Seeing the machines—even after having been up close to them—still managed to send a thrill of unreality through Gutsy. It was as if the past had somehow broken through a wall into her present. In the last couple of weeks, the entire fabric of reality had been fractured.
Benny gave a harsh, sour laugh. “I don’t know who to root for here,” he said.
Then the night was split apart by a new sound. Flashes of light and harsh pops filled the air, and for a moment Gutsy had the irrational notion that someone had borrowed her idea for using fireworks. But within seconds she realized that this wasn’t the case, as there was a sound of heavy engines buried beneath the pops.
Then she saw them: two Stryker Dragoons came bumping over the desert floor, the big Bushmaster machine guns firing toward the masses of reapers.
There was no sign of the other vehicles.
She looked over her shoulder and saw that the refugees had moved a considerable way along the path in the direction of Site B. They were no longer climbing over the landscape but had gone to the road and were using that. What had been a poor choice earlier was now the only choice. The enemy already knew where they were, so staying off the road didn’t matter except its flatness allowed the refugees to move much more quickly along the path of least resistance.
The big guns kept firing, and Gutsy looked back again. Would they be able to slow the armies down? How far was it to Site B? Three miles? Four?
* * *
Sunny-Day Ray fired and fired while Sergeant Holly drove. The Stryker’s big diesel engine growled like a dragon as she plowed forward, using all-wheel drive to conquer the terrain. The dense hardness of the steel body was a battering ram, smashing through shambler, ravager, reaper, and wild man alike, but the impacts still sent horrific shock waves through the interior. Below the Bushmaster was a nest of anti-tank rocket pods, and Ray shot these into the masses of killers, blasting them apart. Each detonation created a massive fireball that hurled burning bodies high into the air, but as devastating as they were, they were not enough. Nor could the Bushmaster fire enough rounds.
As the Strykers plowed through the crowds, the last of the rockets fired. The heavy wind whisked away the clouds of smoke. Fires burned here and there on patches of dry grass, and in places it was beginning to spread.
A minute later the machine guns themselves fell silent.
Trailing smoke from empty barrels, the war machines kept lumbering forward. But powerful as they were, the sheer mass of the enemy was too great. The vehicles slowed… and slowed…
And then they stopped, unable to push farther through the thousands of tons of tissue and bone. Not even hardened steel and heavy tires could manage it. The shamblers and ravagers pounded on the doors and tiny windows. Gutsy heard a few desperate pistol shots.
After that, nothing.
The two teens stood on the hill, able to see a large swath of the field in the moonlight. Everything was black and white—even the blood.
“The reapers are taking out all the wild men,” said Benny. “I guess that’s good for us.”
“Is it?”
“Sure,” he said. “They’re a lot faster than the zoms.”
Gutsy raised her machete and pointed. “No, wait. There are more wild men over there.”
They both studied a new spot of violent movement off to the southwest. A knot of shamblers were attacking others of their kind. Gutsy could not see how that started, but she could see it spread. First a handful of wild men were biting los muertos, then ten. Reapers came running, summoned by Brother Mercy’s whistle and shouts from ravagers, but by the time they got there, a dozen shamblers had been transformed.
Then it was two dozen.
It was like watching a stone dropped into water. Ripples of infection radiated out from where those first wild men had attacked. This is what the Raggedy Man and Brother Mercy had tried to stop. It was what they feared. It was so strange a concept that creatures such as they could fear anything. And yet there was panic in the shrill bleats of the whistle. Panic in the waving arms of the king of the dead. Ravagers with guns turned their weapons on the infected, cutting them down. Others waded in with axes and clubs, aiming to cripple and kill what had been their own shock troops.
One by one these defenders of the army of the dead were attacked, overwhelmed, dragged down. The ravagers rose again as wild men. Gutsy could not see what happened to the reapers. It was all becoming so frenzied. The Wodewose was spreading faster than any wildfire. It was unstoppable now, and they knew it. The Raggedy Man was howling in rage, but now there was a note of fear in his voice. The area of infection was a hundred yards from where he stood, but the wave was coming.
The end was coming. His vast and unbreakable, unconquerable army of the dead was about to be swept into the dustpan of history, replaced with millions of screaming infected. Mad beyond control, each of their bodies a battleground more fierce than the one on which they stood.
Brother Mercy was calling his reapers back, no longer trying to fight the infection but to provide a wall of fighters between the wild men and Homer Gibbon. Ravagers kept up a continuous barrage of small-arms fire, and the wind stoked the burning grass.
“We need to get out of here,” gasped Benny, backpedaling. “Right now.”
Grimm howled and then took off after Benny, who began running.
Gutsy, however, lingered. She was not really watching the spread of infection. Something else had drawn her eye. It was the smoke from the burning grass. It blew across the fields, at times obscuring the flatbed. The breeze whipped it through the struggling monsters.
Once more she thought she smelled the scents of Mama’s kitchen. Just for a moment, there and gone.
Then she, too, turned and followed Benny.