Chong and watched them run off.
85
KAREN KNEW IT WAS ALL falling apart.
The plans and preparations, the fortifications and the careful selection of who should defend what—it all seemed pointless now. There was no way to prepare for this. Two armies, each created by a different warped science, were coming now to exterminate what was left of the living.
New Alamo was going to die, and she knew it.
Though it hurt her to do it, she went to where the huge old air raid siren stood on a corner of the wall. It was operated by a crank, and as she wound it around and around, the voice of doom woke up. The banshee wail rose high and floated out across the town. Other sirens, one on each corner of the wall, picked up the shriek.
Evacuate.
Nearby, a handful of defenders paused in their work of reloading guns and throwing rocks and stared at her. She saw their faces, saw the hopelessness there. The dread of what was going to happen.
Karen released the handle, and the siren began to fade away.
“Go on,” she said. “Save yourselves. Save your families. I’ll stay here.”
One of them, a tall man who’d brought his family to America all the way from Ecuador in the weeks before the outbreak, stepped toward her.
“What about Sarah?”
She smiled at him. “Josué… get your family. Take Sarah with you. Her pills are in the blue backpack in the living room.”
Josué lived two doors away from the Peaks. He looked pained, torn. He did not want to desert his post, but he had a wife, two grown children, and three grandkids.
“I…,” he began, but words failed him.
Karen gave him a brief, fierce hug. “Tell Sarah that I love her very much. Tell her I’ll try to find her. If I can.”
The last three words were as thin and false as they both knew them to be.
Josué nodded and hurried toward the ladder. Of the eight other defenders on the wall, only two others went. Both had families.
The rest, some single, some whose remaining family members had died in the two recent attacks, stayed. They looked at one another. There was so much fear, but there was also acceptance. She saw how acceptance firmed their chins and straightened their spines.
As one, they turned back to the wall.
