“We love you, princess,” he said. “You and your friends. But you need to leave.”

  Urrea stroked Alethea’s cheek and kissed her forehead. “Let us do this for you. Let all we’ve been through mean something.”

  She looked at him. At Ford. And saw their resolve. Their acceptance.

  She kissed and hugged them both, and then she staggered back. Caught her balance. Tears blurred the world, but she found the best path.

  She and the survivors ran away.

  The first time Alethea looked back, she saw the Chess Players watching her.

  The next time she looked back, the old writers were hurrying away to the northwest. They were making noise, clanging their weapons. Being heard by the killers who chased them. Leading death in the wrong direction.

  The last time she looked back, Ford and Urrea were out of sight.

  She and her people ran. Quickly and quietly. Into the night. She never saw them again.

  96

  THEY PUSHED THE CART FOR miles in the dark-ness, lit by moonlight and guided by stars. Gutsy led the way, because she knew the Broken Lands better than any of them. Sombra was with her, sniffing the ground, darting out into the shadows to investigate noises and returning quickly. Grimm stayed with Benny, guarding him and the Dòmi.

  There was a cluster of small buildings on a high hill, above which rose the rusted skeleton of an old cell phone tower.

  “Wait here,” said Gutsy. “Rest while I go up and take a look.”

  Chong and Benny collapsed on the ground beside the cart, which they had muscled over the rough terrain. They didn’t dare use the main road, because it was evident from thousands of scuffed footprints that it was how a big part of the Raggedy Man’s army had come to New Alamo. It was too big a risk if they used that route, in case more were coming, or the clever reapers might follow to try and chase down refugees.

  Gutsy stood at the base of the tower and took a deep breath. The adrenaline rush was fading and she had never in her life felt this exhausted, but resting was not a possibility. Not now, and probably not for hours. Site B was still many miles away, and they had to move fast. So, she took another breath, set her jaw, and climbed.

  The tower was very tall and the wind was whipping out of the west, making the structure creak threateningly, and the whole thing swayed like a willow. She had to force herself to continue to climb, praying to Mama, the Virgin Mary, and every saint whose name she could remember not to let the tower fall.

  There were a lot of different kinds of dishes up there, which she knew from people in town were for different kinds of service for handheld phones—similar, she assumed, to the satellite phone Nix and Lilah had. Most were weather-battered and covered in bird droppings. A few had become nests for insects.

  She had to climb above the cluster of dishes to see, and was immediately sorry she did. It wasn’t just that the elevation offered a more comprehensive view of the utter destruction of her home. No. What jolted her, what nearly knocked her from that precarious perch, was what she saw moving through the darkness.

  From that bird’s-eye view, she saw two masses of figures on the march. Far to the west, coming from the direction of the destroyed base, were more of the wild men, hidden by the ancient ruins of small towns. Not as many as before—Gutsy wondered how many had been destroyed in the fires—but enough. Sixty or seventy of them. Running erratically toward the northeast, loping sometimes on two legs and occasionally on hands and feet, like misshapen dogs. It was an ugly sight. Terrifying.

  But much worse was what she saw to the east. She thought she’d understood how massive the Raggedy Man’s army was when viewed from the crane platform. But she was wrong. Very, very wrong. She’d half-joking referred to it as an army of a million, but now she was sure that’s what she was seeing. There were so many of them that it was as if the entire surface of the desert moved. Too many of the walking dead to count. They moved like a tide, a mass at least two miles wide and many miles long, shambling with inexorable slowness in the same direction the refugees had gone.

  Here and there she saw ravagers and reapers—and she could identify them by the way the moonlight glittered on their weapons. She figured the teen Benny had fought was down there. He didn’t seem the type to have been caught helpless when the town burned.

  Gutsy forced herself to look toward the northeast. Off in the distance, spread out in the night, she saw dozens of small refugee groups picking their way through lands most had not walked since the dead rose. Her heart sank, because none of them were very far ahead of her own group. They should have been. They should all be halfway there by now, but they were not. Fatigue, fear, confusion, and perhaps infighting had slowed them. The night fought them by making each footfall treacherous and uncertain. The people of New Alamo were struggling against their own survival.

  The night breeze brought both distant howling and the soft pleading of hungry moans. They were all following the refugees. All of them heading on what was clearly a collision course to Site B. Or, worse, to a point before anyone could reach the hidden place. If the doors were still locked, then the land in front of that last bastion of hope would be a killing ground. Gutsy and everyone she knew would die there.

  And no one would ever know.

  97

  A SUDDEN GUST OF WIND nearly flung Gutsy from the tower and she clung to it, crying out in sudden fear as it leaned so far over she thought it would fall. From below she heard Spider and Benny cry out too.

  “I’m okay,” she called, though that was in no way certain.

  Mama, please…, she begged. Help me.

  The wind did not stop blowing, and in fact, seemed to intensify. It picked up dust from the desert floor and whipped it at her, stinging her skin, half blinding her.

  Help me, Mama… please!

  For just a crazy and impossible moment she thought she smelled something on that wind. A familiar scent of flowers and spices, like Mama’s kitchen when she was cooking. It was the second time since Mama died that Gutsy had smelled it. It made her think of her mother’s spirit, released from its troubled envelope of infected flesh, going home. As if her cries for Mama’s help were being somehow answered.

  But if there was a message from beyond the grave, its meaning was lost on her. And that was maddening, because she could use any help she could get. Even a hint.

  The wind blew past her, though, taking those beloved smells away in the direction of the Raggedy Man’s vast army. The tower creaked, but it did not fall.

  Gutsy climbed down and rejoined the others. Her legs trembled, and she was happy to be back on solid ground. She quickly explained what was coming.

  “We have to get everyone to go faster,” she said. “A lot faster.”

  They set out at their top speed and soon overtook the rearmost of the refugee parties, urging them to hurry. The fitter young men and women from that group were sent as runners to find other groups and pass the word. Soon the whole mass of them were moving at a near run. When someone lagged behind, pairs of survivors flanked them and half carried them. Wheelbarrows and carts with goods were dumped out so older people and little children could ride instead.

  It was not orderly, and it was not nearly as fast as Gutsy knew they needed to go.

  Behind them the howls of the wild men could be heard, rising in intensity, becoming even more savage as the creatures caught the scent of their prey. What Gutsy didn’t know was if that meant they could smell the fleeing townsfolk or if they’d discovered the massive army.

  “Keep going!” she cried.

  She and Benny formed the rear guard of the group, with Grimm and Sombra flanking them. As they ran, they had a conversation without words. It was a look of truth. It said, We’re not going to make it.

  It was not a statement of insecurity or resignation. Just an honest appraisal of the situation. There were miles to go to reach Site B. Even if the doors stood open and waiting for them, they both knew there was simply not enough time to get there.

  Gutsy set her jaw. If she was going to die, then she’d die. Maybe she and Sombra could hold the monsters off long enough to allow some of the people to survive. Maybe they’d at least get Morton and the Dòmi to Site B, which would allow for the possibility of a counterattack. A slim chance of survival for what was left of the human race.

  If she could do that, then dying may not be so bad.

  And Gutsy was sure that was what she’d read in Benny’s eyes as well. She did not want or need to be a hero, but if she died, then Gutsy wanted her life to matter.

  98

  BROTHER MERCY STOOD ON THE edge of the Raggedy Man’s mobile flatbed. The king of the dead was leaning forward, head craned as he looked around, rotted hands clutching the arms of the throne.

  “Did you kill them all?” he demanded.

  Brother Mercy pointed. “No, lord. Look there.”

  They stared in mutual horror as sixty or more of the wild men came howling across the field toward the front rank of the seething mass of shamblers. The young reaper put a silver whistle to his lips and blew a high, shrill note, which caused scores of reapers and ravagers in the army to turn and look.

  “There!” he cried. “My reapers, my brothers and sisters—kill them. Kill them all.”

  The ravagers immediately turned and began shoving the shamblers back, beating them with clubs—not to injure but to direct. As they did that, the reapers swept forward. Engines roared, and a dozen quads came whipping around from behind. The rest ran, knives, axes, and bows in hand. The leading archers fired, and arrows shot through the night, the deadly points catching silver sparks of cold moonlight. The whole front rank of wild men went down.

  But the rest, undaunted, came howling on.

  * * *

  Gutsy and Benny paused at the crest of a hill, the first of a series that rose into the distance. Each had their binoculars out and watched the battle begin.

  “They have quads!” Gutsy cried.

  “I know. That’s how we got them,” Benny said. “We stole four from the reapers in Nevada. It’s how we beat Saint John’s army to California in time to mount our defense.”

  Seeing the machines—even after having been up close to them—still managed to send a thrill of unreality through Gutsy. It was as if the past had somehow broken through a wall into her present. In the last couple of weeks, the entire fabric of reality had been fractured.

  Benny gave a harsh, sour laugh. “I don’t know who to root for here,” he said.

  Then the night was split apart by a new sound. Flashes of light and harsh pops filled the air, and for a moment Gutsy had the irrational notion that someone had borrowed her idea for using fireworks. But within seconds she realized that this wasn’t the case, as there was a sound of heavy engines buried beneath the pops.

  Then she saw them: two Stryker Dragoons came bumping over the desert floor, the big Bushmaster machine guns firing toward the masses of reapers.

  There was no sign of the other vehicles.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw that the refugees had moved a considerable way along the path in the direction of Site B. They were no longer climbing over the landscape but had gone to the road and were using that. What had been a poor choice earlier was now the only choice. The enemy already knew where they were, so staying off the road didn’t matter except its flatness allowed the refugees to move much more quickly along the path of least resistance.

  The big guns kept firing, and Gutsy looked back again. Would they be able to slow the armies down? How far was it to Site B? Three miles? Four?

  * * *

  Sunny-Day Ray fired and fired while Sergeant Holly drove. The Stryker’s big diesel engine growled like a dragon as she plowed forward, using all-wheel drive to conquer the terrain. The dense hardness of the steel body was a battering ram, smashing through shambler, ravager, reaper, and wild man alike, but the impacts still sent horrific shock waves through the interior. Below the Bushmaster was a nest of anti-tank rocket pods, and Ray shot these into the masses of killers, blasting them apart. Each detonation created a massive fireball that hurled burning bodies high into the air, but as devastating as they were, they were not enough. Nor could the Bushmaster fire enough rounds.

  As the Strykers plowed through the crowds, the last of the rockets fired. The heavy wind whisked away the clouds of smoke. Fires burned here and there on patches of dry grass, and in places it was beginning to spread.

  A minute later the machine guns themselves fell silent.

  Trailing smoke from empty barrels, the war machines kept lumbering forward. But powerful as they were, the sheer mass of the enemy was too great. The vehicles slowed… and slowed…

  And then they stopped, unable to push farther through the thousands of tons of tissue and bone. Not even hardened steel and heavy tires could manage it. The shamblers and ravagers pounded on the doors and tiny windows. Gutsy heard a few desperate pistol shots.

  After that, nothing.

  The two teens stood on the hill, able to see a large swath of the field in the moonlight. Everything was black and white—even the blood.

  “The reapers are taking out all the wild men,” said Benny. “I guess that’s good for us.”

  “Is it?”

  “Sure,” he said. “They’re a lot faster than the zoms.”

  Gutsy raised her machete and pointed. “No, wait. There are more wild men over there.”

  They both studied a new spot of violent movement off to the southwest. A knot of shamblers were attacking others of their kind. Gutsy could not see how that started, but she could see it spread. First a handful of wild men were biting los muertos, then ten. Reapers came running, summoned by Brother Mercy’s whistle and shouts from ravagers, but by the time they got there, a dozen shamblers had been transformed.

  Then it was two dozen.

  It was like watching a stone dropped into water. Ripples of infection radiated out from where those first wild men had attacked. This is what the Raggedy Man and Brother Mercy had tried to stop. It was what they feared. It was so strange a concept that creatures such as they could fear anything. And yet there was panic in the shrill bleats of the whistle. Panic in the waving arms of the king of the dead. Ravagers with guns turned their weapons on the infected, cutting them down. Others waded in with axes and clubs, aiming to cripple and kill what had been their own shock troops.

  One by one these defenders of the army of the dead were attacked, overwhelmed, dragged down. The ravagers rose again as wild men. Gutsy could not see what happened to the reapers. It was all becoming so frenzied. The Wodewose was spreading faster than any wildfire. It was unstoppable now, and they knew it. The Raggedy Man was howling in rage, but now there was a note of fear in his voice. The area of infection was a hundred yards from where he stood, but the wave was coming.

  The end was coming. His vast and unbreakable, unconquerable army of the dead was about to be swept into the dustpan of history, replaced with millions of screaming infected. Mad beyond control, each of their bodies a battleground more fierce than the one on which they stood.

  Brother Mercy was calling his reapers back, no longer trying to fight the infection but to provide a wall of fighters between the wild men and Homer Gibbon. Ravagers kept up a continuous barrage of small-arms fire, and the wind stoked the burning grass.

  “We need to get out of here,” gasped Benny, backpedaling. “Right now.”

  Grimm howled and then took off after Benny, who began running.

  Gutsy, however, lingered. She was not really watching the spread of infection. Something else had drawn her eye. It was the smoke from the burning grass. It blew across the fields, at times obscuring the flatbed. The breeze whipped it through the struggling monsters.

  Once more she thought she smelled the scents of Mama’s kitchen. Just for a moment, there and gone.

  Then she, too, turned and followed Benny.

  99

  THEY RAN AND RAN. BOTH of them looking back to see if they’d run far enough. But each time the killers were closer. The wild men on one flank, the mixed army of reapers and zombies on the other, and, directly behind, the melee where monsters were fighting one another.

  Then once, when Gutsy and Benny looked back at the same time, they saw that all their fighting and planning and struggles to survive were for nothing. The mass of conflict had moved so much closer and within it, they could see him.

  The Raggedy Man on his throne, pulled by all the dead.

  As if he could somehow sense the eyes on him, the king of the dead turned slowly and looked out over the sea of bloodshed, straight at them.

  Gutsy and Benny stood on the hill, panting, drained of hope. The others came and joined them. The two dogs sat near their masters, heads lowered, tongues lolling. Sombra whimpered softly. The hill was bare, dusty dirt, and, painted in bright moonlight, they were as visible as black flies on a whitewashed wall. The Raggedy Man slowly raised one arm, extended a crooked finger toward Gutsy, and grinned like the monster he was. Whatever strange connection he had with his army was in full force. Many thousands of them turned away from the commotion, abruptly disregarding the threat of the wild men, and immediately began moving forward. A fierce, dry wind whipped sand at the oncoming tide of death, but the zombies did not pause, did not even blink.

  That same wind blew past Gutsy, rifling her clothes, whipping her hair, making the canvas sides of the laundry cart snap and pop. Chong sat down heavily, head sunk between his shoulders. Gutsy looked at him, watching how the freshening breeze stirred his black hair. It was blowing steadily out of the north. She remembered thinking only a few moments ago that it was as if the wind itself had betrayed them and was trying to slow their escape.

  And yet…

  Impossibly, unexpectedly, Gutsy caught a smell on the wind. Just for a second. It was not of pinyon pines or creosote bushes, nor the stink of blood and fire. This breeze smelled of flowers and spices. It smelled like Mama’s kitchen. There was nothing in that blighted place to account for those smells. Nothing. But Gutsy knew what it was and where it came from. The stiff wind carried it not as a weapon of betrayal, no. It was a gift from someone very far away.