Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)

“Yes.”

“How? Sarah never goes outside the walls.”

The answer was there in Karen’s silence and in her eyes. It chilled Gutsy to the marrow.

“The Rat Catchers made her sick?” she whispered. “They gave Sarah the plague? How?”

“They’re scientists. Maybe they injected her, maybe some other means. I don’t know. All I do know is that my daughter is infected and they have the only medicines that can keep her alive. And they’ll do that and worse to you and to me, and to anyone who interferes with their research.”

“What are you talking about?”

Karen glanced around. They were alone on the street, but even so the woman was clearly terrified. She leaned in. “Not here. Not out in the open. I can’t.”

“Okay, fine,” said Gutsy. “My house. Two hours.”

“No, I—”

“Want me to come to your place?”

Karen shook her head.

“Okay, then, like I said, two hours. Come in the back way. I’ll leave the door unlocked. You’d better be there, Karen. I’m not joking.”

With that she turned away. Sombra looked back a couple of times, but Gutsy did not. She didn’t want to see what her words and her threats were doing to Karen. She was angry, she was filled with hate, but she wasn’t that cruel.

65

GUTSY LOOKED UP AT THE sun and judged that she had about an hour of good daylight left before the slow summer twilight.

She and Sombra did not head home, but instead took another circuitous route back to Misfit High. However, Mr. Urrea and Mr. Ford were already gone. Gutsy took a sheet of paper and wrote a quick note, paused, considered, and wrote a second one. She folded them both and left the school.

Spider and Alethea were out front of the Cuddlys’ place again, though now they were shaving carrots. Mrs. Cuddly was inside, but even so Gutsy didn’t slow down or do anything more than say, “Hey.”

One of the notes fell beside the basket of unpeeled carrots. Gutsy and Sombra walked on.

The Chess Players were on their shaded porch, deep into a game, with pieces scattered across the board and cups of tea steaming beside them. Neither of them glanced up at her as Gutsy stepped onto the porch and leaned against the rail.

“Who’s winning?” she asked casually.

“I am,” said Ford.

“You wish,” said Urrea.

When Ford flicked a glance at her, Gutsy showed him a small corner of the note she had concealed in her hand. She raised a single eyebrow. Ford moved his bishop, and when he reached for his tea, his hand brushed the spine of an old paperback, knocking it to the floor. Gutsy bent to pick it up and saw that it was a dog-eared copy of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” a frightening epic poem inspired by the legend of the quest for the Holy Grail and the story of the Fisher King, both of which had been taught in school. Gutsy covertly slipped the note between the pages and handed the book back. She lingered there and watched Ford advance toward checkmate and then left, pretending to look bored.

She stopped at the butcher shop to buy a beef bone for Sombra, then went home.

While the coydog attacked the bone with savage glee, Gutsy used the bathroom, washed her face and hands, went into the kitchen, made a light meal, ate almost none of it, and waited.

The windup clock on the wall ticked through what felt like ten million seconds.

That was fine.

It gave Gutsy lots of time to think.

66

THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR was light and quick. A nervous, tentative sound. Even so, Sombra leaped to his feet and barked.