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90
GUTSY AND SPIDER REACHED THE hospital and saw that the entrance was completely jammed with people. Gutsy climbed onto a big metal trash can and balanced on the rim as she scanned the crowd, looking for Alethea, Alice, Benny, or Chong.
She saw the tiara first. Sparkling with reflected light, nestled in wild chestnut hair.
“Alethea!” she called, yelling through cupped hands. Spider yelled even louder, and Sombra began barking. Alethea did not hear them, though.
It was a full-on panic now. Civility was gone. Gutsy saw a grown man shove two children out of his way so he could squeeze into the entrance. A woman was swinging a golf club at him, missing, and hitting other people around her. On the floor, shoved against the wall, an old couple clung to each other, their faces bloody, their eyes streaming tears, and no one even paused to help.
Alethea had her back to the wall next to the tunnel entrance, and Rainbow Smite in both hands. A knot of children clustered around her. Two men, both of them bruised and bleeding, lay dazed on the floor, and for a moment the frenzied exodus ground to a shocked halt. Alethea’s eyes blazed with terrible fury. One of the children had a badly bleeding nose and he had his arms wrapped around Alethea’s thighs.
Gutsy could read the scene—one or both of the injured men had done something rough and violent to try and get into the tunnel first. That had been a mistake. Another man tried to shove Alethea out of the way, and she rammed the fat end of her bat into his stomach with such force that it lifted him off the ground. He dropped to his knees, face purple, and she kicked him away. Her hair was wild and her eyes wilder, but her tiara was still in plac
e.
“Kids go in next,” she roared, “then adults. Anyone else shoves a kid out of the way and I will murder them right here and now.”
One man—a big hulking fellow who Gutsy recognized as a wall construction worker—laughed at Alethea and told her to get out of the way. He emphasized the demand with a very ugly comment about her weight.
The hardwood tip of a fighting staff tokked him on the top of the head hard enough to stagger him. He dropped to his knees, and then the bo swung around and stopped less than a quarter inch from the tip of his nose. The man gaped and his eyes stared down the length of the staff to a pair of intense green eyes.
“You heard the princess,” said Spider. Sombra took a step past Spider and bared his considerable teeth.
The big man had nothing to say. The kids fled into the tunnel. Alethea and Spider flanked the door, and the congested knot of people transformed into a steady flow.
Gutsy edged over to Alethea. “Where’s Alice and the Carnovskys?”
Alethea shook her head. “Sorry, Guts, I haven’t seen them.”
She took her group of kids and ran into the tunnel.
Gutsy and Spider stayed outside and made several trips deeper into the hospital to drive stragglers toward the tunnel. Gutsy looked for Alice in every room, too, but didn’t see her anywhere. The tide was slackening now, kindling a fragile flame of optimism in her. She had no idea how many people had gotten out. Not all, of that she was sure. Some would have been hunted down by either the dead or wild men. Some were probably hiding, convinced they could wait it out.
Where was Karen Peak? Had she gotten out with Sunny-Day Ray and the vehicles? Or had she fallen with the town, the last defender of the New Alamo?
And… where was Alice?
The flame of optimism in her heart flickered and offered no comforting warmth at all.
“Gutsy,” said Spider, “listen.”
She pulled herself out of her own thoughts and heard the sounds. Howling.
Coming from inside the hospital.
91
AT THE FAR END OF the tunnel, Benny stood at the exit, guiding the fleeing citizens out through the car wash and into the night. Many were weeping as they fled into the darkness. Away from the only home they knew and toward the uncertainty of Site B far to the northeast.
Alethea came through with a bunch of little kids and herded them along, her bat clutched in one fist and her other hand darting out to touch each of them as they ran, tallying them. It was an automatic thing, unconscious. For all her bluster, Benny suspected she had a big, gentle heart. He prayed that she would survive this. Her and those kids. Seeing them gave him hope but also deepened his fear.
“Where’s Gutsy and Spider?” he called.
“Coming,” was her only reply. He peered down the tunnel but could see nothing except shadows and debris.
Not far away, the town was beginning to burn. There were still explosions and yells and even a few scattered gunshots, but most of the fighting was distant.
“God, I wish Joe and Sam were here,” he said to himself. It was not the first time he’d said or thought that. It had become a mantra for him, and he kept hoping the two soldiers would appear as if by magic—as they had during the siege of New Alamo.
