Medics came to apply dressings, set bones, save lives. Sombra received eighteen stitches, and Gutsy was given twenty in a straight line from left hip bone to right. Benny had a bunch of his own, as did the two older soldiers. Only Grimm was unharmed, thanks to his armor. The big hound looked tired and seemed older, though, as if deeply weary with war.

  Maybe, thought Gutsy, this would be the last war for all of them. But she didn’t think that was really true.

  Two

  Gutsy’s plan for using the windstorm to spread the Dòmi was never put into practice.

  At least, not that night.

  Over the next days, helicopters chased packs of wild men and seeded them with the Dòmi-laced stabilizer. The wind of the rotor wash spread the treatment over them, and the wild men stopped running. Stopped fighting. Stopped howling.

  They stopped entirely.

  Those who had been shamblers before the Wodewose corrupted them stood silent and then fell. Without the parasite driving their motor cortexes and other functions, their bodies simply died.

  More helicopters arrived from the American Nation. Monstrous Chinooks and Ospreys came and brought doctors, medicines, and help. It was as if the past had invaded the present with mercy. Once they’d breached Site B, Ledger and Sam found a communications room and made contact with California—only to find that Nix had already gotten through and that help was coming. Then Ledger called Asheville, and once more found that the military was mobilized, with every available chopper already on the way to New Alamo, thanks to Morgie Mitchell and Riot. The two fleets of choppers flew fast, moving from refueling point to refueling point, racing to get to New Alamo in time.

  Only just in time…

  Three

  There were reunions at Site B.

  One of the helicopters—painted with the sunrise symbol of the Nine Towns of Central California—landed, and two slender figures emerged. One was tall and had hair as white as snow. The other was shorter and rounder and had fiery red hair and a lot of freckles. They saw Benny and Chong at the same time the boys saw them.

  “Nix!” yelled Benny, and he ran as fast as he could toward her.

  “Lilah!” cried Chong, and pelted after him. For once in his life, Chong outran Benny. Lilah and Nix met them halfway, and they collided with hugs and kisses and laughter and tears.

  Gutsy and her friends sat on a picnic table, watching the reunion. Despite everything, Gutsy smiled to see their joy. Alethea took her hand and squeezed it.

  The four California kids came over, and there were more hugs and tears.

  “Hey,” asked Benny brightly, “I guess that monkey-banger Morgie actually made it to Asheville. Riot, too.”

  The smile on Nix’s face faltered. “They made it,” she said.

  “Where are they?” Chong asked, looking around. “Did they come with the army? I haven’t seen them anywhere…”

  His voice trailed off because Nix’s eyes were bright with wetness.

  “Hey, whoa,” said Benny, “what is it? What’s wrong? Where is Morgie? Where’s Riot?”

  “They… they took the fastest route,” began Nix in a fragile little voice. “They did everything they could to get to Asheville in time. They wanted to help, you know?”

  She paused and wiped at her eyes. She tried to say more but couldn’t. She just put a hand over her mouth and shook her head.

  So, Lilah said it. “They drove too close to Houston,” she said.

  “So what?” asked Alethea. “Did they get bit or something?”

  “No,” Lilah said. “There was some kind of radiation thing. A power-plant meltdown. They made it to Asheville, but they were sick.”

  “How sick?” Benny demanded. “Come on, Lilah, how bad are they?”

  Lilah just looked at him. Then tears rolled down her cheeks too.

  “Oh… my God…,” Chong breathed.

  Benny sat down hard on the edge of the table and put his head against Nix’s chest.

  No one said a word for a long time.

  Four

  Every day after the fall of the Raggedy Man, Gutsy and Sombra went out looking for Alice. Alethea had seen her during the exodus, her eyes empty of everything but hunger. The girl Gutsy loved had been staggering awkwardly on badly broken legs, but there had been no time to quiet her. Gutsy looked for her every morning. Every afternoon. Well into each night.

  Alethea and Spider volunteered to help. So did Benny and Nix and the others. Ledger offered too. Gutsy said no.

  On the fifth day Gutsy came back just as the sun was setting fires in the western sky. She did not speak to anyone. She went into the tent that had been set up for her by staff from the American Nation. Gutsy stayed in there all night and most of the next day. Sombra sat outside and would not let anyone come close. When the moon rose, the coydog howled. After that day, Gutsy no longer went out looking for Alice.

  Five

  There was more to the story. Mysteries solved. Answers given.

  Asheville had never been destroyed, but it had been attacked. A team of reapers had staged a series of systematic sabotage missions in the capital of the new American Nation. They destroyed all of the cell towers in the region, blew up two electrical power plants, and set off bombs in the communications center. The town went dark, unable to reach the rest of the national network.

  By the time the power was back on and communications restored, the Raggedy Man had launched attacks on a dozen smaller towns and countless settlements. No one had any estimates of the loss of life, but it was staggering.

  When Ledger and Sam had reached Site B and forced their way in, Bess Collins tried to ambush them. The small group of soldiers stationed at the site fought hard to keep it. They fought the wrong enemy, though. Sam and Ledger had taken more heavily defended places than that. Five of the eight soldiers had surrendered after the others and Captain Collins had died in the fighting. They each claimed they were just following orders, which did not work well with anyone.

  The rescue operation was overseen by a pair of old friends of Ledger and Sam—a grizzled old man named Bradley Sims, known to everyone as Top, and a brawny fiftysomething ex-marine from Orange County with the improbable name of Harvey Rabbit, known as Bunny. They had been part of Ledger’s special ops teams for decades.

  Even so, it had been way too close.

  Six

  Dr. Morton found everything he needed at Site B to make pills. His ability to almost miraculously improve on the formula did not go unnoticed. After all, he was now a patient who required those drugs. They let him work and gave him plenty of assistance, but he was never thereafter allowed into any lab or hospital without a military escort.

  A transport came and took him away to Asheville, where Dr. McReady, the brilliant researcher who had led the fight to cure the Reaper Plague, had her main facility. With Wodewose and Dòmi and the bulk of all the research, there was talk of an actual cure—for Sarah Peak and Chong and all the infected. And, of course, for Dr. Max Morton.

  Seven

  Captain Ledger found Gutsy sitting in her tent one morning. He stood there studying her, his eyes unreadable.

  “Are you going to sit there forever?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  “People need you,” he said.

  “No one needs me,” Gutsy said. “I did what I could, but I’m done.”

  He came in and squatted down. Sombra allowed it.

  “Listen to me, Guts,” he said softly. “You look like crap.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, you need some food and a shower and some air.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and looked away.

  “No,” insisted Ledger gently, “you’re not. Listen—I get that you likely feel that you somehow let Alice down, that it’s your fault she died. Thinking that is natural. We humans tend to take out the knives and stab ourselves when things are really bad. You’re looking at the champ of that.”

  She said nothing.

  “Here’s the thing: you did more to save New Alamo than anyone. You want me to go over it point-by-point to explain why I—and everyone else—thinks that?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “No, I won’t be doing that. Your friends out there won’t either. And pretty soon they’re going to get tired of this vigil or whatever it is.” He rubbed some old scars on his face. “But they’re going to need Gabriella Gutsy Gomez. That smart problem solver, the one who figures things out. And you know why they’ll need you? Because you do figure things out. You look at the clockwork and understand what makes it tick.”

  “I did everything I could do, and look what happened.”

  “I get it. You lost your mom, and now you lost Alice. You are gutted, empty, broken. I really get that,” he said.

  She shook her head. “If you came in here to give me a pep talk, it’s not a very good one.”

  “Look, we’re all children of the storm lands,” said Ledger. “We’re all marked. We’re all scarred, inside and out.” He leaned forward and gave Gutsy’s shoulder a slow, firm squeeze. “What matters in the end is what we choose to become when the world rips apart who we’ve been. So, tell me, Gutsy Gomez: Who are you going to be?”

  Instead of waiting for an answer, the soldier got slowly to his feet, knees popping. He lingered in the opening of the tent and gave her a sad, weary smile. But it was a smile nonetheless.

  Eight

  Three weeks after the fall of the Raggedy Man, Benny Imura and Gutsy Gomez sat on the same picnic table, looking out at the endless wastes of the Broken Lands. She looked southwest, to where New Alamo had been. He looked northwest, toward his home in Central California. Sombra lay with his head in Gutsy’s lap.

  “You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Benny asked.

  “I thought about it,” she admitted, “but no. Thanks, though.”

  “So, what are you going to do? Go live in Asheville?”

  Gutsy bent down and plucked a stalk of sweetgrass and put it between her teeth. “For a while. Alethea and Spider want to see it. I guess I do too.”

  Benny turned to look at her. “See it, or live there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Yet.”

  He nodded, and they watched a fleet of clouds sail across the sky.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Back home to California?”

  “I suppose.”

  “To see it, or live there?” she asked, smiling.

  “I don’t know either.”

  Sombra’s leg twitched in his sleep as if he was running from something. He uttered a small whine. Gutsy stroked his head, and he settled down to a more restful slumber. Like Gutsy, his stitches were out. And also like her, he would wear a scar for the rest of his life.

  “Tell you one thing,” said Benny, “there are still a lot of zoms out there. Billions of them. Dr. Morton says that there’s no way to even be sure the ones in other countries are the same. Different mutations, exposure to different chemicals and weather conditions. All that. Could be stuff out there the Wodewose and Dòmi won’t touch.”

  “Yeah,” Gutsy said, “but there could be whole communities out there, too. Intact, I mean. People who stayed safe. On islands and mountains. Or people who found their own cures. It’s a big world. Who knows what’s out there?”

  Benny nodded. They glanced at each other, their gazes lingering.

  “I might want to go take a look,” said Benny.

  “Yeah,” said Gutsy. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  A cloud passed in front of the sun, for a moment darkening the day, but then it moved on. They watched the shadow move across the field and then vanish into the unknown distance. Like a traveler wandering down a lost road.

  More from this Series

  Broken Lands

  Book 1

  More from the Author

  Mars One

  Bits & Pieces

  Fire & Ash

  Tooth & Nail

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2018 by Sara Jo West

  JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres, including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens, and middle graders. His books include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Glimpse, the Dead of Night series The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, and Mars One. His comics include Black Panther, Captain America, and Pandemica. His Rot & Ruin series is in development for file with Alcon Entertainment, and his V-Wars books and comics are now a Netflix series. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies, including The X-Files, V-Wars, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, Baker Street Irregulers, and Nights of the Living Dead. He lives in Del Mar, California. Find him online at JonathanMaberry.com

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Jonathan-Maberry

  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Also by Jonathan Maberry

  THE ROT & RUIN SERIES

  Rot & Ruin

  Dust & Decay

  Flesh & Bone

  Fire & Ash

  Bits & Pieces

  THE BROKEN LANDS SERIES

  Broken Lands

  THE NIGHTSIDERS SERIES

  The Orphan Army

  Vault of Shadows

  Scary Out There

  Mars One

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Jonathan Maberry

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2020 by Matt Griffin

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  Book design by Laurent Linn

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Maberry, Jonathan, author.

  Title: Lost roads / Jonathan Maberry.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2020] | Series: Broken lands ; book 2 | Audience: Ages 14 up. | Audience: Grades 10–12. | Summary: “After losing her mother, Gabriella ‘Gutsy’ Gomez continues her journey to save those infected with the zombie plague, all while having to defend her home from the Night Army, who’s back and even stronger than before”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019056479 (print) | ISBN 9781534406407 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534406421 (eBook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Zombies—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M11164 Lo 2020 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056479

 

 

  Jonathan Maberry, Lost Roads

 

 

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