Lost Roads (Benny Imura 7)

“Looks to me like you left ’er too late.”

“No kidding.”

“Work faster,” said Holly. She and one of the other drivers were handing out automatic rifles and bundles of loaded magazines to the people clustered around. “We saw a lot more coming.”

“We can hold them off for a while with these,” Spider said, pointing to the big machine guns mounted on the vehicles. “Can’t we?”

Holly and Sunny-Day Ray both shook their heads. “You ain’t been out there, Spider,” said the old man. “You ever heard the expression ‘between a rock and a hard place’?”

“Sure, but—”

“You seen the rock already. That big mook on that throne? That’s the Raggedy Man.”

“We know.”

“Well, what you don’t know is it weren’t them zombies made the convoy split up.”

“What do you mean?” asked Spider, but Gutsy clutched his wrist.

“He means the wild men are coming.”

“No,” said Sergeant Holly. “The wild men are already here.”

83

BROTHER MERCY TRIED TO FIND the rest of the strike team that had infiltrated the town with him and Sister Sorrow. He found only Brother Cactus and Sister Moon. The rest were scattered, doing their assigned tasks. He told the two he found about seeing the wild men. They were aghast. They knew about Wodewose from the ravagers who’d been at the base. It was a great evil to those half-zombies. None of them had known that wild men would be here. Right here.

“We have to get out of here,” he said urgently. “Forget this cursed town. Let the wild men have it. We need to get outside and turn our army back.”

Brother Cactus looked past him to the empty street. “Where’s Sister Sorrow?”

The sneer was replaced by a mask of such deep hate that the others recoiled. “She’s gone,” he said. “Into the darkness. Now come on!”

They swarmed up the eastern wall, scaling the tires and bumpers and door handles of the stacked cars until they reached the walkway. There were only a few guards left over here, and the reapers cut them down.

Below, in the field outside, the first of the ravagers and the rest of Brother Mercy’s strike team reached the wall. They hurled grappling hooks over the top of it and began to climb. Brother Mercy leaned out and waved them back.

“No!” he called down to them. “Go back. Go back!”

They stared at him in confusion. There was too much noise, too many things happening at once, and Brother Mercy knew that this army was going to fail. The gray people—the sinless dead who were beloved of Lord Thanatos, all praise his darkness—could not stand up to the wild men. The Raggedy Man and some of the ravagers had told tales about this new threat. A single one of the howling madmen could begin an infection that would sweep through the king of the dead’s shambling army. Even the ravagers were vulnerable. Taking this town of sinners was not worth the risk, and the Raggedy Man did not know the wild men were coming. That they were nearly here.

Brother Mercy sheathed his knife, took hold of a grappling line, and slithered down the outside of the wall. The other reapers followed, silent as ghosts.

84

GUTSY AND HER FRIENDS RAN to the west wall and climbed to the gate. A few ravagers and reapers, along with several hundred shamblers, had attacked that side of town, but it was more of a diversion, drawing resources away from the main assault on the east gate. Now those same attackers were themselves being attacked. How soon before the Wodewose infection reached the larger army on the other side? And then what?

Gutsy stared in horror as the wild men overran the living dead, attacking the shamblers and ravagers, but also tearing down the reapers with relentless savagery. Mad howls filled the night.

The undead had no chance. Not only were they attacked with hands and teeth but their bodies were assaulted by Wodewose spat at them or delivered through bites. Within moments the living dead began twitching and thrashing as a second war was fought in their bloodstreams—paracide versus parasite. A few of the more recent reanimates actually screamed in very human voices as the disease swept through them, awakening parts of their brains, reconnecting them to the realization of what was happening. Driving them insane within seconds.

It was horrible to see.

But the fight was not entirely one-sided. The reapers, seeing and understanding that something terrible was happening to their undead allies, mounted a sophisticated defense. They were all excellent fighters—as Gutsy had just learned—and while the wild men could use clubs and stones as weapons, the reapers had skill and cunning. They met the attack, often putting themselves between the wild men and the living dead. Blades flashed, and bodies fell.

The fight shaped itself that way, with the reapers learning from success. They formed a curved wall around the uninfected shamblers. Some of the ravagers stood behind them, firing pistols and shotguns at the wild men.

“I don’t know who to root for,” mumbled Benny.