Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

So many thoughts crashed and tumbled through her brain.

The Night Army. Who or what were they? The soldiers seemed scared of them. Were they the ones the captain and her lieutenant were talking about? The ones who might overrun their base?

She thought about all the rumors she’d heard around town and from scavengers about a base. There were lots of theories about what it was and where it might be located, but until now Gutsy hadn’t taken any of them seriously. Travelers often told tall tales in the hopes of interested listeners buying them a meal or offering to let them bed down in a spare room. Now, though, Gutsy new that some of them had to have been telling the truth. There was a base. And also something the soldiers called “the lab.” Where were they? What were they?

The information was so big, so confusing, and felt so vastly important that it threatened to kick down the walls of the world as Gutsy knew it. The Rat Catchers were clearly part of something very large, very scary, and completely mystifying.

They had known her mother’s name.

“Mama, please,” she pleaded to the darkness. “What’s going on?”

There was no answer in the endless night. Sombra walked beside her, silent as a ghost. The cool desert wind blew toward them, bringing faint moisture from the distant Rio Grande.

When they were still five hundred feet up the road from the Abrams tank, Gutsy heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a horse nickering and then the sharp “Shhhhhh” as a female voice told him to be quiet. Sombra answered it with a single whuff.

Gutsy had her knife out in a heartbeat, ready to fight. Oh God, she thought wildly, the Rat Catchers followed me here.

Panic flared in her chest, and Gutsy realized how stupid all this was; how insane a risk it was to think that she could outwit trained professionals. She crouched, weapon ready, determined to take at least one or two of them with her. To make them pay for what they did to Mama.

I’m going to die, she thought. I’m stupid and I’m going to—

And then Spider stepped out from behind the tank, his hardwood staff in his hands.

“Oh, hey, Guts,” he said with a bright smile.

She gaped at him. “Spider . . . ? I could have killed you. What on earth are you doing here?”

Even in her shock and surprise, Gutsy pitched her voice to be quiet but not whispering. Whispers, especially the s sounds, carried farther than normal speaking at low tones. That wasn’t part of her own collection of specialized knowledge—it was one of the things people learned quickly after the dead rose.

“Waiting for you,” said Spider. “What’s it look like?” He ground the heel of his staff on the dirt and leaned on it. “Don’t worry . . . we were careful.”

Gutsy saw the faintest glimmer of silver light, revealing the presence of some of her fishing line stretched across open ground a dozen yards from the tank, and she nodded approval. The previous summer, when they had all snuck out at night, Gutsy taught Spider and Alethea to string the line between rocks, cacti, and the wreckage of any old vehicles or debris. Small metal cans filled with pebbles hung at intervals along the fishing line. If those lines were touched, the ensuing rattle would alert her friends to approaching danger. Place them at a sensible distance and the warning allowed enough time to climb out of sleeping bags and grab weapons. Personally, Gutsy would have strung her lines even farther away, but now wasn’t the time to nitpick.

Alethea appeared with Rainbow Smite resting on her shoulder. “Hey, sweetie,” she said as if this was a bright, sunny afternoon in the town square.

“I thought I told you guys to go back home,” snapped Gutsy.

Alethea arched an eyebrow. “You did, but I don’t remember you being appointed Queen of All That Is . . . and you’re definitely not the queen of me.”

“I—”

“We got halfway home then decided to come back and wait here for you.”

“And by talked about it,” amended Spider philosophically, “she means that she told me that was what we were going to do, because she apparently is the Queen of All That Is.”

“Princess,” corrected Alethea. “I’m not that egotistical.”

“You’re going to get in so much trouble,” Gutsy protested. “The Cuddlys will—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Cuddlys,” said Alethea, flapping a hand. “We’ve been in trouble with them before—”

“And will be again,” said Spider quietly.

“And will be again. Who cares?” Alethea stepped closer and glared at Gutsy. “Besides, who do you think we are? Do you think we’d leave you out here all alone? Do you think we’d just stash Mama in the barn like you said and then drift off to have happy dreams of unicorns and puppies? No? No. We either do this together or we don’t do any of it. End of discussion.”

When Gutsy turned to Spider, hoping he’d be the voice of reason, he gave her a bland smile. “Her Majesty has spoken.”

Gutsy knew how to spot a fight she wasn’t likely to win. Trying to convince Alethea to do something she didn’t want to do was a lot scarier than a whole pack of los muertos.