Lost Roads (Benny Imura 7)

Then he stiffened. They all did. They’d been waiting for Spider and Gutsy.

And now…

“Oh my God,” said Benny in a faint and horrified whisper.

PART TWENTY-TWO ON LOST ROADS

If quick, I survive. If not quick, I am lost. This is “death.”

—SUN TZU

93

GUTSY FELT PAIN AND WAS confused by it. How could a dead person feel anything?

Then terror swept through her as she remembered that the Reaper Plague kept the original personality awake and aware even after the body reanimated.

Ay dios mio! Estoy muerto!

Then, suddenly, she felt something wet on her face. Warm. Moving.

And it smelled awful.

Gutsy flinched away, bashing at it, afraid it was one of the wild men. Her flailing hand hit something that yielded. A sharp yelp of pain and fear filled the air.

A… yelp?

Gutsy opened her eyes. It was like lifting ten thousand tons. She stared through tears, grit, and dust into a pair of smoky gray eyes.

“S-Sombra… ?”

The coydog was hesitant because she’d just hit him, even if by accident, but he was there, trying to help her, his tail wagging nervously. He began licking her all over for the sheer joy of her being alive.

Actually alive.

Gutsy wrapped her arms around him and pulled the scared and skinny animal into a fierce embrace. He whined and wriggled, licked her and barked.

A voice behind her said, “Are we dead?”

Gutsy let Sombra go and turned to see a thin, trembling shadow rise from the debris. Spider was covered in ash, and his T-shirt had been nearly torn away. He leaned on his bo and looked at her with eyes that were dull with shock.

“We’re alive,” she said in a hoarse voice she barely recognized as her own.

She bent forward and vomited. Spider came and wrapped his arms around her and held her while she did. Then Gutsy straightened, dragged a forearm across her mouth, and together they staggered toward the car wash. Sombra, following, whined continuously, his tail curled between his legs.

* * *

“Gutsy!”

A voice came echoing through the ruined tunnel, and Gutsy and Spider looked up and saw Benny Imura running full tilt toward them, his gleaming sword in his hands.

“Gutsy,” he cried. “Spider… what the heck happened?”

Spider just pointed the way they’d come. The far end of the tunnel was gone, blocked entirely by fallen debris, burned cases of food, and half the ceiling. The blast had done more than ignite their mound—it had exploded all of the remaining containers of kerosene, and clearly something else that was stored there. The detonation had been too large, too powerful for just a few hundred gallons of lamp oil and a handful of fireworks. Gutsy pulled a wrapper from one of the fireworks out of a pocket and handed it to Benny.

“You did that?” he marveled.

“Seemed… practical.”