Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

They ran to join the others.

The six of them pushed their quads all the way to the tree line and then another hundred yards down the main trader’s road. By now the sky was turning a bloody red, and it threw its lurid light across their path. If anyone felt uneasy at the gory hue of the morning, no one dared mention it.

When they were a mile from the town, they climbed onto the saddles, fired up the engines, and drove away from home.

Interlude Two

KICKAPOO CAVERN STATE PARK

ONE WEEK AGO

THE HUNTER FOLLOWED THE BLOOD trail for two miles.

There were blood smears on leaves, on tree trunks, against a big rock. And one big bloody handprint on the fender of an ancient Mustang convertible that had likely been abandoned long before the dead rose.

The hunter was annoyed by how sloppy his quarry was. Either the man was dazed from whatever catastrophe had befallen him, or he had no idea how to move in the woods. The man moved like he did not care that anyone might follow. That was stupid, because these woods were filled with dangers. So

me that hunted on four legs, others that went on two. Alive and dead.

The hunter claimed these woods as his own, and predators who came here had to earn their right to share this forest. The hunter allowed the big hunting cats from the zoo to prowl here. They frightened off most of the scavengers and those infected who hadn’t yet lost their minds. Those cats occasionally took down the dead. Not to consume them, but for sport. Leopards were like that. They, like house cats, were among the few animals who hunted for the joy of slaughter. Many humans were like that. Even some of the soldiers the hunter had run with once upon a time had not been drawn to an idealistic sense of honor or even the sense of empowerment that came with bearing arms. Some wanted to spill blood, walk through blood, see blood, and know that it was they who had spilled it.

The hunter understood that mind-set because it was important to know how minds work. It was not, however, how his mind worked. He had killed so many times that he’d long since lost count. Sane people do not keep that kind of tally. Not unless they want to ruin themselves. As a soldier, as a sniper, as a leader of men and women through the valley of the shadow of death in battlefields around the world, he had spilled blood. And now, here in the wasteland of what had once been America, he killed nearly every day. Animals for food, the dead for protection, and humans for various reasons. He never once enjoyed it.

He killed to survive, but never for sport. There had been too much senseless death in the world. Everyone he knew was dead. Friends, family, brothers-in-arms. Dead. The world had become a graveyard.

If the wounded man was benign, then the hunter would offer help. First aid, some food and water, and precise directions for leaving this forest. For going elsewhere. If the man was hostile, then he would die. There wasn’t a lot of give in the hunter. He set strict rules and lived by them. There were a lot of graves hidden among the weeds and wildflowers in these woods.

The hunter moved on, going faster now because this fool did not merit a more skillful chase. The footprints wandered on, and then he slowed as he saw something odd. The prints suddenly seemed different. Deeper. The hunter paused and knelt by one of them, touching the dirt to see if it was wetter or spongy with moss. It wasn’t.

Then he saw something else that was wrong. The print was smeared a little. The tread marks looked blurred, doubled, as if the foot had stepped, lifted and stepped down again in the same spot. Almost perfectly, but not. And the weight distribution was wrong. A person walking forward lands heel-heavy. These had that, but he saw that the ball of the foot was equally deep. As if the person had stepped back into his own print and walked backward. Which made no sense unless . . .

The barrel of a pistol touched the back of his neck.

“Hold it right there, sparky,” said a cold voice. “You even breathe wrong and I’ll kill you.”

PART FIVE

NEW ALAMO, TEXAS

LATE AUGUST

THE RAT CATCHERS

I don’t think of all the misery

but of the beauty that still remains.

—ANNE FRANK

26

SPIDER DROVE THE WAGON TO hope cemetery, with Alethea seated beside him and Gutsy in the back with her mother. This time the shroud was still, without sound or movement except the rocking of the wagon. Sombra lay with his head on Gutsy’s lap, looking at her with his pale, wise dog eyes.

It had taken a lot of persuading to get the day guards to let them take the wagon outside that morning. Two of the night guards had been badly beaten by the masked riders, and a half-dozen of the dead had been turned loose in town. Luckily, the response to the whistle calls had been quick and efficient, with scores of people rushing out to do as they had been trained. They circled each of the living dead, using big T-poles to push them back. The T-bar at the end of each pole was a yard wide, and when two or three people worked together, the bars created a barrier. With a couple of strong men holding each pole and other folks using smaller T-poles to shove, a group of five or six could easily maneuver a dead person into one of the many pens positioned around town. Everyone knew how to do this, and everyone had to practice the drills a few times each month.

Once the dead were confined in the pens, handlers wearing head-to-toe body armor would go in, wrestle each muerto to the ground, bind them securely, and wrap leather muzzles around their mouths. The dead were then put on display to allow people to see if anyone knew them. Families would claim their loved ones and bury them according to preferred customs. The unclaimed would be taken by the guards out of town, spiked, and burned where prevailing winds would blow their smoke and ash away.

The efficiency of it always pleased Gutsy, who liked a good process. A few times, though, she had made suggestions for doing it better, and was typically ignored. Being fifteen was a pain in the butt sometimes. She also got told off for being “too smart for her own good,” an expression that never made sense to Gutsy.