Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

Gutsy had been so glad her friends were with her when they put Mama into the ground for the last time. They’d been there when Mama’s ghost kissed her face with that soft wind and went free. However, most things have consequences. Everything was a process of cause and effect, as the Chess Players so often said.

“You want to clean up here before you go home?” she asked. They were all covered in dirt and dried sweat.

“No, thanks,” said Spider. “Probably should get this over with.”

Alethea gave a nod and a bleak stare. The Cuddlys, unlike most adults, were not people she could order around. Gutsy wondered, though, if that would change when her friend turned seventeen. After that no one could tell any teenager what to do. It was a year and a half away, though, and Mr. and Mrs. Cuddly could make life miserable for her until then.

They hugged each other, and Gutsy stood in the doorway to watch her friends trudge home. Most likely she wouldn’t see them for a day or two. House arrest, as Mr. Cuddly, called it, was part of the punishment for rule breaking. She tried hard not to wish a full-out living dead attack on the Cuddlys, but . . .

Then she closed her door, stripped off her vest, T-shirt, and pants, and went into the kitchen in her underwear. Sombra lay in a patch of sunlight by the window, looking at her with suspicious eyes as Gutsy opened a closet and removed the same soap and sponges she’d used on the dog the day before. Sombra whined and closed his eyes as if pretending to be asleep.

“Nice try,” she told him. “Come on.”

With great reluctance, as if walking toward his execution, the coydog followed her into the bathroom and climbed into the tub. He whined piteously as she soaped and scrubbed him and even howled a few times.

“Stop being such a baby.”

He contrived to stare at her with large, liquid, accusing eyes. Gutsy couldn’t help but grin. Sombra may not have spent much time in houses with people who cared about him, but he was learning fast how to manipulate.

Once the suds were gone, Sombra looked skinny, battered, and unhappy, but he smelled of soap and wet dog. It was a nice smell. Gutsy patted him dry, pausing to examine his injuries, all of which were healing nicely. She wrapped him in a towel and he curled up on the bathroom rug while she rinsed the tub and filled it for her own bath. Gutsy heated some water on a little wood-burning stove she’d installed in the corner of the bathroom, and when it was perfect, she stepped out of her underwear and sank gratefully into the steaming water.

It was the single best feeling in the world.

She lay there for a long time, thinking things through. There was no guarantee that the Rat Catchers would think that she’d brought her mother home. There was no guarantee they’d come to steal her body the way they’d stolen all the others. It would be a dangerous thing to do. Risky. After all, they had to believe Gutsy would tell the town council about what happened.

Gutsy hadn’t, though, and she had her reasons.

She thought about the fact that they’d brought her mother back twice. There were many weird things about that, and she began cataloging them in her mind. Many questions, too.

The riders had attacked the night guards the second time, but not the first. Why?

Why bring Mama’s body back at all?

What did Simon, the big lieutenant, mean when he asked the captain: Do you think she told her anything after we dug her up?

Did he expect Mama to actually say something? Gutsy knew that there were many different versions of the disease that made the dead rise. As far as she knew, though, the only infected who could speak were those people who had the ve

rsion of the disease where they slowly turned into monsters. That wasn’t what happened to Mama, though. She’d died of tuberculosis and had none of the symptoms of the wasting mutation Mr. Ford told her about. She wished she’d asked him about it, and decided to go find him later and ask.

Do you think she told her anything after we dug her up?

Even if Mama could think and talk, Gutsy mused, what on earth did they think she might have said?

Why and how did the Rat Catchers know her?

She looked over at Sombra, whose gray eyes peered out at her from inside his towel nest. “What are they doing with all those bodies?”

The dog, the house, and the day had no answers.

Yet.

45

THE TOWN OF NEW ALAMO was the only place Gutsy had ever lived, but it was strange.

It wasn’t like the places she read about in books. It always felt awkward to her . . . though she admitted that it might be that it was she who was awkward. Or both. Hard to say.

After cleaning up, fixing food for Sombra and herself, and doing other busywork that wouldn’t interfere with the thoughts running through her head, she went out. Her list of questions had grown very long, and now Gutsy wanted to start making sense of things. The problem, as she saw it, was that she wasn’t sure who to talk to first. Or if talking to anyone was safe. The fact that the Rat Catchers had brought her mother into town the first time without causing any disturbance with the guards worried her. Either they had a secret way in—in which case, why hadn’t they used it the second time?—or they had friends in town, possibly among the guards.