Lost Roads (Benny Imura 7)

What had Collins said? Something about the Raggedy Man having the largest army in the history of the world. If so, then he could afford to keep throwing his troops at New Alamo until all the town had left for defense were clubs and knives, and those would not stop a wave of thousands of shamblers. That, Gutsy knew, was the logic of an undead general. Even Captain Ledger with his sword or Sam Imura with his sniper rifle could not take down enough of them to stop los muertos from wiping New Alamo off the face of the planet. There were not enough bullets, not enough blades, not enough human physical strength left to stop an army of billions. It chilled her to the bone.

“This is how we’re going to lose,” she told Sombra.

The coydog, being only an animal, wagged his tail, happy to be spoken to. Gutsy knelt and wrapped her arms around the battered dog and held on for dear life.

Then a soft voice spoke out of the shadows.

“We’re not going to lose, Gutsy Gomez.”

She jerked her head up, and through the tears in her eyes Gutsy saw a slim figure dressed in soiled clothes, with hair that was ratty with grime and dried sweat and a face streaked with dirt cut by dried tear tracks. It was a beautiful face, though.

So beautiful.

“Alice.”

Alice Chung came into Gutsy’s arms and they clung to each other. Sobbing. Holding on for dear life. Gutsy

kissed Alice’s hair and face and hands.

“Alice,” she said, repeating the name over and over.

PART FOUR THE ROAD TO ASHEVILLE

But I’ve a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town…

—ALAN SEEGER, “I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH”

21

“YOU THINK BENNY AND THE others are okay?” asked Morgie as they packed their gear onto the quads after another night in another empty house.

Riot answered with a shrug.

“We made the right choice, though, didn’t we?” Morgie prodded. “Splitting from the others like this? Going to Asheville?”

Another shrug.

He sighed and changed the subject. “Okay, so I did the math on the trip, and it’ll take us about thirty-two more hours at top speed to get there.”

Nothing.

“But we’ll probably have to go slower. So it could take as much as fifty hours all told. With rest stops and all, that’s at least a week.”

Not a word.

“I was bitten by a zom last night and turned into a flesh-eating ghoul,” he said.

Riot flinched and cut him a look, but when she saw him grinning, she gave a scowl that was as dark and threatening as a storm cloud.

“Just checking to see if you were listening to me,” he said.

Riot stared at him for several seconds, saying nothing. Then she went back to packing her quad. Morgie sighed and stopped talking. They left a few minutes later.

They drove in silence, Riot way out in front. As they made their way north, Morgie focused instead on the landscape and wildlife. They passed small herds of zebras, and another of wild horses. The latter made sense because of all the abandoned horse ranches they passed; the zebras must have come from a zoo. There were carcasses and bones, too. It was getting easier to recognize the difference between zombie bites and marks from the claws and fangs of living predators. Probably a lion or tiger, he figured.

A camel walked slowly along the roadside, and Morgie smiled at it until he got close and saw that it was deformed. Not a zom camel but something equally disturbing—a mutant. Maybe it was radiation, or perhaps chemicals from a tanker truck or train; but whatever it was, the camel was hideous. It had one normal eye, but the other was a darkened pit over which flies crawled. Instead of two nostrils it had five, and its mouth was filled with jagged teeth and what looked like stunted tusks. It smelled of feces and sulfur. Morgie gunned his engine and left it behind.

A lot of the plants were mutated, too. Trees whose trunks were twisted as if writhing in slow pain as they grew. Carnivorous plants with small rodents and geckos caught in the clutches of sappy leaves. Butterflies as large as doves but with stingers like scorpions.