Lost Roads (Benny Imura 7)

Holly set the note down on the cooler. “What about town? Tell me what happened.”

“Sure,” Gutsy said, “but would you mind putting the gun down?”

Holly glanced down at it and grunted. “Oh. Right. It’s empty anyway.” She leaned it against a cabinet.

“Empty… ?” echoed Gutsy.

“It was all I had,” said Holly. “If you turned out to be a ravager or wild man, then I guess I’d be dead.”

“You could have used it as a club,” Gutsy suggested, but Holly didn’t comment. So, Gutsy said, “Look, I’ll be happy to tell you everything, but Dr. Morton wants the Dòmi stuff. Wild men tried to get into town through the secret door at the car wash. Do you know about that?”

“The door? Sure.”

“Good. The wild men are going to be a problem because a huge wave of los”—she stopped and switched from the town nickname for the dead to the word Morton used—“reanimates is going to hit us. The Night Army. If the wild men infect them, then they’ll just overwhelm us.”

Holly nodded. “That’s what we’ve always been afraid of,” she said. “Ever since Homer Gibbon escaped and started organizing the ravagers. He’s like a god to the reanimates. He destroyed this place. I figured he’d have wiped New Alamo off the map.”

“Not for lack of trying,” said Gutsy. “But, look, Morton is hurt. He’s been bitten. We have people looking for Site B to try and get the supplies he needs for his treatment, but he sent me here to get the Dòmi stuff.”

It was only partly

true, but Angela Holly kept nodding as if it was all reasonable. “You came all the way from New Alamo?” She shuddered again. “You’re out of your mind. Those things are out there.”

“I was careful. Look… why don’t you come back with me?”

“I… I’m okay down here.”

“Really?” Gutsy asked frankly. “How much gas do you have left for the generator?”

Holly’s eyes shifted away again. “Enough, I guess.”

“How much is ‘enough’?”

“Another week. Maybe more.”

“And then what?” asked Gutsy.

“Well, by then most of the reanimates will have wandered off. I figured I’d risk opening the south exit, load up a Humvee, and drive out to Site B.”

Gutsy stared at her.

“Whoa, wait—you have a vehicle that works?”

“Of course we do,” Holly said. “Humvees, Strykers, Fast Attack Vehicles, some of those deuce-and-a-half trucks. They’re in the motor pool on sublevel one. But we can’t get there from here because part of sub-one collapsed. We have to go up to the main floor and then take stairway F to get there.”

“How do you know that hasn’t collapsed?”

“I’ve been there. Just to make sure, you know? But there are too many reanimates out there, so I came back down to wait.” She paused and frowned. “You seem surprised, but how else were you going to get the Dòmi back to the lab? Didn’t Doc Morton tell you to take a jeep or Humvee?”

“I, um, don’t know how to drive,” Gutsy admitted. “But, look, we need to get moving. Will you help me get the stuff on Dr. Morton’s list?”

Holly seemed indecisive, but then nodded. “Sure.”

Gutsy picked up the list again and moved to cabinet 003. She dialed in the code on the manual lock, opened the cabinet, and began removing small plastic devices, each marked with a code of mixed numbers and letters matching Morton’s list. Gutsy knew that these were flash drives, which she’d heard about but never seen before. It was still hard to believe that vast amounts of information could be stored on such tiny devices.

“Do you have any, um, computers?” she asked. “Doc wanted one. A lap one.”

“No problem,” said Holly, as if that was nothing. “We can grab a couple of laptops.”