Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

“Okay, okay. Thanks, guys.” She looked around. “Everything been okay here?”

Alethea adjusted her tiara. “Been pretty boring, actually.”

“Which is good,” said Spider.

“Whatever. What about you, girl?” demanded Alethea. “You were gone a long time. I chewed my fingernails all the way to the elbow.”

Gutsy looked around. “Any visitors?”

“Couple lizards,” said Spider. “And about a zillion mosquitoes. No shamblers.”

“Good.”

“Hey, do I have to beat the story out of you?” asked Alethea, waggling Rainbow Smite in her direction.

Gutsy took a drink of water from the bottle Spider handed her, and stared back the way she’d come.

“I think we’re in trouble,” she said. “A whole lot of trouble.”

40

GUTSY TOLD THEM EVERYTHING.

There wa

s enough starlight to read the emotions that came and went on her friends’ faces. Shock, horror, anger, and confusion.

“Whoa, whoa,” said Spider, “they know who you are? They actually said ‘the Gomez girl’?”

“Yeah,” said Gutsy. “They’re the ones who brought Mama home. No doubt about it.”

“That’s . . . that’s . . . that’s . . .”

“Yeah,” agreed Gutsy, “it really is.”

“How do these Rat Catchers even know you?” asked Spider. “How’d they know your mom?”

“Beats me,” Gutsy admitted.

Alethea scratched at the knob of Rainbow Smite with her fingernail, lips pursed in thought. “You said they called Mama a ‘rat’?”

“Yes,” said Gutsy, and the memory of it made her lip curl into a silent snarl.

“Is it wrong that I want to beat on them for, like . . . a year?” Starlight glittered off the metal screwheads jutting out from the business end of Alethea’s baseball bat.

“I’m okay with it,” said Spider. Then he shook his head as if chasing off buzzing flies. “But who are they? No, more than that, why would they want to dig up all the bodies? Why dig up Mama twice and bring her back to your house, Guts?”

“That’s what I have to find out,” said Gutsy.

“That’s what we have to find out,” said Spider and Alethea at the same time.

Despite everything, Gutsy smiled. “We,” she agreed. “Look, from what I can figure, these people belong to some kind of group. They’re really organized. A captain and a lieutenant, and two guys who I guess are soldiers. It’s like how the military used to be, at least from what people say when they talk about before the End.”

“If they belong to some actual organization,” mused Alethea, “then what kind is it? And why don’t people know about them?”

“Yeah,” said Spider, “if that secret base thing is real, why hide it? I mean—why make it secret at all?”

“He’s right,” said Alethea, shaking her head. “What would be the point? And why hide all these years?”