Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

Collins smiled, but it was fragile, forced. “You’re lying to me.”

“Why the heck would I lie?” laughed Gutsy. “What’s the point? I went out there to try and find you and beat your brains in because of what you did to my mother, but the Night Army got there first. It’s burning, and I ran back here to try and warn the town before it was too late.”

“You should have run faster,” said Collins coldly.

“Bess . . . ?” said Morton. “What are we going to do?”

“We do what I said before,” she snapped. “We get these records to the other lab.”

“How? It’s over a thousand miles from here. How will we get there without the vehicles at the base?”

“Let me worry about that.”

The screaming in the hallway stopped, and Sombra came stalking back into the room. His muzzle was smeared with bright red blood, and there was an alien wildness in his eyes. For a moment Gutsy thought the coydog was going to attack her, but Sombra looked up at her and there was a momentary softening of his expression. It was as if he was aware of the line he’d crossed and it scared him. He whined and gave a sad little wag of his tail. Gutsy wanted to hug him, to tell him it was all going to be okay. Except, as she had done once before, she declined to lie to the animal.

Nothing was ever going to be okay again.

Collins was moving backward toward a big storage locker, her gun steady on Gutsy. “Come on, Max. We have to go. We’ll find a way to get to Asheville. Get the bags.”

With her free hand, she reached back for the locker door handle, but the doors suddenly opened outward and a ravager slammed into Collins with shocking force. The gun went off and a bullet punched the wall inches from Gutsy’s head. Collins fell screaming with the ravager on top of her. Her gun flew from her hand.

Gutsy was suddenly in motion, swinging the crowbar at the ravager, but in the instant it landed on the killer’s skull, Gutsy realized that the ravager wasn’t moving.

The ravager wasn’t alive.

The crowbar crunched through bone and Collins immediately shifted the body off her and snapped out with a powerful kick-sweep that sent Gutsy crashing to the floor. She fell hard and banged her head on the ground, but she kicked back and caught Collins on the hip, spilling the captain as she tried to rise. As Collins fell down, Gutsy swarmed atop her and began hitting the woman who had killed Mama and treated her like vermin.

Every bit of fear, every moment of indignity, every life destroyed and future stolen put iron in her muscles and shoveled coal into the furnace of her hate. It was no longer the cold hatred from back in the cemetery. Now she burned with it as she punched and punched. This was for Mama. For her friends. For the town. She hit and hit until she thought her hands were going to shatter. Collins may have been military, but she wasn’t prepared for the speed and power of Gutsy’s attack. Maybe she’d underestimated the little Latina. Maybe her own rank and status made her too arrogant to think this “rat” was any kind of threat.

She learned different.

But then someone looped an arm around Gutsy’s waist and hauled her backward and off the captain, and it wasn’t Dr. Morton.

“Enough!” roared a voice she had never heard before. Gutsy was dumped on the floor, and the person who grabbed her danced backward out of reach of the furious swing Gutsy launched.

Sombra leaped at the newcomer and clamped his teeth on the person’s wrist, but those teeth did not bite through flesh.

The moment froze.

A boy stood there. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. Tall, strong-looking, wearing full body armor and a helmet with a plastic visor. Behind the visor were Asian-looking eyes. He had what looked like a samurai sword strapped to his back.

“If this is your dog,” said the boy, struggling with Sombra, “better call him off. I don’t want to hurt him.”

Suddenly there was more movement in the corner, and Gutsy turned to see something that looked impossible. Three more teenagers stepped out of the cabinet as if they were stepping out of nowhere. It was like one of those old novels. Like the kids coming out of the wardrobe from Narnia or Alice through her mirror. They were all dressed in body armor, all splashed with gore. A second boy, also with Asian eyes, and two girls: a tall, stern-faced blonde and a short redhead. The second Asian kid had a compound bow and was drawing an arrow back, the weapon pointed at Sombra, who continued to slash and chew the first boy’s wrist pads. The blond girl had a long spear and the redhead had another katana, though hers was in her hands.

“Last warning,” said the boy with the bow. “I like dogs, but I like my friend more. Well . . . maybe only a little more.”

Gutsy tried to make sense of it. Failed.

But she said, “Sombra . . . no . . .”

And with great reluctance the coydog released his bite. He stood his ground, though, growling at the newcomers. In the corner, Dr. Morton was a statue, too terrified to move. Captain Collins groaned and rocked side to side on the floor, her hands over her bloody face.

“Who . . . who are you?” gasped Gutsy. “And where did you come from? How did you get in here?”

“The tunnel . . . ?” squeaked Morton. “God, are they in the tunnel?”

Everyone knew who “they” were.