Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

Gutsy stepped down off the porch and thought about it, then smiled and headed off toward the rear guard post.

46

THE SOUTHERNMOST PART OF NEW Alamo was called Cargo Town, because it was where large quantities of scavenged supplies were kept under guard.

The Raid had been the first expedition to Corpus Christi, but there had been others, and also plenty of raids on warehouses and factories scattered throughout that part of Texas. Those survivors who knew the area worked with scouts and mission planners to set up the raids. Most of the time those raiding parties found buildings that had burned down, been stripped of everything useful, or were so thoroughly overrun that it would cost too many lives to justify an attempt. Some of the warehouses had been taken over by scavengers. A few had become small communities, and no one in Gutsy’s town wanted to go to war with other survivors.

And then there were the plague towns: places where whole populations had been wiped out by disease. Early attempts to scavenge goods from those unfortunate places had brought death to New Alamo in waves.

It was getting harder to find stocks of clean bulk food, like canned goods that hadn’t swollen with botulism, or sacks of grain, rice, and other staples that weren’t so thoroughly infested by bugs as to be useless.

On the other hand, there were other items in bulk that were worth the effort to bring home. Pots and pans, building supplies, clothes, toilet paper, books, furniture, and supplies of things like aluminum foil, clean plastic bags, tons of baking soda, and more. One raid on a mile-long derailed train yielded two hundred tons of toothpaste, mouthwash, roll-on deodorant, bar soap, and hand sanitizer. The daily diet in New Alamo might not have much range, but everyone had great teeth, and hygiene was remarkably high for a postapocalyptic settlement.

Big Quonset huts were set along the walls and crammed with supplies, and there were guards in each. The area directly around the gate was clear except for a corral of horses and a line of trade wagons. There was a flat catwalk that ran around the entire town atop the stacked walls of cars. Two sentry towers had been erected at each of the town’s gates, and the gates themselves were made from stacks of rubber tires on long vertical poles, lashed firmly together and mounted on a series of heavy-duty sets of truck wheels to make them easy to move. When closed, the gate could withstand a wave of los muertos.

Gutsy and Sombra walked up to an old Winnebago permanently parked inside the wall. It was used as an office for the security supervisor. She peered in through the window to see who was on duty and was relieved that it was Karen Peak, the mother of Sarah, one of Gutsy’s friends from school. Or at least Sarah used to be a school friend. Because of a severe allergic reaction to something inside the school, Sarah had been taken out and was now tutored at home. Sarah was a pretty girl who used to be funny and popular, but now she was sickly and withdrawn, clearly not fully recovered from being sick. Gutsy rarely saw her anymore, though both Karen and Sarah had come to visit the morning after Mama died.

Gutsy tapped on the door and went in. Karen rose and came over to give Gutsy a hug. Mrs. Peak was an athletic woman of about forty, with straight blond hair framing a pretty face. Like a lot of the adults in town, there was a kind of permanent sadness in Karen’s eyes. Gutsy knew that it was an emotional scar that marked anyone who had lived through the end of the world as they had all known it. Eyes that had seen too much and lived in a world full of reminders.

“Hey, Gabriella, how are you doing, sweetie?” asked the supervisor. Karen always called Gutsy by her giv

en name, Gabriella, but Gutsy didn’t hold that against her.

“Okay, I guess,” lied Gutsy. “Getting by.”

Karen looked past her to the coydog standing uncertainly in the open doorway. “Who’s that?”

Gutsy introduced Sombra and made up a story about finding him wandering in the desert. She did not mention Hope Cemetery or the collar the dog had worn. Karen listened and made sympathetic noises, but Gutsy could see the supervisor’s sharp eyes roving over the many injuries, old and new. The expression in her eyes let Gutsy know that Karen was making some of the same judgments about Sombra she had herself.

All Karen said was, “Poor pup’s been through the wringer.”

“Lot of that going around,” said Gutsy. “I heard that some of your guys got hurt the other night. What was that all about?”

“We’re, um, still sorting that out,” said Karen. Her eyes shifted away for a moment. Was she embarrassed? wondered Gutsy. Or was there something else? “Jimmy Quiñones is in the hospital with a cracked skull, a broken leg, and some other injuries. Roberto Cantu was knocked out, but he’ll be okay.”

“Who were those people on the horses?”

“No one knows. Ravagers, probably.”

“How’d they get in, though?”

Shutters seemed to drop behind Karen’s eyes. “We’re looking into that.”

There was some kind of warning in her expression and Gutsy didn’t push it. Instead she asked, “Were they working the night before?”

Karen looked surprised. “No, why?”

“Who was?”

“Trey Williams and Buffy Howell worked that shift. Why?” The suspicion was very evident in her tone.

“Oh, I just wondered if they saw anything before,” said Gutsy quickly. “I mean, were the riders from a wolf pack or something?”

It was a little clumsy, and Gutsy wished she had prepared better for this kind of conversation; however, it seemed to work. Karen’s tone was milder when she answered.

“Nah. Trey and Buffy didn’t see anything. No one on the day shift did either; and we’ve had our own riders out on patrol all week, but no one’s seen a thing. We don’t understand what happened the other night.”

“Really? What’s with the patrols?” Gutsy asked, and nearly winced because it was too quick, and it put Karen back on the alert.