Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

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“Wait . . . no, don’t go out there,” cried Gutsy, realizing that whoever had brought Mama here might still be there. But the dog vanished. She could hear his furious barks and then the angry whinny of a horse.

Gutsy, shaking with fear and pain, staggered after. She couldn’t see her machete anywhere. She’d leaned it against the arm of the couch, but it was gone. However, there was an umbrella stand beside the door, filled with baseball bats, a field hockey stick, a crowbar, and a heavy metal golf putter. She snatched up the hockey stick and dashed outside just in time to hear Sombra let out a high-pitched yelp of pain.

The sound came from up the street, in the direction of the back road out of town. If it had been only herself to think about, Gutsy would have gone back inside and pushed furniture in front of the doors. She would have gone back to deal with the thing in her bedroom. She would have fallen apart.

The dog, though . . .

She clutched the stick in her hand, ground her teeth together in a feral snarl, and ran.

High-pitched squeals of pain told her the way. Along the street a few windows popped with yellow as some of the neighbors lit lanterns. One or two curtains parted, but no one came out to see what was happening. That was so typical, she thought. People hid rather than get involved. They were braver during the day, braver in numbers, but at night they trusted closed doors, locks, and the night guards to deal with problems. No one wanted to be seen wandering in the streets for fear of being mistaken for one of the dead.

Gutsy reached the end of her street and skidded to a stop, because now there was no sound at all. Sombra had fallen silent. Was he dead? That thought stabbed her, making her realize how much she already cared about the strange coydog.

She edged toward the corner of the last house on the left, one of the empty ones used for bulk storage. There were more houses than people in New Alamo. Adjusting her grip on her weapon, she leaned out for a fast look and ducked back, letting her brain process what the brief glimpse had captured.

Then she leaned out again and stared. Sombra lay in the middle of the street.

Beyond him, moving away from the spot where he’d fallen, were two riders on horseback. For a wild moment, Gutsy was terrified that the cannibal ravagers had somehow breached the walls. That was always the worst fear in town. When they raided a town, they left nothing and no one alive. Not a person, not even the smallest house cat.

“Please, God,” she begged, gripping her weapon, aware of how flimsy it was against killers like that.

Then the riders moved into a patch of light thrown by a streetlamp. They wore long canvas coats whose split tails flapped as they galloped. Each had an old-style cowboy hat with the brim pulled low, and they both wore scarves wrapped around the lower half of their faces. Gutsy moved into the center of the street and stood by Sombra, who was still breathing and whimpering softly. There was fresh blood on his muzzle, but his eyes were closed.

Gutsy gripped her hockey stick in both hands.

“Come back and fight, you freaking cowards,” she yelled.

One of them, the shorter of the two, cut a look over his shoulder and reined his horse to a stop. The rider looked too young to be doing what he was doing. A teenage boy or . . .

No. Was it a woman?

That thought somehow jolted Gutsy, because she hadn’t expected that. But even in the bad light, she was sure she was right. It was a woman. Slim but strong-looking, with broad shoulders. She raised a weapon and pointed it at Gutsy. It wasn’t a gun, though. It was Gutsy’s own machete. It wasn’t a challenge—it was a message letting Gutsy know that it was she who had brought Mama back, and she who had taken the big knife.

Gutsy raised her hockey stick and pointed back at her. After a moment, the woman gave a single, short nod. Then shouts filled the air, along with the sound of people running. Townsfolk and the night guards. The rider turned away, kicked her horse, and was gone. Gutsy dropped slowly to her knees beside the dog. Sombra was alive, but unconscious and bleeding.

The thought she’d had earlier, that New Alamo was the safest place anyone knew, now seemed to come back to mock her. This town wasn’t safe at all.

Nowhere was safe.

Nowhere.

21

BAD NIGHTS CAN ALWAYS GET worse.

Night guards tore past to try to catch the riders. People crowded the streets now, everyone chattering but no one saying anything she needed to hear. Then all conversation died as a series of gunshots filled the night air from the direction of the rear gate. Then the town’s alarm whistles were shrieking, giving the signal that everyone in town knew and dreaded—three shorts bursts followed by three longer ones, and three more short ones. An old code, from before the End.

SOS.

A lot of people thought that it meant “Save Our Ship” or “Save Our Souls.” Gutsy knew it didn’t, or at least it wasn’t meant to mean that when German sailors invented the signal a long time ago. The nine sounds were picked because it was an easy code, and it was the only nine-sound message used in Morse code. Something she had learned in a book.

It was used now for one purpose, and it might as well have meant Save Our Souls.

It meant that the dead were inside the town walls.

The people scattered like sheep. Some screamed as they ran for home. Maybe on another night Gutsy would have run away too.