One after another.

  * * *

  “They’re in the streets!”

  Benny and Chong heard the terrified cry. They were in the general store, helping the old owner pack canned goods into a big cart, ready for the exodus out of New Alamo. The cry stopped them for a moment.

  “No,” said Benny under his breath, despair sharp as a knife, “no, no, no—it’s too soon.”

  Grimm began growling, and his whole body tensed as he turned toward the door. The teens dropped the cans they held and ran outside, snatching their weapons from where they’d placed them next to the door. The shouts were coming from the northeast corner of the town. There were yells, screams, and gunfire.

  “Chong,” Benny said, grabbing his friend’s arm, “we’re out of time. Get to the hospital. Start the evacuation. Tell everyone to get to the rally points.”

  “Benny,” said Chong, “those shots are coming from the east gate. We can’t send people there.”

  Benny cursed. “Okay, everyone has to get to the hospital. That’s our only rally point now. The tunnel is our best hope. Go tell everyone you can. Then make sure the tunnel’s still safe. Take Grimm with you. If people don’t listen, let him bite a few of them. That’ll work.”

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  Benny stepped away and drew his sword. “To help,” he said, and then he was running.

  “Good luck!” yelled Chong. “Don’t die!”

  “Not a chance,” Benny shouted back. Though as he ran his snarky comment felt like tempting fate.

  * * *

  Chong ran back into the store and had to push the owner into taking the cart and heading directly to the hospital. People were pouring out of their homes, but few of them carried their belongings, and fewer still were heading toward the rally points. He yelled at them. He shoved them. He even had to threaten one stubborn young man who wanted to stay in his house with his wife and two little kids.

  “You’ll die in there,” Chong pleaded. “They’re already in the streets.”

  The man’s wife gathered up the kids and pushed past her husband. The man stood for a moment longer, though, looking around at his house. At his life. Then the man looked at his wife, holding their little ones as she went out into the madness, and there was a visible change. He did not suddenly swell into a towering hero, but he picked up a wooden chair and smashed it to pieces on the floor. He picked up one of the legs and hefted it, feeling it become a weapon in his hand. He gave Chong a brief look—as much fear as courage—and then followed his wife outside.

  It hit Chong very hard. The man was not a fighter, but he would have to fight. He was not a killer, but he was likely going to have to kill. It made Chong’s heart go out to him, but it also reminded him of the version of himself who’d been a bookish, gentle, nonviolent teen only two years ago. Now he was older, scarred, with the memory of blood on his hands and a body warring with infection.

  He wanted to sit down on the couch in this now empty house, put his face in his hands, and cry. He needed to do that.

  Instead he took a deep breath, and—with his bow and arrows—went back out to the war. Grimm followed close behind.

  * * *

  There were fresh yells coming from the eastern wall, and Benny angled that way. Those screams had contained rising notes of panic. Not mere warnings but sheer terror.

  Looming inside the wall was the big tower crane that had been used to restack the cars.

  “Oh my God,” Benny cried, looking up.

  High above he saw two figures on the crane, working the levers that turned the giant boom. There was a guy in a cowboy hat and his girlfriend, with hair as red as Nix’s. Benny had seen them around town, two refugees who’d been brought in after the first siege. A dozen yards below them, climbing with the agility of apes, were several ravagers.

  Benny cupped a hand around his mouth to shout a warning to them, but the night suddenly took on a new shape, something fierce and feral and insane. As the ravagers climbed all the way up, the boy walked toward them. As he did so, he took off his hat, and with it came his mop of blond hair. The girl did the same, plucking off the baseball cap and red wig, laughing as she did.

  Beneath their hats, bared now to the glow of fire and the cold starlight, were scalps shaved smooth and covered with elaborate tattoos. The teens dug into their pockets and removed strips of red cloth and began tying them to their ankles and wrists.

  The teenagers up there were reapers.

  77

  THE BIG RAVAGER POINTED HIS shotgun at Gutsy and pulled the trigger.

  There was a blast so loud it seemed to tear the world apart, but the buckshot missed her. Every single pellet tore into the ceiling as the ravager suddenly pitched backward, bellowing in surprise. A shape appeared out of the shadows behind him, and there was a whirl of brown hardwood as Spider spun his bo and brought the end down on the monster’s skull.

  “Gutsy!” he yelled, and leaped over the body, but something pushed past him, a gray streak that flew straight for Gutsy.

  “Sombra!”

  And the coydog was all over her, licking her, pushing himself into her, against her, seeming to be everywhere at once. Then he stopped and began barking at her, scolding her for locking him up. Gutsy hugged him but looked at Spider.

  “Alice is hurt,” she blurted, then in a few fast sentences told him what happened. They went into the kitchen, and Spider dropped to his knees to examine Alice’s legs. He knew a lot about first aid, maybe more than Gutsy did, and she watched his face, seeing his immediate and deep concern.

  Alice was half asleep, faint and weak from blood loss. Spider felt for her pulse, then rose and pulled Gutsy aside. “We need to get her to the hospital. I think she needs blood.”

  “To the hospital?” gasped Gutsy. “How? It sounds like a war out there.”

  Spider winced and nodded. “It is a war. They’re inside the walls. Not many, but enough. I think maybe there was another tunnel after all. I don’t think the walls are going to hold. The hospital is the only rally point left. We need to get Alice there, get her treated, and then get out through the tunnel while there’s still time.”

  Dull thumps kept coming from the bedroom, and although Alice was out of it, she flinched each time, nightmares connected to the truth.

  “She can’t walk,” said Gutsy. “We need a cart or a wheelbarrow.”

  “Okay, wait here,” Spider said, and was off like a shot. He was back in less than two minutes with the Carnovskys, a couple who lived a few doors from the Chungs. They were greengrocers and hurried up with a red wheelbarrow spattered with vegetable stains.

  “We were about to head to the rally point,” said Mr. Carnovsky. He looked around. “Where’s her mom?”

  “Turned,” said Gutsy. It was a simple but deeply ugly word. Mr. Carnovsky murmured a brief prayer.

  Mrs. Carnovsky rushed over to examine Alice while Spider, Gutsy, and Mr. Carnovsky cleared a path for the wheelbarrow. There was another of those deep groans of metal. Sombra began barking furiously. Gutsy and Spider went outside and stopped dead in their tracks. Behind the house, on the platform of the tower crane, two teens and three ravagers were pulling at cables.

  “Wait… are they… are those two kids working with the ravagers?”

  It was impossible, but that’s what it seemed to be. Instead of raising another car, they had hooked the cables to cars already on the wall. And the teens no longer wore their hats. Instead, Gutsy saw bald, tattooed heads. Suddenly she understood. These weren’t refugees. They were the strange killers Benny and Nix had talked about, who’d attacked the towns in Central California. It seemed impossible that they could be out here, but here they were. Gutsy simultaneously understood what happened with the truck. It hadn’t slipped from the crane; it had been dropped deliberately. An attack. Which explained why the teens hadn’t come down to see what happened to the house it had fallen on.

  And she also realized what those reapers and their ravager allies were attempting to do. The hooks, the cables…

  “They’re going to tear down the wall!” The words exploded from her, and suddenly Gutsy was running, charging the crane. Spider and Sombra were at her heels, and then off to her left she saw another figure charging the scaffolding, too.

  Benny.

  He had his sword in his hand and was bellowing at the reapers. Cursing them. Daring them to come down and fight.

  Gutsy changed direction and ran into the house. “Can you take Alice to the hospital? I have to go. Something bad’s happening, and—”

  “Go,” shouted Mrs. Carnovsky. “We’ll look after her.”

  Gutsy grabbed her weapon and ran.

  Far above, the reaper boy leaned over and looked down at the teenagers and dog approaching. He said something to the girl, and they both laughed. The ravagers laughed too. They were fifty feet above the ground, and the hooks were already in place. If they could exert enough leverage, then the whole section of wall would collapse into the town, opening a clear path for invasion and slaughter.

  The reapers and ravagers hauled on the cables and heaved on the pulleys, throwing all their weight against the big boom. The wall creaked; metal screeched. A single car at the very top canted over and fell, crashing down to explode in a storm of jagged metal, plastic, and glass.

  Gutsy and the others dodged and ducked and came up running. They leaped over debris and jumped for the pipe bars of the scaffolding. Gutsy briefly thought about doing something to destabilize the scaffolding, but there simply wasn’t time. And it probably would be suicidal anyway. No, what she had to do was stop them. So she sheathed her machete and climbed.

  Benny circled around, looking for the easiest place to climb where he wouldn’t be seen.

  The ravagers and reapers saw them coming but didn’t bother to draw their blades. Instead they labored at the crane with renewed vigor. The wall of cars trembled. Pieces broke and fell, and from beyond the wall Gutsy could hear a terrible noise—the voices of uncountable los muertos moaning with hunger. She climbed as fast as she could. There was a chance—slim as a razor—that the walls could still keep the dead out. Ravagers and reapers could climb, but the masses of the shambling dead could not.

  Down below, and throughout the town, she heard people shouting, “Rally point! Get to the rally point!”

  It sounded like a plea, a prayer, and a war cry all at once.

  The stacked cars trembled again, and a second vehicle toppled over. It fell past her, less than two feet away, and then struck the ground below. She prayed Sombra was smart and quick enough to get out of the way.

  Then she was there, at the lip of the platform.

  One of the ravagers saw Gutsy scrambling up and yelled to the teenage girl, who was closest. She let go of the cable and drew her weapon. It was a machete. Spider was always better at numbers, and Gutsy wondered what he would make of the statistical probability that the reaper would be armed with a machete too. No gun, no ax. A weapon identical to Gutsy’s own.

  The platform itself was larger than the scaffolding on which it stood, which meant that Gutsy had to lean away from the pipes, grab the decking, and then do a kind of chin-up to get over. It was a tough enough challenge without having to worry about a killer with a heavy blade. But she had to go for it. She twisted, tensed, and then sprang for the lip of the deck. Her hands were small but hard and strong, and she caught the hardwood decking, and for a moment her legs swung out over a sheer drop.

  Then, with a grunt of effort, Gutsy began to pull herself up. Even with all the noise of the battle and the metallic groans of the crane and the wall, she heard the footsteps as the reaper girl ran toward her.

  Gutsy swung sideways, hooked a leg over the lip, and, with a surge of raw power, pulled herself up. The girl was ten feet away, whirling her machete in a figure eight, building speed and power for a killer blow. She brought the machete up, over, and down in a vicious butcher’s chop—but Gutsy was already rolling like a log toward her. Instead of trying to stand or draw her own blade, she hurled herself at the older teen’s shins. The impact knocked the girl’s knees straight, and the reaper crashed down hard on her butt, driving her tailbone against the unyielding boards. Gutsy wasted no time and scrambled onto her, hitting the girl in the nose, the eye, the lips, the throat. The reaper girl’s face seemed to break apart in a spray of red.

  “No!” bellowed the reaper boy in alarm. “Sorrow—I’m coming!”

  It was an odd thing to say, and he said it as if Sorrow were the girl’s name.

  He drew two long-bladed fighting knives from hidden sheaths under his baggy shirt and rushed at Gutsy, slashing down as soon as he was within reach, aiming for her neck. Gutsy tried to swing around and grab her machete, but she knew there was no time.

  Suddenly a line of silver cut the air and intercepted the blades, which rebounded with a sound like a ringing bell. The shock of it threw the teen back, off balance. Benny Imura crouched on the edge of the platform, teeth bared in anger.

  The reaper girl yelled, “Mercy—the boy with the sword. It’s him—it’s Imura.” Her voice was thick with pain but also laced with hatred bordering on hysteria.

  * * *

  Benny blinked in surprise at hearing his name and raised his katana in a two-handed defensive posture. The young man’s eyes went wide as he looked at Benny. Seeing him, his face, his weapon.

  “You,” breathed Brother Mercy, and loaded that one word with bottomless loathing.

  Benny blinked. He’d never seen this person before, and had no idea why the reaper should seem to hate him personally, but he didn’t really care. What mattered is that this guy was a reaper. Right here in New Alamo, and clearly working with the Night Army to sabotage the town’s defenses. As the reaper charged him, Benny raised his sword and rushed forward, hungry for the fight.

  * * *

  A hand grabbed Gutsy’s vest, jerking her backward, and she spun as she fell, turning to see a ravager clutching at her. She drove the heel of her palm into the center of the thing’s forehead, jolting the killer. Then Gutsy kicked him in the groin and head-butted his nose, and as the ravager staggered back, Gutsy fell hard but back-rolled and came up with her machete in her fist.

  Now the three ravagers came at her, one pulling a hatchet from his belt, another with a length of chain to which small nails had been welded, and the one she’d hit, who stooped to pick up a length of pipe.

  The bald girl groaned and got to her knees, bleeding and dazed. She fumbled for her machete, which had slid away and hung, handle-first, over the edge of the platform.

  Gutsy was trapped in the moment, uncertain how to fight three ravagers and this girl, who may have been hurt but was clearly not out of the fight. Benny and the reaper were battling on the far side of the platform, and Spider was still climbing. Sombra, left down on the ground, was barking and snarling in helpless fury.

  Gutsy had two choices: run and hope she could climb down to safety, or defy the overwhelming odds of the reaper girl and the three ravagers.

  “This is my town,” she yelled, and charged.

  78

  A RUNNER CLIMBED UP THE ramps to the top of the wall and found Karen Peak.

  “There was a tunnel,” he said breathlessly. “It was in one of the houses near the east wall. We think forty or fifty shamblers got in, plus a dozen ravagers. But I think we got them all.”

  Karen clapped him on the shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  “Billy Dow and the Dominguez sisters have teams going through that whole part of town, so, yeah, I think we got them.”

  Karen turned back to the fight on the wall. More than half the defenders had answered the cry to head to the rally point. They were holding it against the climbers, but there were still so many monsters out there.

  “What should we do?” asked the runner.

  But Karen did not have a quick answer. If they deserted the wall, then the dead would swarm over before the town could be evacuated. If they stayed to fight, they would all die defending their home. She looked around as if for answers, but every door seemed to be nailed shut.

  * * *

  Alethea dropped the last of the shamblers with a mighty overhand swing that left a corpse with almost no head. Then she pushed the kids into a bunch and began herding them toward the hospital. It was the safest building because there were guards, more rooms to hide in, and—as a fallback—it had the escape tunnel.

  “To the rally point!”

  So many people were yelling it that even some of the kids took up the chant without knowing what it meant.

  She was already exhausted. Huge blows with the bat were easy at first, but with every swing, Rainbow Smite seemed to gain another ten pounds. Pain lanced through her sides, and breathing felt like inhaling fire. Stopping for a rest, though, was impossible.

  She ran, and the children ran with her.

  * * *

  The Chess Players made their way up to the wall, puffing and sweating. They each had long poles and stood shivering in the chilly wind. They were terrified, and each was acutely aware of the years, the arthritis, and the weakness that was the dreadful gift of old age.

  “Funny,” said Ford, in a way that meant it wasn’t going to be funny at all, “but after all this talk of wild men, I kind of figured it would be them.”

  “Yeah,” Urrea agreed.

  “Not that I want a horde of wild men.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  They watched the army of the dead move forward with a hideous slowness. They both knew it was because the shamblers did not move fast, but it had a strange mockery to it, as if the dead had all the time in the world to consume this town.