Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

“Wait . . . ,” said the soldier. “No . . . that’s impossible. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

The soldier suddenly lowered the gun and sat down hard on the ground. He looked like he had just been punched in the face. The pistol tumbled from his hand and landed in the dirt.

“I’m losing it,” the soldier said, and he grabbed his head with both hands. “I’m totally losing it. I . . . I . . . I . . .”

He never finished the sentence, because the hunter launched himself through the air and tackled the soldier.

PART SEVEN

NEW ALAMO, TEXAS

LATE AUGUST

THE GRAVE ROBBERS

The secret to happiness is freedom,

And the secret to freedom is courage.

—THUCYDIDES

37

GUTSY WATCHED THE RAT CATCHERS dig. As they worked, she felt something happening to her.

At first it was only a physical thing. Her fists closed into knots, her stomach clenched, her jaws locked as she ground her teeth. It felt like fear, at first. It felt the way it did sometimes when she was running from the smarter, fast

er kinds of living dead. Or how she felt when a party of rough-looking Broken Lands travelers nearly trapped her out on the desert. Fear of what could happen to her; of what would happen if she wasn’t fast enough or smart enough.

As Gutsy always did, she looked inward to try to understand what she was feeling. The Chess Players sometimes talked about the difference between a “knee-jerk” reaction and a “considered” one. Knee-jerk reactions were instant. Sometimes they were a reflex inspired by nothing more than a simple emotion—fear, anger, need, hunger, insecurity. Other times they were copied reactions, like one dog starting to bark after another one started. Considered reactions were different—they were how people responded once they’d had time to think things through. It was how smarter or more experienced people reacted, basing what they did on what they’d learned, what they knew, what they thought about things.

Gutsy looked for those two kinds of reactions in people and found that it was useful to understand the forces at work in a person. It told her a lot. It gave her compassion, when that was needed, usually after someone said something or did something that they would later regret. But it also taught her a lot about how someone really was. If someone was kind as a reflex, that was great, like someone stepping aside to hold the door when they saw an old person going into the general store at the same time. A “reflex of courtesy,” Mr. Ford called it. Or the way Mama used to snap at her when Gutsy did something dangerous, jumping to anger to hide the fear.

Then there were the times she was so mad that her face flushed and her throat burned and she felt like just rushing at someone and beating their brains out. Like the time Nicky Cantu pantsed Spider in front of everyone at the spring fair. Or when Mrs. Osborne across the street kicked the neighbor’s twelve-year-old half-blind yellow Lab for pooping on her lawn. Those times were raw, unthinking anger. The kind that Gutsy always had to fight back, to stuff into their closets and lock the doors. They were knee-jerk reactions.

This, though . . . this was different.

What she felt as she watched them throw shovelfuls of dirt out of the hole was different from all those feelings.

This wasn’t a reflex, and it wasn’t the heat of anger. This wasn’t even rage. It went beyond that. It went the whole way past that into a place Gutsy had never been before. A place she thought she’d been, but now that she was there, she knew that these were her first footsteps into that strange and ugly landscape.

This, she knew, was hate.

38

THE RAT CATCHERS LABORED OVER their ugly work. The white woman and the tall black man stood watching as the other two dug. An owl hooted from a nearby tree. It was like a scene from Frankenstein, a book Gutsy had read last autumn.

“Make it quick,” said the lieutenant to the two men with shovels. Then, in a quieter voice, he addressed his captain. “Have to admit, Bess, I’ll be glad when this phase is done.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Losing your nerve?”

“Being realistic. We’re taking a big risk here.”

“We’re doing our job, Simon.”

Gutsy took note of the names. Bess and Simon.

“Sure,” said the lieutenant, “we are, and we’re nearly done. That’s great. But you’ve seen the reports, you’ve heard what the scouts have been saying. What if they’re right? What if all of them are getting smarter? What if they’re really getting organized?”